Cherie Blair needs to simmer down. While on the lecture-circuit here in the States, she attacked the President on human rights; ruffling feathers and embarrassing her government. I don't know that much about her, but does she usually go around the world shooting her mouth off? Either she's a loose cannon, or her husband put her up to this for political reasons. It may well be the former, as I gather she's something of a drama queen.
The cur of the Bambino? State troopers arrested Foster's Daily Democrat staff photographer Aaron Rhode for shooting this picture of a police K9 taking a bite out of "crime" during a Red Sox World Series victory celebration on the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham.
That's what crowd control is all about- making people simmer down. I don't know why people have started to act like fools after games lately. We never used to before. Still, our idiots are pussycats compared to what they have overseas.
Mr. Cracker was on the street outside the stadium in Kiev when hooligans came pouring out after a soccer match. He stood aside and let a wave of them pass, then headed behind, walking to his apartment. They busted up everything they passed. He was surprised to hear on CNN the next day when he was on the plane home that this was described as an anti-Semitic attack, because a synagogue's windows got broken. He said the buildings left, right, and all over had their windows broken as well. There's plenty of genuine anti-Semitic nastiness without including soccer-hooliganism in the mix. I've read that there were people inside who came out and confronted these guys. For sure, there would have been a fight then.
He was there for a year and had a lot of interesting experiences, and although I would have had him give this one a miss, he was still an eye-witness to a little bit of history.
Enjoying a Saturday afternoon
Playing by the lake with Shiloh
The Lilly Hop
Female surgery puts an end to her career as a bikini model
We've commenced the candy quality-control testing procedure
It should be finished by sometime tomorrow night
I wish everyone a happy Halloween
So it's come.
Al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden want to inject themselves in the American election.
They're murderers and we'll never stop hunting them down until we bring the last one to justice. No negotiation, no appeasement.
Last week I had a lady say to me "Shame on you" when I answered her insult to President Bush by saying I was voting for him.
The people who should feel ashamed are those who try to undercut the Commander-in-Chief in the middle of a freaking war.
John Kerry is a Jimmy Carter retread, an effete Bill Clinton with erectile dysfunction. He's not going to do jack about terrorists. He's going to talk, talk, talk.
Screw that noise. I don't want talk. I want action.
UPDATE:
Protein Wisdom has a round-up of reactions.
This is so very cool about the dog dialing 911 and letting the cops in after her epileptic owner fell and was knocked unconscious. Dogs are capable of such amazing feats of service.
On the other end of the spectrum, while I was out earlier with Shiloh, Lilly discovered the couch. Mr. Cracker said she crawled up on it and was flopping up and down the length of it, bouncing off all the cushions, and looked like she was enjoying moving without hurting anything.
I was wondering if there might be something out there like a boxing glove for her stump, with a velcro fastener at the top. That would be terrific for outside.
The Sydney Morning Herald took an interesting article about Southern heritage and attached a nasty title and cartoon to it. We're bad people who vote wrong, and the editors wanted to make sure everyone understood that, since the writer wasn't emphatic enough about it.
Go raise a yell at the editor. I sure did.
The only usable pic of the lot. No flash, lots of blur. Best I have at the moment.
Lilly in her favorite room- the kitchen
Lovely. Michael Moore's in town for tonight's protest at the SOE office about the 9-storey-high stack of missing absentee ballots.
I guess that means this is Bush's fault somehow, even though this is the third SOE in a row who has screwed the pooch? That happens when you make it an elected position instead of hiring a professional.
I very much resent outsiders coming down here to stir up trouble. We can handle it ourselves and don't need to follow in the wake of the great white whale.
BTW, my ballot came this afternoon. I'll carry it down to the SOE tomorrow.
You won't like how I'm going to mark my absentee ballot, Mikey.
UPDATE:
He came, he saw, he probably had a snack.
UPDATE II:
He threatens to eat the pets of those who vote for Bush!
One of the Broward Commisioners says she's tired of Broward being the laughingstock of the nation because of our utter cluelessness about how to run an election.
Those of us who requested absentee ballots, but have not received them, will not be allowed to vote on Election Day.
I'm wearing my clothes out from the inside from all my laughing.
Not really. I want my ballot.
Our only option is to go to one of the early voting centers and stand in line for hours. There's some out-of-town people who look to be SOL.
I forgive you
RIP Curse of the Bambino 1918-2004
Duane didn't do so well with percussion instruments.
Wail on, Skydog!
Forget trying to stigmatize diamond-buying by talking about conflict diamonds and artificial scarcity. This approach using paired-associates will work much better.
Despite having put in two requests, I still haven't gotten my absentee ballot. It doesn't look like I'm going to, either:
The Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office pointed a finger at the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday for nearly 60,000 missing absentee ballots, but took the blame for having a phone system that was being overwhelmed by calls from frustrated voters.
While the post office denied responsibility for the missing ballots, Broward County commissioners, anxious to avoid another failed election, offered to send county employees to help with the phones. Dozens of employees could begin assisting the elections office today to answer telephone calls and to process voters at the 14 early voting sites.
Due to the ousted SOE's being both crazy and retarded, County employees from other divisions were called in to help the SOE's office two years ago during an election. A new SOE is in place and yet County employees are still supplementing the SOE office. The SOE is an elected official and has her own budget separate from the County's. When is that office going to get its sh*t together? They should go study how they do it in Afghanistan, or something.
I came back with Lilly. For the next two months, my life will be hell as I work on extinguishing her bad behaviors. She's friendly but she mouths, and nobody on this earth wants to be mouthed by a German Shepherd. My Mom hated her within an hour. Dad and Mom both wanted me to return her, with Dad volunteering to do the dirty work, as is his lot in life. The dog must have slept all of two hours yesterday. She's a bit hyper, but I think I would be too.
She gets around by scooting/hopping combo, and goes at a great clip. She's missing a foot and holds her back legs like the numeral '4'. I'll be taking her to my vet in just a bit for a thorough examination. A vet over in Fort Myers volunteered to amputate the leg for free, so after she's gained more weight, I'll look into it.
She gazes at the refrigerator with great love and adoration in her eyes. She's very cute. I can't tell how intelligent she is yet.
The people at Animal Control named her Lilly Chayne, for the chain in her neck. I'll have to take her back over there if the cruelty case goes to criminal court, as opposed to civil.
UPDATE:
My vet advises against amputation as the dog uses her stumpy leg for balance, and she's not knocking it on things.
Lilly has fought sleep all day. I see her nodding...nodding...but then she jerks herself awake. She must be on high-alert.
I've already got the mouthing extinguished just with doing the yipping procedure, so maybe she does have some brains. The other stuff will be harder.
While early-polling places remain in chaos and the NYT writes that attacks around the nation on various Bush campaign headquarters just mean the Republicans are getting set for shenanigans, I am, as the old excuse has it, "going to see a man about a dog."
Only this time it's no excuse.
See y'all when I get back.
BTW, I'm in the middle of an Ace-INDC sandwich. I know it's wrong, but it feels so right
If you haven't been reading The Kerry Fairy, you should check her out. Today I learned there that the Editor of the UK Guardian, paper of record for calling for assassination of Presidents when election results disappoint, is Albert Scardino, a former NYT reporter from Savannah, by Gawd, Georgia. He was also the former press editor for David Denkins and the media consultant for Mr. Clinton's 1992 campaign.
Looking around, I see that his brother John, with whom he writes articles for the Guardian, is a failed Congressional candidate.
His brother Tom is also a failed Congressional candidate.
No wonder he thinks the will of the people sucks. We stupidly refuse to elect Scardinos.
UPDATE 7/29/05:
More on the current situation of Albert Scardino here.
There are lots of updates on the story of Lilly the blogging dog.
If I'm lucky she'll put me on her blogroll.
Sami Al-Arian, indicted head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in North America and former University of South Florida professor, has just released a book of poetry. The poems deal with daily jailhouse routines and experiences and, of course, how innocent he is. If this volume does well, he may release a second volume, containing poetry of a more deeply philosophical nature, such as: Damn America to Death, Death to Israel, Jews Are Monkeys And Pigs, and Here's The Dough, Go Recruit Some Kids For Suicide Missions.
"The heart and soul of America is found right here in Fort Myers."
Damn skippy, Mr. President.
Get ready to rock
Dubya and Laura: Y'all are welcome in my town any time
It's nice to be among friends
11,000 early-rising friends
Bring back the bonnet!
Ya gotta love them white-hatted dudes
We love you! Come back soon!
Here's a cached copy of the Guardian column calling for the President's assassination.
I hope the editors of the UK Guardian and columnist Charlie Brooker get exactly what they deserve. Those aren't civilized men running that paper- those are animals.
This is beyond the pale.
Dumb show
Charlie Brooker
Saturday October 23, 2004
The Guardian
Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming "Please God, not Bush!", the candidates clash head to head in a series of live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh.
Or have you? Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so. The exemplary BBC News website hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK.
Watching Bush v Kerry, two things immediately strike you. First, the opening explanation of the rules makes the whole thing feel like a Radio 4 parlour game. And second, George W Bush is... well, he's... Jesus, where do you start?
