Jesse James Garrett: jjg.net

Jesse James Garrett: jjg.net:
File under 'further evidence that the Japanese are living in the future': Snap a photo of a product bar code (a la Delicious Library) using your cell phone, and Amazon Japan will give you a price check on getting the product from them.

I feel dirty, and I like it

My illicit and tawdry love affair with a mega-corporation continues...

You know about Amazon's wish lists (no link provided, I'm only two corporations' whore, thank you)? Well, Google's trumped them: Announcing, the Froogle Wish List.

from Google Blog (yes, I read it so you don't have to):
We release a lot of stuff here at Google, but this one I'm particularly excited about. Every year near the holidays my Mom starts asking me to tell her what I would like for Christmas. I'm usually bad at getting her a list, and more than once I've received argyle socks, but now I'll be happy to point her to my Froogle Wish List.

Want one of your own? Just go to Froogle, search for a few things from thousands of online merchants, and click 'Add to list' for any item you want to add to your Shopping List. You'll need to sign in to your Google account or create one if you haven't already (if you have a Gmail account or Groups 2 login, you already have a Google account). If you want to share items, just click the 'In Wish List' checkbox and whammo, you now have a web page of your holiday wish list to share with friends and family. This year maybe I'll get iPod socks instead of argyle!

Jason Shellen
Program manager - Blogger, and Froogle fan

New idea: movie reviews - stolen

As I understand this blogging role, I'm choosing to basically be the editor of an online magazine, and as long as I'm not making money through this, I can freely make use of whatever the fuck I want, especially if it isn't rigorously copyrighted. And, like any good editor I won't take credit for other's ideas, merely my organization of their ideas. So, since Janella and I watch at least four movies a week, I'm going to start posting a movie review of each movie I/we see. Not my movie review, but the review which I find closest to my reaction to the film. I'll try to stick with reviews within one hyperlink of IMDB. This, by the way is Janella's idea. On a personal note, one of the things I fell in love with this woman for was her penchant for coming up with new ideas--usually better than my own. I love you, dear.

arturobandini's comment on Demonlover:
Admittedly, DEMONLOVER makes a sharp left narrative turn at the halfway point that's going to confound viewers who are intrigued by the straightforward (and extremely absorbing) high-stakes opening. But that's no reason to dismiss the many, many things that writer/director Olivier Assayas gets absolutely right. In the end, DEMONLOVER is a fascinating mirror-world reflection (as William Gibson would call it) of where our global society might be just five minutes from now: the fittest who survive will be multilingual, career-consumed and ridiculously chic, but also soulless, as if missing the gene that supplies a sense of loyalty and ethics. The movie is a cautionary, though entirely plausible, tale of humans debased by their own lust for ungoverned capitalism. Every line of dialogue is about the business merger at hand; in the rare instances where feelings are discussed, they're usually about how *work* affects those emotions. The big wink here is that the characters don't even discuss business honestly, because each has duplicitous motives.

Technically, DEMONLOVER is a feast. Denis Lenoir's widescreen photography constantly dazzles -- many of the tracking shots are sustained in close-up (creating paranoia), and the color spectrum appears as if filtered through corporate fluorescence. (The neon-drenched Tokyo sequence is particularly hypnotic.) Jump cuts keep the narrative one step ahead of the audience. Sonic Youth's atonal guitar score creates the same mutant environment that Howard Shore pulled off in CRASH. Most significantly, Connie Nielsen's face (and hair and wardrobe) mesmerizes more than any CGI I've ever seen. Considering the labyrinthine motives of her character, Nielsen's exquisite subtlety may be lost on first-time viewers; on second look, her emotionless gaze speaks volumes.

Audiences (and critics) have unanimously attacked the `problematic' second half as an example of directorial self-indulgence. While I agree that it's not as satisfying as the first half, I don't think it's a total crash-and-burn (pardon the pun). Clearly, the ending is open to thematic interpretation, but I think Assayas is just saying that if our species isn't more careful, we'll end up like one-dimensional characters in a video game of our own devising - sure, winner takes all, but the rest of us suffer enormously.

