As a Dean supporter, let me just say no true Dean supporter wants Nader to run. I've already e-mailed him.

Will you?

Everyone who tells Nader not to run gets respect in my book. He's a good man, who is fighting the wrong battle. I never agreed with his argument that Democrats were just as business friendly as Republicans. I was sad to see him proved wrong, but I'm more annoyed to see him still asleep at the wheel.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned my friends working at Project Neptune but recently an interesting issue has come up when they tried to buy some google ads. It seems google is in bed with the cruise-line industry. Weird, eh? Of course, the last time google tried to make a stand on principle they bowed to the Chinese government over censorship rights, so this is pretty much par for the course, but still, it's a little disturbing.

And, no, I don't called Project Neptune by any other name. The new name (and flash-driven cold-fusion image-bloated website) is silly. Project Neptune it will remain.

So it turns out those delightful creations hawking quiznos subs are called "Spongmonkeys". Their website is here and another video is located right here. These things are frickin' addictive. Trust me. If you haven't seen them yet you haven't laughed.

Yes, it's time for Friday's credibility gap...

First off, I'd like to apologize for the scanty postings the last week or so. Being without a computer severely impacts my ability to post. My new one is being made right now, so hopefully it'll arrive soon. Then more posts. Yay!

Today's issue is that Bush recess appointed William Pryor to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Where's the credibility gap? Simple. Bush claimed "A minority of Democratic senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist tactics to prevent him and other qualified nominees from receiving up-or-down votes" as if Pryor was a good candidate stymied by evil Dems. In fact, Pryor was the natural result of a contentious judicial process marked by the administration's desire to send overtly political appointees to the bench, rather than moderates. Dems have played along, approving all moderates but witholding passage for a few far right wing judges. For someone who has been railing lately about "activist judges" (in relation to civil unions, etc.), Bush doesn't seem troubled by appointing a judge who has supported overturning Roe v. Wade. That's a credibility gap.

Okay, so I'm watching today's press briefing and I notice that it's a fairly soft and short one, when the final question comes up, from a twelve-year old:

Scott, fittingly, patronizes her and then promptly ends the news conference. I've never seen such a bizarre spectacle...is the White House having to bring in "ringer" press people to ensure Scott doesn't get trashed? What other explanation is there?

Today's credibility gap is also funny: Bush just said "we need to put a stake in the heart of the death tax, and kill it for good" as if he was Bushy the Estate-Tax Slayer. What a joke.

He spent minute after minute trying to say the economy is good. But we know it's not. That's an obvious credibility gap.

Yes, it's a reference to Encyclopedia Brown.

I just got the rumor confirmed.

Let's just say the old adage about being caught with a dead girl or a live boy applies to Governor Perry here.

And I don't think he killed anyone.

werkz advice: save your cash.

I'm only 15% of the way through the sequel to the wildly succesfull "final fantasy x" game, but I've already learned enough to throw out an opinion. it's disappointing, on many levels. First off, almost all of the characters in FFX2 are women. Not bad for DOA games, but pretty awful for what is supposed to be a action/fantasy game. Second, the amount of actual fighting in the game is much lower: after ten minutes of battling monsters, you're "treated" to 15 minutes of mindless plot exposition and/or wacky dance numbers. That brings me to the third reason FFX2 is lame: the storyline is weak. The premise is that the protagonist and her band of fighters must journey around the world to collect spheres. So far, so good. Idiotic side-plots involving Yuna dancing, people being depressed, and so forth abound. The turning point for me occurred when one of the mini-games in the main game involved giving a evil character a massage.

Yeah, you read that right. A massage.

Even creepier, as you're playing the massage "game", the character (a woman with a "dress" that resembles two pieces of fabric held together merely by a brooch in the belt/groin area) moans ecstatically. After losing the game once (it makes broccoli crunching noises when you massage poorly) I managed to win but feel dirty at the same time. After the joy of Rachet & Clank 2 and Prince of Persia, FFX2 falls particularly flat.

Okay, if you've got flash and are ready for a real treat click to watch this commercial from quiznos or this one or, finally, the the coupon commercial. I have no idea what those things are supposed to look like, but they're hysterical. A co-worker pointed them out to me and...you just have to watch them to believe it.

I'm still laughing.

