Cry me a river

This blogging business is hard work. Trying to think of things to say, knowing that you are really writing into a void, learning all this linking, all while trying to keep the boss from figuring out that you aren't really working on that spreadsheet...

So apologies - we are trying our best to go out and cull the best or most interesting or what we deem important from the internets, but we are totally new at this, and we are trying. And you dear reader, if you are out there, and hopefully some day you will be, are invited to make comments.

Here are some of the things going on - we are trying like hell to keep the ball rolling and keep involved. But the siren song of the tivo (see below) and the US Weekly and and the glitzy sweet world of don't think about it too much because if you do you will start crying, again, is strong. So it is possible that what we began as a purely political animal may evolve a bit into both more and less, if you see what I mean. Clearly the pros have us beat on this - Wonkette and Dan Radosh and all - so we shall see.

Julia Roberts' twins (am I the only one who thinks Hazel is a nice name?), the Ohio recount (going forward, they say), the entire cabinet resigning, Ken Jennings losing, should I leave the country?

Sincerely, John Kerry

his consolation letter says it best:

There is no way to hide the pain -- and no point in trying.

But there's also a point in being pissed as hell that the whole operation was rigged. If the Ukranians get a second election, we should at least a paper vote run-off between Viktor Kerrykovych and Viktor Bushchenko in OH and FL. It might happen. Then again, we seem to lack the millions of demontrators marching on the capital. They do seem more deserving by comparison. I mean, I'd do it, but... there's just so much TiVo to watch. And it's really cold out.

Miss Beazley

So on a lighter note, and as we are heading into the holiday and i will be seeing the family, it's time to talk about cute little Miss Beazley.
First of all, I want to note that I love Barney (the dog). Hate Bush, but that Barney is mighty cute. And yes, I follow presidential pets, and yes, I cried when Buddy died, and if you didn't you're a damn liar.
But back to Miss Beazley. She is, as you may know, the new presidential puppy (see this). She is a little black scottie and looks to be headed for extreme cuteness. But that's not the point. The point is her name. She was named after a character in the book The Enormous Egg by my late, great uncle, Oliver Butterworth. Really.
So the whole family doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry over the whole situation. Uncle Beazley is a triceratops born to a chicken in Freedom, New Hampshire. The entire book is a (thinly) veiled allegory about McCarthyism and the evils of the goverment taking away civil liberties. Ironic? Yes. Painful in a that-evil-man-has-robbed-my-family's-heritage kind of way? Yup. So not taking this lying down, we got the word out. And now my aunt has written a very lovely open letter to the White House (printed in the Hartford Courant, sorry I don't have a link yet), which you should read because Thanksgiving is coming, and what I have to be thankful is a family as wonderful and as full of humor as this:

Dear Miss Beazley,

Our family is delighted to hear you are now a member of the first family, cavorting around the White House. It's good to have another Beazley in Washington.

We'd like to tell you something about your namesake, Uncle Beazley, who has been a cherished part of our family ever since my husband, Oliver Butterworth, created him in his book ``The Enormous Egg'' in the 1950s.

Uncle Beazley is a triceratops, a three-horned dinosaur, who unexpectedly hatches out of an enormous egg laid by a hen in Freedom, N.H., where he is then raised by Nate Twitchell, age 12. Freedom is a little town described by Nate as ``about three miles from the Maine state line, but Pop says Freedom's just as much a part of our state as Concord ...'' Uncle Beazley outgrows Nate's little town, so a scientist friend takes him to Washington, where he ends up in the National Zoo. You can find him there today in a position of honor just outside the Elephant House.

Uncle Beazley's Washington life was been full of adventures. A Sen. Granderson, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, took a dislike to him and proposed a dinosaur bill to exterminate this beloved animal from Freedom -- he was eating up too much of the taxpayers' hard-earned money, and besides, he was un-American and ``a specimen of a bygone age,'' according to the senator.

Nate went on TV and gave a speech that launched a national campaign that had everyone writing congressman to defeat the dinosaur bill. Citizens' groups like the Mechanicsville Fife and Drum Corps and the Citizens' Council for Secondary Schools from Point of Rocks rallied at the zoo with banners and signs. Penny collections rolled in to pay for Uncle Beazley's alfalfa. The day was saved.

