Educate The Masses

Dear Fellow Readers,

It has been approximately four months since my last post.

A lot has happened in these four months. The nation has a new president, several new pieces of legislation have been passed, more notably a 787 billion dollar economy stimulus bill.

What I am trying to convey is that lots of (not to sound cliche) change has taken place. With change, we are left with two options, we can either adapt and move forward or we can choose to not adapt and get left behind.

This also applies to Educate The Masses. After careful consideration, I have decided to change the direction of Educate The Masses. Educate The Masses will no longer serve as a news outlet. In hindsight this was an unrealistic goal that would never come to fruition.

I have decided to change Educate The Masses from a news outlet to an editorial column. I am sure that many of you are wondering what the difference will be, after all a blog is just a person’s opinion. However, I see that I did not fufill my promise of bringing unbiased news coverage to the masses. It is this reason that I see why Educate The Masses will be better used as an outlet to not only present the news but present one side of the story as well.

From now on, I will try my best to make a post weekly. A typical post would consist of a current event, my opinion of it and an opportunity to present your opinions as well (comments).

I hope that through increased communication about current events the real goal of Educate The Masses could come to fruition and that is to educate the masses.

If a place to stay informed and have a say piques your interest, then I hope that you will be a reader of Educate The Masses.

Regards,
         Orlando

Barack Obama has won the 2008 Presidential Election! In an election that was historic in so many ways, Barack Obama won. Not only will he be the first Black president but he also won in the election with the largest voter turnout in history. Barack Obama won with 349 electoral votes. Regardless of who you support, the world is going to change. Whether or not that change is for the better or the worse, I leave that to Obama. Congratulations President Elect Barack Obama!

Facts about President Elect Barack Obama:

• First Black president
• Third president from Illinois (Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant)
• First president born in Hawaii

As of 10:25 ET

Obama – 202 Electoral Votes (Blue Above)

McCain – 114 Electoral Votes (Red Above)

As of 9:10 ET

Obama – 175 Electoral Votes (Blue Above)

McCain – 46 Electoral Votes (Red Above)

As of 8:15 ET

Obama – 76 Electoral Votes (Blue Above)

McCain – 34 Electoral Votes (Red Above)

As of 7:05 ET, McCain leads Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election.

McCain - 8 Electoral Votes (Kentucky)

Obama - 3 Electoral Votes (Vermont)

There have been various reports of fraudulent alerts telling people through either text message, flyers, phone calls, etc. that due to various issues in voting and polling places that voting will be tomorrow.

This is NOT the case. Today is the ONLY day to vote. Officials say that if you are in lines to vote before the polls close that you WILL be able to vote.

Just a friendly reminder from Educate-The-Masses.com!

Well, it’s that time again. It’s the time where the people have the power (unless you count American Idol). As you are no doubt aware of, the 2008 Presidential Election is today. Educate-The-Masses will be covering the election throughout the night, providing you with frequent updates. To the right of this post is a countdown timer that tells you when the next polls close. Also, a source provided me with images from a voting booth in their state of New Jersey.

Click below to read the rest of the post and see the images…

Read the rest of this entry »

On a note other than politics,

Game 5 of the World Series was special in many ways. It was the first World Series game in history to be delayed, a delay of 46 hours. It was delayed in the bottom of the 6th inning due to rain with both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies tied at 2 runs. Even more special is that the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series! At Citizens’ Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Phillies won game 5 of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays With a score of 4-3. The Phillies won the World Series 4-1 against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays have not had a World Series win in franchise history while the Phillies last won the World Series in 1980 against Kansas. Certainly, this is a big morale boost for all Phillies fans. Congratulations Phillies!

Well, we have about a week to go until the 2008 Presidential Election takes place. Researchers at Princeton University however have uncovered something very disturbing. That is that the electronic voting machines used in the state of New Jersey are very susceptible  to tampering that can be used to commit voter fraud. As far as the technical aspect of it goes, it consists of:

• Replacing a ROM chip (This takes about seven minutes)
• Install fraudulent firmware on the machine.

That’s it nothing more. After this happens, this allows whoever made the modification to change the machine to make votes count more than one and to affect everyone else’s vote. The firmware is also apparently very easy to write, taking them two days to write 122 lines of code.

Perhaps what the most scary part about all this however is that this modification on one voting machine can spread like a virus to all of the voting machines in a state. This then spreads and affects other voting machines which could affect elections for years to come.

Below is the Princeton University website where they discuss this in more detail as well as a 155 page .pdf document of a redacted expert-witness report that was given to a court.

Sources:
Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine
Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine (.pdf)