BBC: 'US pledges $350m in tsunami aid'

About frickin' time.

Fred Phelp's take on the tsunami disaster

Fred Phelp's take on the tsunami disaster
Originally uploaded by unspeakable_grooviness.

The Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas, is headed by a a man named Fred Phelp's. Being a pastor, he is a kind and caring man, sensitive to the needs of his flock and for those in the greater community. Definitely the kind of man who votes Republican based on his moral values, for surely he is against abortion and such, although abortion isn't his main concern. His main concern is the evil of homosexuality. He runs a little website called God Hates Fags. I wish I were making this up. But I'm not. He picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, to share his view that he simply got what was coming to him, being a fag and all. Mr Phelps also makes it a point to try to picket as many funerals of AIDS victims as he can. To share his view. The picture with this post is taken from his website. Apparently the tsunami was a good thing. I really don't know what to say. What can you say in the face of such horrible ignorance and intolerance?

PS You can click on the image to make it larger if you want to actually read more than just the headline.

President Clinton Leads While Bush Vacations...

Ah, the Clinton years. How I miss them.

The brief on this one is that Bush still hasn't made any kind of official statement about the tsunami. Clinton has talked about it on the BBC. German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder cut his vacation short and returned to work in Berlin to co-ordinate Germany's response. Bush is still in Crawford, TX. He spent Tuesday clearing brush and riding his bike.

May he fall off and break his neck.

Update: Apparently Bush has telephoned his support to various national leaders. This NY Times Editorial, entitled 'Are We Stingy? Yes', still criticises Bush for the 'miserly drop in the bucket' of $35m and points out that US promises of aid often fail actually to materialise.

Also. Go here: http://donate.ifrc.org/ I just did. I don't need that other DVD and neither do you.

Update the Second: Apparently Paul Martin is also still on holiday.

Another reason I'm pissed off.

This is a brief little article about a story on 'Good Morning America' about the children-victims of the tsunamis. All of the children featured were WHITE EUROPEANS. Those brown-skinned kids don't count, I guess. Probably a 1/3-1/2 of those affected by this disaster are children. But only the white ones count.

When will people get over their insular little selves? I've realised that over the past four years, I have had many many lines of thought that begin with the words, 'If I were president...'. It finally this morning started to piss me off. I don't want to have to think about what I would do if I were president because the US should be able to elect a reasonable person to hold the job. A horrible disaster like this ought to bring the world together. I don't know exactly what's going on locally in Sri Lanka but I know that the president (of Sri Lanka) has called upon the nation to come together, for the rebels to lay down their arms for the moment, and help to rebuild the nation. Even if the rebels pick up their guns again after the rebuilding is done, it would be a powerful message that they came together to help to rebuild.

This is what the world ought to be doing. Coming together. Obviously nations cannot give unreservedly--it's fair that they need to take care of their own populations first. But the US contribution currently stands at $35 million. Likely a drop in the bucket. The US currently has a population of 293,027,571. 35,000,000 divided by 293,027,571 equals 12¢/person. TWELVE CENTS. Even if it were increased to fifty cents/person, they would then be sending $145.5 million. The annual US government budget is measured in the trillions of dollars. One would think that they could divert some money from less important things like, say, missile defence (whose budget is measured in the billions) to something that actually matters, like human life.

On the topic of presidents, Kennedy once gave a speech in which he pointed out that no matter what our differences, we are all human, we all share the same basic goals and desires. Most simply, we are all mortal. Each life is as precious and valuable as the next. Our own mortality is staring us in the face right now. Not simply because of human stupidity but because of an act of nature. Human stupidity is a painful thing to witness, but acts of nature ought necessarily to be humbling. They should reminds us all just how delicate the entire planet is, how lucky we are to be here at all.

Sadly, in the old guns versus butter debate, guns always seem to win out. I have no reason to believe that 2005 will be any different, but I can always hope. As Harvey Milk once said, without hope, life is not worth living.

Just to continue with the current theme...

Each week, Josh Brown offers up sad but often far too accurate looks at life during wartime.

Wave toll 'could exceed 100,000'

US President George W Bush pledged to set up an international coalition, with Australia, India and Japan, to co-ordinate the relief effort.

The US earlier said it was more than doubling its pledge of funds to the region to $35m.

Does anyone else feel like the international aid coalition should be headed by something like, um, the UN or the Red Cross or something? I guess I'm just silly in thinking that international organisations ought to play the central role in situations like this, rather than individual national governments. It's an international disaster after all. Just a thought.

It's nice to know...

...that the US can spare $15 million for the tsunami victims. Especially when the Chimp-in-Chief's inaugural a month from now is estimated to cost between $30 and $40 million, exclusive of security costs. At least America has their priorities in order. I'm sure they figure that South Asia doesn't give them much but cheap labour. And I'm sure that land will be really cheap now in certain areas and that people will be desperate for work once the rebuilding gets underway. Hey! Let's build a factory and keep them in a cycle of poverty!

Can you tell I'm in a bitter mood?

Christmas Morning

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...

I'm spending my first Christmas morning away from home listening to David Sedaris's SantaLand Diaries and watching the cats play. Later, I'll head over to a friend's place for Christmas dinner and movies. It will be wonderful and relaxing. Not being with my family, it feels like just another weekend. Nothing too special. And I'm okay with that. The only Christmas-y thing that I did yesterday was to keep a long-standing Christmas chat date with a good friend. But without my family there was none of the usual attendant stress. It was just nice. I'll probably call my mother soon since I'm sure that they've been up for hours now. The gifts have been ripped open ungratefully and whines have been uttered over the fact that my little brothers didn't get something they'd asked for. Although that rarely happens--they almost always get everything they ask for. In the grand scheme of things, gifts seem like a silly thing. They're nice, of course, but I could do without them. The overt commercialism of Christmas has always bothered me--at least since I was in high school, anyway, and began thinking about these things.

A final thought on John Lennon: why don't more people want war to be over?

Hallmark

'When you care enough to send the very best.'

I just realised how condescending the Hallmark motto is. Think about it.

Merry Fucking Christmas

From Daily Kos

So, who is to blame for all the deaths in Iraq? Let's mull this one over a bit, shall we?

Bush claims Saddam is a threat. Bush claims Saddam has WMDs. Bush claims Saddam has ties to Al Qaida. Bush and his administration promote questionable intelligence that supports their preconceptions and prejudices, and reject that which counters it.

Bush puts Rummy in charge of the war. Rummy fires general who says 'we need more troops'. Rummy says we can do more with less. Rummy says 'lighter is better than armored'. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld say we'll be met with flower petals. They say the war will be entirely paid for by oil revenues. They say the reconstruction will be paid for entirely by oil revenues.

Bush says he's giving diplomacy a chance, but he's giving the world a middle finger. Powell says he's showing the Security Council evidence of Saddam's duplicity, but he shows them pictures of warehouses. Bush claims a coalition of the willing, that's really a coalition of the billing -- a mish-mash of third-world nations with token contributions. Only England offers tangible support.

Bush sends the troops into battle, claiming he had no choice. But Saddam had caved on every Bush demand (inspectors were allowed back in, his long-range missiles were being destroyed).

No WMDs are found. No ties with Al Qaida are found. No military capable of threatening Iraq's neighbors is found. Saddam's army collapses quickly and the country's defenders retreat into 'insurgency' mode.

Bush declares mission accomplished. Bush taunts the insurgency. The insurgency kills our men and women. The commanders on the ground scream for more troops. They scream for armor. They scream for protected mess halls. Those screams fall on deaf ears.

More soldiers are killed. 1,320 Americans, 74 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians. The wounded number in the five figures.

Nevermind the innocent Iraqis who have been 'liberated' to death. And while we scream about Saddam's torture chambers, we create new ones of our own.

