So I'm sitting here, surrounded by the detritus of a political night. Or nightmare, if you will.

I still think we can win. If we pick up Ohio, through the provisional ballots, we'll be ready to capture the White House. If not, we won't.

But as I type these words, the thought of winning or losing the grand prize seems very far away. I look at the map of red and blue states, of percentages and initiatives, and try to piece it all together.

Right now, at this hour, only one state has switched sides from 2000: New Hampshire. And it switched in our favor. This stunning lack of difference has baffled me the entire evening. A huge turnout? Check. A massive lead in early exit polls? Check. An electorate concerned with Iraq and less with terrorism? Check. Why, then, have we done no better than from four years ago? Why is George Bush leading the popular vote count?

There are several reasons that spring to my sleep-addled mind.

1. Our massive get out the vote operation, unparalleled in modern history, actually was equaled by the Republicans.

2. Voters just never liked John Kerry.

3. The echo chamber of blogs and e-mails let progressives think they were taking a pulse of the nation when in fact they were dead wrong.

4. The Republicans cheated.

5. All our new voters we registered failed to actually vote.

Obviously, I'd prefer #4 to the other options. But when I look at the current national vote projections, with George Bush leading, I can't believe they could cheat so well. How could John Kerry be doing worse than Al Gore at winning the popular vote?

Every volunteer I talked to was so much more fired up this year than four years previously. I never saw a GOP operative who was excited about Bush. Yet according to the polls in Florida and Ohio, tons of Republicans came out to vote, enough to balance our efforts.

Maybe people don't care. Maybe all the GOTV was for naught. Maybe a good ad buy beats personal contact. I don't know what works. But I do know one thing: regardless of who pulls it out over the next week or two, I will continue to fight. DC went 90/9 for Kerry. My hometown is full of smart people who voted properly. I will never give up this fight, for all the people who know America deserves better.

For everyone who fought this fight, I salute you. For everyone who will give up in the future, I have no respect for you. This fight is too important to retreat in the middle of a battle.

Even if John Kerry ends up winning, we need to win the battle of ideas as well. I'm armed for battle. It's no longer good enough to say demographic trends favor us 20 years down the road. By that time, we may not have much left to salvage.

And so, tomorrow, we begin again. We fight for Kerry to win the presidency. Then we fight for every idea we hold dear. Then we fight until we win. That is our only option.

The field offices here are crazy full of people...(as opposed to being full of crazy people) the main HQ is, by contrast, a smoothly running machine. I'm actually more confident now than before I left, if only because the people on the ground seem dedicated and hard-working, and the people above seem competent and confident.

The more I see the breakdown of early return numbers, the better I feel as well. It's clear that large numbers of Democrats are voting early. That means even more people pounding the pavement tomorrow in states where you cannot vote ahead of time. Which is a great thing.

My crazy prediction of Kerry getting over 300 electoral votes, looks like it might just come true. Yeah. That's a nice blue map.

The latest AZ poll, a Survey 2000 affair, is way off the mark. Trust me.

The party was great.

The house is a disaster zone.

I leave for Arizona in a few hours.

Victory is ours.

Relax. Stop worrying. Why? Because we're going to win.

Yes, yes, I know. It's the most important election ever. Our very democracy is at stake. Bush is pure evil, etc. There are only a few days left!

But you know what? Worrying won't win us the election. Fretting over whether Dems in Colorado should vote to split the electoral votes proportionally (they should!) or not won't win us the state. Nightmares about voter suppression tactics in the inner cities won't help us.

Only two things will influence this election at this point: the number of people who registered to vote, and the number who vote for Democrats. We've already done the tough work, which is the first part. Record numbers of new voters have been registered in Democratic areas across the country. Now all that's left is doing get out the vote operations.

We can do this. We will be up early and out late, getting everyone to vote. We will not have sleepless nights, because we will be too tired from our daytime exertions. We don't have to worry about states we cannot influence, because we can trust that all the hardworking folks in (insert state name here) are doing a good job. We are coordinated. We are on message. We are united, as never before.

In short, we will win. And once we do, then we can start worrying again about how to duplicate our success and achieve some solid social policies that benefit the people. Politics is only half campaigning. The rest is governing. And if we all pitch in over the next couple days, we will be halfway there.

I believe. Do you?

Well, thanks to some trusty work over at globalsecurity.org we can now definitively say that the Pentagon's latest Al QaQaa explanation, namely, that trucks showed up before the end of the war to remove the HMX, is completely false.

Of course, if the combination of IAEA notes and DoD imint doesn't convince you, the embedded KSTP video might put the seal on the bunker.

aside: my spell checker coughed on almost every other word in this post!

So I had jury duty yesterday. As usual, I was running late...

I briefly thought about taking a cab but decided against it, jumping on the metro at the exact moment I was supposed to be in court. Twenty minutes later, I emerged at Judiciary Square and ran into the proper building. Of course, there was no reason for me to rush. I was assigned a jury number and sad down in the large lounge.

