What’s up everybody? Not too much here. I do have some pics to post of the trip to La Rochelle from a couple of weeks ago: http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=82nxgnrb.7v44wx57&x=0&y=a1x6v4

Frankly, I don’t know if I have the energy to dedicate much space on the blog to political rants like the last post. As a general rule, you can expect a random mix of travelblog and social/political commentary. I’ve been reading some articles about serious irregularities with the voting and the wide discrepancy between the official count and the exit polls. What is worrisome is the scant attention these accounts receive in the mainstream press.

One of the pieces that best summarizes the unanswered questions is Thom Hartman’s piece on Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm) discussing irregularities and posing questions that need to be taken seriously. That is not to say that I or others asking these questions believe there was another stolen election, but there are enough questions to put in doubt the legitimacy of 11-2 and the US electoral system.

In the piece, Thom Hatman wrote:
“The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.”

And:

“While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.”

These kinds of questions have indeed lead to some action. There are several petitions to congress for further investigations into the matter. Two of the ones I’m familiar with and comfortable enough in posting are:

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/
and
http://www.petitiononline.com/uselect/

Anyway, we’ll see where all that leads. My guess is that the decision was made by those that can make a difference (read: mainstream media) not to rock the boat; perhaps even before the elections themselves.

Onto something completely different, was it my imagination or did I see G dub kiss new appointee Spelling on the lips at a press conference? Did anyone else see this?
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/111704-5v.htm)
I scanned the main fishwraps (nytimes, wash post, cnn, etc.) and came up with no mention of it. Not that it matters. In fact, I would encourage W and the neocons to get their freak on more often. Maybe they’ll loosen up and come to their senses (www.fthevote.com sent by A is a humorous, if somewhat explicit, effort along these lines). However, in light of the improbability of this, I just muse about what would have happened if Clinton had done the same. Things just keep getting weirder and weirder.


While all this is going on, the Angers Scoop festival (http://www.festivalscoop.com) started this week. It’s a two week festival dedicated to journalism and information. This year’s theme is violence in journalism. While not the best website (the English translations are very bad), the festival itself offers some insight into what they still call journalism over here through discussions, presentations, exhibitions, etc. The opening night featured a panel discussion made up of some high profile figures of the TV news including anchors, reporters, and editors. While there wasn’t anything new revealed, I have to give credit that the discussion was at least taking place and some of the audience questions hinted at some intelligent life out there. However, I fear my own personal views of the (show)business of news are too skeptical to not notice the self congratulatory back-slapping that goes on when a group of reporters sit to talk about their profession.


The other big news for us right now is our first roadie to Barcelona to check things out over there. The ten-hour drive took us south to Bordeaux through some amazing countryside of rolling hills, vineyards, and chateaux. Once in the city of Bordeaux, we headed southeast to Toulouse, the center of France’s – and to a certain extent, Europe’s – Aerospace industry.

By the time we got to the coast near Perpignan, the landscape had turned dramatically different. The still hilly terrain was dominated here by low shrubs and pine trees in this arid land that gave me my first ever glimpse of the “mare nostrum” as the Romans called the Mediterranean.

After Perpignan, the border in the Pyrenees is a mere formality with merely a slow down. No stop, no papers, just Europe. Nice. As you might expect, the landscape doesn’t change much on the Spanish side, but it seems somewhat dryer. What does change is Spanish drivers. The difference isn’t by any means dramatic, but it is noticeable.

It was dusk by the time we entered Barcelona that first day. The street lights were coming on and people were starting to come out onto the street in a major way. Here, as in most of Spain, the street is where it’s at and at night is when it happens. Perfect for nocturnal creatures like myself. Anyway, it was a strange sensation for me to enter a place I had never been to before, yet had decided long ago to make my new home. My first impressions of the place, as I explained to A the other day, is that it has New York hustle and bustle and Parisian style, with a decidedly Mediterranean feel.

Two surprises stand out from that experience. It was surprisingly cool that weekend, though nothing compared to Angers or Paris, it’s always a strange sensation for me to be by the oceanside with palm trees and have to wear a coat or jacket. Don’t let the palm trees fool you. Also, I was surprised to find how much Catalan sounds like Portuguese. When you read it, the structure immediately reminds you of a mixture of French and Spanish. Frankly, it doesn’t seem very warm on the page. However the sound is very similar to Portuguese and I would even add that the somewhat throaty and guttural sounds with some combinations of “L” and vowels are reminiscent of Rusian (a language that I find possesses a rather poetic quality).

The next few days were a blur of meetings, appointments, and more research; all the while, taking in the sights, but more importantly the sounds and smells of this vibrant metropolis. There weren’t many photos taken or visits to tourist sites on this trip. Just a couple of folks doing our thing. After thinking and talking about it, after reading and listening, after wondering whether or not we could actually pull it off this crazy stunt, we kept thinking to ourselves: This is just crazy enough to work.