So thousands die, for a war built on false justifications, managed poorly, with underequipped, undermanned, and under-armored forces. And to add insult to injury, we've had to pay for this mess, to the tune of $200 billion.

So who sent our troops into Iraq on false pretenses? Who sent them in unarmored? Who refused to provide enough troops to stabilize the country effectively? Who taunted the Iraqi opposition with 'bring 'em on'? Who approved the American-branded torture chambers? Who has rewarded the secretary of defense who has negligently ignored the armor shortage in Iraq?

And who keeps them there as they continue to die?

Forgot to post this one yesterday...

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Each year, you really get into the spirit of Christmas. Which is much more important to you than nifty presents.

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

Too much time...?

You Are a Liberal for Life

You've got a bleeding heart - and you're proud of it. For you, liberal means being compassionate, pro-government, and anti-business. You believe in equality for every person, and you consider yourself universally empathetic. Helping others is not just political for you ... it's very personal too.

What political persuasion are you?

Your Element Is Water

A bit of a contradiction, you can seem both lighthearted and serious. That's because you're good at going with the flow - but you also are deep. Highly intuitive, you tune in to people's emotions and moods easily. You are able to tap into deep emotional connections and connect with others. You prefer a smooth, harmonious life - but you can navigate your way around waves. You have a knack for getting people to get along and making life a little more peaceful.

What's Your Element?

You Are Green Tea Pocky

Your attitude: natural and zen Peaceful yet full of life. Deep and thoughtful. You're halfway to tantric bliss!

What Flavor Pocky Are You?

You are 93% Cancer

How much do you match your zodiac sign?

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

Okay...I think that's enough for today. Maybe more later! :-P

Praying to the Financial aid gods...

...for a differential tuition waiver. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! IT'S MY LAST SEMESTER.

In other news, I'm done with the semester...yay! Although still worried about the last paper that I handed in. I may write another one over break to supplement it. Just because I'm an over-achiever like that.

But I haven't started that yet because I've been staying up until 2 every night playing Sim City 4!

Burnt by the usually non-political comic!

Yay.

'Canada "can permit gay marriage"'

How much do you think this is going to piss of our neighbours to the south?

Kittens

Tiggy is SO interested in the pointer on my computer screen. And is also very interested in the text that is popping up as I type.

AWWWWWW!

A Call to Arms

And that's the problem with our coalition: it's mostly made up of leaders counting on rewards, rather than of nations that are really behind us. Tony Blair genuinely believes in the Iraq war as a matter of principle, but the other members of the coalition are mostly opportunists trying to buy good will in the Bush administration.

That's because a White House that proved immensely sensitive to public opinion in Ohio has been oblivious to public opinion abroad. To his credit, Mr. Bush has tried to mend relations lately, but the damage is done: Americans are dying in Iraq, largely on their own, because Mr. Bush's bulldozer approach has so alienated potential allies.

But don't give up. I'll continue my mission on behalf of Mr. Bush by traveling to two more giants in our coalition: Latvia and Lithuania. Will I find more troops for Iraq? Stay tuned.

I wasn't sure if this guy was serious or tongue-in-cheek when I started reading. Definitely tongue-in-cheek. See what happens when a NY Times Op-Ed columnist travels to Estonia to see if he can help drum up some more troops for Bush and the Coalition of the Willing. He points out that if each of the nations sent an additional 5,000 troops, the presence of non-US troops would almost double. Too bad Estonia only has an armed forces with 4,000 troops and 60% of the nation is against being involved.

This is, um...

...yeah.

Back at the beginning of October Bush gave a speech at which he introduced Mike and Sharla Hintz, proud Bush supporters, particularly of his tax cuts and his stance on terror and society/culture. Mike was quoted as saying, 'The American people are starting to see what kind of leader President Bush is. People know where he stands. Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war on our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes.'

At the end of October, Mike Hintz was charged with the sexual exploitation of a child (a 17-year-old, yes, but still underage in Iowa) with whom he came into contact through his youth ministry at the First Assembly of God Church in Des Moines.

Go Republican family values!

*blink, blink*

So, I just slept for twelve hours.

I think my body is trying to tell me something: Drink more coffee.

Mending fences?

Read the text, or, if you want to be really pissed off watch the video in which Anne Coulter says that Canada is 'lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent' with us and in which Tucker Carlson tells Caroline Parrish, 'Without the US, Canada is essentially Honduras.'

Bonus Link! The Reverend Jerry Falwell says that the Iraq war is going pretty well 'if you watch it on Fox.'

Berkeley/Michigan fiasco update

So, it's going to be okay. They're each going to keep the transcript and writing sample and send each other the letters of recommendation. The woman at Michigan was like, I don't know why no one noticed this when they opened the envelope. There's even this whole extra supplemental application for Berkeley!

Pentagon sending more troops to Iraq to provide security before election

The Pentagon has decided to bolster U.S. forces in Iraq in advance of elections scheduled for late January by sending elements of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., and extending the tours of duty for other units already in Iraq, officials said Wednesday.

At least two Army brigades now operating in northern Iraq will have their tours extended by about two months, until after the election, an Army official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But I thought they were ready for elections. Why on earth would we need more troops?

Secondly, I find it interesting/bothersome that the army official talking about extending tours of duty spoke only on condition of anonymity.

In a related piece, apparently serving in the US Marine Corps doesn't count as military duty.

What to say?

I received this email today.

December 1, 2004

Dear Anthony,

Yesterday the Department of History at UC Berkeley received an express package.
The inside  large brown envelope is addressed  to University of Michigan.  Inside it are letters from Bourne and DelBourgo in envelopes addressed to UMI and one from Lewis in a plain envelope with no address.  Also enclosed are two copies of the McGill transcript and a writing sample.

We have not opened the letters and transcripts.  What do you want us to do with this mailing?
We can send it first class to U Michigan or you can call around and see if U Michigan got the package intended for us and we can each  keep our respective items.  What you've sent us inadvertently is also required for your Berkeley application.

Please advise.

Karmic pay-back?

Universities may bar military recruiters from their campuses without risking the loss of federal money, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off their campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from military service.

The 2-to-1 decision relied in large part on a decision in 2000 by the United States Supreme Court to allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters. Just as the Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gays, the appeals court said, law schools may prohibit groups that they consider discriminatory.

I believe this deserves a proper and dignified response.


(That's an orang-utan giving the finger to the military.)

Checklist

Independent study paper - check.
Dante paper - check.
Grad school applications - CHECK!

To do:

Paper on élite marriage practices in colonial São Paulo.
Paper on colonial American perceptions of Native American gender.

Then:

Sweet blissful sleep.

Mathew Gross: The Politics of Victimization

Democrats as abuse victims? I'm taking the second half of the post, go read the first half. It's interesting.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

In other news, I wish I could post a poll here. There's probably some way to do so, but I don't have the time to figure out how right now. What do I do if I don't get into grad school? New York? Washington? If I'm as serious as I keep saying I might be about getting involved in politics, Washington seems to make more sense than New York, but who wouldn't want to leave in New York as a twentysomething?

Sigh. Back to the history paper dungeon.

I think this is cool.

I may have mentioned this before. But, if not, I think the Wikimedia Foundation is cool, and that there projects are also quite cool. Although I'm a little bothered by the slogan of the WikiSpecies project: 'WikiSpecies if free. Because life is public domain!' For now it is, anyway. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

I love when...

...historians oh-so-subtlely contradict themselves. For example, in one chapter, the author suggests that dowries were no longer focused on helping the couple to set up shop on thier own, citing the decline in useful, tool-like items that could be used to help the couple subsist. In the next chapter, however, the author suggests that the dowry was still very much about property. What is property if not a way to subsistance? And why don't I get any dowry inventories? I don't care if only 2% of dowries in eighteenth-century São Paulo included a townhouse, as opposed to 40% of dowries in the seventeenth century. This doesn't tell me anything if I don't know what the other 98/60% of dowries were like. I know they had townhouses, but did they tend to include things that might take the place of a townhouse? Did those families have a townhouse to give?

