As soon as the signatures were turned in, the right wing took to their airwave monopoly with their stories of [...]]]> Please you’re giving me a headache. I can not handle anymore right wing crying wolf about “massive fraud”. We recently collected more than 1 million signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker(540,000) were needed.

As soon as the signatures were turned in, the right wing took to their airwave monopoly with their stories of fraud. Everyone on the right has a friend whose brother in laws friend signed the petition 10 times( or some other variation of this urban legend). The hate sqwaukers were all to happy to continue telling these unverified fables.

These next two pics, touted as obvious fraud, come courtesy of wolf on back/ snake on chest herself:

Lets look at this. Is this fraud or a mistake? What probably happened here was Duffy Holloway was probably told to recall both Walker/Kleefisch he had to sign twice. He probably misinterpreted that to mean twice in a row, he made the mistake and crossed it out. On the same sheet, Corrina Williams signed her name and then probably thought she had to put down Scott walkers name as the person she wanted to recall. She did not sign scott walker to the petition. Are either of these fraud? No! Nor were either of these counted by United WI in their final total.

One more example:

Let’s take a logical look at what probably happened here. A group of people stopped to sign the recall petition and all got into a discussion(the petitioners were our friends and neighbors) and passed the clipboard around. One of the people in the group was probably visiting from Ithaca, NY and in the process accidentally signed the petition. Is this fraud? NO! This signature was also not counted in the 1,000,000+ total by United WI but this sheet needed to be turned in since there are 9 legit signatures on it.

Let’s move on to JSonline and their exam in the signatures link.

If you find signatures, names or addresses of people who signed the petitions that are noteworthy, you can submit them to our database in our Data on Demand portal. We will review submissions and post those that we can independently verify.

OOPs..Looks like JSonline is not following their own rules. They are allowing anonymous people to sift through the recall signatures and then comment about the “known fraud” (See urban legend reference above) and we do not know if it is darlene wink commenting, a 12 year old or an actual handwriting expert(although I am amazed how many actual handwriting experts there are in WI(more on this in a bit). Lets take a look at one example:

Recall petitions page 000664: Lines 4 & 5 – Brittney & Brooke Hietpas – same address.

Now lets look at the comments on the JSOnline website(please keep in mind that official policy is We will review submissions and post those that we can independently verify.)

Anonymous handwriting expert from somewhere in this world(no guarantee they are even from WI) and supposedly independently verified complaint:

651 14 4&5 Obvious false names Obviously same handwriting. 1/31/2012

Obviously same handwriting? It could not be that these two people, who are obviously sisters, and probably same age(twins) or very close in age and of the same sex would not have similar handwriting? I guess not since JSonline independently verified this. Unbelievable. PS: Hietpas seems to be a common name in Little Chute, shouldn't be hard to actually verify.

One more example before I wrap this up. This gem from the Racine Journal Times regarding verifying the recall signatures:

Marge Orth, 63, of Caledonia, also had a page filled with notes about flagged petitions. On some of petitions, she could tell the person that filled out the address was not the same as the person who dated the signature.

“The twos, they don’t match,” she said. She doesn’t know if the signatures she flagged will be thrown out, but she said, “You have to question it. We’ll let the lawyers figure it out.”

If 63 yr old Marge Orth can’t tell that “two’s dont match” who can? rest easy walker backers, Marge is on the case.

Ok now let’s get real and wrap this up. There is absolutely NO way that they will be able to throw out enough signatures to stop the recall election. Do you really want to anyway? as if our state is not divided enough as is, try and not have a recall elections after a million signatures and thousands of volunteers and watch it get even worse. Besides Scott Walker said he wanted this election ASAP, don’t you take him at his word?

I truly believe that the Walker campaign and supporters have every right to review the petitions. The Walker campaign has had .pdf versions of these petitions for days now. I think anyone who wants to help should go find a Walker for Gov office and sit and go through them. To put them online in a searchable database is insanity. To allow people from all over the country unfettered access to them is also insanity! To the walker backers that are putting their name in a verify the signatures – What do you think is going to happen with that database? Is it really necessary to use this database to make fun of fellow Wisconsinite’s last name? I would say that most people in Wisconsin whether their name is Smith or Heitpas or Orth are quite proud of their last name and no need to start throwing them out as legit signatures because you do not know someone with that name.