Narrative ambiguity aside, DEMONLOVER is the great Hitchcockian/Cronenbergian espionage fantasia I've been waiting for. It makes sense that it would come from Europe, since Hollywood forgot long ago how to make their assembly-line genre exercises intellectually stimulating. (Like the animé porn within the story, Hollywood movies today represent no more than a calculated corporate commodity.) More than any other film from the last 2½ years, DEMONLOVER seems a product of the post-9/11 world - a not-so-distant future where overwhelming paranoia goads us to preemptively eliminate any form of potential competition before it can do the same to us. And how in doing so, we devour our own tail.

I expect this movie's reputation will grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years.

Voting Anarchists?

I have no keyboard right now, so no explanations, just links...

from
The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
seen on
Voting Anarchists?
referred by
.M.a.r.k. .D.i.l.l.e.y.

Don't Just Vote -- Kill Yourself Saturday

This is dedicated to Numb Chumpsky, Piss Crass, Starbuck, and Utah Phillips...

A celebration of how we can get in touch with Wild Nature, just like real lemmings do...

POISON KOOL-AID PARTY FOR ANARCHIST VOTERS!

A celebration of San Francisco Bay Area anarchists' powerful embrace of the electoral process

ANARCHISTS ARE AGAINST VOTING -- EXCEPT IN NOVEMBER...

This November 2nd, the overwhelming majority of the Bay Area's anarchist and anti-authoritarian community will park their erstwhile convictions at the curb and run lemming-like into that Porta-Potty called the voting booth. Our dogma allows us to pose as the most intransigent of rebels. None of us has anything to gain in a contest between George Bush and John Kerry. But, on November 2nd, without the slightest hint of external coercion, we'll go out of our way to show our loyalty to the political process of capitalist America, and specifically to that faction of the elite that nuked Hiroshima, founded the CIA, accelerated US involvement in the Vietnam War, gutted the social welfare apparatus, and killed more than 600,000 children in Bill Clinton's starvation blockade of Iraq in the 1990's.

ANARCHISTS ARE AGAINST LEADERS -- BECAUSE ANARCHISTS ARE FOLLOWERS...

As anarchists, our votes for John Kerry will mean that we have effectively committed political suicide -- so why not commit physical suicide as well? Unlike the majority of the populace, who have wised up and won't be voting, we are virtual lemmings in the face of one of the most transparently bogus ideological hustles that the system has to offer. So let's get in touch with Wild Nature, like real lemmings do, and follow our democratic impulses to their logical conclusion!

Albert Camus said that the only remaining question in philosophy is the question of suicide -- this November we'll be getting way-helluv-philosophical!

REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER!

POISON KOOL-AID PARTY FOR ANARCHIST VOTERS!

at the Long Haul
3124 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, California
(510) 540-0751

This will be a tobacco-free, alcohol-free, scent-free, and drug-free event -- except for cyanide.

Wheelchair-accessible. Extremely long-term childcare provided.

For any questions, contact us at http://www.dontjustvote.com

Thank you. For peace, work, and democracy!

brown black and white
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ZD before sunrise
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2008 Republican Ticket

It's a scary possibility, but I thnk the man is right, this would be an unstoppable Republican ticket....

Varifrank: Future Flash: "Powell resigns as Secretary of State.
6 months from now, Cheney steps down due to 'health' reasons.
Bush then nominates Powell for VP. Senate agrees.

Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of State in 2005. McCain nominated since his term expires in 2006. Senate agrees.

2007 - Vice President Powell runs for President, he picks McCain as his Vice President. 49 State sweep."

birds in a tree2
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birds in a tree
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TAPPED: November 2004 Archives

This idea could, of course, be extended to the Green Party or the Working Families Party.

Lifted shamelessly from The American Prospect:

TAPPED: November 2004 Archives:

SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK. So here's an idea that came up in conversation with a friend recently. I'm throwing it out to Tapped's many smart and well-informed readers so they can shoot it down and explain why it's stupid or unworkable. The idea: There are tens of millions of Americans who don't have health insurance. There are countless more who do have health insurance, but hate how their HMOs treat them for any number of reasons. The Democrats have spent the last several election cycles proposing to fix these problems -- chiefly by being elected and changing government policy in this or that area. But they haven't gotten back into power, so they don't have much opportunity to affect policy across the board. So why wait? Why doesn't the Democratic Party offer health insurance to its members directly?