That's all. I know I shouldn't complain if this is the worst of my complaints.

Blog outsourcing...

Communhealth, from Atrios...

Mrs. Atrios and I spent two months in Barcelona in summer 2003. You may remember the good old days when the corrente crowd was posting. While we were there Mrs. Atrios had a wee stomach bug, enough to necessitate a trip to the doctor. After a bit of hunting we found a local health clinic. After a bit of discussion they took her passport number at reception, sat us down, and a half hour or so later she saw a doctor. The doctor inquired about her insurance. My wife explained that we had travel insurance, and the way it worked was that we'd just cover any costs and then submit them upon our return. This troubled the doctor greatly, not because of the cost of the exam, which turned out to be free, but because of concern about the cost of the drugs which were to be prescribed.

We took the prescription, went to our local pharmacy, and had it filled.

Cost?

About 3 bucks.

Spain spends about 7.5% of its GDP on health care. We spend about 13.9%. About 4% of our GDP is spent on a subset of health care called... 'health care administration.'

This raises the obvious question -- why do they hate freedom?

Yeah. Not much to say on that one. Stuffing, anyone?

Results...

You are He-Man from Masters of the Universe! You
take life very seriously, and you should,
considering you are the keeper of all that is
good and right in the universe! However, your
nonstop suspicion of Skeletor and his henchman
can start your friends wondering why you don't
loosen up once in awhile.


Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You Are the Stuffing

You Are the Stuffing

You're complicated and complex, yet all your pieces fit together. People miss you if you're gone - but they're not sure why.

What Part of Thanksgiving Are You?

In other Yanksgiving news, MY DAD IS ENGAGED! I'm so excited for him!

So...

Ukraine has a disputed presidential election, and they're on the brink of a civil war. The US has a disputed presidential election, and...it's life as usual.

There's so much that I could say about this picture...

...but I won't.

Economic 'Armageddon' predicted

This is, um, promising.... NOT!

Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.

But you should hear what he's saying in private.

Roach met select groups of fund managers [in Boston] last week, including a group at Fidelity.

His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic 'armageddon.'

Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, 'it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public.'

Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that 'we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon.'

The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.

In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.

The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.

Less a case of 'Armageddon,'' maybe, than of a 'Perfect Storm.'

'Virgin Mary' toast fetches $28,000

Just thought I'd give y'all the update on this.

This is somehow oddly appropriate...

"it's a small world": The happiest cruise
that ever sailed! Surreal and silly, or sweat
and touching, you are a well intentioned 1960s
homage to the world's diversity that
unfortunatly inspires feelings of sheer terror
in those who can't help but feel something more
sinister lays beneath your shiney surface. But
most cannot deny your charm, even if they
cannot explain it, and leave feeling better
than when they entered. Most overlook the fact
that because of your unique style and design,
courtesy of Disney Legend Mary Blair, you are a
true work of art and you deserve to be
appreciated. You are both worldy and
simplistic, both cosmopolitan and decidedly
middle American. You are a splendid
candy-coated contradiction with a sugary, sunny
song that one never forgets. If the world
truely listened to your never-ending optimism,
it could be a small world after all.


What Disneyland attraction are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

All I want for Christmas

United States Patent 5,983,411

Kittens and Patriarchy

Microsoft Word is sexist. It recognises 'matrilineal' but not 'patrilineal'.

In other news, we have a kitten! My roommate was fairly convinced that Sudra was lonely. Maybe she is. So now we have a kitten. 7 months old. Named Tiggy. Part (not sure how much) Maine coon. We have them segregated at the moment. Sudra hasn't quite figured out what's going on yet. She noticed the meowing from the other room at one point this afternoon. She seemed not quite sure what to make of it and eventually, as is her style, lost interest. We'll see how this develops. Hopefully the kitten will run the extra pounds off Sudra and she won't be Chubby-Cat anymore. Maybe this will bring out hidden maternal insticts in her. Or something.

Back to the patriarchy (in Brazil)....

I (heart) the world

I love when I come up from air from a study break to see the headline on BBC read 'Troops storm major Baghdad mosque'. Because, you know, there were bad people inside. Never mind the fact that it's Friday. There were worshippers inside. Among others, the imam was arrested. The raid was conducted by Iraqi security forces backed by US troops.

Long ago this became a moot point. But let's just all remind ourselves: this is not a war on Islam.

Library Adventures

I would like to re-iterate my frustrated hatred of all McGill Libraries Reference Staff. Not once have I ever actually been helped by these people. They listen to the first three words you say and then tell you they know exactly what you need. And it never is what you need. Then they suggest that you check Muse. Thanks. Did that. That's why I'm asking YOU.

In other news, Bill Clinton is preparing to open his Presidential Library. No word on whether or not the Blue Dress will be on display. Oh the nostalgia. Things were so simple and harmless during the Clinton years.

Let's all move!

Ireland has been named the best country in the world to live in by The Economist. I could live in Ireland. Yeah, I could totally live in Ireland.

Who's with me?

(And no comments about the fact that I'm supposed to be writing papers and yet I've posted three times today. I'm being super-productive.)

Leading Democrat Senator Won't Block Confirmation of Gonzales

'I said jokingly that the president, with the majority he has in the Senate, could have sent up Attila the Hun and got him confirmed,' Mr. Leahy said. 'But Judge Gonzales is no Attila the Hun; he's far from that, and he's a more uniting figure.'

Just fucking curl up and die. If Gonzales is a uniting figure then I am the Second Coming. Wouldn't that be great? If the Second Coming were a gay history student?

bah

I'm listening to the most inane rich-activist-kid conversation at the architecture café. They are preventing me from working on my paper because it's just far too entertaining.

Only in America

'I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God.'
Click
here to read the whole story

In real world news, Anthony reading week is going well. I'm four pages away from hitting 30 pages on my independent study paper. And I definitely have more than four pages left to write. This is a good thing. I just hope it's all coherent at the end. Then I let it sit and ferment for about five days until I look at it again, polish it up, and hand it in. In the meantime, I'll hopefully write my latin american history paper. And maybe my Dante paper. Tonight, also, I have to finish up my personal statement.

A busy boy am I.

Now, though, I am going to have a poor law free shower. Woohoo! (At this point, it really is the little things.)

Who's a dumbass? I'm a dumbass!

I HAVE ANOTHER WHOLE WEEK TO WRITE MY PAPERS!

Somehow, I thought that next week was the beginning of December. But it's not. All last week up until yesterday, I thought that I had this week, and that's it. That I would basically have to write three papers and finish my personal statement by Sunday or so (first drafts, at any rate). This is what prompted the panic of taking this week off. I'm still going to take this week off, and I'm still going to try to get two papers essentially written by the end of this week. I really think I can have my 30-pager done by Wednesday--a first draft, that is. Then I'll jump into the 15-20 pager.

*enormous sigh of relief*

In the meantime, go watch the trailer for Un long dimanche de fiançailles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's (of Amélie fame) new film. Audrey Tautou is even in it!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/averylongengagement.html

Time off

I've realised that this blog has become less about me and more about posting things that other people have said that I feel you all ought to know about. As you might imagine, there hasn't been a lot of me to go around recently, with school and all. Indeed, I'm instituting an personal reading week next week, so I probably won't be posting much, if anything. Don't worry, it's not likely that I've died. I'll just be trying to write two papers and the bestest personal statement ever seen my a graduate admissions committee. Maybe.

Ugh. Three more weeks and this semester is over. I will be oh-so-glad when it is.

Bizarro World

From Atrios. The sad thing is that these kinds of stories don't even surprise me anymore.

I just heard a report on NPR about a group of Chinese Muslims who have been in Guantanmo. We've decided that they're no longer a threat. The Chinese government wants us to hand them over so they can try them on terrorism charges.

