Oh Noes!!1!

I love LOLcats, even if I hate real cats. So sue me. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what the Republican National Committee thinks it’s going to get sending me letters saying that my membership, which of course I never had, is almost up. Maybe it’s praying that I don’t remember my political affiliations, and think to myself, “Dammit, I knew I’d joined something. It must have been this outfit. Let me find my checkbook.”

If this is what American political organizing has stooped to, then no wonder it barely succeeds anymore. No wonder people are disengaged at historically high levels. No wonder people don’t care.

Obviously, the current electoral cycle is bringing out voters in what appear to be high numbers for today’s day and age. Whether or not they’ll compete with historical highs is something else altogether, but we ought to take progress wherever we can get it.

I’m currently engaged in a debate about marriage equality with some Christians who insist that if gays are allowed to marry, it is an act made against them as Christians. It simply isn’t conceivable that allowing for freedom of marriage does just that: allows for consenting adults to choose who they legally join. Rather, it is believed by these Christians than any attempt to legalize gay marriage is simultaneously an attempt to undermine Christianity. Ludicrous as this opinion may be, you almost can’t help but feel sorry for Christians so stupid. They, as we have all been, have been taught that anything they don’t personally like can be considered an attack upon them as a whole.

I learned the same lesson at the University of Massachusetts. “What? Somebody somewhere doesn’t agree with me? That’s xxx-ism!” The Christians have adopted this mindset too. “What? Somebody wants freedom to be extended to people that we claim to love but really hate? That’s anti-Christianism.”

One of the painful things about living in a multicultural society is that we have to be, yknow, multicultural, and that means not forcing everybody to follow along with whatever we believe. It means creating, and protecting, the marketplace of ideas, and letting the intellectual battles that ensue not spill out into legislation.

It seems clear that if opponents of something really want to get their way, then they ought to take responsibility for convincing people to go along with whatever they’re advocating. Christians who advocate keeping gay relationships as separate but equal entities are clearly doing so because they’re too lazy, bashful, or otherwise disengaged to approach gay people and preach to them about the alleged evil of their sin. Same goes for anti-abortion foes, who would be perfectly happy to see the practice outlawed and police take over for the responsibility of enforcing it.

Needless to say, we’re currently suffering a politics of the scapegoat. The Democrats and Republicans do it at equal speed, although the GOP has been better at scapegoating particular groups. It seems clear that it is ultimately a go nowhere strategy, which is why the party is desperately hoping that I’ve forgotten everything I ever believed in sending me that letter. Unfortunately for the RNC, it failed. Speaking of fail.

Obama Takes Maine

The past few days have been telling, haven’t they? Obama doesn’t just win Maine, Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana; he crushes his opponent. She responds by shaking up her campaign and grimly holding onto the possibility that an arcane nominating process within the Democrats can save her.

Taken a piece at a time, maybe that news isn’t good for Hillary, but all at once? She claimed that her voters were white and working class - Obama goes and win white working class votes in Nebraska, Washington and Maine. She shakes up a campaign that has actively claimed it just didn’t care about winning in the states where Obama’s currently cleaning up. Why? Why not care about smaller states? Why stick with a plan to only win big states when it was a plan that failed with both John Kerry and Al Gore? And then she doesn’t claim that she’s necessarily going to win more than Obama, but rather, that she’s got a machine built with insiders that will pull her struggling campaign back out of the murk.

What we’re seeing is a contest between the new and the old. The old is the notion that it is better to be right than to win. “Oh sure, John Kerry can’t win, but he’ll be right…” as if being right matters. Winning matters. Obama has stepped forward and argued, in essence, that the party can both be right and be winners and that to do so requires something other than the same old strategy. Meanwhile, Hillary clings to that same tired strategy.

Two days from now, we’ll get results from Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland. If Obama takes two of three, then that’s good; if he takes three of three, then that’s unbelievable, and a terrible blow to the Clinton campaign, as it would mean she went 0-7. At that point, momentum might be so completely behind Obama that she won’t be able to stop it with all of her insider wrangling.