The internet's a-buzz with speculation that Bush has been wearing a wire, receiving help from some off-stage lackey. Screen grabs appearing to show a mysterious bulge in the centre of his back are being traded like Top Trumps. Prior to seeing the debate footage, I regarded this with healthy scepticism: the whole "wire" scandal was just wishful thinking on behalf of some amateur Michael Moores, I figured. And then I watched the footage.
Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he's listening to something we can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.
So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head, because I'm trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it's a miracle he wasn't laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole "wire" debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.
Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired. Perhaps he's just gone gaga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll never know the truth.
The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy theories, ones with far less evidence to support them. (For infuriating confirmation of this, watch the second part of the must-see documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (Wed, 9pm, BBC2) and witness the absurd hounding of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater and Vince Foster non-scandals.)
Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
Looks like they forgot something:
On Election Day, voters will be protected from campaign pressures by a 50-foot cone, an invisible barrier that campaign workers cannot breach. Not so for early voters.
While the Voter's Bill of Rights in state law says they have a right to "vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person," a glitch in the newer early voting law does not include the same 50-foot guarantee.
Guess the rest.
In Delray, Danny freakin' Devito was blocking the entrance to the polls. That definitely would have pushed me over the edge if I had been there. Who wouldn't want to push the little twerp's mug in? Get out of people's way and let them vote.
Stolen Honor is now viewable online.
It's a depressing film. Listening to the POWs talk about the impact John Kerry's propaganda had on them while they were in prison is heartbreaking.
(Via Citizen Smash.)
If you want to shut Ann Coulter up by throwing pies at her, those pies better be made of napalm. Otherwise, you just rile her up.
Free speech for thee, but none for me, eh, boys?
Ann Coulter arrived two hours late, sidestepped an attempt to throw a pie in her face and delivered a steady stream of outrageous, politically incorrect one-liners attacking liberals, opponents of the war in Iraq, Democrats and that party's presidential nominee, John Kerry.
All in a day's work for the author, TV talking head and blond bombshell of the far right.
-----
Coulter dodges pie, ridicules war critics
Ann Coulter arrived two hours late, sidestepped an attempt to throw a pie in her face and delivered a steady stream of outrageous, politically incorrect one-liners attacking liberals, opponents of the war in Iraq, Democrats and that party's presidential nominee, John Kerry.
All in a day's work for the author, TV talking head and blond bombshell of the far right.
Though Coulter was late arriving because of snarled travel arrangements, most of those who braved stormy weather to see her at the University of Arizona's Centennial Hall stuck it out. The hall, which holds about 2,500, was more than 90 percent full when she finally took the stage to a standing ovation.
Coulter called Kerry a "gigolo" who has spent most of his life "living off the work of other men." She said Kerry's only hope to improve this country as president would be "to snooker some rich country into marrying us."
She said the "reporting for duty" line Kerry used at the Democratic convention "is the same thing he says when he goes into the bedroom."
As Coulter was fielding questions from an overwhelmingly supportive audience, a pair of young men ran onto the stage toward her, threw a pie at her face and kept running. College Republicans, who helped organize the event, gave chase. The pie missed.
"Ann, are you all right?" yelled one woman from the crowd. "That's a liberal for you," yelled another.
A UA police officer at the scene said the pie thrower and his accomplice did not get far before being apprehended. It couldn't be determined early this morning what became of the pie flinger.
Coulter ridiculed arguments by opponents of the war in Iraq. For instance, she said it was absurd to call "the 18-month run-up" to the war a rush to judgment. She also blasted the claim that there is no evidence of a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
"There is plenty of evidence," she said. "Just not enough to convince an O.J. jury."
Coulter identified Democrats as "the party of pacifism and appeasement" and said the Democratic Party "supports the troops like they love America and believe in God."
She took aim at the governments of Germany and France for not joining the coalition effort in Iraq.
"I never really knew why we needed the approval of Germans to take out a dictator who gassed his own people," she said. "But at least the Germans can fight. I haven't figured out what France's contribution would be."
Coulter recited a litany of terrorist attacks carried out against Americans over the past 20 years by Middle Eastern extremists in arguing that racial profiling to prevent terrorism is justified.
She also repeated the line that she has been most criticized for, saying U.S. policy in the Middle East should be to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Coulter blasted American liberals as intolerant of Christian religious beliefs.
"Liberals insist that Muslims should be able to practice their religion at Guantanamo, but Christian religious practices must be banned from public schools."
At another point she said, "Conservatives believe man was made in God's image. Liberals believe they are God."
The visit by Coulter, who wrote "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," was embraced by campus Republicans. They were upset that a student group paid $27,000 for a visit this month by far left filmmaker Michael Moore, which took in substantially more than that. Coulter's $20,000 fee was paid by the Virginia-based Young America's Foundation and by private contributors. Her talk was free.
Before Coulter's arrival, a small group of students carried placards and shouted slogans protesting her views.
Mike Sosa, 23, who pretended to be Adolf Hitler and mocked Republicans in a German accent, is confronted outside Centennial Hall by Lisa Sato, 46, who said her mother fled Germany to escape Hitler. The two sparred before Ann Coulter's talk last night
This is a mess:
Tens of thousands of Florida voters are also registered to vote in a second state, and more than 1,600 may have cast ballots in Florida and one of two other states in recent elections, taking advantage of an absence of safeguards to prevent illegal double voting.
An Orlando Sentinel examination of voting records from Florida, Georgia and North Carolina found more than 68,000 cases in which voters with the same names and dates of birth were registered in two states. In 1,650 cases, records indicate those voters cast ballots in Florida and another state in the 2000 or 2002 elections.
They did manage to bust one double-voter, after a relative turned him in. He got 18 months' probation. Supervisors of Elections are setting new standards for lots of loose sh*t going on.
What's it going to take to keep the foxes out of the henhouse? A national voter database?
We keep better track of cars.
Here's the blog of Lilly, a Fort Myers dog with a story to tell.
UPDATE:
I wrote to the reporter covering the story. Lilly did not get adopted during Saturday's big Pet Fest.
UPDATE II:
I called out to the pound and then my mom called out there too. Mom's going out to there to talk to Lilly to see what's what.
I thought 20 people would have called to claim her after the newspaper and TV coverage. What happened? Is it because one of her back legs doesn't work? They wouldn't put her up for adoption if there still wasn't some sweetness left to her personality.
UPDATE III:
I've been writing back and forth with the reporter who's covering Lilly's story. She said that the dog was working the crowd at Pet Fest, wagging her tail and letting everyone pet her. It was the leg that put people off. It's missing the foot and the leg itself is twisted around in the completely wrong direction. It needs to be amputated. So, that's very good news. I was hoping it was just the leg. Three-legged dogs are some of the best dogs out there. People shouldn't be so choicy. Most of us aren't beauty pageant material either.
--------------
The original story from the Fort Myers News-Press:
DOG BLOG: Lilly tells her tale
Editor's Note: This Weblog, as told through the eyes of a 2-year-old German shepherd at Lee County Animal Services, was written by The News-Press reporter Karen Feldman
Sept. 13
I got lucky today. I got loose and started to explore the neighborhood.
A woman saw me on her lawn and realized I needed help.
Soon a man showed up in a big white truck.
He told the lady that he was Ricky Martinez, an animal control officer. His voice was soft and gentle. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt me.
He picked me up, put me in the back of his truck and took me to a big building where there are lots of dogs and cats. I heard someone call it “animal services.”
More nice people came over to see me. They petted me and a man with a ponytail checked me over from snout to tail.
They gave me my own dog run and a big bowl of food.
All around, it’s been a pretty good day.
Sept. 14
I’m really sleepy, but I wanted to tell you what happened today. The man with the ponytail turned out to be veterinarian David Fancher. He and vet tech Maria Raiche put me on a table and put a mask over my nose.
I slept for a while and when I woke up, that awful choker chain that had grown into my neck and hurt so much was gone.
My neck is still very sore but it feels better without the collar.
Sept. 25
Boy, do I feel good! My neck isn’t sore anymore and my fur is growing back. I look pretty darned attractive, if I do say so myself.
A television crew came to see me and my story was on the news tonight.
The reporter talked about the horrible chain that dug into my neck and got so deep they had to cut it out. They showed a picture of me just after the chain was removed and then moving pictures of me now, with lots of fur and a fuller figure.
I’m a star!
Oct. 20
I met a man and woman from the newspaper today. I was so happy to be getting attention that I had a hard time sitting still for a picture. I think they got my good side, though.
Oct. 22
It looks like there’s going to be a party here tomorrow. All the people are running around setting up tents and signs. A lot of us got baths.
My fur feels soft and thick now and has mostly grown back on my neck. I hope someone notices how pretty and loving I am and doesn’t mind that one of my back legs doesn’t work.
Maybe tomorrow will be the day I find someone who will take me home and love me.
Lilly's surgery at Animal Servies to remove the embedded collar
Lilly during her recovery phase at Animal Services
Lilly at Animal Services Pet Fest
---------------------
Text from Cruelty Page on Lilly at Lee County Animal Servies
"Lilly"
On September 13, 2004 Lee County Animal Services responded to a call involving an injured dog that had wandered into the caller’s yard. The Animal Control Officer who responded found the dog with a choker chain type of collar that was severely imbedded in its neck. An imbedded collar is when the dog’s neck has been cut by the collar it is wearing. Most often it leads to an open wound that becomes infected. In some cases the animal’s own skin begins to grow around the collar as it tries to heal.
