Who you gonna call?

I am losing patience with County Executive Kathleen Falk and with the boards that manage our 911 center. It seems as though no matter how many expensive studies resulting in admonitions to immediately add more staff are conducted, proper measures just are not taken. Or they are, but only after protracted foot dragging.

And more mistakes--mistakes with terrible consequences--are made.

Case-in-point: the recent failure of a 911 operator to dispatch police to the scene of not one, but two noise complaints. Just over an hour later, a man was found beaten to death in the area from where the complaints originated.

Not to play too much of a game of "if only," but it strikes me (and many others, I'm sure) that this death could have been avoided, and perhaps the perpetrator in the Zimmermann case apprehended, if the county had simply followed the recommendations of the intial report from back in 2004. Instead, it's 2008 and the center still hasn't implemented the necessary policy changes and increased staffing levels necessary to properly handle calls.

It's difficult to expect the public to have complete trust in the system with results like these.

The resignation of former 911 center director Joe Norwick was all well-and-good, but we need additions, not subtractions: more staff, better training, clearer procedural policies. And we need Falk to face the issues honestly, without sugarcoating. None of this "Falk said the report confirmed that the county is on the right track by adding the staff she included in her budget to address overtime" crap.

I understand the need to make yourself and the county look good to the public, but seriously, own up. We may be on the "right track" but we still haven't done everything we could have and should have. Is it a matter of not having enough money for all of the needed positions? Then say so! We can better address problems if we know what they actually are. Don't dance around the issue by boasting about adding only half of the recommended positions. Asking for upgraded software is good, but it's not enough.

And don't just continue to ask for more studies. We've already been given several similar recommendations. We know what to do. Now it's just a matter of actually, y'know, doing it.

For the resortation of trust in the dispatch system, and for the safety of the community.

Hail Mary full of gaffes

Whew, talk about dodging a bullet.

It's hard to tell how much of this is the GOP trying to find a single scapegoat for their massive failure in this election, and how much of it is the honest-to-goodness truth (or a bit of both). But it's also hard to figure why Fox News, of all places, would report these stories at all. They were, after all, some of the biggest Palin cheerleaders on cable news. If we want to get really cynical, I suppose you could chalk it up to spite, or maybe they're just being played by McCain staffers in order to further that whole scapegoat thing.

Whatever the case, I still think it's pretty damn clear that almost no vetting was done for the Palin VP pick, and that she was a pretty big weight around the campaign's neck. That said, Palin was not the sole reason for the failures of the Republican party on Nov. 4 - rather, it was a complex and many layered cake that had been baked over the last 8 years of GOP dominance in Washington (it probably goes back even further, honestly). They let cronyism and hard line ideology take control, and the results are being crushingly played out on the American people's pocketbooks and lives.

Still, the not knowing that Africa was a continent thing is, if baffling, pretty damn funny. Oh Alaska, I don't envy you right now.

A torn heart

I watched the returns roll in with a festive and like-minded crowd last night at the High Noon Saloon, and admit that I found myself getting misty-eyed on several occasions.

When the camera coverage on CNN cut to images of the Rev. Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes, I almost lost my composure completely. I haven't agreed with everything he's done and said over the years, but still I have a great deal of respect for the greater fight he's been fighting. And here is a man who walked beside Martin Luther King Jr., and now he gets to see the election of this country's first African American president. Amazing.

Too, it's very nice to be on the winning side of a national election for the first time in my voting career.

We all deserve to feel really good, to revel in this massively historic accomplishment. But still, not to rain on any parades, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Obama said it himself in his victory speech last night. It's going to be an uphill battle. We have far better tools and leadership with which to see that battle through now, but it's still not going to be easy.

With the new-found Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature here in Wisconsin, and a strengthening of those majorities at the national level, Democrats must now kick into high gear and get things done. And we, their constituents, must hold them accountable and push them to do the right thing. It's often very tempting for the majority party to just run roughshod, more focused on assuaging their own egoes and selfish desires than on actually working for a better country for all of us. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.

And while we're at it, let's do something at the national level to actually fulfill the promise of equal rights for all under the law. Last night saw one giant step forward for equality, and several state-level steps back.

In California, for instance, Proposition 8 looks to have passed by a slim margin, stripping the rights of LGBT people across the state and (hopefully only temporarily) extinguishing the light of one of the great beacons of fairness in this country. It also throws into limbo around 18,000 same-sex marriages that have been conducted over the past 4 1/2 months.

I want you to imagine, if you can, waking up one morning to find that your fellow citizens have voted to revoke your marriage license, simply because your idea of love differed from theirs. I cannot even begin to understand how heart-rending this must be for all those couples who thought finally, finally, they were able to enjoy the same rights as everyone else. To know that so many people still have such a fundamental misunderstanding and fear of something as simple as the love you have for your partner. To realize that, after so much gained ground, you've once again been pushed back into the muck.