Here’s hoping.

Two Posts In A Day? Super Tuesday

It’s now less than 24 hours until polls open across the country for Super Tuesday. Some polling work suggests Barack Obama is pulling close to Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, she’s crying again, which seems suspiciously similar to her performance in New Hampshire. Incidentally, New Hampshire is where the polling - claiming an Obama breakthrough - was completely wrong. What are we to make of things?

I left the Democratic Party after New Hampshire. That was small potatoes compared to what’s happening tomorrow. The Democrats have the option of picking the best, or worst, available candidate. Obama is clearly the best. Anybody suggesting otherwise has no idea what they’re talking about. Even a casual glimpse at polling numbers will reveal that Hillary Clinton unifies Republicans (currently splintered beyond all recognition) who will do anything to prevent her coronation. Obama? People are excited to be a part of his revolution. In this case, it includes people of all stripes. My 95-year-old grandmother for example.

The clock is ticking. Tomorrow, I’ll probably liveblog my evening, and even though none of you are regular readers, you’ll have the opportunity to watch me either celebrate or crumble.

Obama Romps and Stomps

Wow - Obama raised $32 million last month. That’s a crazy amount of money. Read the article - it represents his best three-month stretch up to now. Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, there’s this. I’m not the only person who will have walked away from the Democrats if the party is stupid enough to nominate Hillary. Some of us understand that this is one of the great political opportunities and if it is screwed up…

I keep thinking the unthinkable, and no matter how many times I consider it, I cannot vote for Hillary. It isn’t going to happen.

Obama in South Carolina

I’m putting this at the top. It’s a big deal. This post is dated, but so what? Who says Obama can’t win?

My hope is cracking. It’s now an hour until we start getting results out of South Carolina’s primary, and I’m starting to fear that the Democrats will actually seriously consider nominating Hillary Clinton for the presidency. It doesn’t make a damned bit of sense to me; nobody on Earth could possibly support her. In an hour, we’ll know.

I have a theory about the people supporting Hillary Clinton; they’re the ones with John Kerry/John Edwards bumper stickers on their cars. Instead of being ashamed for getting behind such an awful presidential candidate, these people have kept the stickers on their car. They’re the Democrats who believe that eventually, America will realize the Democrats overwhelming rightness, and will support the cause. They are the reason Democrats keep losing.

My father and mother both have the sticker on their car. I’m hoping it’s not there for this reason. Still, whenever I drive around Morgantown and see those stickers, I get infuriated. “You’re the reason Democrats didn’t win!” I keep shouting at my windshield. It doesn’t change anything.

A couple of serious political observers have chided me for my endorsement of Obama, insisting that we ought to support Clinton because she’s the serious candidate. I like being condescended to as much as the next guy; it’s what makes the Democrats so god-damned endearing. “Don’t think for yourself. Instead, do what we tell you to do, because we’re so serious about all of this.”

I hate the Democrats. The people who did told me these things didn’t realize quite what they sounded like (I hope), but they’re still so terribly wrong. Hillary Clinton isn’t a serious candidate, because if she was, she’d want to win on her merits, not her ability to manipulate and jigger the rules of the game. We won’t even bother to bring up Bill Clinton’s nonsense, which has made me a Clinton hater; I used to be one of his biggest fans.

Now there are 43 minutes until results come in. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Whew.

I Will Not Vote For Hillary Clinton

I keep pounding on the same point: I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. I have friends, Democrats, who are encouraging me to put aside my hatred for her candidacy because judicial nominations matter. Cue spooky, threatening music.

It’s true that judicial nominations matter. It’s true that judicial nominations are important. It’s just that they aren’t particularly important to Democrats. If judicial nomainations were important to Democrats, the party wouldn’t be poised to run Hillary Clinton, a woman that people don’t like, from a family that people are sick and tired of. If the Democrats really cared about judicial nominations, they’d run a candidate who can actually win. But of course, Democrats do not now, nor have they ever, cared about winning. That’s how you end up with candidates like Gore, Kerry, and now, Clinton.

