Recall effort gathers enough signatures to have election

From the Express:

Linn County Clerk Steve Druckenmiller announced on Wednesday that enough signatures had been verified to trigger a recall election on Oct. 7 of Lebanon School Board chair Josh Wineteer and vice chair Rick Alexander.

Alexander and Wineteer each have until Sept.15 either resign or submit a 200-word statement addressing the allegations made about their performance in the recall petition. The board members' statements as well as the statement justifying the recall by the chief petitioners will appear on the ballot.

....

Druckenmiller said he had his staff quit counting after they had verified over 1,500 signatures on each recall petition, well above the 1,398 required to force an election.

To busy to comment, but, uh, damn. Is everyone holding on tight? The ride is starting...

Tom Tancredo

Step back for a second and marvel at the fact that this man is running for President of the United States on a major-party ticket and no one is batting an eye:



Pretty scary, if you ask me.

Hering's Sense of Self-Preservation and/or Common Sense

Apparently it kicked it just long enough for him to write this editorial.

Funny, though - he omits any discussion of why a nonpartisan SecState is good, or why the job has party affiliation attached to it in the first place. He also omits, well, anything else - including his usual attitude that almost always makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

Poor guy - he can't quite come out and say it, but it's obvious that he's disappointed with the state of affairs re: the secretary of state, and so is - and this is why I'm confused - begging that the person who wins be as nonpartisan as possible.

I wonder if he'd say the same thing if the party affiliations were reversed? I think he'd be pretty happy and likely to have a whole new position on the situation.

Who needs consistency, anyway?

Australia's Howard is out

Good frackin' riddance. That guy is incredibly racist. Everything I saw come out of his government was Bush-lite and/or neoliberalism 101. Plus, he'd been PM for 10 or 11 years or so (way too long, in other words).

I hope Rudd is better, especially on Aboriginal issues.... but I doubt he will be. My experience with Australia is that there's still an incredible amount of blatant, conscious racism there.

Hopefully it was just the people I met.

Update: Howard lost in both ways - he lost his seat and his party lost. Yay!

Measure 50

Since I posted on M49, I might as well post on this one, right?

While I don't like the fact that M50 will be written into the Constitution, I am still voting for it.

Why?

Because a social policy that taxes cigarettes and uses the money for health care - even if only part of it is for kids - is a good policy. Cigarettes need to go away, and while I think outlawing them is a bad first step (but not off the table, sadly), creating barriers to smoking is a good thing.

That and the fact that opposition parties - usually tobacco companies - have spent over $10 million to defeat this is a giant sign that it's a good idea. And it makes me happy to hope that said companies will have wasted $10 million.

So yeah: For once, I am a yes-happy ballot measure voter. Doesn't happen often.

Kucinich Once More

Hilarious. In a totally black-humor sort of way, of course:

If you know the Kucinich is the best candidate to represent your self interests, but you vote for another candidate the TV says is “electible” and then you hope that other candidate will adopt your issues once in office, you are exhibiting classic co-dependent behavior — acting against your own self interests in order to please someone in the hope they will change. It’s exactly the same as someone living with an alcoholic or an abusive partner.

From a comment over at The Republic of T. Check out the entire post, it's a pretty good argument for a) voting one's conscience and b) voting for Kucinich.