Well Said.

A Massachusetts drug maker has killed 14 of people and sickened hundreds more with contaminated medicines. Federal inspectors wanted to shut it down in 2002, but Bush’s FDA refused to intervene, and in 2003 state regulators ignored FDA warnings and allowed it to continue operating. The governor in 2003 was (drum roll) Mitt Romney. The company’s co-owners are (drum roll) Republican campaign donors.

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/13/15140852-fda-wanted-to-close-mass-pharmacy-in-2002-report-says?lite

http://wrentham.patch.com/articles/necc-co-owner-and-wrentham-resident-barry-cadden-gave-money-to-brown-campaign

Roger Rabbit Commentary: I posted this to help our trolls understand why I don’t want Republicans appointing FDA commissioners or the director of our state health department.

Actually, each of those ballots was reviewed by at least nine individuals, three from each party and three county employees, and many were reviewed by twenty-one individuals, seven from each party and seven county employees, because in the hand recount the King County ballots were hand counted between three and seven times.

It has been unequivocally and repeatedly demonstrated that human beings are better than machines at pattern recognition. That’s why a hand recount is the gold standard, why it’s always more accurate than running the ballots through scanners.

Remember also that every single one of those 2004 WA-Gov ballots was reviewed by at least two individuals, that they agreed on the candidate who was voted for on that ballot, and that they always represented both parties.

What “found” ballots are you talking about, sonny boy?

“Plus, Rossi won two of the three counts.”

An election isn’t baseball playoffs.

Why is the last one assumed to be the most accurate. Just because it was by hand?

Because that’s what the law says.

I trust automatic counting over people who decide to count however they want, and could easily make mistakes. If they stack the ballots one could fall into the wrong pile even.

You obviously don’t know a damn thing about the ballot counting process, and have never seen it done, so let me educate you.

First of all, ballots are stored by precinct in boxes with security seals, and the boxes are locked instead a cage.

Next, the ballots are counted by having election workers feed them through an optical scanning machine. This is an imprecise counting method because the machines can’t read some of the ballots.

In the 2004 hand recount the following procedure was used in King County. Each sealed precinct box was given to a counting team consisting of a team supervisor (who was a full-time elections department employee) and two temporary workers, one chosen from a list provided by the Republican Party, and one chosen from a list provided by the Democratic Party.

When a counting team was given a sealed precinct box, they unsealed it, then the Republican and Democratic counters each counted all the ballots, and wrote the results on a slip of paper which was handed to the team supervisor. The two counts had to match exactly; if they didn’t the team counted the ballots again, and if their counts still didn’t match, the ballots were taken away from them and given to another team.

Every King County ballot went through this counting procedure a minimum of three times, by three different counting teams, and all three counts had to match exactly. Some of the ballots were counted up to seven times by seven different counting teams.

The entire counting process was done at tables in roped-off areas surrounded by observers from the political parties and news media. As an observer, my job was to stand there and watch the counters count. The counting teams and observers were not allowed to talk with each other. Use of cell phones was strictly prohibited and would get you immediately kicked out of the building and not allowed back.

There is no fucking way even one ballot could have been miscounted in the hand recount. There is no fucking way anyone could have removed a ballot or added one without being discovered. Even though King County had to count 1.8 million ballots, that hand recount was absolutely accurate.

There were, of course, some disputed ballots. Any counter could, without explanation or justification, pull a ballot out of the stack and send it to the county canvassing board. Ballots with stray marks, unreadable marks, or ambiguous marks were sent to the canvassing board, which is the body vested by law with the authority to decide whether questioned ballots will be counted or not.

King County had by far the largest number of ballots, so was the last county to finish the hand recount, and I was standing right next to Dean Logan when the final count was released. After all the ballots statewide had been hand counted, but before the King County canvassing board had met, Gregoire led Rossi by 8 votes. Gregoire and Rossi both gained additional votes at the canvassing board proceedings, but Gregoire got 121 more than Rossi, increasing her lead to 129.

The GOP then exercised its statutory right to challenge the election in court. They filed their lawsuit in Chelan County, a GOP stronghold, to make sure they would get a Republican judge. Their handpicked Republican judge in their handpicked Republican county found that 4 of Rossi’s votes were fraudulent and subtracted them from Rossi’s final total, which increased Gregoire’s lead from 129 to 133.

Gregoire won that election. Contrary to wingnut talk-radio claims, there was no way to “game” the hand recount and it wasn’t “gamed.” To Republican partisans who assert that Rossi “won” the first two counts (the Election Night machine count and the machine recount), my answer is as follows:

1) An Election Night machine recount is less accurate than a machine recount;
2) A machine recount is less accurate than a hand recount;
3) By law, each recount supersedes the count preceding it, and only the last recount counts;
4) No fraud occurred in that election, and none was ever proved, and GOP claims of fraud were nothing but empty hot air;
5) Gregoire won because she got more votes than Rossi, and people like you are nothing but whiny sore losers.

Well, no, that wasn’t what he was talking about, but …

As you can see, it’s not just those “urban” voters who seem to vote their identity. Asians and Jewish households are much more Democratic than you might expect given their relatively high incomes, presumably because they see the GOP as believing fundamentally in a white Christian nation from which they will forever be outsiders.
And then there’s the other identity-politics minority, which is every bit as anomalous in its voting behavior as those urbanites.

Some of the attempts to predict future trends argue that over time Hispanics will become politically “white”, the way Irish and Italians did. Maybe, although somehow that hasn’t happened yet to my tribe. But isn’t it equally likely that over time Southern whites will finally become culturally assimilated, and start voting like the rest of their fellow citizens?

WA Republicans: Stop acting like and promoting policies that are anything like Southern Whites, and you’ve got a fighting chance.
… if you can do the math

Wrong person dude…

Free stuff! Say it loud and say it proud!