There’s a huge change underway in the process of electing a President. I happened to stumble upon this N&O article announcing North Carolina’s proposed plans to offer all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The plan calls for state officials to tally the popular votes from all of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and offer all of its electoral votes to the winner of that tally.

The plan, called the National Popular Vote compact, would give smaller states like North Carolina more clout in presidential elections. Campaigns currently focus most all of their resources on the battleground states. This plan would change all that. North Carolina joins California, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, Hawaii, and Arkansas in advancing the measure through its legislature.

State representatives have been falling over themselves to introduce the measure. Bills from Sen. Charlie Dannelly (S760) and Sen. Dan Clodfelter (S954) are moving through the Senate, while Rep. Melanie Goodwin’s (H1645) is working its way through the House.

More on the plan can be found at the National Popular Vote website, or the book Every Vote Equal, appropriately available online for free.

If states implement the National Popular Vote measure, no longer would a presidential candidate win the popular vote but lose the election. Makes sense to me!

Maverick former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca takes aim at Bush and Cheney, calling them “clueless bozos” in his new book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone? Read this excerpt:

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
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I’ve posted my pictures from the RTP 2.0 social I went to the other night. You can check ’em out here. (My RTP 2.0 pics are hereby placed under the Creative Commons Attribution-3.0 Unported license. In essence: go crazy with them, just let folks know I took ’em.)

The beer at Tyler’s was outstanding, though the eats turned out to be two bags of soggy potato chips. Regardless of my hunger, the sponsors made the right call in favoring the bar over chips. I can eat stout all night!

I was happy with the people there, too. I met a Massachusetts-transplant graphic artist looking to team up with a photographer, a local entrepreneur/angel investor sniffing out the Next Big Idea, and an old friend/former coworker-turned-entrepreneur whom I hadn’t seen in six years. My only real complaint is there just wasn’t enough time to talk to all the interesting people there!

Kudos to Fred, CED, Broadwick, and everyone else who made it happen.

Now let me get this straight: U.S. Attorney Carol Lam went after Randy “Duke” Cunningham, arguably the most corrupt member of Congress ever to serve (serve himself, that is), and instead of praising her for cleaning up politics, Bush fired her? Does this suggest there are Republican politicos who may actually defend Cunningham’s taking multi-million dollar bribes? That – in the words of Kyle Simpson, Alberto Gonzales’s chief of staff – the “real problem” isn’t shockingly corrupt politicans like Cunningham but the public servants who rightfully put them in jail?

Gonzales is so finished. If he lasts through next week there should be nationwide street protests. And this is just the beginning. By the time all leads are followed more heads will roll. Or should, if there truly is any justice in this country.

Once again, when is the media going to investigate the real reason why Dusty “Kyle” Foggo, a high-level CIA official, was compromising a member of Congress with money, booze, and hookers?

Doc Searls got taken in by this ridiculous post saying Linux can’t exist without Windows. This satiric post was so clever it pushed the buttons of scores of Linux zealots.

Clicking through the thread I found mention of Shelley The Republican. Its the funniest political satire I’ve read anywhere.

I admire good satire. Its so hard to do properly. I don’t think I could pull it off. “Shelley” and the “Jerry Lee Cooper” behind the Linux posts are world-class satirists (and could be the same person, since Linux is one of “Shelley’s” occasional targets).

[Update:] I was wondering why the hit count on this post was skyrocketing. Thanks, Doc!

I happened to be poking around the City of Raleigh‘s website today and was happy to discover the Raleigh City Council meetings are now available as streaming media. These streams are designed for Windows Media Player, which not exactly an open format but can indeed be played using the open-source mplayer if one decodes the various URLs.

Being the political junkie (and, well, hopeless geek) that I am, I considered subscribing to cable just to view these meetings. Now not only do I get to view them, I can also skip through them easily to see only what I want.

Also today I learned that C-SPAN will be offering its content with a Creative Commons-type license allowing for non-commercial use. That makes the meetings of my federal and local governments freely available online, joining my state government which was already available online.

If there’s a better way to begin national Sunshine Week promoting open government, I haven’t seen it. Its also another great victory for the Creative Commons, which includes everyone. Go on: pat yourself on the back!

(On a related note, I find it ironic that many of the News and Observer’s open records stories are locked behind its paywall).

Army Secretary Francis Harvey has resigns amid Walter Reed scandal. Could this be the start of some accountability in the Bush Administration? I could never imagine this occuring with Rumsfeld as SecDef. I may be willing to temporarily forget Robert Gates’ former involvement in the shockingly illegal Iran-Contra affair if he keeps this up. Maybe.

The abysmal support given to wounded veterans is truly a shame. You can’t say you support the troops,then slash funding to the Veterans Administration, dumping vets into squalid facilities like Walter Reed, away from the “glory” of the battlefield. These kids deserve better.

Well well well, if this isn’t interesting! A few clips of the BBC World Service have surfaced on Youtube showing a report from September 11th, 2001 that the WTC7 building had collapsed while all the while WTC7 is plainly visible behind the reporter.

This has got to be fake. Someone is just trying to embarrass our government. In case you want to see what these obvious nutjobs are suggesting, here’s the clip.

Former N.C. House speaker Jim Black has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to federal corruption charges. Thank goodness.

One less crooked politician out of power. How many more are still out there?