Lilly was brought to Lee County Animal Services immediately for treatment by the Animal Control Officer. She was anesthetized and the imbedded choker chain removed. The gaping wound was sutured. Animal Services continued its cruelty investigation to find the owner and determine how the animal came to be in this condition.
The owner was located and claimed to have given the dog to a second party three to four weeks earlier to care for until she could move. The caretaker subsequently turned the dog loose after his landlord said he could not keep the dog. It was determined that the severity of the wound from the collar could not have occurred in just three to four weeks. The owner is being charged with cruelty under Lee County’s ordinance as the injury must have been present when the dog was given to the caretaker. The caretaker may be charged as well for not providing care and for abandoning the dog.
Lilly, is available for adoption from Lee County Animal Services. Besides recovering from the imbedded collar, she also has an old leg injury that may require additional care. Anyone interested should come to the shelter at 5600 Banner Drive in Fort Myers to visit with this special pet. Adoption hours are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 10 am to 4:30 pm, Tuesday from 10 am to 7:00 pm and Saturday from 10 am to 2:30 pm.
This guy must be the director of ACORN that we've been hearing about on the streets:
An activist group was sued in Miami-Dade Circuit Court this week by a former employee, who has accused top officials of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now of violating a slew of election laws.
Mac Stuart, of Opa-locka, has accused the organization, known as ACORN, of illegally copying voter registration applications and selling them to labor union groups, allowing people to sign petitions who were not registered voters and suppressing Republican voter registration applications.
It is an accusation. I don't know what, if any, proof he has. He was high up in the organization, however, and would be in place to know if illegal activities were policy. We'll see.
Seven games to go. Mock him at your peril
Firas of Iraq and Iraqis has something to say to Americans regarding the United Nations and our election:
Well it’s a free country now and I can say what ever I want to say and its FOR AMERICANS ONLY:
Americans……….what’s the matter with you, why are you talking a lot about dumping us to UN? Why are you thinking that you made a wrong act by removing Saddam?, Have any one thought for a moment about living under Saddams nightmare?. Was his dictatorship a right thing?, what about the mass graves?, he supported many terrorists in the world, and if you ask me, yes he would be happy to help Bin Ladin if Bin Ladin asked him for, and he would do whatever it would take to have WMD to use it not, if not now then later, and he would live all his live trying to kill more and more of all those who don’t carry on his ideas, Iraqis, Americans, or even Jordanians.
And with the entire bad nightmare we live in today, which we are certain it will end soon, we are happy that we are a part of the rest of the world again and acting positively to continue being an active peaceful part.
After all that, don’t you ever think that removing Saddam was wrong, not only for Iraqis, but be sure that when many enough dictators will rule in the world even those who live under democracies will not be safe anymore.
And if and only if we will assume that you did something wrong towards Iraqis and made our lives more difficult by removing Saddam, then is it the right thing to leave us half way with all our problems and dump us to an irresponsible corrupt universal organization like UN who took long years working in Iraq before March 2003 hiring and employing only Saddams intelligence and Bathiyests ?, ..........of course not.
For all that, either you thought this or that, you should think you are obligated to continue helping us. I say that to those American who are willing to vote for the person who are planning to give up the war against terrorism and stay home waiting for them to come after him and act at then.
But for the man who took the right decision at the right moment and decided to fight terrorism and remove all its supporters all over the world and at the same moment he knew he would face many problems and criticism from that by his competitors, at his next presidency campaign I say Thank you President Bush you made the right decision from my point of view.
I know I can’t vote or make any difference but truth will make that difference, so it must be said, and telling facts will help showing the truth.
From a free country I want to say by the name of all those who share my opinions, and I don’t think we are a minority, that we do feel our freedom and we intended to keep it whatever it cost and we do feel that the future will be better and the light of the sunrise which begun on the 9th of April 2003 will continue to shine all over Iraq and Iraqis and January is not far to prove what I am saying.
(Firas has more to say. I'm disgusted by the people wanting to cut and run. Where is your honor?)
That's a handsome tie, Mr. Instapundit
I've been doing some tallying, trying to figure out which blog has the most references to "Instapundit" on the front page. The most I've found in one place is fifteen, not counting the blogroll. That's some XXX brown-nosing, and looks to be the likely winner, but there may be some talent of even greater magnitude out there just waiting to be discovered.
If one of y'all finds a blog with more, send me an e-mail. If it checks out, I'll send you a prize: a Duane pic, of course.
UPDATE:
Ace is afraid it's him.
Matt's got something on his nose! What could it be?
Looking fine after the big haircut.
Wail on, Skydog!
It's a good thing Spain got those terrorists off its back.
Here's a video of John Edwards obsessing over his silky mane. He's got a compact and everything.
erepublic.com/focus/f-news/1249473/posts">FR.)
A robber picked the wrong woman to tangle with:
Investigators said Felecia Moss, 34, was followed when she drove her Lexus into her gated community. When she arrived at her home, a man who was driving a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera pulled up and approached Moss as she got out of her car.
Moss said the man, who had a gun, demanded money from her. But when she showed him her empty wallet, he grabbed a cellular phone from her purse.
That's when she started filling the air with lead. She even disabled his getaway car:
Moss then pulled out a 9mm Heckler and Koch semi-automatic handgun. The man scuffled with Moss, trying to get the gun. Without being able to get the gun, the man took off running.
Moss fired three shots at the man, and fearing he would return for his getaway car, she shot the tire out on the vehicle.
The robber then carjacked a lady who was defenseless.
Way to go, Felecia, for practicing good self-defense and giving a very bad guy something to think about.
Here's more on those Kerry stickers in Hebrew I was talking about the other day.
I hadn't realized it, but it turns out Kerry is all about protecting Israel:
"I have a 100 percent record on every resolution, on every vote, on every appropriation, on everything that has made a difference to Israel's qualitative military edge," Kerry said.
He's also flown an Israeli jet, and in some speeches says he was going to fly into Egypt, but changed his mind at the last second. He's even stood atop Masada and shouted Hebrew stuff.
Kerry says he'll do a better than job than Bush "holding those Arab countries accountable for funding terrorism," and:
Kerry promised that he would stay engaged in the Middle East and help create a Palestinian entity with which Israel could negotiate. "You don't have one today, so you have to build a fence and you have to do what you are doing," he said.
So how come Ariel Sharon says Bush is the best friend in the White House that Israel has ever had, and supports him for President?
Probably because when Kerry is addressing Arabs, he sings a different song:
Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry had a different position when speaking to an Arab-American gathering near Detroit one year ago - he said the security fence separating Israel from the Palestinian territories was a "barrier to peace."
Being Israel's best friend is not going to put Kerry in good stead with France, Germany, and the United Nations- the very entities whose good opinion John Kerry desires most.
Should we now believe he's going to pick Israel over them?
---
Kerry courts Jews with Hebrew campaign stickers
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - John Kerry boasts of flying an Israeli jet and calls out in Hebrew during Florida campaign stops, trying to keep the state's large Jewish population from straying to President Bush.
In 2000, Jews voted 4-to-1 for Democrats Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate on a major party's presidential ticket. But Bush has built a reputation as a strong backer of Israel, and he has courted Jewish voters in hopes that even a slight increase in support could make a difference in another tight election.
Kerry told voters in West Palm Beach Monday that he will do a better job than Bush of "holding those Arab countries accountable for funding terrorism."
"We'll do a better job of protecting the state of Israel than they are today," Kerry said. Supporters held signs distributed by the campaign that said "Jewish Americans for Kerry" and wore stickers and T-shirts that said "Kerry-Edwards" in Hebrew.
Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said Kerry wants to reassure Jewish voters that he will continue his record of fighting for Israel. "By and large the Jewish population in Florida knows who's on their side and who isn't," she said.
Kerry supporters cheered when he said he'd been to Israel several times and touted his voting record in the Senate. "I have a 100 percent record on every resolution, on every vote, on every appropriation, on everything that has made a difference to Israel's qualitative military edge," Kerry said.
"I've had the privilege of flying a jet in Israel, learning firsthand how tight that security is, how close the borders are, how tiny and fragile it is," Kerry said. "I've climbed to the top of Masada and I've stood on the top of Masada and yelled out as the Air Force recruits and others used to from the side of that cliff, the words `Am Yisrael Chai!'"
Kerry's use of the Hebrew cry that means "The people of Israel live" delighted the crowd. The symbolism of Masada - the desert mountain where Jewish rebels chose suicide over capture - still looms large in Israel as soldiers come at the start of their military training to pledge allegiance to the state.
Sharyn Wachs, wearing one of the campaign's Hebrew stickers on her shirt, said Kerry seemed "really united" with Israel and she was touched by his story of climbing Masada since she's done it twice herself. She has been angry with Bush's invasion of Iraq and left the rally to go cast her vote for Kerry since early voting began Monday in Florida.
"Let's just hope he can come through," she said. "That's the thing - they can say anything to get elected."
