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Had I been writing “Pop Smatters” this summer, The Russian Futurist’s “Precious Metals,” from Let’s Get Ready to Crumble, would have been, hands-down, a Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now. (And yes, the disc came out even earlier, but these recommendations are subject to the vagaries of fate, my tastes, and especially what makes it out of the WMUC offices.) I still recommend you check it out, or dig up the track’s near-twin and current TYSBLTRN, “The Shore,” off The Cansecos’s self-titled record. The M.O. is the same: programmed beats, keyboard synths, various loops, all washing out flattened vocals that are consequently all the more intriguing for their dwelling just out of reach. And so one has little choice but to simply hum along, even while one puzzles about what a bunch of Canadians are doing singing “J to the A M A —I—C A / All together now” in the first place. (Listen to “The Shore” here or request it here.)
While you’re online, I heartily recommend the site for Sandstrom Design. Be sure to check out their “Salute to the Greatest Designs of All Time” (regarding the Ship in a Bottle: “Slightly edged out the message in a bottle mostly because it’s a ship, and it’s in a bottle”) and “Color of the Month” (July’s was Department of Motor Vehicle Brown). Amazing copy and understated design.
It's times like these that I look back at the word to see what it might say:
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
Pretty apt, eh?
Well, they finally did it.
Making my morning even better, (after last night's epic battle with Microsoft came to an end after 4 weeks) today Firefox went gold. A 1.0 release. Nice.
All you windows users can just go here to pick up an executable installer of the latest version.
If you haven't tried Firefox yet, you haven't experienced the web the way it was meant to be: fast and portable.
Three ways to have a good morning:
- Eat lots of bacon for breakfast.
- Get a ride to work.
- Notice the skies are bright blue.
Combine those three with an ice-cold beverage and you're well on your way toward a great day. And that's even before I realized Sigourney was visiting. Hooray!
These numbers are simply unbelievable.
Say it with me...if they pull a knife, we pull a gun. If they send one of ours to the hospital, we send one of theirs to the morgue. Hell, we own Chicago now, don't we?
This "we're nicer than them" business has to end. Today.
Update: the D-trip responds to this. Bottom line: I'd rather be known as a member of the party that plays hardball than the one that is warm and fuzzy. We don't need plumbers, we need soldiers. I always defend the DCCC against nay-sayers, so I'm not criticizing them; I'm criticizing the mindset of the party in general that thinks winning the women's vote involves touchy-feely slogans or winning the men's vote involves hunting. Americans are good judges of character, and they can tell when a candidate is "tough" fairly well. Being tough means calling things like they are, not being political 100% of the time.
Saturday I enjoyed the incredibly great weather by roaming around g-town and discovering that every single store I couldn't afford to purchase anything in was having a sale. I ended up just picking up a couple of items that, when I returned home, turned out to be not what I expected. Regardless, good deals overall. Did I mention the blue skies and perfect weather? Oh, well...it was wonderful even if I did.
In the evening, I managed to see the greatest soccer game ever with Fincher. After two incredible halves full of amazing shots from both sides, two scoreless overtimes, and a tied shootout, it went to golden goal. United prevailed. The fans went wild. You had to be there to witness the madness.
Like every perfect evening, Saturday ended with some sushi.
On Sunday, I plowed through a nautical novel, soaked myself in rays and caught a film in the evening. I'd post a review now, but I'm busy working on the coding for the next major addition to the site. So be prepared!
can anyone locate a copy of the electoral college map by population just shown by tim russert on the meet the press?
Yeah, the Blue Room is going back on the market. So get your bids in early. Check out the craiglist posting or just go straight to the source for all the info you need.
Any questions? Ur?
...and no states wasted ten percent of their vote on the Nazis or thirty percent on the Communists, like the Germans did.
...and I can be proud to be from New Hampshire again, where a Democrat is once again governor, and 169,464 people voted for a 94-year-old woman instead of Judd Gregg.