We don't want to hand them over because... yes, you know it's coming...

The Chinese government may torture them.

I (heart) rumours

Especially when the rumours involve the potential new chairman of the Republican Party possibly being a big ol' homo.

Mehlman has REFUSED to answer direct questions from reporters about his sexual orientation. This wouldn't be relevant, except:

1. There have been rumors for years about Mehlman's sexual orientation. Now that he's a very public figure, those rumors gain an importance they didn't have before.[...]

2. Mehlman has already said publicly that the gay issue is fair game for politics. If it's fair game, then the same rules apply to him.

3. Mehlman has publicly defended the president's anti-gay policies, including the federal constitutional amendment. Were Mehlman gay, he'd be guilty of hypocrisy, and that would justify his outing - again, were he gay.

4. The GOP has made it perfectly clear that gays and lesbians and their relationships are a threat to the fabric of society. As American citizens and voters we have the right to know if Ken Mehlman's so-far-undisclosed relationships are posing such a threat or not. The last thing the GOP should be doing is giving a position of prominence in the party to someone who, for all we know, might have a secret agenda of undermining the family. They can't have it both ways.

5. The Republican National Committee is an organization that makes NO BONES about using gay-bashing to help Republican candidates. There is good reason to believe that any RNC chair, were he not 100% straight, would be at pains to effectively run an organization that relies on gay-bashing to get its way. Don't red-state Americans have the right to know if the leader of their party, whomever it turns out to be, actually embraces the party's prefered lifestyle?

6. We have been told that part of President Bush's supposed "mandate" in the most recent election was a vindication of his attack on gays. The voting public has a right to know if the next RNC chair plans on subversively undercutting that mandate or actively supporting it.

[...]

America is in the throes of a culture war, nurtured by groups like the RNC and people like Ken Mehlman. Americans have a right to know which side of the culture war Ken Mehlman is on, and whether, as RNC chair, he would be a fifth column for those very forces that the RNC tells us are out to steal America's Bibles and jam homosexual sex down its throats and the throats of its children.

Now, I've always been one for keeping what happens in people's bedrooms their own business, which, for example, is why I couldn't care less about Monicagate. As for outing people, I've also never been a fan of that--it's their life, if they want to disclose, they can disclose. Sure it would be better in the long-run if everyone just came out so that people would realise that gays and lesbians are everywhere and are quite normal people, but everyone has to do what they have to do.

In this case, though, it's different. Not only is there the problem of hypocrisy, but this would be worse than having Mary Cheney as a paid staffer of Bush/Cheney '04 while completely refusing to acknowledge her existence and most especially refusing to acknowledge her lesbianism.

I think it's clear that the nation is deeply divided and in a very fragile state at the moment. I fully agree with the quote where it talks about the culture war. Imagine the shit storm of Mehlman were to become GOP Chairman only to be outed? Maybe it would be a good thing in the long-run, but I doubt it. It would piss a lot of people off at Bush, but I don't think that it would make them amenable to gay neighbours or the thought that somewhere in the nation sodomy might be occurring or gays might be getting married.

US deficit pushes euro over $1.30

'The euro has now risen by 10 US cents in a month.'

BRING ON THE FOOD RIOTS!

Okay, so I'm getting a little ahead of myself here....

About how I'm feeling right now, on a variety of levels

A thought on the marriage amendment issue

All these people who want to add a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, to add the first restrictive amendment to the US Constitution. Fine. Okay. You want to play that way? Give up your guns. I will gladly give up my (potential) right to marriage--I'll settle for a civil union or nothing at all, even--if you give up your Second Amendment right to bear arms. It only seems fair. If we have to give up one of our rights, you ought to give up one of yours. That's what democracy is all about: sharing. And, remember, sharing means caring. (Of course, democracy isn't as much about sharing as socialism is, but that's beside the point.)

Sorry Everybody

No explanation needed for this one. Just follow the link.

Daily Kos :: Backdoor draft

From Kos:

Jesus, this one hits too close to home:

David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.

But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.

'I was shocked,' Miyasato said yesterday. 'I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years.'

Miyasato is now suing the Secretary of the Army, asking a court to prevent the Army from ordering him to active duty. He is also asking for a court judgment declaring that he fulfilled all his obligations to the military.

This dude has been out longer than I have. This is the first reported callup of a soldier who had already completed his inactive reserve obligations.

The draft is coming.

At least I can claim homosexuality. I'd love to see Bush try to let gays into the military just to boost the draftable population. Heh. But, as Margaret Cho has said, 'How can you fight a war without gays? I mean, if you don't have lesbians, who's gonna read the map?'

Eschaton's view on 'values'

If 'values' are the new battleground, which I mostly doubt, then I say bring it on, Larry Flynt-style. Let the scarlet A's be handed out, the closet doors swung open, and weekly church attendance records of members of congress and the administration be compiled. If sinning godless heathens are the problem, then let's be clear about who the sinning godless heathens are.

Can we riot now?

Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.

Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. 'Bush took the news stoically,' noted the AP report.

But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.

Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.

Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.

'Exit Polls are almost never wrong,' Morris wrote. 'They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state.'

He added: 'So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points.'

Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.

How could this happen?

'Kerry Won'

Just for context, the author of this piece is Greg Palast, a 'contributing editor to Harper's magazine, [who] investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight.' In other words, not just some desperate crazy person.

Skanksville

Just in case the image doesn't link, check the link. I really like the look that the Bush twins are going for. One of them is 21st century skank and the other is early 20th century skank. It's a good balance. Of course, Laura is in her usual Barbie doll pink, smelling of Lysol (see the Margaret Cho post below). Uncle Dick is wearing a black suit, appropriate for Darth Vader. Not sure what Lynne was thinking: lime green is hardly a patriotic colour, unless we count Miami and Key West, and we KNOW what kind of people live THERE. And, gasp, could that be? Mary Cheney! Have they let her come out of hiding? I guess they had to move her out of the Undisclosed Location so they could put Dick back into storage. And who's that masculine looking woman standing with her?

Vacation's over, folks! Let's make these next two years hell for Bush.

Impeachment 2006!

Big Brother and the Boss

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape [...] He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willowherb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux, occurring against no background and most unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth [...] was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'�m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy'�s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy, no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land

I'�ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this old town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy, no I'�m a man
And I believe in a promised land

There'�s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I�'m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain�'t got the faith to stand it�s ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken-hearted

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy, no I'�m a man
And I believe in a promised land

End of Days

That's it. It's over. Kerry has conceded. George W. Bush has been elected again for the first time.

Needless to say, this is a very difficult moment for me. I wasn't personally involved in any of this. Being in Montréal, I've been able to observe everything from an out-of-body distance. The nation of my birth has troubled me more and more since Bush came into office, and most especially after 11th September 2001. I remember going home for the first time after 9/11, in December 2001. I actually flew home because it was so inexpensive. 45 minutes in the air is a hell of a lot easier than 8 hours on a bus. I was nervous but I had faith. Besides, who would blow up a little Air Canada jet? After collecting my bags, I stepped out onto the curb to look for my parents. Up they drove in their enormous Ford Expedition (Eddie Bauer Edition). Already, it sported an airbrushed vanity plate that declared 'Freedom will be defended' against a background of a bald eagle and the American flag. They had a flag on the antenna. Massachusetts had already released their official vanity plates and there was one of those on the back declaring 'United we stand.'

My mother and stepfather have never claimed to be whole-hearted Bush supporters, but they're the kind of people that worry me the most: they blow with the wind. Although they claimed not to support Bush, they immediately bought into the patriotic goose stepping that was called for after 9/11. Dissent quickly became unpatriotic. That is, perhaps, the most frightening aspect of Bush's America.