During his campaign stop Monday, Kerry didn't tell the extended version of his story of flying the jet, as he did on Oct. 9 in Davie, Fla. He said then that he had started to fly over Egyptian airspace but then did a loop in the air. Kerry, who trained as a pilot in his college days, had been taken aloft by a colonel in an Israeli Air Force jet.
Kerry promised that he would stay engaged in the Middle East and help create a Palestinian entity with which Israel could negotiate. "You don't have one today, so you have to build a fence and you have to do what you are doing," he said.
Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry had a different position when speaking to an Arab-American gathering near Detroit one year ago - he said the security fence separating Israel from the Palestinian territories was a "barrier to peace."
Accusing the president of using scare tactics, Edwards charged: ``George Bush is playing on people's deepest fears. He's exploiting a national tragedy for personal gain and it's the lowest kind of politics."
``He will fail in the war against terrorism because he does not know how to lead,'' Edwards said of Bush.
``George Bush today is making one last stand to con the American people into believing that he is the only one who can fight and win the war on terrorism,'' the Democratic vice presidential nominee said.
Since the terrorist attacks, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled and the former leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, has been in U.S. custody since December.
According to this post, when asked who his heroes are, John Kerry said "Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, and Max Cleland."
Pull the other one. Either there's an amazing amount of turn-over on the "hero" list he's had a life-time to build, or he's pandering. Why couldn't he have been honest about such a simple thing? Even given that by "hero", what's meant is "most admired", it's just silly and phoney.
When lawyers disrupt elections, it's the voters who lose. It makes me sick what the Florida Democratic Party is doing.
Silly me. I thought voters would choose the next president.
Now it's starting to look like lawyers and judges will have more say on the elections, at least in Florida.
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Lawyers doing the voters no favors
Silly me. I thought voters would choose the next president.
Now it's starting to look like lawyers and judges will have more say on the elections, at least in Florida.
It all started in 2000 when lawsuits became the way to win political elections. Al Gore is not president today because he lost in the Supreme Court.
Democrats vowed it wouldn'thappen again.
Believing the system is stacked against them in Republican-dominated Tallahassee, Democrats have begun an unprecedented preemptive assault in the courtroom. Party lawyers and their activist allies in special interest groups are challenging everything from how voters are registered to who should be on the ballot.
These suits distract elections officials at a time they should be preparing for what may be the biggest turnout Florida has ever seen. The lawyers are doing voters no favors.
Not that some of them seem to care. Many of these Democratic-oriented activist groups depend upon publicity to raise money, so they have a hidden reason to keep a high-profile suit alive. When it comes to some lawyers, the only thing they like more than billable hours is a microphone and a television camera.
A good example of lawyers running amok is the court battle over who should appear on the ballot in Congressional District 22. Democratic activists are insisting at the last minute that they have a new candidate on the ballot to run against U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale.
Their former Democratic nominee, Jim Stork, flubbed his withdrawal from office as badly as he waged his campaign. He announced publicly he was leaving the race almost a month before the deadline for removing his name from the ballot. Then he didn't file the proper papers in time.
Democrats sued.
They want political consultant Robin Rorapaugh to replace Stork on the ballot.
Never mind many absentee ballots have already been distributed, marked and returned to the elections office. Never mind it is too late to reprogram the electronic touch-screen voting machines. Never mind that early voting starts Monday. Never mind this foolish suit is sidetracking election administrators when they need to be concentrating on the Nov. 2 election.
Gisela Salas, Broward's second-in-command in the elections office, says, "I'm involved in day-to-day operations. I had to go to Tallahassee for two days on one suit when I could have been preparing for the election."
Don't expect any sympathy from the lawyers. Ron Meyer, a Tallahassee attorney representing the Democrats, told The Associated Press they'll stay in court. Even if the ballots can't be changed, Palm Beach County Democratic State Committeeman Joseph Martin and Committeewoman Katherine Kelly, who filed the suit, want votes cast for Stork to be counted for Rorapaugh. That raises other questions that could end up before a judge.
What's behind this suit?
Rorapaugh, who has managed many campaigns from the backrooms, is hardly a household name. I believe there is no way that even a well-known Democrat could start a campaign this late and beat Shaw.
Maybe the answer is that Democrats just want to hassle Shaw and the Republican-led state Elections Division.
But suits like the one in District 22 serve to complicate an already difficult election to run. It is the voters who could suffer from a flawed election.
Somewhere along the line, Democrats have forgotten what Ben Franklin warned as the nation was beginning so many years ago. Franklin said, "A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."
Poll watching is catching on. There's been a great increase in the number of people volunteering to be poll watchers for the upcoming election, and Supervisors of Elections have been reminded that poll watchers are allowed to challenge a person's qualifications for voting. Each polling place may have one watcher from each party present.
Here in Broward there will be a self-appointed group of roaming lawyers of the Democratic Party persuasion to ensure people's "right to vote". I'm sure they'll ensure things run smoothly and not intimidate the poll workers or watchers at all when someone with no identification or voter registration card shows up to vote.
I'm voting absentee and will miss all the drama.
Sara, a border collie mix in Sebastian, is in full support of her owner's buying of a lunch to support hurricane relief
Pious Agnostic continues to roll up an Orlando terrorist cell, and T.J., a Ft. Myers puppy saved from an attacking alligator when his owner-lady stabbed the gator in the head with a knife, has had lots of donations to get all the surgery and treatments he needs to get better. Yay for the folks who helped the little dog.
Meanwhile, reader Carl says "In your face" to the reigning Aussie one-upper of saurian news, Paul of Daily Diatribe, with the story, pics, and video of the big damn gator my fellow Crackers in Palatka have caught.
Big damn gator
Before you enter this contest, you should think about the jealous fighting it could cause amongst your friends should you win. Remember, you can take only one of them with you.
Let Dead Man Eating tell you.
Great new ads out by the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth.
The media slams the Swifties, let's see what they say about the POWs. There should be some interesting verbal acrobatics, as I don't think they'll be willing to outright disparage the POWs.
Democratic U.S. Senatorial candidate Betty Castor continues to steer clear of John Kerry and she's not the only one:
Nationally, all of the Democratic candidates in eight hotly contested Senate races are keeping their distance from Kerry because they find themselves in pro-Bush or toss-up states, said Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Report in Washington.
''None of the Democratic Senate candidates are running with Kerry. Some are actually running away from him,'' she said.
Castor keeps avoiding being seen with Kerry or Edwards on their visits to Florida. He can't help her:
Republican fundraiser Justin Sayfie said. ``I don't think Kerry's got the coattails to help Betty.''
He could hurt her, though. I don't blame Betty for avoiding all that free television time with Kerry. Start hanging out with John "Nuisance" Kerry and voters might start thinking you're weak on terrorism.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Wail on, Skydog!
Back in the day, the Miami Herald was a really good newspaper to subscribe to; the Sunday issue in particular. On Sundays they had a magazine section called "Tropic", which, among other things, would cover a particular story with an in-depth article. Many of the articles were so good, so memorable, local people are still referencing them in conversation to this day.
As the Herald went into decline, one of the things they got rid of was the "Tropic" section. I'm lucky enough to have access to archives that cover most of the years of the magazine. I ran across this article on Christine Falling, Florida's worst babysitter, today while researching something else. I remember sitting on the patio, drinking coffee, and reading this article one Sunday long ago. Since it's not available on the net, I thought I'd include it here so it would be.
The author won a Pulitzer for her work at the Herald. While I don't agree with the conclusion of the article, the writing is terrific. Something you could savor along with your coffee on a Sunday morning.
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THE BABYSITTER
Author: MADELEINE BLAIS Herald Staff Writer
1983 Tropic
"I love young 'uns. I don't know why I done what I done. Young 'uns is real cute. They don't really give you no problem. They sleep most of the time. They is affection and you can cuddle them. Little girls is fun because their clothes is prettier than boys and you can dress them up more fancier. I always give young 'uns candy, or a cookie, get on my hands and knees and chase a truck with them. I've been babysitting since I was 14. I never hit a young 'un. I always left that up to the parents.
"Everybody asks me, why you done it, why you done it. I keep askin' myself. I could a seen it if it was a grown-up, could take up for itself, but a little one ain't gonna hurt a grown- up. If it was a grown-up I could have hollered self-defense. The way I done it, I seen it done on TV shows. Only way I ever thought to do it. The simplest and easiest. No one could hear them scream.
"Sometimes I think I done it 'cause I got bad nerves and all the crying, pitchin' fits, throwing stuff, all the time messin' on you, peein' on you, burpin' up on you. Make my nerves go haywire. Only thing I want to do is shut them up. I go to any extreme. I went too far.
"Maybe it was a seizure. I have them grand mal seizures. They is the worse seizures they are.
"Maybe it's 'cause I cain't have young 'uns. Cain't carry them. Something's wrong with my uterus, deformed, retarded, somethin'. When my sisters have one I'm jealous. Maybe that's why I did Geneva's the way I did. I never did touch Carol's young 'un though. Cain't say why not.
"Maybe it's 'cause I didn't get paid half the time. Geneva never paid me but she was kin. Now some of them parents owed me and owed me and owed me. They was gonna pay me and it kept doubling up and doubling up. Fifteen dollars a day times three months. I don't know how much that is. Cain't add that good.
"Sometimes I want to blame the way I was raised up.
