Cool poem found on NPR. Text of it is in extended entry.
Hopefully you get to vote today. Nefarious forces (search for Swing Set) are out there trying to stand between you and your rights. It seems the Republicans are evil, and the Democrats are incompetent (though possibly just as evil). And who know what side the hackers are on. The electronic voting machine companies are clearly on their own incompetent side. Jeez. What sort of evaluation did all these government agencies do? Reminds me of a story a co-worker told me a while back.
There was a company that had important stuff on servers and had emergency generators that would theoretically kick in if there was a power failure. They tested this system at regular intervals (every six months to a year) by shutting off the power and making sure the generators kicked in and ran fine for five minutes. One day the power went out for real and the generators kicked in like they had during the tests. Somewhere between five and fifteen minutes after the generators started up, they were overloaded and all power was lost. Oops.
The Poor Voter on Election Day
The Proudest now is but my peer
The highest not more high.
Today, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I!
Today alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known.
My place is the people's hall,
The ballot box my throne.
Who serves today upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong today.
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
Today let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide.
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
Today shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand.
While there's a grief to seek redress
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust -
While there's a right to need my vote
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! Clouted knee and ragged coat -
A man's a man today!
- American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
I cannot think of the present state of humanity as that in which it is destined to remain; I am absolutely unable to conceive of this as its complete and final vocation....Only in so far as I can regard this state as the means towards a better, as the transition-point to a higher and more perfect state, has it any value in my eyes. by poker online
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