Imagine an endeavor under which the official Democratic Party sponsored a non-profit health-insurance corporation, one which offered some form of health insurance to anyone who joined the party -- say, with a $50 'membership fee.' Since I'm not a health care wonk, I don't know how you'd structure such a business, or what all the pitfalls might be, or even if such a thing is possible or desirable. But I can think of some theoretical advantages. The Democrats could put into practice, right away, their ideas for the kind of health insurance they think we all ought to have. They could build their grassroots and deliver tangible benefits to members. Imagine a good HMO, run not for profit and in the public interest, along the lines the Democrats keep telling us all existing HMOs and health care providers should be run.

(Note: The Republicans could do it too, creating health care organizations that work the way they think health care should work. Then people could comparison shop the ideas in practice!)

So that's the idea. Now, dear readers -- especially you wonks out there -- educate this poor benighted reporter, and please tell me why it's a stupid idea.

Email your thoughts to nconfessore-at-gmail.com.

Photographic responses to the war in Iraq

Here are two sites, Fallujah in Pictures and Iraq Uncensored, presenting photographs of the war which you won't see on your national television network. Here's an explanation for one site, as stated by the website owner and a comment received:

Fallujah in Pictures
a brief note on why

i believe the american people are decent and not without humanity. they have not seen what is being done in their name. maybe we don't live in a world that can do without war. i do know that people need to know what war means before they decide.

a lot of people have sent me pictures of september 11th. please stop. i lived in lower manhattan on 9/11. i've seen it in real life.

the people in these pictures are just as important as the men and women that died on september 11th. a mother who loses her child suffers the same no matter what her nationality might be. she doesn't want a lecture on politics or religion. she wants her son back.

[Comment]
You see photos of the violence committed by the insurgents on the news already, and there is no need to post them here. This website exists to balance things by presenting photos that don't make it onto the news. The point is that there is loss on both sides. But if you insist that the two-year old with his leg blown off is one of the bad guys, then there is no arguing with you.

Iraq
Uncensored
For months on end, these seven independent photographers and filmmakers have worked exclusively in Iraq documenting US troops and Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and child laborers, imprisoned women and incarcerated youths. Using varied media and narrative styles ranging from photojournalism to first person narratives, cinema verite and found photography, Iraq Uncensored photographers present insights and subtleties beyond what daily news reporting can provide.

Together they will present rare windows on Iraq, the land that cradled what we now call civilization.


Thanks to Mark for pointing one of them out to me.

Rural vs. urban America

This post is way too long for most people to take the time to read, especially with the equally interesting links within the post, but I encourage the reading of it by the political-minded. I've excerpted a part that especially interested me, given my inclinations toward Slow Food and sustainable agriculture, but the entire analysis of rural America and the consequence of the vacuum of liberal voices there is worth reading:

Healing the heartland
If people in rural areas believe that urban liberals look down their noses at them, it's largely because they have little contact with them. They're buying into conservative distortions, of course; but liberals do nothing to counter the charges, either in the media or on the ground, in the way they affect rural dwellers' personal lives.
Urban liberals too need to look in the mirror in this regard. The prevailing attitude in reality is more one of benign ignorance, laced with the scent of moral superiority. The manifestations range from the indulgence in demeaning stereotypes of rural life to a presumption of liberals' own moral and intellectual superiority. These attitudes are conflated by conservatives into one of malevolent contempt toward rural life. As long as the Left condones these attitudes and even fosters them, the more it feeds the dynamic.
What is especially ironic and unfortunate about the way urban liberals relate to their rural brethren is that it has blinded them to the natural alliances, and the shared values, that have informed progressive politics for more than a century. In essence, it has cut them off from one of their historic constituencies, and in the end an essential component of their own identity.
While liberals' chief claim to moral superiority mainly rests on championing the rights and needs of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, one of the most significantly and consistently disenfranchised segments of the American economy of the past 20 years has been the rural sector. If rural dwellers who see their way of life under assault wonder why liberals do not seem to consider their cause a worthy one, they probably cannot be blamed for concluding that they simply live in the wrong place, lead the wrong kind of lifestyle, and are not the right color. It may not be the whole truth, but there is some truth to it.
More to the point, urban liberals should be concerned about what's happening to rural America, because it directly affects their lives as well. The corporatization of agriculture and the accompanying gutting of local rural economies first of all affects urban dwellers' food sources; even as genetically modified foods are being pushed into the food chain, the actual supply of traditional hybrid strains of crops and the genetic diversity they represented has been decreasing dramatically, since many of these resided within the purview of smaller family farms.
Moreover, corporate farms are rapidly becoming a major source of pollution, a problem that affects every locality. Unsurprisingly, the current administration relies on "voluntary compliance" when it comes to regulating this pollution.
The overarching theme that progressives should adopt regarding rural America is one aimed at reviving the family farm. In economic terms, this means adopting a Schumacheresque "small is beautiful" kind of capitalism that encourages an environment in which individual family farms can operate successfully on a smaller scale, one that allows them to grow crops organically and sustainably. In political terms, it means coming into direct opposition to corporate agribusiness -- stripping them of their oversized place at the federal trough, closing the huge tax loopholes that allow them to devour whole tracts of land, dismantling their horizontal and vertical integration of the agricultural economy. It also means confronting "the Wal-Mart economy," the spread of which has done so much to devastate rural small businesses.
...

