Looks like generally more Democrats are early-voting than Republicans.

Obviously early-voters do not an election make, and there's no rule that says you've gotta vote your party affiliation, and there's certainly still an opportunity for voting machine shenanigans by the good people at Diebold (or whatever it's called now), but it's nice to feel excited about the future for the first time in a long time.

I guess there's still the possibility of the oft-mentioned "October Surprise," but IT'S TOO LATE, 'cause I voted TWO WEEKS AGO. And my hardened, drunk the Kool Aid 'Publican friends are terrified that Obama's gonna take their "hard-earned" money away and give it to poor black people (they'll even take a smaller tax cut under McCain if it means poorer folks will still be worse off than they are).

A couple of things that have been mulling around in my head. Discuss at liberty:

• While certain members of my generation are obsessed with the fantasy of midichlorian-based telekinesis, that's always struck me as too fantastical a conjecture to ever become a reality. I do, however, want the power turn electronic and some mechanical equipment on and off by punching it, a technique I call "The Fonzarelli Method." Although I am open to calling it "The Fonzarelli Technique" or "The Fonzarelli Maneuver," depending on circumstances.


• Last night at the gym I was watching the talking heads on Fox discussing the Obama speech, and the consensus among them was that Obama should have stood up in church and shouted down his minister for making offensive statements then and there. Where were these people when Jerry Falwell and John Hagee were blaming September 11 and Hurricane Katrina on homosexuals and feminists? Where's John McCain's speech talking about that?


• Someone on the local theatrical message board posted the entire text of David Mamet's Conservative Conversion, which basically amounts to "I'm rich now--screwfuck the rest of you folksfuckers." Not that I should give more of a shit about what David Mamet thinks than conservatives should George Clooney, but seriously--why is this important? It's not as if Mamet was some great champion of liberal causes, and based on some of the text (He calls his referring to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio" a mark of liberal pride, instead of mere bigotry) he sounds pretty mainstream redneck to me. Ironically, he starts his anti-government screed with a quote from John Maynard Keynes.


• Going to see the touring company of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels tonight at the Orpheum. While I understand it's a good show, do you think it might be possible to see something that wasn't previously a movie? Sewiously.

I love how Clinton's stump speech has turned into "We're DOOOOOMED! DOOOOMED, I TELL YOU! DOOOOMED! NO HOPE!"

I can't believe I was within 500 yards of Mike Huckabee on Sunday and my spider-sense didn't start tingling. It went off like crazy when I was in the same restaurant as Pat Buchanan in college.

Sometimes, I wonder whether my support for Barack Obama lies not in my admiration for his optimistic message, or his advocacy for technology, or his ability to bridge racial barriers, or his desire for universal health care, or withdrawl from Iraq, but rather my fondness, since childhood, for Blazing Saddles.

I think I've discovered which campaign Karl Rove's working on. Having the head of BET imply that Obama is a coke fiend is a page straight out of the Rove playbook. Not that using cocaine is a disqualifier from the office of the presidency. Of course, we all know Bob Johnson's concept of black empowerment.

I dislike having to criticize the Clinton campaign, which gets more than enough from the "Hillary's a bitch" division of the right wing, but dipping into this sort of dirty politics this early smacks of desperation. If Clinton feels that she can't win on her own merits, and seems forced to resort to this sort of remark, perhaps it's better that she take another look at the values of her own campaign.

Thanks to Al Gore winning the Nobel Peach Prize, this evening I'll probably have to endure some tirade lifted verbatim from Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter on how Global Warming is a trick perpetuated on the masses, that it's part of the normal planetary cycle and we can't do anything about it, etc.

As the person most likely to tell me these things is a papist, I'll then have to excommunicate him for going against the pope, who, at least on this issue, agrees with Gore.

White House: No 'credible intelligence' of summer terrorism threat against the U.S.

Sorry, George. When you got "elected" I commented on how a C student was generally wrong 25% of the time. Apparently, your teachers were being generous when they gave you C's.

Not that there are any credible preventative measures actually being taken, but your lack of "credible intelligence" is troubling, as it means your intelligence operatives are looking in the wrong direction.

I suppose that commenting on history as it's occurring is probably unwise, but really, the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education warrants some commentary.

I started elementary school in 1976, twenty-two years after the decision was handed down, and I went to what was a de facto white school in Mobile, Alabama--we had a black fourth-grade teacher, and the attached middle school had several black teachers (and a black assistant principal), but zero black students. Across town, there were a couple of "black" schools. These had not been set up by anything other than the gerrymandering of school districts, but the disparity existed until I graduated high school in 1988 from a more diverse school. Back then, we learned about Brown v. Board of Education in high school, and while I didn't wonder it at the time, I now wonder if the irony of those lessons was lost on students at Mary G. Montgomery (a "white" school) or Blount (a "black" school).

The Mobile County school board took a number of steps to try to rectify the problem without resorting to bizarre school district maps, mostly by adding special programs to the "black" schools in order to give them a specialized curriculum which would encourage white kids to make a special effort to attend the black schools, and (presumably) give the black students already at those schools a leg up on education. This was a qualified success, and resulted in slightly-more integrated schools over time.

That practice is probably illegal now, thanks to yesterday's decision.

In Memphis, the schools are somewhat more integrated, as are the neighborhoods--but I'm somewhat concerned about what the future holds in those pockets of the country where racism is still fairly rampant, and Clarence Thomas would think twice before walking down certain streets. Maybe he's not been to those places, or would prefer to pretend that they don't exist. Nevertheless, thanks to him and his associates, the state of education for African Americans took a pretty significant step backwards.