It's time to up our game, then--to launch a nationwide campaign to garauntee equal rights for all just as we did to rid ourselves of things like anti-miscegenation laws.

Just as important, though, is the continued and more quiet rise in visibility for LGBT people. The more gay folks people get to know on a personal level, the more they tend to support gay rights. It's about education and familiarity. The false spectre of the evil, degenerate, family-destroying gay falls pretty quickly to the wayside once people really meet and interact with members of the LGBT community. So despite these crushing blows to the cause--or perhaps because of them--it is crucial that we continue to fight the good fight, never stopping, because as Americans we have to believe that equality and fairness will eventually win out over ignorance and oppression.

We saw the potential for positive results yesterday, when Obama claimed victory. Take heart in that, and keep movin' forward.

TO ADD: I don't agree with the "fascist" part, but the rest seems about right:

This whole thing makes me doubly angry, because 1) it's super lame, and 2) it's making it difficult for me to be as happy as I ought to be about Obama winning. Blargh.

MORE TO ADD: Andrew Sullivan has a really good take on this here.

YET MORE TO ADD: OK, I'll buy this and dare to hope. The proposition alone may not actually be enough to amend the CA constitution.

Elation.

I am exhausted, but so immensely happy.

(Now I'm just hoping that California doesn't harsh my mellow)

Election Day '08

Haven't had your fill of election day prattling from all corners of the blogosphere? Then read on!

Boy am I sleepy. It has already been an interesting day, and it's not even lunchtime yet.

I rolled out of bed at 6:15 this morning and, because of the unseasonably gorgeous weather, hopped on my bike to head to my polling place. This year, I got to cast my ballot at the lovely Olbrich Gardens - and by the time I got out of there an hour and a half later, was glad to have had the pleasant vistas to keep me mildly entertained.

When I rolled up at 6:55, there was already a long line snaking down across the parking lot. Everyone seemed upbeat, though, and once the doors opened the line moved at a relatively good pace. Unfortunately, at around 7:20 word came that the one and only tabulation machine on the premises had jammed. They were instead bundling all of the ballots into a clear, sealed and signed plastic bag until such time as "someone from the city" came out to fix the machine. We were assured that, once that happened, all of our ballots would be fed into the counting machine for us, so I can only hope and assume that that happened.

For what it's worth, I was voter #280 at around 7:55/8ish.

I'm following a couple of live blogs that are attempting to track the goings on at various polling places in the area, and so far no major mishaps have popped up (just something about misinformed poll workers in Sun Prairie).

Tonight, I'll be doing some live blogging of my own, covering the election results viewing party being thrown at the High Noon Saloon by the Daily Page. The link is already active, even if the live blogging won't commence until 8pm. So if you're looking for oh-so witty and snarky commentary on the elections and the singing abilities of Madison's political junkies, please come on by and have a read.

In the meantime, if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the anxiety and excitement of the day, may I recommend a cleansing dose of puppies? I find it's good for the stress levels.

So, how's everyone's election day going?

UPDATE: This is cool. Granted it's on the honor system, but Facebook is tracking how many of its users have voted today. Provided that even most of the folks who've said "yes" are telling the truth, the numbers are encouraging, I think. As of 11:39AM, it's at 1,765,887 and climbing.

Chosen by God

A brief anecdote:

There's a rather conservative church that I pass on a regular basis here in Madison (I know, gasp!) that sports a sign on its front lawn that is often updated with phrases that range from regular ol' churchy stuff to fundamentalist proclamations. Tonight I drove by and noticed that it had been changed to something about "the powers that be" having been "ordained by God."

Was this church implying that our government had been "ordained by God" or was I misreading it? They'd also helpfully supplied the relevant Bible verse, so I went ahead and looked it up when I got home.

Romans 13:1 - "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

That Paul, always good for a laugh. But yes, it would appear that the person who decided what to put on the sign (at least) believes that we should all submit fully to government because those in it have been handpicked by God his ownself.

I wonder, then, if this conservative church will feel the same way if Obama wins the election. Or will they suddenly decry the teachings of Paul in favor of the somewhat more anti establishment leanings of the big JC?

Which leads me to wonder - if Obama wins the election, will all those far-right-wing fanatics start sporting "Impeach Now!" bumperstickers and the like? If so, I'd be mighty tempted to start telling them to "Love it or leave it." Be good for shits and giggles, anyway.

But that's not what I believe, and I certainly as hell don't believe that any of our leaders have been ordained or chosen by God. I'm not certain why anyone, especially those as into the deep rooted fallibility of humanity as conservative Christians, could believe that.

Then again, it's just a sign, right?

Vote, damn it!