Years after writing ``The Enormous Egg,'' its creator wrote about why his dinosaur was a triceratops: He would be big and solid, ``but didn't bother other creatures,'' and his ``four sturdy legs would keep his feet solidly on the ground ... not the kind of dinosaur that could be easily pushed around.'' He would stand for a ``stubborn resistance to senators who tried to take away your freedoms,'' and his name, Uncle Beazley, ``sounded like a member of the family, slow-moving, a bit stubborn, perhaps even a little old-fashioned, but not likely to give in to bullies.''

We remember the many years when Uncle Beazley really did stand on the National Mall in Washington outside the Natural History Museum and generations of kids had a good time climbing on him before he moved to the zoo. We used to joke that he was the only statue in the District of Columbia that wasn't honoring a war.

His story has been told in other countries, in staged plays, in TV movies and in a remarkable musical put on at the Wilmington, Del., Opera House. A Beazley worth being named after, eh?

It was no accident that Uncle Beazley showed up in New Hampshire in the 1950s, right in the middle of the McCarthy era. And we're glad you're there in the White House now. We can always use a reminder in Washington of our need for civil liberties. And if you're little and wiggly -- so much the better.

Welcome to our nation's capital!

Your friends, Miriam Butterworth and the Butterworth family

Kevin Sites Blog

Bleary-eyed, just back from the trip, no customs hassles like azulita but will comment on that when I get a chance. Anyway, a lot of things to discuss including moments of lucidity while abroad - but for now check out this. He's the guy who filmed the shooting of the unarmed Iraqi by the Marine - it's pretty deep shit.

Pros and cons

We were already discussing the possibility of fleeing the disaster known as this country before our trip to Amsterdam. Nearly all subsequent events have encouraged the possibilty.

First off, Amsterdam is just the coolest, greatest city on earth. Completely laid-back and completely functional. And clean. And as far as I know their terror record is pretty low. Although a bomb could've gone off in the street outside our hotel and we probably wouldn't have noticed. I guess when it comes down to it I'm still slightly partial to NYC but that's only because I'm at home here. From an objective standpoint, A'dam has it ALL OVA New York.

Right. So the next related event was the half-hour search through all my luggage and belongings at Philly airport. I don't know if my headcold-and-flight induced bloodshot eyes might have raised some sort of alarm with those guys, but I was heading to the green lane when this guy came out of nowhere and asked me to follow him so that "we can getcha through fast." He spent the next half hour in a slpw but sure progression from false folksiness ("So what do you do in New York? Whadja do in Amsterdam?") to near-total accusation (with his face IN my purse: "Your bag REEKS of marijuana" me: "YEAH i was in AMSTERDAM"; also him: "Are you sure there's not anything in here you want to tell me about? I'm surprised the dogs didn't go after you. How much marijuana were you carrying in here?") I'm no expert on customs searches, and I hope to God I never have to go through one again, but I know some of those questions were outside the procedure because, for instance, it is in fact legal to carry pot around in Amsterdam. He also ran my bags through the scanner repeatedly, opened my retainer case and took a stack of ATM receipts out of my wallet, went to the computer, started typing stuff in, and when i walked the few feet to where he was, asked "are these all from here?" like, no sir, the 12th one down will say "1 pound pot, purchased in amsterdam for transport into the US." At least in the end I got off with a warning ("You know, the minimum fine for bringing in even the smallest amount is $500 and it ranges up to $5000, and you'll never go through customs again without a complete search")..... except, wait, I did nothing wrong! So it's STILL bullshit that he gave me that warning. I told him I had thought about the consequences and that was why, in fact, I was not carrying any weed. There was also some ugliness surrounding the customs form and him being mad that I hadn't declared my new zara jacket, but I'm sorry, I just don't give a shit and I doubt anyone in the government does either. I think I sorta let the guy down overall though. He was hoping for a bust.

So then today I was reading on dailykos (still learning how to do links...) something that I sort of knew all along but hadn't really thought of explicitely, although it's more true now than ever, and truer by the moment: the US's status as a superpower is basically all based on its military might, which is of course the strongest in the world since we know the only way to secure the peace is through total nuclear annihilation. But as far as jobs, health care, quality of life, living standards, and, probably most significantly, economic power, the simultaneous US disaster and EU success have pushed Europe way ahead of our sorry asses. Do you think GWB likes it that way? Does he like taking money, jobs, resources, from people here so that the evil-wealthy few may prosper? He's a sick bastard.