After reading Brad's post, I decided to re-read Bryan's speech. It's amazing how relevant it still is today. Some excerpts:

Bryan's masses are starting to arise again. You'll see it special elections. You'll read about it in newspapers and on the internet. When Dean formally codifies an organization, you'll see it in the rank and file volunteers who have been working all year to change America. We are a growing army, not from the fringe, but from the middle. As Bryan himself points out,

They've lied to us long enough. It's time to fight.

His speech was good...I enjoyed his line about how Judy's presence (or lack thereof) inspired a long overdue debate over the role of women and careers in society. The line about being tired of George W. Bush dividing Democrats was also well put: we know in the end that we'll come together in November to toss the bum out.

Again, for all you ex-Dean people (now that it's official), let me plead with you to go to the Democrat Meetup and help out the party. We have to keep fighting.

From today's White House Press Briefing comes the latest credibility gap. McClellan is on his heels because the press corps is beating him over the head with the economic numbers. And McClellan just said "The President isn't interested in crunching numbers..." and "we can debate the numbers all we want to" as if Bush was responsible for the raw data and as if this was some debate between two economists. It's not. Most economists agree that the economy isn't creating enough new jobs to sustain the current employment rate. We'd need to create at least 200,000 jobs each month to stay even. We're not even close.

The administration projected at least 300K new jobs a month. No one is even in that ballpark.

Now Scott's resorting to the "I already addressed this question" subterfuge. And he refuses to say the President stands by the CEA job projections, which are bogus, as everyone knows. All he has left is his wacky "let's extend the tax cuts" argument, which every reporter points out is what they said the last two times, with no major subsequent job growth.

He's not endorsing Edwards...as I mentioned before, he's trying to pivot to create some sort of political organization. An interesting bit of trickeration; it'll be interesting to see if Edwards manages to tap into the Kerry hatred that a great deal of Dean supporters feel right now.

I just had one of my ex-coworker's baby spit up all over my jacket. Yay! Surprisingly, I'm not annoyed. That is, after all, what babies do. For some reason it seems appropriate for this moment.

The governor of Texas may be in for some trouble...combined with Chandler's victory yesterday and the whole GOP machine is starting to come apart.

I was annoyed yesterday when, during the post-Wisconsin spin one of the commentators said something to the effect of "I don't buy this whole 'virtual democrat' argument that Trippi keeps trotting out...I mean, these 'virtual dems' didn't even win a single primary". Slurring the blogosphere as being "unable to win a primary" is exactly why Chandler's support and victory was so important.

Without soft money, these so-called 'virtual democrats' are keeping us afloat against the GOP. Small dollar contributions are going to take back the party to the people, and to reinvigorate every Democrat. The reason primary attendance has been so high has been disgust at Bush, channelled through grass-roots organizing and GOTV operations. Without the 'virtual democrats' who actually had a spine and put their money where their mouths were, none of this would've been possible.

As JMM points out, the Dems finally have an advantage that we can make the most of. And as I relayed to a friend yesterday, it's a huge one. How huge? Well, just look at the latest political meetup numbers, which are a good gauge of net-savvy strength:

1. Dean in 2004 (>188,600 members)
2. Clark in 2004 (>66,700)
3. Kerry in 2004 (>48,600)
4. Democratic Party (>27,000)
5. Kucinich in 2004 (>23,800)
6. Townhall (>22,600)
7. March for Women (>10,100)
8. Edwards in 2004 (>9,500)
9. Common Cause (>7,000)
10. MTV and RTV (>5,800)
11. Republican Party (>4,900)
12. Impeach Bush (>3,800)
13. Bush in 2004 (>3,400)
14. Million Moms (>2,200)
15. Gay Rights (>1,700)

Between the top three groups is a quarter of a million people. MTV and Rock the Vote have more members than the GOP group. The "Impeach Bush" group is even larger than the Bush/Cheney 04 group. If the Dems can continue to water the grassroots and get a million people involved around the country, there's no way the GOP can stop us in November. Regardless of who is on our ticket. Simple, numerical superiority.

Go head over to ActBlue to get the latest information on all of the House & Senate races along with ways to contribute, get involved, etc. And don't forget there's a Democratic Meetup this evening, so be sure to sign up and attend. The more people we get involved now, the better our army will be come November. Trust me.

So I'm at this political event Monday evening and someone comments that if Bush wins, they're going to move to another country. Seriously.

