"Will of the people"

One of the things that I dislike the most about the current administration is their use of repeated sound bites to distort reality and define "truth" to fit their agenda. Of course, given that a recent study shows that a majority of Bush supporters still think there are WMDs in Iraq and that there is a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda even without a shred of evidence that's held up to scrutiny, the liars are getting big payoff for this behavior.

The newest line is "the will of the people supports Bush". This is of course based on the fact that Bush carried a majority in the popular vote results from last Tuesday. First of all, the numbers are preliminary as many absentee and provisional votes haven't been counted and there are on-going voter suppression investigations as well as concerns about e-voting without audit trails. The preliminary numbers break down to around 59.5 million for Bush, 55.9 million for Kerry, and about 11.9 million for other candidates.

The 2000 Census puts the US population at around 294 million people, which doesn't include overseas troops. The voting-age citizenry comes in at 193 million. To actually claim to have the majority of (voting-age) Americans behind you, you'd need to garner more than 90 million votes.

The reality is that we have about a 1/3 of our voting-age population behind Bush's policies, about a 1/3 behind the Democrats (or at least anyone non-Bush), and about a 1/3 that either don't care, don't think it is relevant, or are turned off by all the candidates. One could quite reasonably argue that 2/3rds of American don't support Bush with the same factual basis that they use to claim a majority of America is behind them. With a third of the population opting out of our democracy, nobody really knows the 'will of the people'.

Still, in a practical sense Bush is right. He has proven that his policies, tactics, and spin can deliver the Whitehouse and ultimately the real power and money goes to the ones who can grab on and hang on to control. There's plenty of pork to go around to all his buddies and ideologues to install into long-standing appointed positions.

(no subject)

Apparently the secret to getting lots of chicks if you work at Microsoft is to go to the company sponsered Pro Club wearing any Microsoft T-shirt that implies you've been at the company since the mid 90s (a Windows 95 T-shirt is ideal). The assumed stock portfolio is guaranteed to get an attractive girl to talk to you. From there, you just have to lie a lot about how much stock you really own.

That's so not me, but I'm sure it works for some people.

Too bad I didn't actually come to work for Microsoft in mid the 90s and got out before the crash. Then again, money has never been my primary motivator in life. I spent the late 90s following my desire for a fun career, my heart into a rewarding in that playing-with-fire kinda lifestyle, and eating out a lot with appleang and onyxlynxx. Those were the days.

Spent most of today helping a visiting game developer track down some whacky crashes, and tomorrow is more of the same. jeliza and family have a visitor this week, so I'm not really sure when I'm likely to get more time with Jane. My whiteboard has a fair number of errands to deal with this week, but otherwise things are pretty quiet.

While I'm not planning on scamming for gold-diggers, I think I should investigate the Pro Club anyhow. A nice heated pool sounds like a fun way to burn off some excess energy. Now if I can just make sure that I never even talk to a personal trainer I'll try to go on a regular basis. Those years in middle-school PE has permanently scarred me to the point that personal trainers irritate the hell out of me. They go on the list of 'professionals to avoid' with injury lawyers and dentists.