Let’s be clear now the amount of actual fraud will be miniscule, the signatures thrown out will be insignificant. These urban legends of fraud are just being done to create as much noise as possible to cast doubt on the process for people who are not paying 100% attention.

Shame on those that do this, you know better. Please stop, you’re hurting your cause and giving me a headache!

The character was Henson’s response to a brief by Ted Mills (a principal at InPro, which organised the seminar) who laid out the basic idea that Computer H14 “is sure that All Men [...]]]> In 1963, Jim Henson made this film about “Computer H14″ for an AT&T seminar on the tension between humans and machines.

The character was Henson’s response to a brief by Ted Mills (a principal at InPro, which organised the seminar) who laid out the basic idea that Computer H14 “is sure that All Men Basically Want to Play Golf, and not run businesses — if he can do it better.” This emotion is carried across brilliantly, and hints at some of Henson’s more chaotic creations in the future like the Swedish Chef and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

Now I don’t really [...]]]> There’s been a lot of chatter about this article from The New York Times on Apple’s move to China for their manufacturing.  But there is an underreported backstory here involving the management of these factories and the workers whose lives are ruined by Apple, Dell and other American electronics manufacturers.

Now I don’t really care for This American Life.  Ira Glass is a whiner and I don’t have patience for whiners.  But this piece on manufacturing in China really hit home.  Next time you pick up your iPhone to surf the web or make a call, think about this for a minute.

Then the workers start coming in. They come in in twos and threes and fours. They come in all day. It’s an eight, nine-hour day. I interview all of them. Some of them are in groups.

There’s a group that’s talking about hexane. N-hexane is an iPhone screen cleaner. It’s great because it evaporates a little bit faster than alcohol does, which means you can run the production line even faster and try to keep up with the quotas. The problem is that n-hexane is a potent neurotoxin, and all these people have been exposed. Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them can’t even pick up a glass.

I talk to people whose joints in their hands have disintegrated from working on the line, doing the same motion hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times. It’s like carpal tunnel on a scale we can scarcely imagine. And you need to know that this is eminently avoidable. If these people were rotated monthly on their jobs, this would not happen.

But that would require someone to care. That would require someone at Foxconn and the other suppliers to care. That would require someone at Apple and Dell and the other customers to care. Currently no one in the ecosystem cares enough to even enforce that. And so when you start working at 15 or 16, by the time you are 26, 27, your hands are ruined. And when they are truly ruined, once they will not do anything further, you know what we do with a defective part in a machine that makes machine. We throw it away.

And the thing that unites all these people is that they are all the kind of people who would join a union in a place where joining a union can destroy your life. I talk with one woman. She’s very birdlike, very nervous. And she just wants to explain to me how it is that she came to be in a union, because she never thought she would ever be in a union. It’s just that she couldn’t get her company to pay her overtime. And she complained and complained. This went on for weeks and for months.

In the United States, unions were forged in the front lines of industrial capitalism.  That fight has moved to China.  When we think about the fight for union rights for public sector workers, we should never forget the struggles of our brothers and sisters around the world who face unimaginable horrors in the workplace just to feed their families.  And their capitalists are as callous as our capitalists.

“Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache,” Gou said, according to the website run by Taiwan’s China Times News Group.

The Hon Hai chairman was reportedly entertaining Taipei Zoo director Chin Shih-chien onstage when he asked Chin “how animals should be managed” and instructed Hon Hai executives present to listen carefully to the zookeeper’s advice.

Disgusting.

Madison – Clerks in the state are scrambling to assign voters to the right districts after last summer’s redrawing of legislative maps, with changes to the process putting [...]]]> Some how I don’t think voter ID is going to fix this! LOL!

Clerks scrambling to get voters in right districts before primary

Madison – Clerks in the state are scrambling to assign voters to the right districts after last summer’s redrawing of legislative maps, with changes to the process putting voters in incorrect locations across town or even across the Atlantic Ocean.

The problems could add to the confusion for voters who may already be affected by the redistricting law approved by legislators last summer. Primaries for spring races are being held on Feb. 21, leaving little time to sort out the problems.