"Sometimes I think I have a streak of mean.
"A streak of mental illness.
"Undoubtfully you don't do somethin' for nothin'.
"Got to have a reason somewhere.
"I keep having these dreams, seein' all the babies in a row, all the same as they was only they can talk and they're sayin' all this junk. 'You killed us; now we're gonna kill you.' I want to get rid of those dreams and go back to a normal life.
"I don't understand.
"I brought it all out in the open.
"Why I still have dreams about it, I'll never know.
"I remember when we was little my stepmother, Aunt Dolly, she would take me to church Sunday nights and while the services was goin' on, me and some other girls used to sneak out back. We was mean when we was little. We used to take cats, much as I love cats, throwed 'em up in the air and wringed their necks just to see if a cat had nine lives.
"That what we done it for.
"A cat does not have nine lives.
"I found that out.
"You kill it one time, it ain't gonna come back eight more times."
For 2 1/2 years she made headlines:
Christine Falling, the babysitter of northern Florida, presumed carrier of a mysterious virus that infected and then killed first one then two, three, four and finally five children left in her care from early 1980 until July of 1982. She was famous, ("I got letters from Hawaii.") a modern-day Typhoid Mary, a one-person epidemic of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. "They put me in all them Enquirers and them Mirrors and them Globes. TV, too." She told reporters that the "awful weird coincidence" of the deaths was not enough to keep her from babysitting. Her comments were bizarre, so offhand:
"I'm not scared to babysit. Nobody knows if a young 'un is going to die. You can babysit for a young 'un who has never been sick a day in her life and they'll just drop dead on you.
"In a way, I'm glad I never had no young 'uns 'cause if I had one die on me like that, why, they might just bury me along with it.
"Sometimes I wonder if I don't have some kind of spell over me when I get around young 'uns."
Christine's case was as wild and peculiar as the countryside of the Panhandle where the sad drama took place, the portable horror traveling from one town to another: Lakeland, Perry, Blountstown. It is a rural area known as South Georgia, something out of Deliverance. It is God-fearing country with billboards to show it: "Heaven or Hell -- You determine it." Logging country, the land is covered with tall pines and great oaks. The close-by rivers have noble names: The Su-wannee, the Steinhatchee, Apalachicola. They move past the small towns as slow as time, and they are just as old.
The people are poor; without education, without prospects. Carol Phillips, Christine's sister, says the best jobs in Perry are at Buckeye, the paper plant, and after that Winn Dixie and K-Mart. Those are the jobs people would kill for. Housing is rundown and often not clean; as Christine would say, "It's hard to keep your personal hygienes up and all." Inside one trailer, one evening, dinnertime: a bowl of greens, huge servings of mashed potatoes with gravy, a single piece of gristle tossed back and forth among three young children, one shouting, "I hate fat meat." The offending morsel lands on the plate of the youngest, powerless to toss it elsewhere. The television is on. No one is talking. Parents and children glumly fill their mouths. The hus-band will be leaving soon on a run; he drives a truck. He likes it: It's hard to think about going to work after the freedom of a truck. The man is in his late 20s, sick with stomach ulcers, doctor says he's dying. The man thinks he got the ulcers from too much Pepsi. He wants an open casket. Outside tethered dogs bark at the moon.
Under such conditions there is not much margin for grace, very little energy for anything other than survival. Mortality is a presence and a reality. A portion of the cemetery in Perry is called Babyland. It is a group grave. Crude metal markers honor the passing of about 30 children. "Another angel before the Heaven," says one of the markers. Carol Phillips, Christine's older sister, has a baby in the cemetery. "They say that at Woodlawn there are two children to every adult. Half my junior high school class is here because of some foolishness they was into: a car wreck, a dare." Carol bends over, pulling up the weeds and uprighting the fallen baskets of flowers, not just at her daughter's grave, but also at Jennifer Daniel's grave and at the graves of strangers.
When the children in Christine Falling's care died, it was assumed they were like everybody else: life's victims. No one thought "smotheration." Everyone figured it was that disease that keeps the young 'uns from breathing; a touch of that.
No one would accept that she was a murderer. Not her family, not the townspeople, not the doctors, not the parents of her victims.
Reporters wrote that her "babysitting business" was suffering because of the bad publicity. The phrase conveys a wildly false reputability. It implies a facility, some kind of licensing, the keeping of books, a cheerful decor of dancing animals. This picture parodies the reality of a gang of kids in the custody of an epileptic teenaged girl, of low intelligence, in trailers and shacks, tended for hours on end. The parents were poor: the parents of Jeffrey and the parents of Joe-Boy were out fishbaiting; driving worms from the earth, vibrating them up through the use of crude tools, collecting them into buckets and selling them. Each bucket, containing about 500, earns between $17 and $28, depending on the time of year; it's a common side income for pregnant women to get up extra money for a nursery.
They accepted their victimization. Jeffrey's death was blamed on the water. It was contaminated: Young 'uns couldn't handle it. Joe-Boy's parents were attending Jeffrey's funeral when Joe-Boy took ill suddenly. The talk again turned to the water.
The mother of the final victim was out all night. She was 17 years old, celebrating the release of her 2-month-old son Travis
from the hospital after a week's bout with what was said to be "yemonia." The child was saved after he developed breathing difficulties in Christine's care. A week later, Travis was returned to Christine's care, and died.
Jennifer's mother had left Christine for a matter of minutes when the death occured. She was inside a Winn Dixie buying some diapers while Christine watched her daughter when she took ill and turned purple and stopped breathing. When she came out Christine waited until they started driving to tell the mother something was wrong. "I knowed I could put on a cover-up story." Her cover-up story: "This baby ain't breathing." The mother: "Babies don't breathe hard, Christine." She looked over. Her child was blue. "There was no spond." They raced to the hospital. Christine dropped the child's glass bottle on the way in. As always Christine was in shock when questioned by the authorities; the tears came easily. At the funeral when Precious
Memories was played, Christine fled.
Despite the deaths, families of the victims and friends continued to offer tributes to Christine's skills as a sitter: She was nice to young 'uns, she brought them presents, she let them take sips of her iced tea. Also, there were dozens and dozens of children who had survived her caretaking, a statistic intended to demonstrate that Christine could hardly have killed those five in light of the dozens she didn't kill.
"I tried," she said, "never to go under a dollar an hour." Sometimes she did, exchanging her services for food and a place to sleep.
Buddy Smith, Calhoun County Sheriff: "It was a sad case on both sides." Baya Harrison, defense attorney: "The full horror of this story has yet to come out." Dr. Robert Wray, psychiatrist: "Mass adolescent female murderers are extremely rare." Jerry Blair, prosecutor: "Falling is the victim of her environment. She couldn't handle stress very well. I probably have more sympathy for Christine Falling than anyone I've ever prosecuted for a criminal offense."
From the Perry News-Herald, July 29, 1982:
Some of Christine Falling's 'family' in Perry say they're glad she has been charged with the murder of two infants in her care because, this way, she'll eventually be brought to trial where she'll be found innocent of all charges.
"Then, maybe then, Falling's life will get back to normal and people will leave her and her family alone. Falling was charged with the murder of two Blountstown children last Thursday. The charges were another chapter in a long nightmare for the 19-year-old former Perry resident whose babysitting jobs was her sole means of support."
Geneva Burnette Daniels, Christine's stepsister, the mother of Joe-Boy and Jennifer, said Christine's epilepsy made her especially sensitive to the young children who eventually died of their illnesses. "She knew what the kids were going through."
Carol: "She must be a very sick person if she did what they said she did. I won't believe it. I can't. If God came down and stood on that sidewalk and said to me, 'Your sister did it,' I'd have to say, 'You're crazy. Not Chris."'
When Christine was arrested, police tried to link her with the death of Carol's daughter. Christine had visited when the baby was a couple of weeks old. "It makes me really mad," says Carol, "that they tried to blame that on her."
Jesse Falling, adoptive father: "Maybe she's got her nerves crossed."
Dolly Falling, adoptive mother:
"...Like our friend, his two nerves was crossed in the back of his head. All he could do was sit and cry all day, yes ma'am, tears coming down all day and then he went to Chattahoochee for a year and had that operation to get his two nerves uncrossed and he's been his old self ever since."
In Christine's world:
It is the 19th Century.
Russia bombed Pearl Harbor.
Columbus rode the Mayflower and discovered Florida.
Wallace and Carter are former presidents.
Elephants gestate for two years and their offspring weigh 20 tons.
It was either George Washington, or maybe it was Abraham Lincoln, who discovered electricity. In any case, it happened before she was born. She doesn't understand why she has to know things from before she was born.
The psychiatrists keep giving her tests. She thinks they are stupid tests, suitable for "a 2- or 3-year-old young 'un."
"They ask you about your sex life, what age was you when you lost your virge . . .virge . . . virginality. Silly questions: If you had a sex life would you want to be spreading your personal sex life around. They ask are you a homosex or a bisex, which at that time I put no.
"On the tests they want you to tell them what kind of picture you see in this paint spattered, most of its just
butterflies and bats. They do that to see if you got any brains. They like to play with what's up here."
A psychological evaluation con-ducted on Oct. 25, 1982 revealed that Christine's IQ was 85, in the low average range of intellectual ability.