My thanks to Lying Media Bastards for pointing me there.

just playing around
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Iraqi Farmers, Monsanto, and seed patents

From mindfully.org

Iraqi Farmers aren't Celebrating World Food Day - Press Release / GRAIN 15oct04:
When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrates biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers will be mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

'The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable', said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

This is a letter from Bob Jones III, of Bob Jones University. For those that don't know Bob Jones University, it's a racist, evangelical-Christian college that only in the last four years ended its ban on interracial dating (something tells me they're probably against gay marriage).

Dear Mr. President:

The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.

Christ said, “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour” (John 12:26).

The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.

Sincerely your friend,

Bob Jones III
President

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for pointing it out.

What if a war was held and everyone was invited

Rebels in Fallujah Invite 'Embeds,' As Civilian Death Toll Rises:
They may not get many takers, but Iraqi insurgents in the besieged city of Fallujah on Saturday invited journalists to 'embed' with them to report their side of the war.

E&P reported Friday that the Pentagon-run embedded-journalist program has surged again, with several dozen signing on with the main U.S. Marine units outside the city.

'All media will be allowed into Fallujah to witness the crusade against Islam and see the real face of America. U.S. media will not be excluded,' said a statement by the Falluja Mujahideen Shura, which is composed of insurgent leaders, tribal chiefs, and Sunni Muslim clerics. 'We will protect and transport them to the location of the events. There will be a special building for the journalists.'

Who questions authority, conservatives or liberals?

I've been thinking a lot about accepting versus not accepting authority and how that relates to liberalism versus conservative nature. In one response I've read to John Perry Barlow's article, the writer scoffed at the idea that liberals didn't respect authority while conservatives did. This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education made me remember that writer's disbelief, in hegemonic proportion. And hegemony of this sort, if present, seems that it would engender political divisiveness.

The Chronicle: 11/12/2004: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual: Conservatives on college campuses scored a tactical hit when the American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education. Further investigations by people like David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, coupled with well-publicized cases of discrimination against conservative professors, reinforced the findings and set "intellectual diversity" on the agenda of state legislators and members of Congress.
...
Historically, the boundaries of scholarly fields were created by the objects studied and by norms of research and peer review. Today, a political variable has been added, whereby conservative assumptions expel their holders from the academic market. A wall insulates the academic left from ideas and writings on the right.

One can see that phenomenon in how insiders, reacting to Horowitz's polls, displayed little evidence that they had ever read conservative texts or met a conservative thinker. Weblogs had entries conjecturing why conservatives avoid academe -- while never actually bothering to find one and ask -- as if they were some exotic breed whose absence lay rooted in an inscrutable mind-set. Professors offered caricatures of the conservative intelligentsia, selecting Ann H. Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as representatives, not von Hayek, Russell Kirk, Leo Strauss, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick, or Gertrude Himmelfarb. One of them wrote that 'conservatives of Horowitz's ilk want to unleash the most ignorant forces of the right in hounding liberal academics to death.'
...
The first protocol of academic society might be called the Common Assumption. The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord. The Assumption proves correct often enough for it to join other forms of trust that enable collegial events. A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.

