Districts

The redistricting measure was the one I most wanted to vote for, when it was first proposed.

The present system (and examples like Texas) made me decide against it. That I am becoming that much a creature of party (even if it's reactionary partisanship) pisses me off.

I happen to think the present method of districting plays a large part in that. I wish I could see a way to fix it. No, I rather wish I could see a way to fix it which wasn't handicapping Dems in those places they have an advantage.

There are those who will say that means I'm engagin in a double standard. I don't think I am, it's rather that I see the other side playing dirty, and I see no reason to take the high road on this one, so they can have a stronger hand. If evenly built districts were made, across the board, with a competitive ratio of each party in play, I'd be on that so fast you'd think I was knocked from a horse on my way to Damascus. I'd be working the phones, spending my money and donating my time.

Because the present nature of safe seats is what has caused (if you ask me) a lot of the present crop of ideologues on the right to rise to power.

They are safe. They can blather about all sorts of evil things; they can drag the Republican Party off to the fringes of Fascism, and no one will call them to heel, because they are the incumbent. They have the money, and the Party isn't going to tell them to stop feeding red meat to the vocal sorts who turn out to vote (that 30 percent Arnie is playing to, right now) because those are the people who put them in power.

If that 30 percent was only able to exercise the influence that 30 percent represents, I'd care a lot less about them. But that 30 percent is what put the idjits in Dover, Penn., on the school board. It took the 70 percent getting steamed to put them off. But school boards are built differenly from legislative seats.

I don't see a way to fix it, because I don't see a way to make it nationwide. Texas is going to look more Republican than it is, for quite some time, because of DeLays redistricting (and it's amusing, I didn't see McCain complaining that Texas was being redistricted by politicians; who were taking it away from judges, but I digress), and absent a great change in the awareness/sense of self interest of the body politic, I see no way to change it; until it's so broken it can't be allowed to stand.

I just hope that happens before the Republic is too badly damaged to recover.

That omni-benevolent, all-forgiving God of the Far Right

Just in case you doubted that the entire, "Intelligent Design" idea was a stalking horse for teaching religion as science, Pat Robertson is here to keep you from wondering.

He also wants you to know how God reacts to people who flout him by thinking just maybe religion and science ought not be treated as equivalent ideas.

Video

Courtesy of People for the American way we get to hear Pat tell us that by turning out those eight school board members, and replacing them with folks who are against the teaching of ID as science, the good people of Dover have, turned away from God and,> "If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

Yep.

Forget it Faustus, you toyed with sin, so you get to suffer; and if God should elect to visit Dover, Penn. with plagues (a la Egypt) don't think repenting is going to help, because you turned away from Him, so you deserve a whole lot more than you're likely to get. They had their chance and they blew it. The rest of us can just be persuaded, by their suffering, not to question people like Falwell, and Robertson, who know what God did, and wants.

I wonder, should Dover happen to flourish, if Robertson, and his ilk; those folks who believe God meddles in everyday affairs, and every little thing that happens is not merely noted, but actively caused (which means those who want, Job-like to rail against inequities, can call Him on the carpet for That Tuesday, but I digress) will be chastened by that thriving; what with them refusing to teach God's (er, the designer's) cheating to avoid something so elegant as evolution.