One notable blogging tool that does not support trackback yet is Blogger. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to,

True, bottomline was he was doing the bidding of others. One should never under-estimate a geek.

Thank you, but I’d like to examine some other offers first. Here’s one I quite like:

Calm down, Shirin, and continue to express your opinion here in this public forum. I shall do the same, and we shall each of us do so with full foreknowledge that such expression may draw approval, laughter, criticism, scorn, or counterargument. Of such things are a fully informed democratic electorate made, darlin’.

That’s what’s gonna happen anyway, so you might just as well go along with it.

When a college student, I quit voting altogether for a while. “It only encourages them,” I muttered to myself, stung by the incomprehensible decision of the country to put that idiot Nixon back in the white house.

Since then, I’ve realized that was selfish.

It is, in fact, presently a two-party system, and as I pointed out to you before, merely withholding votes for either of the two in favor of a third simply discards the vote without changing the system.

And again, as I pointed out before, if you were serious about this, you’d be devoting your energy to devising and implementing weighted voting systems, in which citizens cast a vote for not a single candidate, but a range of candidates, in order of preference.

I don’t believe you’ve given that any thought, because you’re actually quite comfortable with the status quo: never casting a vote of consequence, therefore never to blame for the result, whatever it is.

Rolling up the windows and slapping down the door locks when you have to ride through the bad part of town: America.

She was too busy trying to win an election than to show up and vote regarding our privacy.

The Senate voted on the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would have stripped retroactive immunity from the surveillance bill just now. The final tally was 31-67; crossing over to vote nay were Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Update: Here’s the official tally.

Presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) were present for the vote – voting nay and yea, respectively.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/senate_votes_for_retroactive_i.php

If I, as a voter, see that as a cause of much of this country’s ills, then voting “no” on the two party system is my duty whether self-righteous smart-asses like you appreciate that or not.

Hillary: Obama Is So Friendly, He Won’t Fight
By Eric Kleefeld – February 12, 2008, 1:28AM
During her interview tonight with ABC/The Politico, Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama’s conciliatory tone — arguing that sometimes you have to just drop the idea of compromise and reaching out, and get certain things done:

“So when I hear Senator Obama talk about that, I wonder which fights he wouldn’t fight. Would he have not fought to get to a balanced budget and a surplus and help create 22 million new jobs? Would he have not fought to get assault weapons off the street and get them out of the hands of, you know, criminals and gang members?
“You never hear the specifics. It’s all this kind of abstract, general talk about how we all need to get along.

“I want to get along, and I have gotten along in the Senate. I will work with Republicans to find common cause whenever I can, but I will also stand my ground, because there are fights worth having.”

Yeah – and that program was started in 1996 – under whose watch was that? No, not BILL CLINTON!

Extraordinary rendition, and now THIS?! Look at all the neat repression tools Bill provided for George. Wasn’t that NICE of him?

And how likely is Hillary (or Barrie O, for that matter) to get rid of Bill’s handiwork? Not very, I am guessing. I am guessing that whoever comes along next will find those little programs of Bill’s quite, quite useful.

This country is in serious trouble. In some ways it’s starting to make the average dictatorship look good.

Using the same logic then, you are as blameless as any Californian who actually cast their vote for Dubya, since the vote they cast did not result in Bush carrying the state.

Next time, vote as if something is at stake here, like the country.

Thanks again.

Well, it’s supposed to humorously illustrate just how treacherously false the “solidly blue” assumption can be. Personally, I wouldn’t trust it to hold in so important a matter as the Presidency, but if you do, fine, then go right ahead and vote for Billy Jack or Christopher Walken, or whoever you’re throwing it away on this time around, and I’ll leave it to James Wolcott to sum up my feelings on this sort of “conscience voting”.

Quoth Wolcott:

“I have many faults and quirks, but one thing I’m not is a narcissist. My vote isn’t about Me. Who I am, how I conceive myself, how my vote positions me in the pulse of the moment. The tab I flip in the voting booth isn’t intended as a dramatic gesture to pin in my lapel like a carnation and sniff during intermission, like some Clifton Webb character.”

Why would Krugman be as corrupt as Colin Powell and Barack Hussein Obama?

Your negative crap and stupid conspiracy slander knows no boundaries.