The Common Assumption usually pans out and passes unnoticed -- except for those who don't share it, to whom it is an overt fact of professional life. Yet usually even they remain quiet in the face of the Common Assumption. There is no joy in breaking up fellow feeling, and the awkward pause that accompanies the moment when someone comes out of the conservative closet marks a quarantine that only the institutionally secure are willing to endure.
...
the False Consensus Effect. That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.

The tendency applies to professors, especially in humanities departments, but with a twist. Although a liberal consensus reigns within, academics have an acute sense of how much their views clash with the majority of Americans. Some take pride in a posture of dissent and find noble precursors in civil rights, Students for a Democratic Society, and other such movements. But dissent from the mainstream has limited charms, especially after 24 years of center-right rule in Washington. Liberal professors want to be adversarial, but are tired of seclusion. Thus, many academics find a solution in a limited version of the False Consensus that says liberal belief reigns among intellectuals everywhere.
...
The problem is that the simple trappings of deliberation make academics think that they've reached an opinion through reasoned debate -- instead of, in part, through an irrational social dynamic. The opinion takes on the status of a norm. Extreme views appear to be logical extensions of principles that everyone more or less shares...

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts.

IQ Hoax -- Debunking the hoax claiming that states with the highest average IQs voted for Gore or Kerry instead of Bush

I find great distaste that I'm quoting so many Republican sites nowadays, but I'm getting a little fed up with all of the misinformation and downright divisive and deceitful posts about the Red vs. Blue states. Anger and seeking solutions is one thing, purposefully seeking out misinformation or hoping for bad news in order to stoke one's anger is too much.

One of the hoaxes drifting around the net is this Blue states have higher IQs than Red states.
Well, with distaste [especially for the eugenics nature of the site], but with respect for a serious debunking, here's a Republican site: IQ Hoax -- Debunking the hoax claiming that states with the highest average IQs voted for Gore or Kerry instead of Bush

Very amusing ad on Craigs list

This is from the personals section of the New York City Craig's List. I'm just going to print this straight as it appears.

Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m

Reply to: anon-47785163@craigslist.org
Date: Wed Nov 03 19:11:50 2004


I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.


it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Thanks to Jake at Lying Media Bastards for pointing me there.

Two days ago, we saw the northern lights way down here in Michigan. This, unfortunately, was the best I captured. I should have thought about taking pictures earlier.
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Addendum to Barlow

This sentence has stuck in my head ever since I read the essay I spoke about below. I think it answers a lot for me.
"This young man had been trained to respect authority just as surely as I had learned to suspect it. Whatever our agreements, we would always be separate in that regard. "

BarlowFriendz: Magnanimous Defeat

This deserves to be read and re-read. I already have. John Perry Barlow has owned a cattle ranch for 17 years and co-written songs with the Grateful Dead from 1971 to 1995. He pretty much coined the term "cyberspace" to refer to, well, cyberspace. He has written for numerous high-quality publications. He has also written what I wish I could write about the metamorphosis his anger had to take over this election and what has taken its place. This should help bring my friend, Annalisa, what she was seeking.

Boy, does this suck. Even with a couple of days of perspective, it still sucks. And it may suck for 4 more years.It may suck until sometime in late 2012, when the Mayans seem to think time and space will collapse and everything will suck everything into everything else. And that will really suck. But, for now, life goes on.

I feel as if half the people in America have just forced a fat crow down my gullet. I am compelled to admit that I am genuinely out of touch with half my country.

I feel like I'm suffering the death of a loved one. I'm not sure which of the stages of grief I've reached at this point, but I'm pretty well past denial. I'm mourning a number of losses, one of which is the belief that "my side" is actually a clear majority that would reveal itself if we ever shuffled off our disdain for politics and voted in any force. ( Actually, we may be a majority - I don't trust these results - but even if we are, our margin is very slender and we were too dumb, diffident and disorganized to prevent the other side from successfully gaming the system. I would be angry about that if it would do any good, but I see where anger has gotten us so far.)

I worked last night on processing all that wrath.
...

Open Letter To The Democratic Party

Most "Anybody But Bush" people searching around the internet in hopes of understanding the election results have probably already run across this letter, but in case you haven't, here it is.
Open Letter To The Democratic Party
How You Could Have Had My Vote
It's been two days since John Kerry conceded, and all I am seeing, hearing and reading from the Democratic party is that you guys think you lost on "moral values." You seem to think this means nothing more than opposition to gay marriage. You seem to think that Bush voters waited in line for hours to stick it to the queers, to tell those faggots how much we hate them!