I'm so sick and tired of this meme that I can't stand it any longer for multiple reasons:

1. Most people who say this have no intention of moving. So for them it's just hyperbole, and diminishes the impact of those who are telling the truth.
2. Of those who actually mean it, the next problem is that by leaving, they plan to simple abandon the struggle to restore America to its proper role in the world. Did the conservative give up while FDR was in power? Of course not.
3. Finally, those who give up simply assume that they can move "somewhere else" and have it just as good as they have it here. They're wrong. For all of America's flaws, it is still the greatest nation in the world. Opportunities exist here that are found nowhere else. Giving that up is an idiotic gesture.

Of course, I told the person in question none of these reasons, because she was starting to annoy me. I just stopped talking to her.

In my "free" time I also updated the w3c links at the bottom of the page along with a link to firefox. Feel free to use them and be sure to tell me if the site doesn't validate for any reason. Thanks!

So you thought I'd forgotten Tuesday's credibility gap? Silly you.

Over the three day weekend, the White House dumped a whole bunch of papers on the press corps. It's too bad they don't answer any of the important questions in the process. The AWOL issue just won't go away...

So I'm hanging out at Politiki when this guy starts to setup a keyboard. A few minutes later, while I'm on my second pool game I notice a woman warming up her voice next to him. The jukebox is playing "My Way" (yeah, the Joebituary Song itself) and then cuts off so these two people can start singing.

It was awful.

As a Dean supporter, I think that moment summed everything up. When I found out later (Gwyn called me to tell me the news: we'd lost to Kerry & Sharpton...and ward one was the best ward of all of them) what the results were, it just confirmed it. At this point, I think Dean's going to pull out and form some sort of 527 committee to keep politically viable. It's been a long, strange run.

Oh, yeah, the exit polls have him losing to Kerry and Edwards, fyi.

So as soon as the god-awful music fires up, I settle my tab and jet for the commonwealth, to hit Loaf's birthday party. This year was in a much better spot (only one couple stood her up...yay!) and was a short walk from the metro, at a trendy sushi place called Cafe Asia. The one problem: the service was horrible. The waiter kept ignoring us, and even after we ordered, brought our sushi menu back to inform us that he'd given us the happy hour menu instead of the dinner menu. The only difference? The prices were higher on the new menu. What a joke. He didn't even transcribe the choices over...he made us rewrite everything onto the new sheet. Combined with the oddity of having Loaf's mother present (evidently Meat and Loaf moved into some new digs and Loaf's mater decided to drop by...) made it all a memorable experience.

Almost two hours expired and I still hadn't eaten, so when it finally showed up I plowed through it, said goodbye to Meat (and asked him to hang out later) and Loaf and cabbed back across the potomac to Chinatown, where I met Leto and some friends at Fado. We then relocated next door to RFD to meet Sean and some of his friends. The larger group then moved over to Coyote Ugle, where we ran into even more friends in line. The temperature was below freezing and it took about half an hour to get inside, which may have colored my review of the joint. The only good thing was that some idiot on the second floor of the building decided to do a little back-door excavation action while pushed against the glass. First the right, then the left hand, both voyaged to his posterior in a treasure-hunting experience that every single person waiting in line got to see. A real class act, to be sure. When we finally made it inside, we snuck up to the second floor to catch a sight of the tool himself, and once accomplished, felt too ashamaed to actually tell him his disgrace. (Plus, I'm sure he was entertaining new people in line!)

As I mentioned, Coyote Ugly was actually pretty lame. At one point a coyote who was dancing on the bar yelled at the crowd to say we were too quiet. A second later she said "Do you guys think I'm stupid or something?" to which there was only silence in response. And she was the good-looking coyote. As a feminist, I was secretly pleased to watch them dancing among cynical DC folks, who just wanted to get their drinks and watch quietly, not engage in high-school pep-rally empowerment cheers. I think C.U. will end up bombing, much like Planet Hollywood did: tourists may come to see it, but regular DC people won't, which will lower attendance enough to kill it.

It was when one of the large belt-buckle adorned coyotes began singing Lynyrd Skynyrd that I realized how weird it was to see some yankee (sent from the NYC C.U. HQ, no doubt) attempt to fire up the rather slow southern crowd in attendance. What a joke.

