Minutes of our last post, Van Jones was fired. Perhaps I should not have said that he would not last the month and said that he should not have last the day instead. But this debacle is really a shame to President Obama and a loud wake up call to his followers.

“Get rid of the politics of the old and get things done,” was a message that won a lot of Independents over. Yet, a simple swift-boat attack on the person best qualified for the job and he has fallen right into the Republicans’ trap. This is one of the most disappointed I have been in a President in a long time.

Perhaps, it is that I have personally went and heard talks from Van Jones that I know that he is not a racist or anti-capitalist. Or it maybe the fact that I have studied green technology enough, that this quitting has really made me angry.

However, it is the sheer lack of fight that is in President Obama that has disappointed me. He has lived up to his party’s mantle; the spineless Democrats. There was not even a hint of support coming from the White House over this issue. That has really got to be a disgrace!

It is going to be very difficult to find somebody that is going to be as qualified as Van Jones when it comes to shaping a green economy. And you threw it all away coming from a party where half the base think that global warming is a hoax.

The sad thing is that the President has a lot of good ideas that are going to waste if he does not stand up for it. Liberals wanting a public option can forget about it entirely! You have to wonder what other promises is he going to back down due to Republican opposition.

It is sad that America has a President that is missing something over the last 9 years. Be it the brains and competency in the President Bush (43) administration or the guts in the current one. Neither would have the ability to get anything done.

Letting Van Jones go because of the accusations is like letting Albert Einstein go because he looks idiotic with fuzzy hair, firing Steve Jobs from Apple because he is Buddhist or rejecting Alan Turing into the British army because he was gay! It is that absurd a choice.

I reiterate again, I would rather have Jesse Ventura as a Senator now rather than Norm Coleman or Al Franken despite him being a 9/11 “truther”. When is saying what you feel, bad in America? Hey, what about Governor’s Parry talk of secession? Should he be tried for treason? How far can you play this puck?

This is really a sad day for me. President has lost a lot of respect for not fighting for his nominee. Liberals have yet to learn, Conservatives have yet to change their political game.

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Senator Norm Coleman has finally conceded. Al Franken is now going to be a Senator from the state of Minnesota. Though this has been label as the magic 60th vote on the Senate, I really doubt that the severity of this event.

How do Minnesotans vote? I really do not know. First there was a over-pumped wrestler in Governor Jesse Ventura (I declare that I am a fan though). Then there is a seriously messed up person in Representative Michelle Bachman and now a clown by the name of Al Franken is becoming a Senator. All courtesy from Minnesota. Fran Drescher must have tried to be a Senator in the wrong state!
(Relax Minnesotans, I am just kidding!)

In a serious note, with Al Franken being sworn in, the Democrats would have 58 Senators and 40 Republicans in the Senate. Independent Senators Bernie Sanders and Joe Liebermann caucus with the Democrats. It is with the assumption that there would be a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

I do not buy this for a minute. Even if we assume that all Democrats and Republicans are machine morons that vote by party lines, I really do not see Senator Liebermann kow-towing to Democrats. Remember how many Liberals hated this guy? He was very much with the right with regards to matters such as the Iraq war. That alone should take the magic out of the number 60.

Secondly, I think that there are many Democrats and Republicans that would vote….according to what they feel is right or what is better for them politically. For example, if there is legislation to ban M16s and AK-47s on the streets, I do not think that a Democrat with a lot of M16 owners would be for it. Similarly if there is a legislation to legalize weed, I think that Republicans with a lot of marijuana addicts would vote for it even if his/her party is against it.

This may even be a stumbling block for the Democrats more than a celebratory cause. Right now, they would have to get things done. They cannot blame the Republicans in the Senate at all. Everything is fair game right now. Any wrong move that the Democrats make, would be pounced on so hard by the Republicans. Knowing the backbone of the Democrats, I do not think that they would hold this majority till next year at all.

If I were a Republican, I would right now get my notepad ready and begin to jot down all the failures where I can attack Democrats on. It is time to hunt for the Republicans!

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To recap, an election took place on Nov 4 in Minnesota. It was between an incumbent crook named Norm Coleman, a clown named Al Franken and a sane person that was under funded named Dean Barkley. Dean Barkley got 16 % and the other two candidates received 42% of the vote.

Because the margin of victory was much less than 0.5%, a recount was automatically triggered as per Minnesota electoral law. The margin of victory in this election was was 0.0065%. First 133 ballots were found. That was fair. If the ballots were lost unintentionally and did not make it to the vote, I believe that they should be counted. So fair enough, this was a rightful bet gain of 46 for al Franken.

After that, everything went mad. People on the Democratic and the Republican side just started giving pointing out and submitting ballots out of no where. We are not talking one or two ballots, we are talking about close to 7000 ballots that were not counted.

It is one thing that human error is done. It is another thing altogether for this to happen at such a grand scale. I mean it really got ridiculous. Judges had to sieve out one paper at a time to see if the vote was legitimate or not. Guess what only, 10% of the votes were legitimate! Mind you, both sides gave roughly the same amount of ballots. At this point in time, if I really felt that the two candidates that were fighting for this post really should start paying for the process as they were clearly wasting a ton of time.

Majority of this 10% voted in favor of Al Franken and thus he should have “won” by 220 votes. But could Norm Coleman let this go? No! He started attacking the stupidest of all technicalities and Al Franken fought each and every one of them. This really dragged the time even further.

The saddest part is not that this vote is not done, but the manner that Minnesota is divided on this issue. It is such a disgrace. Look out at any blog that allow commentary on this topic and you would find some very flowery language. The Republican supporters claim that Al Franken stole the election and some even suggest that President Obama had a hand in wanting to make Al Franken a Senator. The Democrats in the mean time talk about how Al Franken is a messiah coming to the party and how Minnesota were sick of 8 years of Bush! These are all really crazy talk.

Not to end there, there were even crazier comments made by the candidates to the media. The craziest of which belongs to Norm Coleman who claimed that God wanted him to be Senator of Minnesota! I am not kidding at all!

Al Franken is going to win the election pretty soon. Norm Coleman is cornered and has nowhere to run. Regardless of that, I really feel that both candidates should be punished for doing this silly election. They should at least be asked to pay for it.

Lastly I feel that it is time that elections all around the world take a look at its procedure. One of the most common way to disqualify a vote on paper is to check in minute errors voting. For example in many countries, people shade the people that they want to be elected or tick in the box. Should they shade or tick outside the box even by a little bit, that vote would be rejected.

One suggestion that I can give is to create multiple boxes for elections where there are not so many people taking part. E.g. I there were 2 people standing for elections have 2 separate boxes to count 2 different votes. This really simplifies the voting process and would prevent incidents like this from happening again.

Either way, best wishes the state of Minnesota, the state of Jessie Ventura!

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