The only thing in my mind that can account for what's going on is pure and simple apathy. Although there may have been record turn-out yesterday, the majority--even if it's an ever so slight majority--of the nation just doesn't care enough to question what they are fed. Cheney declared that if Kerry were elected, the nation would almost certainly suffer another terrorist attack. What the nation doesn't understand is that Bush&Co themselves have committed a terrorist attack far worse than that of 9/11. They are attacking the very foundations of the nation. I don't even want to think about what four more years of Bush will mean for the nation or for the world for that matter. It's simply too painful to think about right now.

The nation is clearly deeply divided. This is perhaps surprising considering the amount of pulling together that seemed to happen after 9/11. The problem is, though, that the Republicans now hold control of the entire government. Giuliani was on ABC at one point last night and suggested that whoever won would have to do a lot of bringing together. I simply don't see the Republicans as doing this: why should they? They now have a popular mandate--51% it's true, but that's the first majority mandate that a president has received in over a decade.

I am deeply conflicted right now about my own future--never mind that of the nation. It frightens me to think that I might be moving back to the states in a few months. And yet I wonder if maybe that's where I need to be. The odd thing about this election is that it has, in a way, awakened some kind of patriotism within me. There is great promise in the founding promises of the United States.

The nation survived Nixon.

The nation survived Reagan.

Can the nation survive Bush?

The GOP tried to impeach Clinton because of a dirty dress.

Two years are a long time to wait. And yet if the Democrats can get their act together during the next two years and make decisive gains in the mid-term elections, Bush is impeachable on a lot more than a dirty dress. A lot can happen in two years. A lot.

There has been a lot of talk, particularly over at Daily Kos, about the death of the Democratic Party in its current state. The party is ripe for reformation. It desperately needs to draw itself together and find its base and its message. For the sake of the nation and for the sake of the world. Almost half the nation supported Kerry. It's difficult to know if it was based on support of the Democrats or an anti-Bush sentiment.

I think that this election decisively shows that the US is tacking significantly more to the right than Europe or Canada. Any new Democratic party would necessarily have to run towards centre. I've always been more of a leftist, to be sure, but I'm starting to wonder if I need to return to the nation of my birth to help save it.

I'm too conflicted about it all right now to say for sure. But I feel too strongly about the future not to consider it at all.

No Surrender, II

Everyone agrees that Bush&Co. stole the election four years ago. If they do it again....

As I suspected--and as has been pointed out over at DailyKos--something's not right in FL and OH. The link is to a post explaining the very obvious fact that exit polls for everywhere but OH and FL reflected reality. In FL and OH, though, both of which showed Kerry winning by comfortable margins, something happened. What, did people lie?

Somehow I think not.

I'm going to be very punchy today. Not nearly enough sleep. I stayed at the boy's house last night in order to have access to a tv. (I have to say that I was happy with ABC for not doing stupid things like calling states way too early. They refused, in fact, to call OH. And they called MN and WA quite a while after everyone else had. I guess Peter Jennings still retains some sanity from his Canadian roots.)

Anyway, since I was staying here and leaving for school from here, I had to bring a change of clothes, obviously. I subconsciously made a good choice:

No Surrender

I think I should try to sleep. But I thought I would post these lyrics as an attempt to stay hopeful. I have to admit that my hope is fading, but I don't want to think about Kerry not winning. It's just too horrific to think about what the United States and the world might be like after another four years of Bush.

--

We busted out of class had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school
Tonight I heart the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Like soldiers in the winter’s night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I’m ready to grow young again
And hear your sister’s voice calling us home across the open yards
Believin’ we could cut someplace of our own
With these drums and these guitars

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
But it’s good to see your smiling face and to hear your voice again
We could sleep in the twilight by the river side
With a wide open country in our hearts
And these romanics dreams in our heads

We made a promise...

It's 12.47...

...do you know where your next President is?

Margaret Cho

During her recent get-out-the-vote tour, everyone's favourite Asian-American compared John Kerry to an Ent, the tree-people from Lord of the Rings, because he's so tall.

'But wouldn't you so much rather have a tree than a bush?'

She also said that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a Mrs Robinson-like quality about her and was sexy, especially in comparison to Laura: 'you KNOW her pussy smells like Lysol.'

From 'electoral-vote.com'

As I have discussed repeatedly, normally people with a cell phone but no landline are not polled. Most of these are in the 18-29 year old group. Up until now, no one has known how their absence from the polling data might affect the results. Zogby has now conducted a very large (N = 6039) poll exclusively on cell phones using SMS messaging to get a feeling of how they will vote. The results are that they go strongly for Kerry, 55% to 40%, with a margin of error of only 1.2%. If they all vote tomorrow, the pollsters are going to spend the rest of the week wiping egg from their faces. But historically, younger voters have a miserable turnout record, so the pollsters need not yet stock up on paper towels.

Oh, and there's the current prediction, too: Kerry 298, Bush 231.

Special End of the World Edition

This is it. 2nd November 2004. Hopefully it will be remembered for being the day that the United States finally snapped out of its zombie daze, elected John Kerry, who then set about correcting the wrongs that have been propagated over the previous four years.

Appropriately enough, the first song that came on iTunes this morning was Madonna's 'American Life'. I think I need to make a new cd to listen to today, starting with U2's 'Beautiful Day', since Kerry has been playing that a lot at his rallies, but prominently featuring The Boss. It's funny how, when I was a mindless child, I used to sing along with the chorus of 'Born in the USA' whenever it came on, and thought that it was all about how great it was to be born in the USA and how wonderful a country it was and all. Oh, the naïveté of the child.

Hm

So much for compassionate conservatism. (Yes, I know that went out the window a long time ago, like yesterday's campaign promise.)

Lisa Dupler, a 33-year-old from Columbus, held up a rainbow-striped John Kerry sign outside the Nationwide Arena on Friday, as Republicans streamed out after being rallied by George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A thickset woman with very short, dark hair, Dupler was silent and barely flinched as people passing her hissed 'faggot' into her ear. An old lady looked at her and said, 'You people are sick!' A kid who looked to be about 10 or 11 affected a limp wrist and mincing voice and said, 'Oh, I'm gay.' Rather than restraining him, his squat mother guffawed and then turned to Dupler and sneered, 'Why don't you go marry your girlfriend?' Encouraged, her son yelled, 'We don't want faggots in the White House!'


The throngs of Republicans were pumped after seeing the president and the action hero. But there was an angry edge to their elation. They shrieked at the dozen or so protesters standing on the concrete plaza outside the auditorium. 'Kerry's a terrorist!' yelled a stocky kid in baggy jeans and braces. 'Communists for Kerry! Go back to Russia,' someone else screamed. Many of them took up the chant 'Kerry sucks'; old women and teenage boys shouting with equal ferocity.

...

When the crowd came pouring out of the arena, the vitriol only increased. One clean-cut man, holding his son by the hand, yelled 'coward!' at one of the protesters. I asked him what made him say that, and he said, 'Because he's demeaning our troops by saying they are fighting a lost cause.'


'Jesus! Jesus!' screamed 26-year-old Joe Robles, pointing to his Bush-Cheney sign. 'The man stands for God,' he said of the president. 'We want somebody who stands for Jesus. I always vote my Christian morals.' Robles, a student at Ohio State University, told me that Kerry's daughter is a lesbian. I said I thought that was Dick Cheney's daughter, but he shook his head no with confidence.


Robles said that Kerry would make it illegal for preachers to say that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. In California, he informed me gravely, such preaching has been deemed a hate crime, and pastors who indulge in it are fined $25,000, which 'goes to lesbians.'


A few of the protesters, meanwhile, were red-faced from yelling at their antagonists about homophobia and budget deficits and a senseless war. Republicans were incensed. A blond woman dragged her young redheaded son toward the protesters, pointed to them, and said, 'These are the Democrats,' speaking as if she was revealing an awful reality that he was finally old enough to face. As she walked away with a group of other mothers and children, she was so angry she could barely speak. A friend consoled her by promising her that Bush would win. After all, she pointed out, 'Look how many more Bush supporters there were on the street!'