Christine listed her hobbies as watching Saturday morning cartoons.
Some of the fevered curiosity that greeted the case of Christine Falling diminished because of how she looked: Christine, Christine, beauty queen, went the chant in her hometown of Perry. Christine was obese, over 200 pounds. The long straight hair fell flat, untended. The wide forehead was a ledge, overhanging sunken eyes. There was a lack of differentiation to her features; the cheeks were chubby. She was a mockery of someone younger; a giant baby.
She certainly did not fit the cliched cheerleader image of the pretty, young babysitter dressed in the latest outlandish style, trusted element of society, absolutely essential to the sanity of the burgher marriage, girls who think everything worthwhile is either cute or really cute. They arrive to babysit with their textbooks in virtuous if ostentatious tow. They are given a nervous little lesson in 911, offered the bounty of the refrigerator and the Cable and all in all rather elaborately courted. For their part the girls are expected to convey an air of reassuring normality. In the newspaper pictures and on television, she never looked normal. Nor reassuring.
Carol Phillips is tall, and thin, with curly hair, freckles, and two chipped front teeth. Like Christine, her sister, she has a country drawl, yet not the same flat monotone.
Carol and her husband Mike live in Jacksonville. He earns six something an hour at a plant that manufactures shingles. The work is difficult, and a man can be standing there laughing one minute and wrapped up in a machine the next. He would like to get on the day shift and hopes to join the credit union so he and Carol can buy a 1980 Plymouth Scamp. Carol spends her time keeping their one bedroom apartment clean and neat, getting groceries, going to the laundromat. The apartment is sparsely furnished. There are some photos from Mike and Carol's wedding on display. The visual centerpiece is Carol's high-school diploma, earned at the vocational school in Perry, four years of study compressed into seven months.
Carol gestures with diffident pride at the framed document, "I always said it was nothing but a piece of paper, but...."
Carol dreams of going to college, studying modeling and merchandising. She likes to make summer tops so maybe she'll go into the summer line of clothes. She remains Christine's only faithful correspondent. She writes her a letter at least once a week, and sometimes tries to send her a card that says "Smile" or "Been Thinking of You." Sometimes Carol will be in the midst of something totally unrelated to her sister, and she'll start thinking of Christine and for no reason start to cry. Carol often says she doesn't want to live through her purpose on earth too quickly: Her purpose is to see that Christine has a home if she ever leaves prison, to keep in touch with her.
Prison life:
"Lots of girls is here on check charges. Some of them murdered people they don't even know. At least half a dozen's in here for the same thing as me."
"Two things they don't like here. If you killed a cop or you killed a young 'un. After a while the nagging stops, but they's them years when they won't let it go."
When Christine Falling first arrived at Broward Correctional Institute she received some notes filled with vituperation and threatening her life. Prison officials reacted quickly: prolonging her orientation, keeping her out of the main compound until it was discovered that these notes were scrawled in Christine's own handwriting. When she tried to burn her cell down, on March 11, the evening before her 20th birthday, other women rescued her, suffering smoke inhalation and burns. Christine wasn't hurt; they were.
"Grossest thing I heard since I been here, they was one girl killed her baby, put it in the oven and cooked it and fed it to her husband. According to what everybody say, her husband asked, where's the baby and she said, you're eating it." Christine places full credence in this ghastly story, even though it never happened.
"They asked me if I want to meet her. No, I don't think me and her would get along. Least it wasn't my young 'un. Least I didn't feed them to nobody. Least I called the ambulance and carried them to the hospital."
Even when she confessed, her confession was not readily believed; from United Press International: "Was the confession a matter of Falling, a poor, overweight, poorly educated teenager, who has spent her life being shuttled from family member to family member and who may have been a victim of child abuse herself, finally submitting to pressures, however subtle, exerted on her at the hospital?"
In the end Christine owned up to the deaths of three of "them innocent children" and she has been linked with the deaths of two more children and one old man. The old man, she says, doesn't count, because the cause of death was never determined: "It's not my fault his family didn't run an autopsy." Although she confessed to Joe-Boy's and Jeffrey's death to a psychiatrist, she was never formally charged, and she prefers to stand by the death certificates: "Myocarditis," Or, as she says, "exploding hearts." When she confessed to the murder of Muffin Johnson, Jennifer Daniels and Travis Coleman, she ended a mystery that probably should never have existed. Joseph Sapala, the medical examiner who broke the case with the Coleman baby, accused his colleagues of traveling the "primrose path of statistics," ascribing to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome what should have been diagnosed as strangulation. SIDS, he said, is a "wastebasket term; if you don't know what the hell you have, it's crib death." What tripped up the examiners was the presence of disease in the children: They found a debility, myocarditis for instance, an inflammation of the muscle of the heart not uncommon and not necessarily fatal; and in a place where the death of babies is commonplace, where such things are often given Biblical interpretations, where God is said to take nursing babies from the mother's breasts to serve his purpose, in such a place the passing of these children was seen to be routine. Not only by townspeople, but also by medical examiners.
Christine:
"It was too perfect. There was no way for them to know I done it unless I said so. They was no homicide evidence, no trauma. Joe-Boy and Jeffrey, their hearts exploded. They said Muffin had brain fever which collapsed her brain. The brain waves froze and all. Jennifer they said had this SIDS, this crib death. Jennifer just upped and died which that's popular with young 'uns. Travis, same thing."
By plea bargaining, Christine avoided a trial and received a 25 year mandatory prison term. In December she was transferred
from Calhoun County Jail to the Broward Correctional Institute in the western corner of the county where Pines Boulevard and State Road 27 intersect, a monotony of canals and roadbed and roadbed and canals inhabited by truckers, alligators and insects. Not visible from the road, the prison arises from the sawgrass about a mile in. It has the air of an industrial complex, a grim mirage, growing out of nothing in the middle of nowhere. It is a place of near absolute isolation, barren under too much sun.
With her confession to crimes as odious as can be imagined, Christine Falling receded from public view: the horrid force, the bad seed, retarded and monstrous, was now contained. Jailed. Never a figure of sympathy, she ceased to be one of curiosity.
Before her arrest her dealings with the press consisted entirely of issuing bizarre remarks. After her arrest, a gag order prohibited her from speaking with the press before the scheduled trial.
In prison, Carol has been her only visitor from home. On Christmas Day she was disappointed to call home at the very minute her adoptive parents were fixing to leave the house.
She decided to tell her story for one reason.
"I got to the point," she said, "where reporters is better than nothing."
Christine Laverne Slaughter Falling was born on March 12, 1963, the second child of Ann Omans Moore Slaughter Adkins, a 16-year-old girl. Ann's first child, Carol, is a year and a half older than Christine. Ann's husband, Tom Slaughter, was an old man even then. Today he is 85, going deaf, and the victim of numerous accidents in the log woods where he used to work. He still stands tall, and spends his time puttering around the front yard outside the shack where he lives. It is one of those yards not uncommon in the deep country, totally covered with cans, car parts, broken furniture. Tom Slaughter takes pieces of debris and puts them together. These are his inventions. He is not much of a historian when it comes to Christine's early days. He knows he's not Christine's father, nor Carol's, nor the next one's -- what was his name, he got adopted out, Michael Wayne. He gave all three his last name because it was only right. "They was caught in my trap. Weren't the daddy of but one of the four, Edward Earl; he might be mine." That one died, though; something was wrong with his muscles when he was born. He wasted away, turned to bone. The four children were born four years apart. Carol remembers her mother leaving and coming back pregnant, not with Christine, she doesn't remember back that far, but with Michael Wayne, and then leaving again for a time, and coming back and having Edward Earl. The extent of Tom Slaughter's baby stories is an account of his daughters first meals: "Carol, she weren't a day old, born Friday night and at noon the next day she ate lima beans and mullet fish for dinner" and Christine ate yolk of egg and butter and grits in equally good time. The menu at baby's first meal is frequently recited in the county, as if there is something quite signal and gratifying about this event.
Some memories:
Carol: "I never did miss Mama. I guess she was never around long enough to get attached."
Carol remembers having to take charge of Christine and the baby: She was about 4. Neighbors dropped in now and then. Once Carol was trying to keep Christine from wetting her pants, and she and a slightly older child hung Christine by her shirt on the clothesline to dry out. Carol says Christine cried, but Christine has no recollection. The two sisters give varying accounts of their childhood. They agree on basic matters, but frequently one will have an elaborate memory of an event, and the other sister will be nearly blank on the matter. The broadest view of course is that no event is ever lost. Something not recalled, at least not openly, goes underground, and is transformed into an outlook, maybe a compulsion or a fear, perhaps a way of behaving that has no obvious roots.
Carol's first memory: "A kitten died."
Christine's: "I was in the hospital, I had a seizure, or when I fell, and they give me IV to keep my nutrition up, and I remember they sticked it in the wrong place, and all the fluid come up my arm and it turned all purple, and they kept trying to restick and I kept jerking it out everytime they restick it."
When Ann was away on one of her frequent trips, which usually took her 100 miles away to her home town of Blountstown, the children often accompanied Tom Slaughter to the woods on his job, staying all day in a big playpen.