The next thing to find out is what the immigration rules in the Netherlands are like. I bet the US would be happy to see a heathen pot-smoker like myself hit the bricks (even though they'd probably rather see all of us in uniform in Iraq).

I liked him on Sportscenter too

There are a lot of crazed theories on these here internets, and it is strange that it hasn't reached the big time yet - unlike the bulge that went from 0-60 in a day. Here's one little wrap-up from a real tv show.

note to self:

some things we need to do, in no particular order:

-make sure that arlen specter is not fucked for standing up to bush. will get some links to places to call/write.

-get the dnc to head in the right direction. this one is really, really important. it goes without saying that if there is a shift right in the dnc, if we believe this morals thing and change ourselves accordingly, then the right will have won. not just this election, but every election.

[it was one thing when we went all right with clinton. and let me get this out here - for all the clinton worship you're going to see here, it's not necessarily his policies that we heart. it's more that big, loveable bubba sexiness. and he was smart. and so pink! so let's not get hung up on the clinton thing - i know that welfare reform was a nightmare and i know that his support of the death penalty is insupportable. so that said - we all tooka turn for the right with bill and with the dlc and all that. and i guess, in the end, it worked. and i rememebr a lot of haters out there calling for his head for betraying us, and they had a good point. but right he went, and win he did. now times are different.]

it seems like the first reaction to this disaster (The Bad Thing, as we like to call it) is to think that we must talk up god and our faith (oops - i don't have any! now what?) and ditch the gays and then maybe those nascar folk will vote for us. but this is where the line must be drawn. i was slow coming around to it but we must not move further right. we must remain the left. we believe in our principles not just because we thought it might get us elected but because they are the very definition of moral. we cannot allow them to turn us into assholes.

so in that vein, i say howard dean for leader of the dnc. i was wrong about him - he was right all along.

-we gotta do something about this fucked up vote situation. we gotta help blackbox, gotta email everyone we can, gotta make noise and all that. and yes, of course it won't work but that doesn't mean it isn't still worth trying. and we need to get the word out that something fishy happened.

this is partly theraputic. it feels good to believe that you have not been betrayed by your countrymen. it's also pr - the rest of the world should know that we are as fucked up and upset over this as they are. because the rest of the world does matter.

-and then we have to start planning how we're going to take this place back. being nice has not worked, and it won't as long as turd blossom is ruling things. we have to outsmart them. which should be possible since we are, like, smarter.

ok, over and out.

Black Box Voting

This seems like a natural place to start. I know that everyone is talking about these guys (or gals, rather?) but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be talking about them too. They're out there trying to really find out what happened, and they need support.

Black Box Voting

and now this...

Martial law declared in Iraq. Mt. St. Helen's smoking again. Everything's going great!

feedback to DNC

We feel that this election was stolen by the Republicans in Ohio and Florida, through uncounted provisional ballots, spoiled ballots and black box votes. The lack of a paper trail is a huge red flag. We do not think the people of those two states voted for the fear and incompetence of George Bush over the clear leadership capability and sensible vision of John Kerry. We feel that this issue should be pressed to the fullest extent of the media, that all votes should be counted, and that all big discrepancies should be investigated.

BS excuses

From the NY Times Op-Ed page, Sat. 11/6:

"Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily."

Although David Brooks uses these facts to construct a case about how the 3Mil-vote margin was made up of people who voted on security/terrorism, they show even more strongly that the evangelical vote story isn't what people are making it out to be. The Democrats did out-register the Republicans. It doesn't add up.

Another good point Brooks makes is this:

"Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying 'moral values.' But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result."

Maybe those moral values included not misleading the country into war. Or not putting corporate interests over those of ordinary people and the environment. Or not behaving like overblown cowboys in the international arena.

The first time

Beginnings are difficult, and so perhaps it's best to jump right in. If we were more organized at this point we would have a manifesto. Instead, we have only inchoate ideas, and a need to get the word out.

If you are quivering with rage while simultaneously curled in a fetal position under your bed, sure that something, somehow, has gone wrong, if you have been crying in the bathroom of your GOP dominated workplace, if you know, just know, that people in Cleveland did not stand in line for 6 hours to vote republican, what else is there to do but turn to the internets?