OkieBrent's Soapbox

Well, it looked like it could be a flying saucer, but I guess it was only a Navy X-47B drone (or so that is what the government claims!)…

I took this photo today at 12:16 p.m. in Minco on Highway 81.  The over-sized load was being escorted by several Oklahoma Highway Patrol SUVs requiring traffic (me and others) to pull over.

After doing a search on the Google, I found several news stories with photos that looked almost exactly like the ones I took today.  Here is what KOAM, the CBS affiliate in Pittsburg, KS posted in January of this year.

A U.S. Navy drone making its way through the Four States has prompted calls to our station about a “UFO” sighting.  One reluctant caller simply said “it must be a movie prop”.

Actually, it’s a Northrop Grumman X-47B naval unmanned drone and it’s en route to a naval air station in Maryland.  When we spoke with officials the drone was under a tarp and on a trailer near Asbury, Missouri.

The drone is a tailless, autonomous, unmanned aircraft developed by the U.S. Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration program.  This is a demonstration program only, with the drone being tested for technical issues.

The drone is being designed to operate from an aircraft carrier at sea.

This video - ”Land of Dreams” – is an original song written by Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal and performed by Rosanne Cash and guest artists Los Lobos, Bebel Gilberto and TREME. Encouraging travelers to come and find your “Land of Dreams,” they are featured in the first ever global tourism campaign for the United States.

You can download the song for free here: http://www.discoveramerica.com/

 

 

 

 

You can watch the full version of this documentary about President Obama’s first three years in office this coming Thursday if you sign up at the campaign website. Here is the trailer.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Elizabeth Warren Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

(this appeared in this week’s Minco Millennium)

The next time you vote in an Oklahoma election, you will be voting on a brand new machine.  Each County Election Board in Oklahoma conducted a mock election open to the public Monday, January 9 through Thursday, January 13.  I participated and tried out the new machines on Tuesday, January 10 at the Grady County Election Board in Chickasha.

According to Paul Ziriax, Secretary of the State Election Board, the old machines were first used in the 1992 election cycle, but some of the computer components in the old machines were from 1990 and the technology was from the 1980s.

The new machines came about because of HAVA, the Help America Vote Act.  Congress passed HAVA in 2002 after issues were raised following the 2000 election in other states, most prominent being Florida.  Remember the “hanging chads” and the weeks of trying to figure out who actually got the most votes between Al Gore and George W. Bush?

“Because Oklahoma was one of the few states that had a uniform system, meaning every precinct in the state used the same equipment and ballots, we had more time to implement HAVA,” said Ziriax.  HAVA provided federal matching funds to purchase the new equipment, which means the state provided half of the funds to purchase the new equipment and the federal government provided half.

The new machines are much like the old ones, but improved.  Voters will still mark their choices with a pen on a paper ballot, and then input the ballots into the optical scan machines.

On the mock ballots there were choices for Best Historical Role Model, Best Oklahoma Treat, Best Oklahoma Athlete, Best Oklahoma Sports Team, Best Oklahoma Musician, and Best Oklahoma Actor.  I marked my choices for each (don’t tell anyone, but I voted for Will Rogers, Oklahoma Pecans, Mickey Mantle, Oklahoma State Cowboys, Vince Gill and Kristen Chenoweth) and then I put my ballot into the machine.  The machine sucked in my ballot and whalah! – an Oklahoma flag popped up on the little monitor with a message, “Your vote has been recorded.”

An assistant at the Grady County Election Board then took a ballot and marked it, but made some errors on purpose.  She put the ballot in the machine and it quickly spit it back out.  The monitor then showed that the “Ballot is not properly marked,” with another message under that – “For Best Historical Role Model” the “contest was over-voted.”  She had purposely voted for two choices (Henry Iba and Sequoyah).  She then was given the choice of getting a new ballot and voting again, or accepting the ballot as it was and her vote not counting in the contest where she had marked two choices.

The new machines also have an audio component for voters who are blind or disabled and cannot vote by marking a ballot.  In cases such as this, the voter puts on a pair of headphones, they insert the ballot and the machine reads them each of the choices in each race.  When the machine comes to his or her choice the voter will push a button.  When the ballot is complete, the machine will ask the voter to confirm and cast the ballot.

Ziriax told me that beginning in the 2006 election cycle, Oklahoma implemented a vote by phone option for voters who are disabled.  That option was provided in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

Brent -

Sharing our own moments in history is real.  It’s humbling.

I remember a moment I had back in late July when I was sitting in my spacious office down on K Street.  I had just taken a call from yet another Member of Congress, asking me to raise him $25,000. My initial reaction was to smile and reflect on simpler but poorer times when I was a Senate staffer, MAKING $25,000 a year!

I spent almost seven years, the best years of my life by the way, doing policy in the Senate and I take great pride in my public service. Back then I did what was natural: I became a lobbyist, with the hopes of continuing my economic policy expertise from the outside. Key word here: policy.

But here’s the rub: lobbyists today rarely get to use the policy they learned in the halls of Congress.  Instead they are forced to spend a majority of their time raising money and shuffling from cocktail reception to cocktail reception.

The “fundraising circuit” is deafening.  It’s sick and it makes me nauseous to think of having to write check after check after check to a Senator or Representative just so I can get a meeting with him or her later.  Anyone that tells you that’s not true is flat out lying to you.