Christine: "Daddy had us out in the log woods in a playpen with a net on top against the mosquitos the day he got in his accident. Me and Carol was laying in it, when a log fell, busted his head open, busted his intestines, three fourths of his stomach is plastic intestines. Right or left side of his face, I forget which, ain't nothin but cotton. He has a metal plate in his head. Who come and got us I don't know. The foreman or somebody else, I don't know. All I know is, Daddy was in the hospital, and it weren't long after we went to Dolly and Jesse.
"Ann wouldn't take care of us.
"Tom couldn't."
Carol:
"What happened was, after Daddy's accident, Mama took all us kids, and carried us to a store or a shopping center, it was somewheres in Perry and she put all the young 'uns on a bench outside the store and she told us to just sit there and she walked away. I yelled after her, 'When are you coming back?' and she wouldn't answer me. She never turned around to answer her own daughter. She throwed us away like we was garbage, can you imagine doing that to your young 'uns? She throwed us away. My own mama doesn't want us. Felt like an outcast for sure."
Christine: "I don't remember that. If Carol says so, I'm sure it's true, but I cain't memory it."
Carol: "I love Ann as far as her bearing us. That's the only kind of connection I have."
Christine says that for the nine years with Jesse and Dolly Falling, the two sisters never saw their mother. Carol disagrees. She says they saw her three times at three funerals. Uncle Archie's. Uncle Willie's. And Grandmom's.
Aunt Dolly:
"I had this hunger in my heart to have me a baby. I went to five doctors, but no one could help me. One day I was at church and the preacher brung in Carol and Christine and my husband said, 'Do you want those children?' 'Well, somebody has to take them.' They was relations of Jesse.
"We never abused those young 'uns, no sir. No one has ever actually seen it with their own eyes. He never drank alcohol in front of them, never beat them unmerciful, never took in another woman in front of those two children. I blame myself for spoiling the children when they were young. They had the cutest little dresses you could buy in Perry. I brought them up to fear God, to believe in the Bible. I went too many miles for that girl. She knows the ground I stand on. Things started to turn when the children growed old enough to know we wasn't their real parents. They would say it to our face and how would you feel, children you spent money on and raised?
"I'll tell you what Christine did one time. Me and my husband had a mind of building this house here, and I seen a picture in a magazine jes like the house I wanted and I cut it out. Children, I said, leave this here alone. This piece of paper. And what did Christine do? She took it and tore it right up. I took the pieces and copied a picture from them and locked it away in my footlocker.
"I think Christine's problem is that she absolutely growed
from a child into a woman nearly overnight. That's what happened. She growed too fast. She got daresome.
"I don't trust that girl. She never did want me and Jesse to have anything for ourselves. She saw Jesse and me get on our feet and it looked like it near about killed her. I told them, we're building for them. One day every drape, every car, every well, every refrigerator, every mirror, every dresser, every commode, every fan will be yours. We're building for the children. Them children is grown. They don't belong to me no more. If they don't have a house of their own it's their own fault. We fulfilled our duty to our children.
"Christine called on Christmas Day. She's always ringing my number and expects me to accept the charges.
"I told her she was free to write to me anytime she wishes.
"She wants us to visit. We won't go this year. Not in 1983. This house is not finished, not finished, not finished. There are no baseboards in this house, not a bit. We have to fix that up. We don't have the money to make that trip with."
Carol has a memory of Dolly Falling's footlocker, filled with relics from her childhood, report cards, ribbons the girls won, a certificate saying that Carol has the aptitude to become a telephone operator. "Just junk but Dolly had kept it."
The junk is gone. Now it contains Christine's Bible that Dolly is prepared to return to her "once she's got a little bit of sense and acts like a human being ought to." There are some house papers, Jesse's Army records in case he has to go to the hospital, some old Valentine boxes. Beyond that the only relics are some 45 rpm records that Dolly used to like and the children used to try to take and break. They remain in safekeeping:
Satisfied Mind by Red and Betty Foley. Whirlpool of Love sung by Webb Price, and Mother Prays Loud In Her Sleep by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
"Them children," says Aunt Dolly, "fulfilled my mother hunger. I done got a square bite of it, don't want no more."
Jesse Falling: "The past is the past. I never hurt those girls, never touched them. If I did, had to be drunk or ignorance. Now I did whup 'em when they rebelled and talked back to my wife; what kind of husband would let his adopted daughter talk to his wife like that.
"Even now if I could get my wife to agree I'd get me one and raise it."
Christine: "One day Uncle Jesse took us down to a housing project he was working on, jes me and Carol. Dolly had a hairdresser's appointment. Jesse told Carol to get out, and I started to get out, and he said, 'No, you stay in the car.' He took Carol in one of them buildings and when she came out, her pants wasn't even on right, her shirt was wrong-
side out, and when we went to pick up Dolly, I started running my big mouth, saying Carol's clothes was all messed up. I ain't seen Dolly give Jesse such a dirtiest look all her life.
"Weren't much later I come into Carol's room and Jesse's standing over her, and her pants was off, and she was crying, which I didn't know what hurt she had, so I tried to call the law to get her help, not to say he done something wrong. I didn't know what he done. The way the phone was I couldn't just pick it up; I was just tall enough I could hit the bottom of the phone and the ear part fell where I could catch it. That was the time Jesse tried to choke me, he put the cord around my neck. Dolly knowed about it. She was right there but she weren't going to do nothin' but preachin' and prayin'."
Carol tries hard not to think about that aspect of the past: "I made myself rise above it. It was nothing Jesse planned. I could be in the kitchen, in the yard, and he would start touching me. I try not to think about it. Dolly and Jesse did a lot for me. They kept me from going to an orphanage and staying there forever. When they adopted us, they weren't anyone else that wanted us, because of our age, and we was so many. And we was unruly. We had been let loose. We was plain and simple 24 hours a day unruly."
But she does remember the day Jesse tried to choke Christine. Jesse told her to go to her room and change her clothes. Which she did. Jesse came in the room. Carol remembers no sexual abuse that time: "He burnt some money, and was hollering about the prices of sex and stuff. I could see Christine in the hallway behind Daddy and I could see her run to the phone. When I come out, Daddy was choking Christine. I was so scared. I started screaming at Mamma to help. She wasn't doing anything. It made me so mad at her. She should have been
helping Christine. I tried to make Jesse stop and he popped me real hard and throwed me up against the breakfast bar, and I ran down to Jesse and Dolly's bedroom and I locked the door and picked up the phone.
"When the cops come around Jesse locked hisself in the bathroom. They broke his arm and three ribs.
"That day daddy was a madman."
Upon the advice of Dolly's minister, Carol and Christine were removed from the Falling home and placed in Great Oaks Village, a county-run children's refuge in Orlando. Carol remembers that Dolly and Jesse wanted to visit, and she did not want to see them, but Christine begged her to let them visit. The two girls had a pact that neither would see either of their adoptive parents without the other.
According to records from Great Oaks village, Christine had trouble adjusting. She was a compulsive liar: She would steal other children's possessions -- once, some playing cards, once some makeup -- and then try to fix the blame on others. "She will try to do anything to get attention," one report reads, "even if she knows it means restriction. If she feels we are paying more attention to someone else, she will come and tell lies on them." One evaluator was asked to indicate any "special interests the child exhibits." Answer: "None." "What would you single out for praise in the child's behavior?" Answer: "Nothing."
In another document, a social worker indicates that Jesse Falling had been arrested at least twice on charges of sexual abuse of Christine. The first time, the records say, there was a hung jury. The second time, Dolly had the charges dropped.
In a letter dated June 21, 1972, a social worker reports that Dolly "blames the children for all her mar-ital problems. Since she views the children as deterrents to her happiness with her husband, she is now relieved that the girls have been removed
from their home."
But after a year the children were returned to the Fallings.
Christine and Carol remember Great Oaks Village with fondness. Christine liked it because it had a swimming pool, and every Friday night a movie was shown and the children were given Dr. Pepper and popcorn.
Christine: "There weren't no one constantly beating on us."
Carol: "A vintage year."
Once home, Carol says, the molestation stopped. But not the beatings. Over the years Christine seemed to attract more beating than her sister: "Christine never understood that expression, 'Children is to be seen and not heard.' Christine didn't exactly understand the expression no matter how many whippings she got. For a long time I didn't talk. I swear, I'd have forgotten how if I hadn't been in school and forced to speak up there."
Christine: "One remark he'd always use: 'This hurts me more than it hurts you.' That's an old saying old folks have."
Carol's version of the final night in the Falling household:
Oct. 30, 1975, Christine comes home from school 10 minutes late.
Jesse accuses her of not coming straight home. He starts spanking her. He begins to spank her "where she is supposed to be spanked." Then he starts in on the legs, the back; the blood is at the point of breaking the skin.
"A man that's angry, a man that's been drinking, he's going to hurt a child. Dolly was just standing at the door. I tried to talk Mamma into stopping him but she wouldn't. What kind of mother, what kind of Christian, what kind of human would just stand there?"
There is a knife on the kitchen counter. "I saw my opportunity; go for the gusto: 'Daddy, stop. I'll see you dead before you hurt Christine again."'
