Carol Owens' Nap

Another from the Recess Supervisor, Rep Carol Owens' nap on the Assembly floor:

More on the GB Nativity

Here a good quote from the Recess Supervisor:

It never ceases to amaze me that a small minority of Christians who clearly feel threatened by the concept of religious pluralism feel the need every holiday season to wage this pointless battle. They aren't putting their Nativity scenes up in public spaces to celebrate their faith. They're doing it to pick a fight with those whose beliefs are in the minority. It's nothing other than faith-based bullying.

Here's a great place for a nativity scene: in front of a church. Here's another one: in your front yard.

But, of course this has nothing with trying to establish a state religion, listen to this fair and balanced argument:

"This is crazy," said Tim Entringer of Green Bay. "It's Christmas. I'm sad in my heart. There is only one God, and you've got to keep him up. The only way to get to God is through Jesus. It's the true religion. You have to do it."

But, the market has spoken, and the secularists have won:

In the ongoing battle over whether it's better to use the term "Christmas" or "holidays," "holidays" came out the big winner in 2007.

In its fourth annual survey, GiftBasketsDeluxe.com (http://www.GiftBasketsDeluxe.com), a major gift basket company, today announced the results of an analysis of holiday gift card messages sent through their company.

The study showed that 60 percent of holiday gift baskets sent used the politically correct term "holidays" on their gift card, as opposed to the more traditional term "Christmas."

Joe on Green Bay Nativity

Personally, I think it is nuts. Green Bay is home to lots and lots of Christian churches. I think a good place for nativity scenes is on the front lawns of those churches. The reason there was an original nativity scene, after all, was not that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to worship. They were ordered to Bethlehem by an unpopular government and they weren't too welcome when they arrived.

Putting a nativity scene at the very center of a city government may not be the best way to recall the original reason for the season.

Ohio Election May Have been Stolen

Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been stolen

Ohio's Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that "critical security failures" are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, "could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State." They have rendered Ohio's vote counts "vulnerable" to manipulation and theft by "fairly simple techniques."

Indeed, she says, "the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant."

In other words, Ohio's top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen. Brunner's stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio's 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.
...
The final official tally for Bush---less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million cast---varied by 6.7% from exit poll results, which showed a Kerry victory. Exit polls in 2004 were designed to have a margin of error of about 1%. In various polling stations in Democrat-rich inner city precincts in Youngstown and Columbus, voters who pushed touch screens for Kerry saw Bush's name light up. A wide range of discrepancies on both electronic and paper balloting systems leaned almost uniformly toward the Bush camp. Voting procedures regularly broke down in inner city and campus areas known to be heavily Democratic.
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Brunner has now recommended that all Ohio's voting be done on optical scan ballots, with reliance on central tabulation. Voters with disabilities could use AutoMark machines with bar coding devices that allow the marking of ballots with little or no additional assistance.

Quote of the day:

Dissent in this country has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us.