That calmed the angry blond woman down a little. But she was still mad. 'We,' she said, stammering and gesturing contemptuously at the demonstrators, "we are the way it should be!"

Random Pulp Lyrics

This song just came on my iTunes. It's odd. Thought I would share. More like a poem with musical accompaniment. It's all spoken. Gotta love Pulp.

Inside Susan

Susan catches the bus into town at ten-thirty a.m.
She sits on the back seat.
She looks at the man in front's head and thinks
how his fat wrinkled neck is like a large carrot sticking out from the collar of his shirt.
She adds up the numbers on her bus ticket to see if they make twenty-one, but they don't.
Maybe she shouldn't bother going to school at all, then.
Her friends will be in the yard with their arms folded on their chests, shielding their breasts to try and make them look bigger, whilst the boys will be too busy playing football to notice.
The bus is waiting on the High Street when suddenly it begins to rain torrentially and it sounds like someone has emptied about a million packets of dried peas on top of the roof of the bus.
"What if it just keeps raining," she thinks to herself, "and it was just like being in an aquarium except it was all the shoppers and office-workers that were floating passed the window instead of fish?"
She's still thinking about this when the bus goes passed Caroline Lee's house where there was a party last week.
There were some German exchange students there who were very mature; they all ended up jumping out of the bedroom window.
One of them tried to get her to kiss him on the stairs, so she kicked him.
Later she was sick because she drunk too much cider.
Caroline was drunk as well; she was pretending she was married to a tall boy in glasses, and she had to wear a polo-neck for three days afterwards to cover up the love-bite on her neck.
By now the bus is going passed the market.
Outside is a man who spends all day forcing felt-tip pens into people's hands and then trying to make them pay for them.
She used to work in the pet shop, but she got sacked for talking to boys when she was supposed to be working.
She wasn't too bothered though, she hated the smell of the rabbits anyway.
"Maybe this bus won't stop," she thinks, "and I'll stay on it until I'm old enough to go into pubs on my own.
Or it could drive me to a town where people with black hair drink Special Brew and I can make lots of money by charging fat old men five pounds a time to look up my skirt.
Oh, they'll be queuing up to take me out to dinner."
I suppose you think she's just a silly girl with stupid ideas, but I remember her in those days.
They talk about people with a fire within and all that stuff, well, she had that alright.
It's just that no-one dared to jump into her fire; they would have been consumed.
Instead, they put her in a corner and let her heat up the room, warming their hands and backsides in front of her, and then slagging her off around town.
No-one ever really got inside Susan, and, and, she always ended up getting off the bus at the terminus and then walking home.

Election Protection — You Have the Right to Vote!

Having Trouble Voting? Call 1-866-OURVOTE

It's really sad that there needs to be an Election Protection Committee. I thought the United States was all about promoting democracy and shit. Sigh.

Forecast for election night: heavy drinking with a chance of tears.

barf! (and 100th post!)

The BBC reports this morning that both NBC and ABC are planning to turn the 9/11 commission report into a mini-series.

WHY?! WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SO DISGUSTING AND STUPID!? THAT WOULD BE LIKE TRYING TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOUR. Oh, wait....


Grr.

In other news...

...someone keeps phoning me from Toronto. I ran the number through a reverse look-up, but it's not listed. I figured the first time it showed up it was a wrong number, because they didn't leave me a message. They've been calling a few times a day every day for the past few days. It's gotten to the point where I just wan to answer and say, 'Who the fuck are you and why do you keep calling me? If it's not a wrong number, why don't you leave a fucking message?!' But they have a tendency to phone either when I'm in class or when I'm somewhere other than where my phone is. Like just now, when I was in the kitchen and my phone was in my bedroom.

Reading Parliamentary Debates

I am saddened by the fact that back in the early days, Hansard's didn't record the 'sound effects' during the debates as they do now. I.e., the jeering and the yelling in favour, etc. It's also kind of annoying that they report it as indirect discourse: 'Lord Althorp said.... He further stated that....'

Ah well. You know me: I always need to complain about something!

To quote the Boston Globe

AT LAST! Pigs can fly, hell is frozen, the slipper finally fits, and Impossible Dreams really can come true. The Red Sox have won the World Series

As for me, I'd forgotten how boring I find baseball.

'No team in World Series history has blown a 3-0 lead.'

But these are the Red Sox we're talking about. I'm sure the stadium in St Louis will sink into the bowels of the earth or something when they're one strike from victory or something.

Or Bill Buckner will appear in the crowd and run out onto the field in some kind of berzerker rage and murder the entire team.

It could happen.

Wouldn't it be, like, so cool if...

...like, the Red Sox won the world series AND John Kerry won the election. It would be, like, double big winning for Boston.

Gratuitous baby photo from Boston.com:

NY Times story

The man who insists that the world is now safer has lost 341.7 metric tonnes (that's 753,319.55 pounds) of heavy explosives--the kind used to blow up buildings and planes, the kind a pound of which was used to blow up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbee--in Iraq.

Do you feel safer now?

The best America has to offer

So, the Guardian set up this little programme whereby people could get the address of a voter in Ohio, a swing-state. They could then write to that voter as a concerned non-US citizen to plead the case about how important this election is not only to the US but also to the rest of the world. Here's a selection of my favourites (to be fair, there were some positive responses but, well, I think these ones are slightly more representative).

Dear wonderful, loving friends from abroad,
We Ohioans are an ornery sort and don't take meddling well, even if it comes from people we admire and with their sincere goodwill. We are a fairly closed community overall. In my town of Springfield, I feel that there are some that consider people from the nearby cities of Columbus or Dayton, as "foreigners"- let alone someone from outside our country.
Springfield, Ohio

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
Wading River, NY

Consider this: stay out of American electoral politics. Unless you would like a company of US Navy Seals - Republican to a man - to descend upon the offices of the Guardian, bag the lot of you, and transport you to Guantanamo Bay, where you can share quarters with some lonely Taliban shepherd boys.
United States

KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH SHIT!
PROUD AMERICAN VOTING FOR BUSH!

Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions. If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.
Texas, USA

Hey England, Scotland and Wales,
Mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidental election. If it wasn't for America, you'd all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you'd all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace. YOU ARE NOT WANTED!! Whether you want to support either party. BUTT OUT!!!
United States

Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.
United States

THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE SPENT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROTECTING THE PEOPLES OF THE EU, AND WHAT DO WE GET IN RETURN. BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL. I HAVE BEEN TO YOUR COUNTRY, THE COUNTRY OF MY ANCESTORS, AND I KNOW WHY THEY LEFT.

MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU. HAVE A GREAT DAY.
Harlan, Kentucky

Keep your noses out of our business. As I recall we kicked your asses out of our country back in 1776. We do not require input from losers and idiots on who we vote for in our own country. Fuck off and die asshole!!!!!
Knoxville, Iowa

Who in the hell do you think you are??? Well, I'll tell you, you're a bunch of meddling socialist pricks! Stay the hell out of our country and politics. And another thing, John Kerry is a worthless lying sack of crap so it doesn't surprise me that a socialist rag like yours would back him. I hope your cynical ploy blows up in your cowardly faces, you bunch of mealy-mouthed morons!
United States

I used to visit the UK every year. I love the history and culture of your country. But after I heard about your campaign to influence our elections, I've decided that neither myself, nor my family will ever visit again. I'm offended by your campaign and because of it, I'm remembering more of the negative aspects I've seen in the UK than the positive ones. Though I still love the castles!
Detroit

You radical leftwingers are worse than the Taliban. I suggest you stand back and take a good hard look at yourselves.