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many Bush voters, like myself, were not happy to be voting for the President's re-election. Many Bush voters agonized over our decision and cast our vote in fear, trepidation, and trembling. Many of us would have given our left arms for a Democrat we could have supported.

Because I am too young to be as disillusioned as I am, and because I know that one-party rule is not good for my country, and because it is my deepest wish to see the Democratic party change into one I can give my whole-hearted support, I am going to explain why you didn't get my vote, and how you can get it in the future.

First, for context, let me give you a bit about my perspective: I am a single, heterosexual, college-educated woman in my late 20's with an annual income of about $30,000. I live in a solidly red state in the South, the region you guys wrote off entirely without even trying to persuade us to vote for you. I am not an ideologue, and I experience painful ambivalence about many political issues. The notion of an abortion makes me queasy, but I don't want Roe vs. Wade overturned. I have friends who've been impregnated by rape and friends who found out late in their third trimesters that they were carrying babies too malformed to ever have normal lives. The pictures of Iraqi children who've lost arms from the bombs my tax dollars bought make me shed tears, but I recognize that the war was the right thing to do, given the information we had available at the time the decision was made. I had no health insurance for three years, but I'm still, hesitantly, not in favor of socialized medicine. I know people who abuse the social services, but I also have friends who would be dead without the food stamps and SSI checks they collect each month. I believe in God and consider myself a Christian, but I don't go to church, and Falwell, Robertson, and their ilk scare me more than they scare you. I believe that in a perfect world, Roy Moore would have to live with the stench of his own ego, just like the rest of us do.

I have gay friends who are closeted and gay friends who couldn't be more open if they had QUEER tattooed across their foreheads, and I think they should be allowed to get married if they want to. I read The Onion, Dilbert, Dan Savage's sex advice, Salon.com, and quite a few blogs. The local librarians know me on sight. I waited in line until midnight when the fifth Harry Potter book came out. I can't wait to see the new Chucky movie. I will probably shack up before I get married, but I won't be proud of it. I wouldn't buy an SUV, even if I could pay cash for one. I recycle. I shop at Wal-mart, but I feel guilty about it, and if they unionized, I would never cross the picket line. I think FOX News is about as fair and balanced as a seesaw with a gorilla on one end.

President Bush's close relationships to people like John Ashcroft scare me. I hate the PATRIOT Act and am fearful of what might be part of PATRIOT II. The two dumbest trial balloons I've heard floated for his second-term agenda are privatizing Social Security and abolishing the income tax. When he says that God chose him to be President during this time of trial, I am embarrassed. I roll my eyes.

I am a pragmatic, disillusioned, realistic, and entirely ordinary member of the radical middle.

Here is why you didn't get my vote:
...

Cold Showers and Feedback

I am resisting as much as possible this belief that America elected Bush because people are stupid or hateful. I might think they are wrong, but thinking they are stupid seems very close-minded, elitist, and impossible to learn lessons from.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Values-Vote Myth: 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.
...
The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
...
It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.

In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.

But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

Catholics, Not Born Agains, Won It for Bush--poll anaylsis by Steven Waldman and John Green--Kerry Christian vote -- Beliefnet.com

Catholics, Not Born Agains, Won It for Bush--Beliefnet.com
There was indeed a flood of evangelicals to the polls-—but it now appears that the shift in the Catholic vote was just as important and, in crucial states, probably more so.

In addition, Bush also made gains among the moderately religious-—and the secular-—not just the heavy-duty religious voters who attend religious services weekly or more.
...
Another surprising finding: Bush did not dramatically improve his standing among people who go to church weekly or more often.
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Amusingly, the biggest improvement in Bush’s performance actually came from those who never go to church. He won 36% of this group compared to 32% last time.

Kerry refused to take Clinton's antigay advice

Advocate.com
According to the latest issue of Newsweek, "Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the red states, former president Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, 'I'm not going to ever do that.'"

