Election Day: what makes Statism a religion

This voting thing is getting out of hand. It’s becoming a four-letter word to me. On NPR this morning I heard that a woman flew from Eastern Europe to Michigan to vote, as she had not received her absentee ballot. She could have donated the cost of the trip to her local party as investment in votes for her cause, certainly more than one. I’ve read a few good articles on the ethics of voting, AgainstPolitics.com has a good collection, and I liked this Picking Neither of the Two Evils posted on LewRockwell.com.

I still can’t get over the idea the people want each other to vote, regardless of how. I’m pretty sure that many Democrats would prefer an 80% voter turn out, even if they all voted Republican. Same with the Republicans, but maybe to a lesser extent, as may, just maybe, the terms “Democrat” and “Republican” still actually mean something.

In other news, I was touched by this article about Nobel Prize winner Eric Cornell, who has been in the hospital for the past few days. What people say about him confirm my positive view of him, though I’ve never met him formally. I’ve seen him speak at CU, exercise at the Rec Center, and play softball. He has a great spirit, very positive, and I wish him the best.

zeugma ZOOG-muh noun, to vote is to pray (& to prey?)

Word of the week: zeugma ZOOG-muh noun. Date: 1523: the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one (as in “opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy”).
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Pretty neat. I also like suffrage. From m-w.com’s word of the day, August 26, 2003:

Why would a 17th-century writer warn people that a chapel was only for “private or secret suffrages”? Because since the 14th century, “suffrage” has been used to mean “prayer” (especially a prayer requesting divine help or intercession). So how did “suffrage” come to mean “a vote” or “the right to vote”? To answer that, we must look to the word’s Latin ancestor, “suffragium,” which can be translated as “vote,” “support,” or “prayer.” That term produced descendants in a number of languages, and English picked up its senses of “suffrage” from two different places. We took the “prayer” sense from a Middle French “suffragium” offspring that emphasized the word’s spiritual aspects, and we elected to adopt the “voting” senses directly from the original Latin.

Atheists and anarchists.

Atheists don’t pray. Anarchists don’t vote. [When first I posted this, there was a website called fuckthevote.org, apparently it's gone...]