A short, non-informative instructional video later (it had been produced in 80s, judging by the rusty Toyotas and bad clothing styles), they began to call all the numbers who were going to be empaneled with the first judge. Finally, after almost everyone had been called, the clerk told us to go into the atrium and that we would be led to the courtroom from there. The entire room got up and walked to the atrium. Where we stood. And stood. And stood some more.

Ten minutes later, the clerk re-emerged as if this was all part of the process and instructed us to follow her to courtroom 313. We dutifully did, and as we approached the doorway, she told us we needed to get into three lines, starting at the door and working back down the hallway. All 75+ people did so, and I found myself near the front of the innermost line. Next, she said the bailiff or another clerk would come to bring us into the courtroom.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, we were still standing in line. A full 15 minutes after she left, the clerk appeared and said that he was going to help us get into the room. All we had to do was listen to him call out our number and he would direct us where to go. He begins to call out numbers, and one by one, people squeeze through the lines (if you were on my row, you had to go through at least 2 people to get out) to get to him. Once they reach him, he began to move them into more lines on the other side of the door.

I was called tenth, and found myself in the second line on the other side of the doorway. (These new lines were much shorter, but more numerous). Another fifteen minutes of number calling and line shifting took place, until everyone in the three lines had been rearranged into new lines. At this point, the clerk left and went back into the courtroom. I took the opportunity to make a joke at his expense. A few people near me laughed. We then waited for another five minutes.

Finally, the man emerged and told the first line to come into the courtroom. Within a minute, the second line was inside and within another ten, all 75+ people were inside the court. The complex line-switching maneuver seemed pointless, as I was to find out shortly.

For the next step was for the judge to tell us (after a brief introduction saying that the trial was a criminal one involving several armed robberies in 2001) that we needed to answer 18 questions on an index card to see if we could sit on the jury. The first question was, of course, whether we could be on a trial until (and here she paused, asking the prosecution how long the trial might take) at least Monday. Mentally, I had never considered that a trial would last that long. I've never gotten this far in the jury process, so yeah, it was silly for me to think justice was swifter, but in my mind, petit juries served one day and grand juries served for weeks. I never considered that a petit jury could serve for one trial which could last several days. Anyway, my plane ticket to Arizona is set for Sunday, so I couldn't do it. But I had to listen to the other 17 questions anyway.

Finally, they begin to call up people one at a time to answer the questions. I was fortunate to be number 10, because I knew I wouldn't need to stay, but didn't want to hang out in that room long. Sure enough, when I went up and handed my index card in the judge said, "Oh, you're not going to be here!" to which I replied, "I'm going to Arizona on Sunday" to which she bantered back, "Oh, so you'll be back on Monday then...just kidding!" I said I was working on campaign stuff, she said good luck, and I left the room.

Once my number had been re-entered into the jury pool, I went back into the lounge. Where I sat and read. And sat and read. Finally, Fincher called to ask me to a building dedication ceremony a block or two away from where I was. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was supposed to be speaking at it. I had an hour for lunch, so I bolted over to the g-town law center. Once there, I found Fincher and friends salivating over an elaborate spread prepared for the occasion. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be ready until after the speech,s o we ended up going outside to hear various deans extol the virtues of various rich people who gave various sums of money to build various buildings. Finally, Justice O'Connor began to talk.

About globalization.

It was weird. Her speech was boilerplate Thomas Friedman with a little George Bush thrown in for wackiness. (A couple of mentions of 9/11 were just off the wall, considering she tied them into state-sponsored terrorism in a Cheneyesque manner.) I mean, she's a Republican and all, but it was just boring hearing her drone on about how "the last few years have shown the US has a newfound place for international law" (paraphrased!). Come on. Really? I would say the last few years were the most isolationist we've seen in awhile. That lexus got car-bombed and the olive tree has been bulldozed in the interim.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore so I went back toward the food. A few minutes later, Justice O'Boring concluded and I thought I could eat. But no...a few more personages had to speak. My hour was almost up so I bid Fincher and Co. adieu, grabbed a solitary macaroon and jetted back to court.

I arrived, five minutes late and worried again, since the clerk had said several panels would be called in the afternoon. Sure enough, two panels were swiftly called (my number not among them) and I found myself alone in an almost empty room again. For hours. If I'd just hung out at the GULC a bit longer I could've stuffed myself with lox, but no, I had to hurry back to sit in a room.

The only highlight at that point was the number of crazy people in the area. First, about ten minutes into the emptyroomness, someone talking on their cell-phone at the door said, "Yeah, they got me down here with all of the murderers and rapists and pedophiles" in a loud voice. The entire room turned their heads around to see what jerk was talking. Later I saw him arguing in the hall with a stranger. What an ass. A few minutes later, a fairly intelligent guy started saying Bush was bad for the country, and he found another kindred soul who agreed. Five minutes into their loud anti-Bush conversation the kindred soul turned out to be stark raving mad, filled with weird Bush family conspiracy theories such as the one that Prescott Bush made all his money in Iran and that the Iranians were covering it up. Yeah, right. Fifteen minutes later, both descended into simple gay-bashing.

