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fancycwabs: (babykiss)
Because I have no interest in spending the next four years living with the consequences of a decision I made based on fear.
fancycwabs: (babykiss)
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).
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.
fancycwabs: (Safety)
Something new in Clinton's "Kitchen Sink" Strategy.

Clever! Having your supporters stab your opponent's supporters is really thinking outside the box. Unless your box is, you know, Kenya.

EDIT: But it obviously doesn't make you a "monster." Most humanoid "monsters" are characterized by achieving some form of post-death reanimation, either through ancient spirituality and curses (mummies), feeding on the blood of the living (vampires), chemically or disease-induced reanimation (zombies, usually), or the judicious application of science and medicine (Frankenstein's monster). Continuing to keep moving long after you should have stopped, and demanding the lives of others as a sacrifice to the unholy needs of your prolonged animation: that's what makes you a "monster."
fancycwabs: (Default)
I love how Clinton's stump speech has turned into "We're DOOOOOMED! DOOOOMED, I TELL YOU! DOOOOMED! NO HOPE!"
fancycwabs: (Default)
For the past couple of weeks or so, I've been reading from a number of locations about the "cult" of Obama--especially from generally liberal sources, concerned that the right is going to somehow successfully attack Obama for his popularity. I'm not really one to yell that the emperor has no clothes on, but frankly, that's the stupidest political argument I've seen put forth in my life. If you disagree with Obama for his stance on unversal healthcare (too much, too little), his stance on the Iraq war (we're surrendering to terrorists!), his take on education, his lack of concrete policies (among those who haven't apparently read the "Blueprint for Change"), or his general lack of experience, you could put forth at least a convincing case, right or wrong.

Criticizing him because his supporters just like him too much smacks of jealousy, or feeling that just because something is popular it must therefore be bad. Obama doesn't have to be Hannah Montana--he could be the Beatles, and not liking him based on his popularity could just mean you're missing out because you feel like being a misanthropic jackass.
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.
fancycwabs: (Default)
For the statistically inclined, this report has lots of data about casualties in Iraq vs. other conflicts vs. no conflicts. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison; you'll have to do some futzing with the numbers to get real data (Is 58,000 dead in the Vietnam era over nine years, with eight million in the military, comparable to 7,000 dead in the duration of the Iraq war, with 1.4 million in the military? Hard to say), but it's interesting to have a starting point for discussion, especially as little cwabs get to the age where the risk of one of those numbers including one of them increases dramatically. Not to mention a couple of folks who read this.
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.
fancycwabs: (Default)
You know who needs to win South Carolina? Fred Thompson. I would so laugh my ass off.
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.
fancycwabs: (Default)
There's still a chance to nominate the Meadow Party dream ticket of Jesse and Jesse, folks.

It couldn't be less appealing than the choices we have now.
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.
fancycwabs: (Fuck it)
Today was election day in Memphis. Not being a resident of the city proper, I couldn't vote in the mayoral election, but as I have to go there every day, the issues of crime and poverty and race relations affect me, and therefore I had a certain interest in the victor.

The victor, in this case, was the incumbent, Dr. W. W. Herenton, the man who shepherded Memphis into its present state of high crime, poor infrastructure, widespread unemployment, and continued racial tensions, whose primary motivations are to build stadiums and to ruin the schools. He wins with 57% of the voting population voting against him (plurality wins in Memphis, and we typically have six or seven candidates), and a victory speech where he talked about the value of loyalty and all the white people who were out to get him, complete with anecdotes about how he was booed on national television (he assumed it was because of the color of his skin, and not his record as mayor).

*Sigh* Four more years of this.

n.b. Racial tensions in Memphis began long before Herenton was mayor, and I'm certain he had no easy task running for mayor initially or running the city when he was first elected in 1991. Playing the race card sixteen years later, after having defeated another well-qualified black candidate, smacks of divisiveness.
fancycwabs: (Default)
  • Earlier this week, I was enjoying the schadenfreude of hearing irate parents call in to a morning radio show complaining about the ten-minute sellout of tickets to a Hannah Montana concert in Memphis, for two reasons: One, Hannah Montana is clearly a product manufactured by Disney, between that and High School Musical, it amuses me to see so many folks drinking the Kool-Aid. Two, she's clearly got a porn star name--I mentally remark on this EVERY TIME I pass her conspicuously prominently displayed CD at Target (seriously. Go to Target and see if the Hannah Montana CD isn't on the inside corner of the main aisle--the "racetrack," if you will--at eye level). I thought I'd enjoy some more of that sweet sweet feeling this morning when I was checking the local newspaper site and saw another article about irate parents, when I noticed, buried in the third or fourth paragraph, that Miley Cyrus (aka the aforementioned Hannah Montana) is Billy Ray Cyrus' kid, which throws my mind into a strange loop, as I've never heard a Hannah Montana song, so now I just envision a fourteen-year-old girl singing "Achy Breaky Heart."

    Further reading (into the comments for the article, which are grounds for EVEN MORE schadenfreude), informs me that Disney also apparently has created a group called "The Cheetah Girls," which was code for strippers (let's assume that link is NSFW) when I was in college in Atlanta--so a good number of Georgia Tech alumni could confess to being fans of The Cheetah Girls back before they were nationally popular. When folks talk about their "tweens" being really into The Cheetah Girls, I laugh and laugh and they think I'm crazy and back away slowly.

  • I have, over the past six years, said things far worse than the phrase "General Betray-us," (mostly along the lines that Bush and Cheney et. al. are getting filthy rich off the deaths of our American fighting men and women, and have managed to turn the Katrina disaster into a profit center, as well) and yet I haven't gotten any condemnation from the Senate. Where's the no-love for me? I want a resolution condemning MY first amendment rights, too!

  • Upcoming auditions in the next couple months: The Pirates of Penzance, Pride & Prejudice, Room Service, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Scapin, The Underpants, West Side Story. I'd like to think I could get into something.
fancycwabs: (Default)
One of the great truths of the information age is that for each of us there will come a day when we discover that there exists on the internet a photograph of us not wearing pants.(SFW)

I think I'm in tights, given the variations in skin tone, but you never know. Also, I was twenty-one, I think.
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.

Sigh...

Jul. 3rd, 2007 07:38 am
fancycwabs: (Default)
So Scooter is too beautiful to go to jail, after all.

They should have sentenced him to death by lethal injection--Bush seems to have no problem with that being too "excessive."
fancycwabs: (Default)
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.