Blue & Red map is too harsh

I found this over on Boing Boing. Someone put together a map which uses a gradient of colors from 100% Democrat blue to 100% Republican red. The map lends much more hope of the compromises and possibilities we have in our political discourse than the stark red/blue map we are, dare I say it, being sold by the media in the interest of generating revenue, fear, and divisiveness. In his words, "I was thinking today about how the 'red v. blue' states graphic is really misleading considering the slim margins that the candidates won some of those states by, so I sat down and created the map that's attached. In the dozens of hours I've been watching the news I haven't seen one like it, but thought that you and the BoingBoing readers might find it interesting. I think it definitely portrays our fellow states far differently than the extreme way we've been seeing to date."

Click here for the map.

For readers who prefer divisiveness, here's a humorous map of North America.

Rethinking religion and the liberal left...

I follow a blog from a Columbia law student who was a mild supporter of Bush, but sometimes says things that I find very thought-provoking. In this post he speaks of how hard it was to see so many of his friends so deeply disappointed when his emotional stake in the winner wasn't as high. But what I found most interesting ws the second point he makes to the Democrats about religion and the American voter. I advise you read it, because it made me pause.

Three Years of Hell to Become The Devil
Anyway, there's a Bush presidency, a fair amount of Republican triumphalism and a lot of Democratic angst. And pundits everywhere are looking for the "lessons of the election," which seems such a doomed effort that I'm sorely tempted to try it. If I had to give my Democratic colleagues some advice for 2008, it would come down to two ideas.
...
Second, the Democrat's big "quick win" would be to learn a language of religion. There are many voters who vote with their hearts and their souls rather than their pocketbooks, but in many quarters this is seen as something fantastic. Take, for instance, David Usborne, a writer for the UK-based Independent, quoted by Irishlaw:

"Voters, especially those in the heartland states, took moral values as their core standard in deciding which candidate to support. Indeed, this may emerge as the most surprising finding to emerge from this presidential race."


As IL points out, it's not surprising if you know the voters in question, people of a deeply-held religious faith. The problem is that many--though by no means all--elements of the left trivialize that. From stunningly poor arguments posing as jokes to invocations of the "Texas Taliban", there is a strong strain of the Democratic Party that is simply not interested in engaging evangelicals and providing a good home for them. And this strain is by no means a silent minority of the party. Think of how Hollywood treats religion in movies. Even if you think that's a fair and accurate portrayal, here's a hint to the next Democratic Clinton: your moment comes when you strike out loud and hard at the next clone of Saved.

Too much of the left now thinks of religion as some form of irrational fiction, that anyone hooked on the Left Behind series must be unworthy of, or incapable of, reasoning with. But each and every one of them has a vote, and in this election they were provoked and used it. Kerry's position--that he was against gay marriage, but would leave it to the states--was untenable so long as the bulk of his supporters were campaigning against DMA, where "leaving it to the states" meant "leaving it to state judges." This was not a convincing argument to someone who did care about the issue.

That doesn't mean, as one Democrat on the radio said today, that they'd be best off nominating a President who doesn't support gay marriage or abortion. There are good religious arguments for same-sex marriage that have been made, and with some force. They're not, however, silly lists from Leviticus or pointing out that Jesus never speaks against gay marriage directly. They' complex, well-reasoned, and speak within the language of faith. Most importantly, they're generally made by individuals of stong and persuasive faith themselves. It takes much more courage to embrace--not "nuance"--a contrarian position within a church than outside it.

It certainly takes more courage than the standard Kerry line of "Whatever my religious belief, it shouldn't be our nation's." That the argument makes sense to secularists does not make it a particularly useful line to woo the section of the electorate that is not secular.

Instead, "learn the language." Learn what someone of faith cares about and how to argue within that sphere. (It's not unlike learning to "think like a lawyer.") And then come out full-bore for homosexual marriage with arguments that treat religion as a source of authority and a driving factor in why such marriage must be recognized, not as an obstacle to be overcome before one gets to the secular reasoning. People resent being considered obstacles. And when naysayers complain this tactic won't work, just point out that it only has to work a very little on the margins: much as Republicans win if we can crack a fraction of the African-American vote, Democrats can make great gains quite quickly here.

I'm not sure how seriously he meant it, but the most poignant Democratic statement I read today came from Brian Leiter, who said, "I do not know the country in which I live." That statement shouldn't be an indictment of the nation, but an exhortation to learn about it.

Running away from what?