...and really, who wanted to see John Kerry's face on a presidential medal?
Although, come to think of it, that's a sacrifice I would have been willing to make...
When I left for Oregon and Washington, I was all psyched to send you all a “Dispatches From a Battleground State” kind of column…especially a survey of the televised political ads, since we’ve had almost none here in the Baltimore-DC metro area. But I didn’t watch TV the entire time I was there, except to watch the Sox beat the Yankees.
Since I got back, I was still planning to write about Portland and Seattle, and about the great people out there, and the lovely time I had. I was going to write about staying with a good friend at the house of her sister and sister-in-law—one of the lucky lesbian families to get married while it was legal—and looking at their wedding photos. I was going to write about the Michael Moore rally I attended, and all the Kerry signs I saw, and how energizing it all was
Obviously, it seems a bit moot now. But even at the time I had a dark feeling it was moot then (which may have been a part of what kept me from writing…).
Because the moment I left the city…the moment I ventured into the surrounding state, as I did on the way to see Moore…the Bush signs starting cropping up. And cropping up. And cropping up.
There are a lot of states out there. A lot of space. A lot of people. And they’re scared. And they don’t like change. They don’t want to think hard about politics…about America’s place in the world...about progressive social issues. They don’t want to care as expansively about people who aren’t like them, who they don’t understand, who they’ll never meet. They just want to live their lives, and feed their families, and do OK.
And Bush offers them that narrative. Bush make them feel safe, and OK, and proud to be American. When America is attacked, Bush makes sure we attack somebody—anybody—back. When they don’t have enough money in their wallets, Bush says he’ll cut taxes, and no one likes taxes, so they nod, because it sounds reasonable. When their own family lives are chaotic, Bush shields them from gay marriage and abortion, which make the notion of family even more chaotic, and he invokes God and Christianity to boot. Bush is like them…or more accurately, projects an image of being like them…and they welcome that. (And we can’t complain, because that same impulse helped Clinton beat the first Bush.)
Rural and Southern America will let itself be lied to, let itself be worked over, let itself be bled dry, because the GOP tells them what they want to hear and makes them feel safe. It’s why people buy SUVs—not because they are safer (by any statistic they’re clearly not), but because they feel safer. It’s why a battered woman defends her husband’s actions and goes back again and again—because he says he loves her, and because facing forward and facing the unknown is far more terrifying than the familiar and muted terror at home. Bush’s America, for better or for worse, is one they understand…no matter what bruises his party leaves on it.
I saw it in Oregon. I saw it in Washington. I see it whenever I talk to my relatives in rural Illinois. They don’t love Bush. But they’re afraid of cities…afraid of Washington…and afraid of being left behind. So they vote the way they do.
And I can’t blame them. They’re honestly doing what they think is right for themselves and their loved ones. Which, sadly, is bad news for us queer-friendly, baby-killing bleeding hearts.
But I have good news.
As Edward says, Kerry hasn’t lost yet. And Bush hasn’t won. We take this fight one day and one ballot as a time.
And even if we lose, the future course is clear. The Republicans have no excuses now. They’ve got big enough majorities now that it’s up to them to run the country. If Kerry loses, and with Daschle gone, they’re in charge.
And they will blow it.
And the moment they falter…the moment they stumble…we have to act.
Our job for the next two years, and then the two after that, is to get people behind the Democratic Party. Our job is to take back and reclaim, recast, or replace the term “liberal.” Our job is to point at the Republicans in control of…well, everything…and say if this doesn’t feel right, if you’re not happy, if you’re still no better off…you know who to blame…and you know who to stand with.
Off-year elections tend to go to the opposition. We have a community we need to find a way to speak to. It’s time to start getting ready.
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.
Our massive get out the vote operation, unparalleled in modern history, actually was equaled by the Republicans.
Voters just never liked John Kerry.
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.
The Republicans cheated.
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.