Bush Clock Down for the Count

Four years ago today, I marked the inauguration by publishing a Java applet counting down the seconds "until the U.S. has an elected president again."

I'm taking a beating in e-mail this morning from random strangers who remembered the clock and came back to taunt me.

Bush Countdown Clock

I'm not one to shy away from abuse (I'm a Democrat, after all), but there's a point I'd like to make to fuck@you.com and the other people who were kind enough to write.

In 2 minutes and 13 seconds, the U.S. will have an elected president again. I'm not having as much fun watching the clock tick down to 0000:00:00:00 as I thought I would in 2001, but there's some comfort in the fact that President Bush has been elevated to the office by voters this time around.

Four years ago, my disgust was motivated by the manner in which the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida and the absence of a legitimate and complete county-by-county recount at any time in the process.

I'm still dumbstruck by Justice Scalia's assertion in Bush v. Gore that a candidate in the midst of a recount should be protected against "casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election." How can a candidate who hasn't won an election yet have an assertable right to legitimacy, absent time travel?

But in any case, that bitterly divisive decision officially becomes history today, and for that at least I am grateful.

Politics · Java · 2005/01/20 · 8 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Another thing that's changed: 4 years ago, it was still morally acceptable to use an Applet on your website. ;)

#1 · Joe Grossberg · 2005/01/20

I hate to say this, because it makes me sound like a teen-aged girl, but LOL.

One of the things I should be forced to answer for is the number of people I sold on applets in the mid-'90s. Think of all the minutes we'll never get back, as users of the Web, staring at a gray box waiting for the hamster powering a browser's Java interpreter to wake up and start spinning the wheel.

#2 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2005/01/20

Some people are still upset about the 2000 election because they wouldn't count the votes in a "special" way just so they could win.

#3 · Shane Hanks · 2005/01/20

"(I'm a Democrat, after all), "

Times up!

hehehe

#4 · Slammin' Ramsey Clark · 2005/01/21

Considering that Democratic machines steal/manufacture 5-10% of the vote in every urban precinct* in the whole country, any Republican "squeaker" win represents, in actuality, 55-60%.

Unrefined Marxism (all the Democrats have offered for the last thirty years, minimum) is a less than palatable alternative to Republican "moron socialism", and six of ten know it. The pre-9/11 preference of (nominally atheist) tech professionals for less-religious Democrats is taking a serious beating now that even the most clueless are no more than a few keystrokes# away from all the evidence they need of far greater religious threats to their liberty than the buffoons on Sunday morning television, who have accomplished jack-squat of their agenda in forty years.

(*E.g., The current Washington state gubernatorial debacle, which, quite frankly, demands open civil war and blood in the streets if the coup de etat goes down. The Sound Politics blog has been keeping an excellent handle on it: www.soundpolitics.com )

(# jihadwatch.org )

#5 · Mike Schneider · 2005/01/22

Mr. Schneider -- you should actually attempt to vote in an urban area one day. You might find it instructive. (hint: our 30-40 year old voting hardware tends to break down a little more often than the new stuff in the 'burbs...)

#6 · d.w. · 2005/01/24

You should recreate the clock for the next election

#7 · Bert Miller · 2005/03/19

Dude, SUPER funny.
Can you send me a link where I can get a good digital bush (get the hell out) clock? I want a link where I can post it on my myspace page if possible.

Thanks!

Ron
thecolorturning2002@yahoo.com

WWW.VOTETOIMPEACH.ORG

#8 · Ron · 2006/05/05