I hear the general chorus of people talking about running away, either running away to another state because of gay marriage amendments in eleven states or leaving the country because of the vote for Bush. I had a fleeting moment of that myself, so I'm not denigrating the thought, but I did think of counterpoints to my thoughts about leaving.

I don't see anything being accomplished by leaving. If I leave Michigan or Oregon or whatever other states voted so discriminatorily, that state is still going to be discriminating, and my not being there will be one vote that state doesn't have the next time the issue is voted on. My not being there will be one less voice being heard in protest or in argument to someone lifting their voice about the wrongs of gay marriage. My not being there encourages the growth of the very thing to which I'm in opposition.

I see the same about leaving the country. If I leave, the country is still there. Bush is still in office, war is still being fought in Iraq, innocent people are still being killed, the poor are still getting shat upon. The U.S. is still holding its financial needs above its ethical duties. I'll still be an American citizen whether I'm in Britain, Canada, or Mexico, and judging from the blogs I read from Americans abroad, I would still feel as much frustration, as much anger, as much disappointment.

Taking my voice away won't help. Adding to the possibility of the state or country I'm leaving becoming less intolerant or more warlike is not an attractive option to me, however emotionally attractive it might seem.

As much as this may be like believing in the lottery, or believing in the American Dream, I do believe that my voice can help make a difference.

Regarding the election, a letter I found on the net.

A Tiny Revolution: Be optimistic, Dad--I know it's hard, it's hard for me, too. Their arguments change, but in the end, the GOP wants to stop the world from changing, and if there's one thing we know, it's that the world will change. Our country is getting more diverse, not less; more urban, not less; more global, not less. The GOP can rig elections and slice and dice the electorate all they want, but these are forces they can't control. This is why they're cozy with the end-of-the-worlders--they realize that their time is nearly over.

Bush may well be what he thinks he is--an instrument of God--but not in the way he believes. Wisdom--or if you like, God's grace--does not come without pain. We had to have a Civil War to have freedom; we had to have WWI to get votes for women; we had to have a Great Depression to get Social Security; we had to have WWII to have a UN. There is no Martin Luther King without Jim Crow. History shows this: our loving, accepting God is bigger than Bush's hating and punishing God.

We will win, because it's not about winning. It's about being our best selves, and our actions during this election were in harmony with that. The others will come around--the world is working on them, too. Our job is to be firm, clear, and above all, still here to show a more hopeful alternative. Sooner or later, it will fall to people like us to point the way up and out, and when it does, we need to be ready.

Key piece of info about election results

The New York Times: Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, had long believed that if he could draw out conservative and evangelical voters who stayed home four years ago, he could 'make the pie higher,' as Mr. Bush once memorably said of his goals for economic growth. Differences in the wording of exit-poll questions between this year and 2000 made a definitive early assessment of how well that succeeded difficult, but a third of all voters yesterday identified themselves as evangelicals, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls.

There were at least some signs that state ballot measures on gay marriage had helped boost conservative turnout.

Happy Birthday, Gabrielle!

Today is my best friend's birthday. I met her over ten years ago (is it eleven years now?), and we've now been through both of us growing up, coastal moves, breakups, marriage, babies, and more. I so severely look forward to seeing all the other life changes we go through. You will always be my best friend, Gabrielle.

She is an artist, and her most current explorations are in book altering. Without her, I would never have even known that activity existed. I wonder if she knows that there exists an international organization devoted to this craft. Well, she does now I suppose, and she is now a member of it. Or she will be when our check clears. Happy Birthday!

Kerry Haters for Kerry

Kerry Haters for Kerry
WALLY SHAWN: Well, I -- I think that, you know, it's an awful situation. I don't -- certainly things are not going to become -- I mean, Kerry will be like Clinton or maybe worse. He's -- people don't usually -- you know, they rarely surprise you in a good way; but I think that, yeah, it's important to tell the world that, you know, we didn't like this, the things that have happened under Bush. I think we have to make the statement -- that, you know, we don't want to go on that road anymore. So, you know, for me it's humiliating to vote for Kerry, because I don't respect him; but I would -- I will -- it's unpleasant, it's like killing a big rat that is running around your apartment. It must be done. But you're not proud of it. But you have to do it. So, we have to tell other people, I think, that, you know, we didn't approve

John Kerry & John Lennon

From Kerry's Wikipedia bio