Archive for the ‘touch-screen voting’ Category

Republican Mitt Romney has had a tough week, but the next 24 hours will belong to President Barack Obama. From the Associated Press:

U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third straight month of weak hiring that shows the economy is still struggling three years after the recession ended.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said in its report Friday.

The economy added an average of just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That’s one-third of the 226,000 a month created in the first quarter. Through the first six months of the year, job creation is also trailing last year’s pace.

“It’s a disappointing report,” said George Mokrzan, director of economics at Huntington National Bank in Columbus, Ohio. He said the job gains are consistent with sluggish economic growth.

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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed will be at the White House on Friday when President Barack Obama signs that bipartisan legislation that reauthorizes …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: 80,000 jobs in June makes for a presidential contest »

Within hours of a Georgia Supreme Court decision upholding the use of touch-screen voting machines, Secretary of State Karen Handel celebrated with a press release.

“Georgia has the most secure elections in the nation due to our four levels of security testing on touch-screen voting machines,” crowed the Republican candidate for governor.

But if Handel is fer it, then GOP rival John Oxendine must be agin it.

Said the Ox, in a counter news release:

”With all due respect and appreciation for the Supreme Court of Georgia, I am deeply disappointed in the decision today to reject the challenge to touch-screen electronic voting machines.

….[M]any Georgians will suggest, and I agree, that the 2000 presidential election demonstrates the exact need for a back-up paper system to establish the integrity of the voting process.”

Who knew that Oxendine was an Al Gore man?

A third Republican candidate for governor, Eric Johnson, was at the state Capitol on Monday, packing up his office. …

Continue reading Your morning jolt: Al Gore’s champion in Republican ranks »

If you’re going to make a comeback, even a quiet one, some backgrounds are more gratifying to the heart than others.

Max Cleland ended seven years of exile from public life this month in a D-Day ceremony on the cliffs of Normandy.

President Barack Obama greets former Georgia senator Max Cleland in Normandy/White House photo

Rolling past an honor guard and a row of wind-whipped flags, the former senator from Georgia served as the official escort of a lanky president and his First Lady during the solemnities at Colleville-sur-Mer.

American news outlets barely took note of Cleland’s presence, but Europe was more intrigued. L’ancien senatuer democrate made the centerfold of Paris Match magazine, beside a sun-splashed Barack and Michelle Obama.

Only 48 hours before, Cleland had received final White House approval as secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, placing him in formal charge of this last June 6th observance — and the ones to follow.

“I was there to greet the …

Continue reading In the background of Max Cleland’s return »