sethrak

Ok, this is getting fucking annoying.

El Paso County, you suck at precinct reporting. You suck MIGHTILY.

The polls closed two hours ago. Neither KRDO.com, FiveThirtyEight, nor Fox have you listed as reporting ANYTHING. Zero percent reporting is UNACCEPTABLE. If House District 5 didn't extend so far west, we'd have no idea how Lamborn's re-election bid is doing. (He seems to be winning handily, mostly on the strength of Teller Co. I suspect. Teller's also going heavily for Buck and Tancredo.)

I'm glad that the anti-tax and personhood measures seem to be failing beautifully. But I'll feel safer about them when we get over 1,000 precincts reported. (There's over 3 thousand for statewide measures.)

KRDO and FiveThirtyEight are both calling the governor race for Hickenlooper. He has a lead of 439,000 over Tancredo, but again, I will feel better when we get over a thousand reported precincts, instead of a little over 700. Salazar is trailing Tipton, which makes me a little sad, but 25% of precincts reporting isn't a lock. (I have NO idea why we got such a deluge of ads from that campaign. They're the biggest geographically of our House districts, but the border's nowhere near here, and the biggest tv market in their area is Pueblo.) I doubt KRDO et al. reach that far.)

Rubio won heavily in FL. Davner is very pleased. Crist and Meek clearly split the Dem/liberal vote, but adding up the numbers, I don't think we'd have won even without the split. Dems plus Independents voting aren't quite enough to beat Rubio. (I'd like to see a breakdown over voters who voted, vs. registered voters, vs. people old enough to vote who aren't prevented by felony convictions and such. I suspect another "failure to properly rock the vote" problem.)

Wisconsin has me deeply disappointed. ::rubs temples:: Republican winning for Governor so far, over the Dem, who used to be the House rep. for my former district, and is currently the mayor of Milwaukee, my hometown. ::grumps:: Feingold's losing, too. ::grumps more:: Davner's thrilled. I'm not.

The infuriating cream on this sundae of "WTF, home-state ?!" is that my feckless uncle is winning Treasurer by a landslide. 54% of precincts have reported. He has 57.1% The Democrat incumbent has 42.9%.

If Wiki can be trusted in this instance, and if I am doing the math right, WI has nearly four million voters over 18. (25.5.% are under 18; total pop is listed as 5,363,675.)

The total voters for Treasurer? 999,421. This is CLEARLY a get out the vote issue, as well as an "educate voters about the nutjobs who could potentially serve you" issue.

::rubs temples. a LOT::

I wasn't having a great day anyway. I might as well signal boost a few disturbing articles, and hope the outrage incurred does some good.

Fair warning: The third set of articles I am going to link to may be extremely triggering for those who have be subjected to abuse or who have had bad experiences with doctors. I will warn again before the links themselves.

***

The story of an 18 year old young man with asperger's, arrested apparently because he was sitting under a tree at a library next to a school, and someone thought he looked threatening. http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/1137

Stories like that make me terribly afraid for Mark's adulthood.

*****

An article from NYTimes online, regarding a new theory by some educators that kids don't actually need best friends, and it's better to discourage any kind of close friendships among children because they shouldn't be too possessive of their friends.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/fashion/17BFF.html

Of particular troubling note: "As the calendar moves into summer, efforts to manage friendships don’t stop with the closing of school. In recent years Timber Lake Camp, a co-ed sleep-away camp in Phoenicia, N.Y., has started employing “friendship coaches” to work with campers to help every child become friends with everyone else. If two children seem to be too focused on each other, the camp will make sure to put them on different sports teams, seat them at different ends of the dining table or, perhaps, have a counselor invite one of them to participate in an activity with another child whom they haven’t yet gotten to know. "

Oh my word. How interfering and helicopter-ish is that?

Not every kid is going to be able to make friends with every other kid. Adults aren't friends with all other adults, nor should they be expected to do so. Why impose that kind of artificial 'friendship' on children? As long as they're civil to one another, and don't engage in bullying, leave them alone.

I can about guarantee, as friendless and shy and lonely as my childhood often was, I'd rather have had genuine connections, rather than knowing the other kids were forced to invite me over to play, and rather than being forced to interact with the ones who were the worst bullies.

I fully expect to see an article about this soon on my feed from Free Range Kids.

*****

Fair warning, this article I am linking to regards an appalling story of medical abuse, which may be triggering to those who have had bad experiences with doctors, or sex abuse, or who simply have little girls whom they love dearly.



Apparently some genius at Cornell University thinks it's legitimate medical research to surgically excise portions of five year old girls' clitorises, then stitch them back together. Then he conducts followup exams involving applying vibrators to the now six year old girls, and recording their responses.

Article from The Stranger: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/06/16/female-genital-mutilation-at-cornell-university

Article criticizing the highly dubious ethics of this study: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4730&blogid=140

Correlating blog post by one of the authors of the critical article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201006/can-you-hear-us-now?

Post by copperbadge, including some of these links, and more concerning where to write letters: http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/3046413.html

I do not have the words to fully articulate my rage and disgust at this man. How the hell did he get approval for these studies? Even setting aside (but definitely NOT forgetting) the shoddy science behind these surgeries doing any good at all, or at least doing no harm, who the HELL thought it was ok to do the followups? What kind of parents agreed to it? What kind of person would even consider trying it in the first place?!

These poor little girls are going to suffer severe psychological trauma. Odds are they'll have severe physical impairment as they mature. And there's absolutely no evidence that having 'overly large' clits did them any harm to begin with.

I... just.... I.... GAH.