Finally, hours later, and only a few letters left in my new dictionary book, they let us go. Whew. What a waste of a day. And now I have to wait two years to get another chance to hear a cool trial! Annoying.

So, apparently Bush is going to pull the latest ad they put up, re-cut it, and re-air it. Why? Because the ad was Photoshopped to add additional servicemen into it.

What an idiotic move on the campaign's part. I mean, it'd be one thing if they were trying to blow the crowd size, but apparently, they just were trying to airbrush Bush out of the photo which makes no sense whatsoever. Making news about the ad is probably the last thing BC04 wanted.

Certainly, however, the desire to produce a slick ad, though the facts were malleable, gives a new meaning to the phrase "whatever it takes".

'werkz advice: a very scary movie. See it in the theaters if you are up for it.

The Grudge, an American version of a Japanese horror movie, is a good film. Normally, most adaptations of foreign films manage to lose the original's feel. In this case, however, the original director signed on and set the story in the same country. Only a few American actors appear, which actually adds to the creepy backdrop, because not only are the characters scared, they are confused about why things are even going horribly wrong.

Most horror films vary between suspense and gore. I've never been a fan of the latter (Event Horizon, for instance) while the former can be great (The Others is a great example) if done well. The Grudge manages to be fairly gore free, except for a few scenes, and yet isn't suspenseful at all. From the shocking opening scene, scares come almost every two minutes, leaving the viewer without much to do except hope the movie ends early.

It's not for the faint of heart. It took me about an hour to fully relax afterwards.

Read a far, far more detailed review of Mosh and enjoy.

Mosh is a polemic that is intended to make you think about strong feelings; strong feelings that you have because of the political situation you find yourself living in. Quite specifically, Mosh is intended to allow you to internalize the anger, the hate, and the rage that the videos' young protagonists feel...and yet, Mosh gets you to channel it, gets you to think about what you and they might do with that anger and hate and rage, to think about why you and they feel that anger and hate and rage.

Private Kelly's sunken-cheeked, grimaced face, angrily meditating on the music, alone in the crowd, is at the core of the politics of this video.

Rage, properly channeled, can be a powerful tool. Now I know how the GOP felt in 94...

There was a problem with adding comments, for those of you using Internet Explorer. It has now been fixed. Sorry it took me so long...

Go check out Eminem's latest video. It's a little large, (otherwise I'd throw it up on my site) but well worth the effort. Last year when I saw Kid Rock prancing around in an American flag poncho, I was annoyed at the ignorance and idiocy shown to all the world during the Superbowl. (Janet's display, by contrast, seemed tame.). But when I saw this video, I was proud to be an American.

More people are fighting back.

update:

update2:

I voted early this year, because I felt it was important to be able to go to another state to help others vote.

This political year, many are saying, is the most important in a generation. They are mistaken. Unfortunately, the last cycle was more important, if only because we had a chance to prevent the last four years from ever taking place. We had an opportunity to continue to grow the economy, shrink the debt, help America's workers and improve health care. Instead, by the barest of margins, Americans voted for to roll back worker protections, shift the tax burden from wealth to work, propose weaker environmental rules and fail to make any dent in the nation's health care crisis. "What!" you say? "Surely, Americans didn't vote to do all of that!"

And yet, the sad truth is, many of us did. The choice has only become starker in the intervening four years. This time, we'll hear no excuses about the Democratic and Republican tickets being similar. We won't hear true progressives urging moderation. Instead, many who slept through the last election have this time awakened to find a darker, fear-filled world promoted by the current White House.

We need to vote for our hopes, not our fears. Voting on November 2 is important because we can either continue to slide backward, or we can move forward on a new path, one that appeals to the best of all Americans. Instead of cowering in fear, we can be triumphant in our abilities. We are the number one country in the world. We deserve the best health care, the best job market, the greatest standard of living for all of our citizens. To say "we're good enough" isn't American: it's defeatist. To say "we're secure enough" isn't pragmatic, it's the politics of fear.

On November 2, those of us who haven't voted already will have a chance to replace the current administration with one that can actually move us forward. I hope everyone takes that step forward.

Every election, you'll hear some voices on the wings saying "if we don't win, I'll move to country X". Well, I have news for you. I don't care if they attempt to steal the election again. This is my country and I'm not going to move out or give up just because a small deluded minority succeeded in throwing away the will of the people. I'll stay. I'll fight. We've let the conservatives run this country into the ground over the past few years and it's time to make a stand. That's why I voted early: to help others fight back against an agenda of fear and delusion. Every single voter I talk to over the next few days will be another push for change. Every person I call, every door I knock, will have an impact. This time, we're going to win.