The errors affect thousands of voters around the state and stem from different sources, including inaccuracies in U.S. Census Bureau data and problems with a new way of assigning voters to districts in a state database.

“We’re not only changing and moving districts, we’re changing the system beneath it,” said Julie Glancey, the Sheboygan County clerk. “We had many, many voters who showed up (on the computer map) on the coast of Africa and we had to drag them back to the state of Wisconsin and put them where they belonged

P.S. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said she may ask for help with the work from the accountability board.

I’ve had a second generation Amazon Kindle for 3 years now.  I love it.  The screen is sharp and crisp and easy to read in bright sunlight.  It’s light and has a little [...]]]> A non-political post by a pissed off consumer.  If you’re looking for politics, move on to the next post.

I’ve had a second generation Amazon Kindle for 3 years now.  I love it.  The screen is sharp and crisp and easy to read in bright sunlight.  It’s light and has a little keyboard.  But it was quite limited in what it could do.  So when Amazon announced the Fire, I was excited.  Here was a device that was closer to an iPad than a Kindle but came in at under $200.  How awesome is that?  I’m already all-in with Amazon for music and movies so this seemed like a perfect fit.

The device arrived yesterday.  It took 3 minutes to get it setup on my home WiFi network and I was reading books, watching movies and listening to music right away.  Unreal!  I was very, very pleased with the device.

Then I took it to work… And the catastrophic heroic flaw manifested itself.  The EPIC FAIL that was lurking just below the surface.

 The Kindle Fire does not support proxy servers

Got that? Can you hear me?  Let me repeat that for those of you who were startled like a deer in the headlights and perhaps did not believe what you just read.

 The Kindle Fire does not support proxy servers!!

I could not believe it.  I couldn’t have missed something, could I?  I checked all through the Google search results and yes indeed, the Kindle Fire does not support proxy servers by design.  This was a major WTF moment for me.

In a discussion thread on Amazon’s own site, they say this:

Amazon EPIC FAIL

How is this possible?  It’s 2011!  Every company on the planet has proxy servers.  This is absurd!  How can they not support proxy servers????

All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t throw away the box the Fire came in.  I’m gonna need it.

Hello, Apple?  I need an iPad… STAT!

In a move that could be called anything but conservative, Republican lawmakers are set to bring a bill to the House floor next week that will repeal state and municipal [...]]]> The lights are on in the republican party but in terms of being fiscally conservative, no one is home. H/T Think Progress:

In a move that could be called anything but conservative, Republican lawmakers are set to bring a bill to the House floor next week that will repeal state and municipal rights to set efficiency standards for light bulbs. The bill would unravel a piece of federal legislation that was strongly supported by light bulb manufacturers and has spurred innovation in the lighting industry.

The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican Joe Barton, would strip away any “federal, state or local requirement or standard regarding energy efficient lighting” that uses light bulbs containing mercury. In other words, all compact fluorescent bulbs.

So while this bill ends local control(sounds familiar) as republicans are want to do, it also will end up costing the American Consumer a whipping $12.5 BILLION dollars annually.

This bill originally was signed by George W Bush, with not only broad bipartisan support, but was also accepted industry wide. As Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs at Philips, says:

The 2007 law set minimum efficiency level. That’s it. Everyone in the industry knew that it was set at a point that we could still make incandescent light bulbs. The industry never would have supported a law that would have banned a technology or prevented us from making a light with a certain kind of ambiance.

The reality is, the new incandescent lights were not being made because there was not an economic incentive to make them. And now Philips [and other manufacturers] makes two types that were not made before EISA. Today, under the efficiency standard, consumers have more choices, not less. They still can choose from more types of incandescent light bulbs that will be more efficient.

“It’s a nice bumper sticker statement to claim that the government is going to come in and take your light bulbs away. Unfortunately, my 5-page white paper that explains the effectiveness of the law has a hard time competing with that,”

UPDATE: A new analysis from NRDC shows that repealing the standard would ultimately cost the country more than $12.5 billion annually. The light-bulb standard will reduce Americans’ energy costs by about $85 per household every year when the standards are fully in place. More efficient light bulbs also will eliminate the need for 33 large power plants – and the pollution they generate

PS: In Cottage Grove, we have a village board who uses that very same bumper sticker slogan as policy!