PS: When do you propose to add Michael Moore to your staff of lunatics?
United States

Cross-eyed but not yet drooling

I spent the morning slogging through an almost unreadable chapter in an almost unreadable book called 'The Age of Atonement'. Supposedly, it's about the influence of Evangelicalism on early-to-mid-nineteenth century English history. Sounds decent enough. My prof warned me that this guy couldn't write very well, but, jeez, Oxford published the book. That should count for something in the way of readability, shouldn't it?!

Then, I spent the afternoon reading selections from the Report of the 1832 Royal Commission on the Poor Law. That would have been interesting if not for the obscenely small print. And the noise from the construction on McTavish.

Now I think I will find something to eat as my tummy is rumbling. Then, I will buy a new copy card as I just used up the last of what I had on my old one. Then I will go home and read the opening debate on the New Poor Law of 1834. Another odyssey of small print and justified-type. I hate justified type. The debate wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't two columns to an already small page. Four columns across a legal-sized photocopy, with room probably for a fifth column, but the book doesn't go that far.

History is going to push me into early bifocals.

A sad, sad day for women and men across Canada

Justin Trudeau is engaged to be married. Where's my box of kleenex? Can we start a support group? How do we snag an invite?

Even better than the electoral prediction from yesterday that doesn't want to post

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:   Kerry 291   Bush 247

Iowa is no longer tied: leaning for Kerry. New Mexico has flopped from barely Bush to strongly Kerry. Pollsters generally don't actually do that well. But, here's hoping. I really hope that more people have come to their senses. A strong win for Kerry will be a lot better than the non-win from four years ago.

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:   Kerry 284   Bush 247

Oh please god, please let it stay! The most recent polls have only Iowa still tied. Florida is barely Kerry and New Hampshirites have finally come to their senses and are leaning for Kerry now.

Quiet morning...

I'm sitting here reviewing for my Dante midterm in a few hours. The cat is sitting on my desk, next to my computer, under my lamp as she likes to do when it's cold: between the computer and the lamp, it's like a little kitty sauna.

She's just hanging out, not really doing anything, purring her little heart out. Then she tries to sit on my papers and I shoo her away since, obviously, I kind of need to study from them. She she wanders off somewhere else.

A few minutes later, she starts running back and forth along the whole length of the apartment. Zoom! Patter, patter, patter. Zoom! Patter, patter, patter. Zoom! Finally, she ran to my window and looked out, very excited, her head jerking back and forth looking at the cars, I guess.

Meanwhile, I'm reviewing Canto 33 of Inferno which opens with what is easily the creepiest line of the entire Canticle: 'La bocca solevò dal fiero pasto': The mouth rose from its infernal meal. Picture this: the very bottom of the pit of Hell. A lake of ice. Sinners trapped in the ice, some sitting up, some reclined on their backs, some completely covered by the ice. You approach one pair of sinners frozen very close together, front to back. The sinner behind is eating the brains of the sinner in front of him. When spoken to by Dante to learn of his sins, he looks up, wipes his lips on the hair of the sinner in front of him, and begins to speak. After this, and his tale in which the sinner in front of him locks him in a tower with his sons and starves them to death and then he cannibalises his sons to stay alive after they die, well, Lucifer is kind of anti-climactic.

The cat has now calmed down and is once again purring away aside by computer.

The New York Times endorses Kerry

We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.

Haven't posted much recently. Had a couple of mid-term papers due last week, one of which took a lot of time and careful thinking and hair pulling. Also, haven't really had too much to say, to be honest. It's mostly been the same old shit, different day syndrome.

I can't believe it's mid-October. Fuck. I have so much to do.

How rude!

I just got a spam text message on my cell phone! But, if you're single and in Montréal, there's apparently a new dating site you should check out: www.mtlhookup.com . I may as well spread the news. Or something.

This makes me happy...

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:   Kerry 280   Bush 248

I realise that I've been writing a lot about politics lately and not a whole heck of a lot about my own life. Well, politics has been taking up a lot of the my free-time thought. But, as a brief update on the rest of my life: it's okay. The bookstore continues to suck the life force from me. Classes are going well, though I feel that I'm not nearly as on top of things as I'd like to be going into mid-October. Grad school applications are still in their preliminary stages, but I'm going to be asking for my recommendation letters this week, so that's a start. Then it's just a matter of writing a personal statement and deciding which paper to submit as my writing sample (I have it narrowed down to two different ones). The boy is good, as well. We're just not talking about the fact that he might actually be leaving the city in January before I do in May.

So, on the whole, nothing too bad.

On one last political note, though, the debate last night made me think of that line from Austin Powers: 'That makes me angry and when Dr Evil gets angry Mr Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr Bigglesworth gets upset people DIE!' That boy from Texas needs a prosac, methinks.

CNN's Presidental Showdown Game!

Here's your chance to play political pundit. Pick the winner of the popular vote in each state. While George W. Bush and John Kerry battle for the White House as their prize, in CNN's Presidential Showdown Game, you'll have the chance to win a 30' LCD Flat TV HDTV.

Excuse me while I barf. The fate of the world is at stake...but you can win a TV!

Veep's

I watched the last half hour or so of the Vice Presidential debate just now. Not too much to say except that Dick Cheney reminds me far too much of Darth Vader and John Edwards is just so darn cute that I want to pinch his cheeks.

Oh, and Cheney was apparently a union member for six years and John Edwards's daddy worked in a mill.

One more thing before bed...

Uncle Donnie is now saying, 'To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links [Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden].'

$7.4 TRILLION is a lot of money

Debt Ceiling Could Be Hit This Month
By Leigh Strope, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government should hit the national debt's $7.4 trillion ceiling this month, and the Bush administration told Congress again Monday it should raise the limit. That would be a politically sticky move just weeks from the Nov. 2 elections.

Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols said the government is on track to reach the limit in early October. He could not provide a more specific date but said the forecast is made 'on a day-to-day basis,' and Congress would be notified.

The government can juggle accounts to stay under the limit through mid-November to avoid default, as it has in the past. But the Bush administration is urging Congress, which expects to adjourn Friday, to go ahead and raise the ceiling.

'We've been calling on Congress to act now for months, and we think it's important that they do so,' Nichols said.

The government's debt was $7.364 trillion as of Friday, $18.3 billion from the ceiling. Congress last boosted the limit in May 2003.

Democrats this election year have cited the rising debt as evidence that President Bush is mishandling the economy. The administration counters that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and efforts to strengthen security at home have forced the increased government borrowing.

House Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow on Monday requesting a meeting to discuss the limit, when it would be reached and what options the department would pursue. It was the second such letter and noted that he failed to respond to the first.

'Our debt has been growing markedly faster than our economy's ability to repay it, thanks in large measure to tax cuts proposed and enacted into law by the administration and congressional Republicans,' said the letter, signed by Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina, Charles Rangel of New York and Charles Stenholm of Texas.

Nichols said Snow intends to respond to both letters soon. Should Congress fail to act before the limit is reached, Snow 'would take the appropriate steps to protect the full faith and credit of our government,' he said.

Let's not forget that the government had a SURPLUS four years ago....

One month.

The one basic question that faces all Americans in one month's time: 'Are you better off today than you were four years ago?'

In the end, that's what it comes down to. Bread and butter win the election over foreign concerns. Do you have more money in your pocket? Do you even have money in your pocket? Do you still have your job? Do you have better health care? Do you still have health car? Are you paying lower taxes?

In the post-9/11 world, of course, there are a few new questions: do you feel safer now than you did in the immediate aftermath of September 2001? (I think it's unfair to ask if you feel safer now than you did four years ago, because I doubt very many people do.) Do you feel safer with the Taleban no longer in power? Do you feel safer with Saddam no longer in power? How many of you have lost a loved one or know someone who have lost a loved one in Afghanistan or Iraq? How many of you sympathise with those who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq--including those uncounted civilians?