After Ugly, we relocated back to Fado, then we headed up north to hit Ben's. On the way there, I helped a nice young woman into a cab. The cab only went ten feet and stopped. It turns out the driver refused to drive one person away...so when I walked up to ask what the problem was she informed me that she needed someone to go her way. We obliged, which worked out perfectly because she ended up living a block from the 'werkz. Some chili-cheese fries later, I parted company with Sean and friends, walked her home and then headed for the finish line in time to catch a few scenes from my new Alien disc set. A good way to polish off the evening.

Okay, I'll mention it again: my computer is dead. So my posting is dependent upon being at work, which is a serious limitation. So if people e-mail me at home, I'm not reading it until I can get into work. Got it? Good.

V-Day festivities were good. I worked the entire day at the DC Caucus, which was fun but odd...halfway through I checked the ballot box counter and it registered 496 total votes. We ended up being around 1000 votes. For all of Ward One. That means 8000 total votes in the city. Yeah, that's pretty awful. I think everyone can agree that the decision to hold a non-binding primary followed by two separate caucuses was a regrettable one. We should've had one, binding primary, before Iowa. We should've walked out of the convetion in Boston. Instead, the person with the best organization in DC lost the caucus to a man who didn't even campaign here. Tragic.

After the caucus I headed over to Politiki for a "victory party" which was anything but. The returns weren't in yet (again) so I realized quite rapidly that I'd have little time before I was supposed to hit Loaf's birthday party. More later...

werkz advice: don't bother.

When some friends announced they wished to hit DC's latest bar, "Coyote Ugly", as a valentine's day excursion, I was excited. Afterwards, on almost every level (literally and figuratively), Coyote Ugly let me down. I'll ignore the lengthy wait in line to get in (despite sub-zero temps outside) because that's not the fault of the club. I won't ignore the idiotic decision to raise the cover to $10 for guys (free for women!) and then give out idiotic "free drink tickets". What's free about a $5 price increase? Yeah, nothing. Once inside, each of the three levels in the old "The Rock" building near the MCI Center were converted into a bar dancing disaster.

That is the heart of Ugly: namely, that women can dance on the bar. Normally, in regular bars, this would be a sign that things had gotten crazy. At CU, however, this level of craziness takes place 24-7, so there are no slow moments. Even if the crowd isn't into it, the women dance. Even if you need a drink and you've been waiting ten minutes to get some service, the women dance. The result: three levels of dc people looking annoyed while women dance on the bar.

Don't even get me started on the whole "coyote" bit, either. The women weren't chosen because they were drop-dead gorgeous, they were chosen because they were really skinny. And could pour drinks. So that means bad faces, and no feminism allowed. And that's before the local women get on the bar. This isn't empowerment, it's lunacy. Fortunately, the people who attended with me all agreed that Coyote Ugly didn't measure up. So maybe it actually is good for feminism, because it will die shortly. Yay!

Plenty to write about but my mind grows tired, tunes spinning too loud before silence hits home. The lack of a computer at home is still impacting my ability to post but I've still got stories for all. I apologize for no v-day colors, but I was occupied. Next year I'll do better.

I saw rear window again this evening and it helped me realize, one of these days, someone is going to make me feel guilty for my vices. That time is still far off, though. For now, each tiny violation seems small, to count them a petty exercise in uselessness. Alas, it is only when one wishes to improve that things change. I say never trust anyone goes the song hitting me now. The trick is...the trick is...to not mind, to keep breathing, to know there is no trick.

It's an odd sensation, when you have the words at your fingertips, when you know you're capable of saying almost anything into the ether, to know information could be shared, secrets divulged, history re-examined. To know you'll stop soon and not let any of it out. When I was much younger, I'd occasionally type out lengthy letters of little-to-no import that were nevertheless imbued with a sense of self-importance. Ego reified, they were melodramatic missives that didn't matter in the end, but it was nice to just tap in and see the fluid flow out. If you go through a mountain of garbage you occasionally find bits of treasure; so it was with these letters. Looking back, I can point to a specific phrase or thought that hit the perfect tone and still rings true. I miss not being able to do that anymore, simply because of time constraints and the limits of my office.

A corner has been turned. I think things are somewhat different than they were three days before. Not in anything to do with any other person. Not of any significance. Maybe it's spring in the air. Maybe I'm just tired.

Let's pretend: happy end.