She jumps on him with the knife. He slaps her across the face with the belt. He takes the knife away. He freezes; he just stands there and looks at her, and lets Carol hit him and hit him and hit him. "He started crying and he told me to leave.
"Christine was laying on the floor. She wouldn't move. She would not."
Later, Carol lifts her sister off the floor and carries her to the bedroom. "Chris," she whispers, "it'll all be over soon. We'll soon be gone.
"The next day Jesse made her go to school and he told her to wear shorts. To show off the justice.
"I packed a Winn Dixie bag with all our belongings and I told Chris she wouldn't have to bother to take the bus home from school that day, that she could leave with me."
Christine has no memory of the final beating.
"I can't remember what urged me to leave. All I know is, I left."
The sisters found an older girl willing to share her apartment. Carol entered a school program in which she worked half a day. "For two years," says Carol, "Jesse and Dolly didn't know if we was runaways or we was dead."
About six weeks after the two girls left home, Christine left Perry for Blountstown to find her real mother. She did, and for the next few years, the sisters were out of touch. Christine says her mother tried to turn her into a prostitute. "You shouldn't do your young 'uns like that," Christine says.
On Sept. 19, 1977, Christine got married. She was 14.
For a long time the "most happiest" day of Christine's life had been her trip to Disney World, a "fancy-nating" place. She loved Cinderella's castle, the rides, and the souvenirs, "shirts and hats with pictures of the Disneyland players, Goofy and all them."
But Disney World got replaced as the happiest day by her wedding day, when she married Bobby Adkins, a city worker in Blountstown, a big man of few words, in his early '20s. He was the stepson of Christine's mother.
"The ceremony was set for 5:30 because that's when Bobby got off work. We had a cake stacked three, and on top was a little man and woman with wedding suits on and all. I wore a white velvet dress, size 18. There was lace coming from the stomach all the way up to the neck. Preacher Nichols performed the ceremony between two funerals and he didn't charge nothin' but we gaved him $30 for his troubles. After he left we spiked the punch with either Seagrams Seven or Lord Calvert.
"I got drunk. I woke up the next morning with blood all over me."
The marriage ended six weeks later. "I don't care who a man is, sooner or later he's going to run around on you," says Christine. She threw a stereo at Bobby. When the marriage ended, especially like that, Disney World went back to being her most happiest day.
Carol:
"People who have problems deal with them in different ways. Daddy didn't deal with his real well. I graduated from high school for my mom and dad. They had told us that wanted one of us to make it through, me or Christine, it didn't matter which one. They didn't even show up for the ceremony. I made the class speech and five minutes before it was supposed to begin, I kept looking out there and I couldn't see them so I called home, and Dolly told me the electrician has just come to fix something that was wrong with the wires. And they had to wait. I kept my eye on the door every minute. They never did show up. I can't forgive them for that. I wanted to make them proud."
On the week-end before Christine's 20th birthday, Carol visited her in prison. The sisters spoke softly to each other, in that country way, giving everything the same drawling emphasis. Both were nervous. A little fearful. Christine borrowed a pretty blouse from another inmate.
"Really, Carol, it's just like college only they got a gate around it. You sleep in a dorm, and you got it guaranteed where's your next meal. If you're pregnant they got what they call prenatal planning, teach you how to be a mother. They teach
college skills and culinary skills which that means kitchen."
"Well, Chris, I'm glad to see you're doing OK. Some day you're going to be a real lady. Your hair's always been so pretty. I was wondering: How long has it been since you wore feather bangs? You might not believe this, but sometimes I wish I was where you are. Sometimes the world can be a hard place. It's good to see you, looking good and to catch you up on the news, who's all had babies, how everybody is. Chris, I was wondering, if I talked to the lawyers, to Baya, and there was some way to get you into a place where you could get some help, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your mind, but if I could get it so you could go somewhere else...."
"Fine by me. Half of 'em here's crazy anyway, talking to theirselves, answering theirselves back."
Carol: "They gotta take care of her now, the taxpayers. It's their ballgame. Something should have been done a long time ago. Life's gave me a run for my money. It never gave Chris a run. It just took her over.
"I think it hurt her because of that fact of who she looked like. She was the spitting image of Ann. It must have hurt her to look in the mirror and see herself become an image of a woman you hate. I remember standing in front of the mirror, primping, and Christine would just be standing there, not looking at the mirror, but at the walls or the floor, crying.
"Sometimes I think my grandmother was what gave me the punch to go on. Christine was too young to get her benefits. I told you my real mother sometimes carried us over to Blountstown, and my mother would go off somewhere and we would stay with her mother. My grandmother made me her pick. Seems like even before I was born she growed to love the baby my Mamma was about to have. My grandmother was always telling me how pretty I was, how much she loved me, what kind of person I was going to be.
"Me and her, we'd sit at the kitchen table, always talking about my hair, getting ribbons for it and how we was going to make some new dresses.
"Christine's my baby. I'm sorry but I love her more than I love myself."
Christine: "If they was something dependent on my sister's life, if it meant for me being killed, I would save her. I'd rather be killed than her."
There is no mystery in Christine Falling. The reasons why she did what she did are mundane. Her life threatened as a child, she threatened the lives of children. Treated like a monster, she became one. Her
childhood paid daily witness to violence. The only point in addressing her past is as a reminder that there is no such thing as a full-blown aberration arising from nothing in the middle of nowhere. Every abandonment, every brutality whether remembered openly or not so openly, worked to create the person Christine Falling is today. The mystery, if there is one, is how Carol survived and how after everything that happened, the two sisters are able to hold each other in what others might call crippled regard but which for them passes for love.
"State where and how the accident occurred: Chest pains with pain in left arm.
"Diagnosis: Psychoneurotic.
"Treatment: Placebo. Two cc's.
"Instructions to Patient: See her doctor in five days."
This was the routine at Calhoun General Hospital for Christine. She visited its emergency room more than 50 times between 1978 and 1980 with complaints of ailments and mishaps, some real, some not: seizures, snakebites, red spots, bleeding tonsils, dislocated bones, terrible falls, hot grease on left arm, stepping on wire, sharp pains, hit by crowbar while fishbaiting. Once she went to the hospital complaining of vaginal bleeding. The diagnosis: Normal menses.
A crisis was building. These visits reached a crescendo in January 1980 when she complained that her period would not go away, the blood would not stop. She was admitted to the hospital but analysis of sample tissue scraped from her womb showed that she was all right. To this day she claims that she was pregnant and the doctors performed an abortion. A baby died in her imagination. Not much later, on Feb. 25, 1980, a baby died in reality. Muffin Johnson, age 2, would not stop crying.
Two and a half years later, she confessed, "I would be doing something simple, like pulling a blanket over one, and a voice would say, 'Kill the baby,' over and over and then I would come to and realize what had happened."
Christine is scheduled to be released from prison in the year 2007, at the age of 44. So far she has served eight months of her term at BCI.
In that time, she has had homosex. "That way you have somebody to look out for you."
She has lost almost 50 pounds: "I always heard prison food is better than outside world food. Well, it ain't."
She has plans to go to the prison beauty shop to get a curly perm.
The prison dentist is fixing her teeth.
She was sentenced to 90 days in disciplinary lock-up for igniting the mattress in her cell: "No cigarets, no potato chips, cain't watch TV, not allowed to talk to them compound girls."
She still has a habit of looking sideways when she speaks; the color of her eyes is tepid, watery: "They turn with what I got on. I got weird eyes." These days they tend toward blue, reflecting the prison issue. She wants to grow out her nails, but they are still short and raw, bitten to the quick.
Christine:
"If I hadn't admitted up to it I might not be in jail right now, or if I was in jail, it'd be on a bad check charge.
"I'm here on my own word.
"Sometimes it makes me feel stupid as hell.
"Obviously, if I hadn't said nothing about it, chances other ones would have happened. It got to be hard on me. Ones I could get my hands on, which ones dead. Ones I couldn't, I jes wished it.
"The reason I confessed was mainly people talking to me, telling me I was looking at a death penalty. No way I could get off on all three charges, and it would be stupid to go in front of 12 juries who want to do one thing and that's put you in a chair. If I plea bargain, then I can go to prison, get a college skill that'll help me get a job. The best part about it," and at this she shows a flutter of animation, the dullness of the gray- blue eyes lightening a bit, "is the day you get out they give you $100 and buy you a new suit and give you a bus ticket anywhere."
Liberal Larry has a touching and heart-felt post on the death of Christopher Reeve. He blames President Bush, but doesn't everybody?
I was hoping to have the ballot in my hot little hands any day now, but it's not working out that way.
A democratic contender for a local race dropped out past the deadline for ballot name removal. Even though they have nobody to replace him with, a couple of state Democratic Party executives sued, and a judge agreed that all ballots in Broward and Palm Beach must be revised. The overseas and military ballots that were shipped out in September- redo and resend. The absentee ballots printed and ready for mailing, redo and resend. Redo the audio ballots, redo the polling booths, redo everything.
The Supervisors of Elections for both counties are understandably freaking, and the State Department of Elections is appealing the ruling.
This makes me worried about all those Pro-Bush overseas and military votes. We had problems with those last time.
If a national election can be thrown into turmoil because of a local race, then it's time the Nov. 2 election become only for President. Let them hold a separate election for all these other races. This thing h