So, back to my “moment in history.” It began at my desk.   A physical chill came over my body. The smile of “making it” as one of the top lobbyists (apparently the Wall Street Journal thought so!) in Washington turned into something different.

That’s when it hit me.  That’s when I knew I had to stop.  I had two choices, be a cog in the wheel or destroy the wheel. I literally shuttered at the thought of losing everything I’d ever worked for: my home, my ability to travel, to live a life of luxury, to provide for my family, etc.

I left my lobbying firm and bunkered down on an island for the month of August and did some major soul searching.

Skip a couple of months forward and a new door opened: my friend Dylan Ratigan approached me to lead the Get Money Out Foundation.  Great offer but I needed a sounding board, so I picked up the phone and called my brother Robert down in South Carolina.  What I heard in my brother’s voice was this theme that Washington, DC isn’t just broken but corrupt. He confirmed what I suspected: that the country at worst hates its capitol and at best thinks our politicians have no clue about what it means to live outside the echo chamber known as the Beltway.

My brother and I couldn’t be more different; He’s a Republican, I’m a democrat.  He’s straight, I’m gay, he’s reserved and more cautious, yet I was the kid in the family that threw it all out there.  But there’s not a single person in this world whom I love or trust more than my brother, and when he tells me the country’s pissed off at Washington, I knew I had to do this.

Robert asked me how I was going to make Washington wake up and give up its power; what’s the strategy, he said.  Here’s what I told him:

First, Get Money Out will debate openly and with the public’s input. We’ll write the best Constitutional Amendment possible and put it forward to the people.  We wont always agree but if you have something to say, I’ll listen.

Second, we will take the best amendment language to Congress and find allies to introduce it for debate.  Do I expect Congress to debate this immediately? I’m not that naive but that’s where you come in.

Third, I need a wave.  As I write this, we know we have nearly 220,000 followers who believe in this mission.  We need more.  We need MANY more.   I wont be satisfied until we reach 2 million or more.  Why? Because Congress won’t listen unless the wave overtakes them.  I’ve said it before: Congress doesn’t pro-act, Congress only reacts.  This is where you come in. We need your help (and your friends and family’s help) to get Congress to react.  Lets build a wave so big they can’t ignore by exposing the auction for this “government to the highest bidder” mentality for what it is: corruption through and through.

Fourth, if we can get Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment, then we turn our focus to the states, which have to ratify it to actually make it law.

Campaign finance reform isn’t a new idea.  Congress has passed reform measure after reform measure.  Yet, the Supreme Court continues to insist that corporations are people and that money is speech. I just don’t agree.  I don’t think the Tea Party movement agrees. And I definitely don’t think the Occupy Wall Street movement agrees that Exxon is a person.  What we all agree on is the system is broken, that Washington DC is nothing more than an auction house, with the highest bidder always winning.

There are others out there spearheading similar movements, many with good intentions. There are many roads to Rome.  Some want to take the back-roads, some want to take the interstate. In the end, if we all want to reach Rome and agree on the same goal, to Get Money Out of Politics, then I don’t care how everyone gets there.  I just care that we all make it to the finish line and pass an amendment banning money in the halls of Congress.

That’s the strategy for the Get Money Out Foundation.  Its simple, its concise, and its honest.  We don’t need to complicate a solution to something so inherently and blatantly wrong.

As the executive director of the Get Money Out Foundation, I give you my word (and my word is all I have in this world) that I will run this movement to ban money in politics as openly, honestly, and transparently as I possibly can.  With your help, we will reach Rome.

Lets get money out and give America its government back.

JFMW

Jimmy Williams
http://www.getmoneyout.com/

Operation Enduring Freedom, the War in Afghanistan, was launched on October 7, 2001. The 10th anniversary is one week away.

The fact that we are still at war, 10 years later, does not seem to be making the national news headlines.  But in the past two months it has been brought to the attention of Oklahomans with the death of 13 Oklahoma soldiers.  As pointed out over on the OK Policy Blog, that averages to one death every four days.

On September 16th we learned that Minco’s own Sgt. Mycal Prince had been killed on September 15th.  Sgt. Prince had been the K-9 Officer for the Minco Police Dept.  He was only 28 years old and leaves behind a wife and two young daughters.

Below are a couple of the photos I took of the dignified transfer bringing his body back home to Minco.

 

Sgt. Prince’s funeral was held on September 26th in Mustang.  The evil, hate-mongering, batshit crazy Phelps family from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas came to Oklahoma to protest the funeral.  Only six members of that evil family showed up (three of them were children), but hundreds of Oklahomans showed to counter their hate-filled message.

I hate to show photos of the hate-mongers from Kansas, but below are a few photos from Mustang that focus not on the sad, sick Phelps family, but on the Oklahomans who showed up to counter them.  There were literally hundreds of American flag waving, sign-carrying Oklahomans all up and down Highway 152.

I did not get still photos of it, but there were reports that the Phelps idiots left when they got egged.  I did however, happen to have my Flip video camera running, and caught some folks tossing the eggs.  I may upload some of that video later.

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ok, got it uploaded. The egg throwers come into the video at about 2:35. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time to catch this.

 

 
I should add, that those Oklahomans who have family members in the military overseas fighting have never forgotten that we are at war. They remember that fact every second of every day.