Penis Hero

The SFGate.com, while reporting on election glitches in some states, had an interesting snippet highlighting the less savory side of US politics.

In Arizona, Roy Warden -- an anti-immigration activist with the Minutemen -- and a handful of supporters staked out a precinct in the city of South Tucson and questioned Latino voters as they entered the polls to determine if they spoke English.

Armed with a 9mm Glock automatic strapped to his side, Warden said he planned to photograph as many Latino voters entering polls at as many as 20 precincts in an effort to identify illegal immigrants and felons.

Warden heckled Democratic congressman Raul Grijalva as he walked into the precinct to cast his ballot. Grijalva ignored Warden, saying such harassment "hasn't been a deterrence to voters -- it's just been a nuisance."

A nuisance?!?!?!

Considering Warden is the same 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag that was in the news back in May for sending an email to a human rights activist with the subject line "Warden to Isabel Garcia: I will blow your freaking head off!", the same piece of trash who descended on a Cinco de Mayo celebration in a Tucson park, armed again, calling celebrants "Mexican invaders" and spouting "We will not permit you, the ignorant, the savage, the unwashed, to overrun us, as happened in Rome. ... Land must be paid for in blood. If any invader tries to take this land from us, we will wash this land and nurture our soil with oceans of their blood!", I'd say this would constitute more than just a nuisance.

Do we have to arm ourselves now to visit the polls for fear of gun toting kooks interfering with our right to vote? One more reason for mail in ballots if you ask me.

Seriously though, is this crap okay? This isn't freedom of speach. Accosting people on their way to the polls is interfering with the electoral process. It's politics through fear and intimidation. It's fucking terrorism is what it is.

From Wikipedia:

Terrorism is a term used to describe violence or other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians by groups or persons for political, nationalist, or religious goals.

Roy Warden, and the rest of these extremists are terrorists plain and simple. Why is George W's War of Terror skipping over the groups closer to home that use the threat of violence as a political tool...?

This shit isn't okay. Roy, I'd rather have 1000 illegals in this country than even 1 of you.

First, watch the video.

As my friend, shall we call him K, said with such eloquence, "how is it... that they can use touchscreens at McDonalds for YEARS without an error.... but we get dozens on election day? something is seriously fucked about this stuff"

I'd say K nailed it.

Lou Dobbs said we were living in "...a banana republic". Good on ya, Lou. We've had a couple hundred years to work on this democracy thing. You might expect we'd be better at it by now... Not sure how we expect to teach the Iraqis when we can't pull it off ourselves, but that's a whole other potential rant. Back on topic.

Apparently four companies make these voting machines - private companies - very private. It seems they all consider their junk "proprietary". That means THEY test the machines and their viability for running National elections. No oversight. A room full of coders and engineers decide what's good enough to decide the leadership of the free world.

Well here's the thing about that. This isn't Windows '98 crashing or Google screwing advertisers AND publishers - this is the future of our frickin' government here!

Proprietary?!?! KA'POW! We just annexed your fucking tech staff. They now work for us.

Why not? If we can take land to build a freeway for the common good, we can sure as hell take some geeks to bring electoral security in-house.

I think that's the real issue. There is no security, no oversight, no paper trail, nothing. Do voters even get a receipt? We can do better than this.

Vote early and, thanks to modern technology, vote often...