We all know which side I'm pulling for here, but that's not the point here. The point is that you have to vote for who you think will do the better job. And, in the end, you have to vote. I didn't vote four years ago and although Massachusetts went securely for Gore, I still regret not having voted.

A month from now, if you're American, vote. And pray that the predicted problems with electronic voting machines--why does no want to talk about this?--don't happen.

Nickel and Diming Homeland Security

The war in Iraq so far has cost $150 billion; for the Department of Homeland Security, the administration has allocated $27 billion this year, with the bulk of that going to the routine operations of agencies like the Customs Service. When it comes to new programs to make planes, trains, ports, and urban centers safer, there's precious little left over—which is why a range of critics, from local firefighters to Republican members of Congress, have lambasted Bush for shortchanging the nation's true homeland security needs. Below, a sample of those needs, along with Bush's budget allocations, compared with the time it takes to burn through the same amount in Iraq.

There's really not much point in commenting on this. Just click through and read the numbers. They speak for themselves. (Don't worry, it's not long, just a small sampling.)

What band from the 80s are you?

You're in touch with the world, and you have a very
strong opinion on things like politics and war.
Even if you do end up changing your image in
the future, most of us will still like you.


What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

It's kind of odd how these things match so well sometimes.... These people have way too much time on their hands (unlike me, who uses them for procrastination).

Debates and More Thoughts on the Future State of the Union

First, I'd like to say that I find it fairly odd how, well, how patriotic I've become, in a way. Patriotic in the sense of being deeply concerned with where the States are headed as a nation and as a country (note the difference between those two words). I guess that as things have gotten worse and more ridiculous, it's made me realise how important the state of the nation is to me personally (because I care) and to the rest of the world. I wonder if I'd have so strong a sense of just how important the United States is to the rest of the world if I were still living there. Even a distance of 60 kilometres gives perspective, I guess.

I don't have much to say on the debates since the talking heads and typing bloggers have pretty much already said everything that might be worth saying. Check out the usual suspects. For my part though, I'm happy that I can say that Kerry kicked some ass. I personally thought it wasn't a spectacular debate myself after having watched it, but reading what other people had to say, I realised that Bush did look pretty bad. I guess I didn't really think he looked bad since I don't expect too much from him, even when he's reading from a teleprompter, never mind when it's impromptu.

As for the future state of the Union, I just read this ('Politics in the "New Normal" America' by Joan Didion) article. Although Scout over at 'And Then...' calls it a must read, I have to say that I'm not so sure. I don't find that it necessarily says anything new. It's a nice compendium of different things and for that it's probably convenient to have it all in one article. So, if you haven't been paying close attention, read it. Otherwise, just keep fighting against Big Brother.

The Onion's top headline this week is 'Documents reveal gaps in Bush's service as president'. It's sad when a satirical newspaper that bills itself as 'America's finest news source' really is, more often than it ought to be, American's finest news source.

I'm also quite bothered by the fact that the most relevant metaphor available for our times continues to be found in Orwell's 1984. I was deeply bothered by that book when I first read it in Grade 9. But, in the warm, fuzzy haze of the Clinton 90s--and perhaps also my own lack of knowledge and experience of the outside world--I felt secure in knowing that I had nothing to fear from Big Brother.

Now, the teacher who encouraged me to read that book, who encouraged me to always look at the big picture, who drilled into my mind that Knowledge is Power and that 'People who have no hope are easy to control, and whoever has the control as the power,' and, of course, that Power corrupts and that Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely, the person--without a doubt the most intelligent and brilliant teacher I had in high school--whom I credit with a very large portion of the way that I've come to think about the world, refuses to visit Montreal because it's a French city in Canada.

It's a sad, sad day when the Virgil of my HIgh School Inferno seems to have come to love Big Brother.

Things need desperately to change in the United States and the fate of the world rests in the balance.

(I'd keep going, but it's almost two in the morning and I'm tired and probably am starting to ramble and not make much sense.)

'Freedom’s just another word'

The events of three years ago were a terrible shock. Terrorists do want to attack us, and they do need to be fought. But the artificial hysteria I found when I was back in America over the last month contributes nothing positive in a battle that has to be waged in a real world full of gray areas and seeming contradictions. The fact is, allies do not cooperate just because you tell them to. Dictators do not pose a clear and present danger just because you think they might. People do not feel liberated just because you say they are. They won’t love you for intentions. They will judge you by your actions.

When Newsweek runs a story with the opening sentences of 'I can tell you the week the United States lost the war in Iraq. It was 18 months ago,' I think that one can hopefully judge that mainstream media are beginning to report things somewhat reasonably. Of course, this is just print media. This implies that people might actually be reading. The more important thing is what are the talking heads on TV saying. That I can't speak for. It continues to boggle my mind that people would even consider to vote for Bush. I can't think of one thing that he's attempted to do in the past four years that had an even remotely good result.

But then I went to watch his most recent political ad. It scared me enough to want to vote for him. Against images of happy Americans being happy and American, the narrator says 'History's lesson: strength builds peace. Weakness invites those who would do us harm. Unfortunately, after the first World Trade Centre attack, John Kerry and Congressional Liberals tried to slash six billion dollars from intelligence budgets, and tried to cut or eliminate over forty weapons now fighting the war on terror, and refused to support our troops in combat with the latest weapons and body armour.' Then, the tag line comes up on the screen: John Kerry & Congressional Liberals. Putting our protection at risk.'

After I got over my momentary fright, I realised, 'Wait a minute.... They said the FIRST WTC attack. That was in '93!' But how many people do you think are going to make that connection? They hear 'world trade centre' and 'attack' and automatically think 2001. Then they think, 'Kerry did all this after September 11th? There's no way we can support him! If we support Kerry, we might die!'

I'm going to Carlos's to watch the debate tonight. I'm afraid. Very afraid. I may cry.

In other news, Bush also has this new Spanish ad called 'Mi familia' which is basically this kind of catchy 30-second song about how great it is to be hispanic and american and republican, I think. I need to get Carlos's to translate it for me.

'Soy George W Bush y apruebo este mensaje.'

Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?

The Count's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder


It started with a simple affection for counting and
the terror it induced in others, didn't it?
But now it's turned into a full-blown
life-consuming chaotic nightmare of order,
repetition, zealousness, and perfectionism.
You used to be so grand, but now you find
yourself obsessively worrying over the littlest
things--like, maybe if you don't check the
light switch at least once every two minutes,
the electricity will go out (and damnit, you're
a vampire--that shouldn't be a problem!), or
maybe if you don't wash your hands until your
seams are coming out, you'll get some fatal
disease. Get yourself some treatment.


Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

To quote my inner voice...

'It's not so much that I want to "kill her", it's just that I want her "not to be alive...anymore." '

Just for the record...

I despise the two receptionists at Health Services. Despise, despise, despise. And yet, miraculously, whenever I'm on the verge of flipping out, they whisk me away to see the nurse.

I'm sure that they've got it all figured out.

Feel free to post Health Services horror stories in the comments.

The Iconoclast endorses its choice for president.

The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.

John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.

Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.

That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.

The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

That's the CRAWFORD, Texas, Iconoclast. (Just for clarification, that's Bush's hometown.)

Because enquiring minds want to know

This is perhaps the most important quiz I've ever taken on quizilla. Perhaps.


Your anime hair color is green.


What is your anime hair color?
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Blog borrowing

Okay. So I've been busy. The crazy work schedule is now over and I have to get down to business with classes. And grad school applications. Oy. So, that's why I haven't been posting a lot. I'm going to see Y Tu Máma También tonight. Finally. Yay. I'm excited. And I get to see it with my Mexican boy, which is even more exciting. Tee-hee. It's been two months now. That's like a year in straight-years.

As for the borrowing implied in the title of this post, the below is from Daily Kos.

Exactly one year ago, Richard Perle said:

And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.

Somewhere in Washington D.C. today, Richard Perle is very surprised.