Candidates ideally inspire voters to head to the polls; Democratic candidates inspire voters to drag themselves to the poll after the end of a long day, hoping that maybe traffic will be heavy enough so that they don’t have to make it and cast a vote for somebody so terrible.

Interestingly, I have never met the people who are actually supporting this woman’s candidacy. That ought to be enough of a death knell right there, that nobody wants to step forward and say, “Dammit, I’m loud and I’m proud about my support of Hillary Clinton.” But of course, Democrats don’t do that. They’re mostly timid, passive, pathetic. They’re afraid of the conflict necessary to actually win.

Which is how we end up hearing things like, “Obama’s good, but Clinton destroys him in the debates.” Debates are what Democrats think about. In case nobody’s noticed, this idiot is currently the president. Gore and Kerry both eviscerated him in debates; why didn’t it matter? Because debates don’t matter. Does anybody seriously believe that Americans are sitting home, watching the debates, undecided, saying, “I wonder how these two will perform tonight?”

Interesting sidenote: a Bob Dylan song just came on my iTunes mix. It sucks. It’s slow, it’s boring, it’s no fun to listen to, but god those lyrics! They’re so deep. They’re so intense. After that, “Mo Money, Mo Problems” by Mase, P. Diddy, and Notorious B.I.G. came on. It doesn’t suck, it isn’t slow, it is fun to listen to, but god those lyrics! They’re not deep at all. They’re not intense. But for some reason, I’d rather listen to something that’s actually, yknow, catchy. Why is that? Why would I want to listen to something I enjoy more than something that makes me run a pencil into my eardrum?

To sum up, I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton, for the same reason that I’m not running a pencil into my eardrum. It’s a stupid thing to do, and I know it will make me completely miserable.

There He Was…And In He Walked

After Barrack Obama lost New Hampshire, I headed down to Morgantown’s CourtHouse and changed my registration from Democrat to Independent. I no longer want anything to do with a party that is so tragically misguided. If the people who vote Democrat can’t understand that Hillary Clinton will unite the currently disorganized Republicans, allowing them to put aside their own differences to vote for whatever moron they finally nominate, then there’s nothing I can do to stop the tidal wave of stupidity that has gripped them.

It isn’t like I’m some sort of expert either. It just seems relatively obvious when you having Republicans frothing at the chance to defeat the Clinton dynasty that perhaps the Democrats might be smart enough not to give them the opportunity. Of course, Democrats are stupid.

Unbelievably stupid. John Kerry almost broke the camel’s back, because we might as well have run a mannequin who, like Clinton, simply couldn’t understand why it was that people didn’t like him. “I’m boring to listen to, have no creative ideas, and am generally a complete douchebag. What gives?” Democrats talked themselves into Kerry believing that his alleged gravitas would win the day. Holding my nose, I voted for the man, a decision that I now regret. Clinton is like Kerry, only worse, because she’s so hated. Republicans were indifferent to Kerry’s bullshit festival; they’ll be smelling blood of Hillary’s on the ticket.

Meanwhile, Obama is doing this. I’ve always hoped for a politician, blown away by the phoniness of his opponents, to actually call them on it. Lo and behold, Obama’s doing it, rightfully pointing out that both Clinton and Edwards are completely full of it. We need candidates who can do that.

An Art Show! And New Hampshire…

-First things first - an art show I put together is going up in three weeks. The flyer is above. It will feature local and semi-local artists exploring the topic of love, although not necessarily in that Hallmarkian light. Think of the other things that go along with love - constant frustration, sadness, anger, lunacy - and figure that at least some of those will be included.

Be there! February 1, 8-11pm, Wild Zero Studios, 229 Pleasant Street, Morgantown, West Virginia.

-Sadly, we need to briefly discuss Barrack Obama’s loss in New Hampshire yesterday which would have been, until about a week ago, considered an enormous victory. Here was Hillary Clinton, the establishment’s candidate, who should have been romping and stomping through New Hampshire. Obama wasn’t an afterthought, but it was looking like he’d come in second place. Then he won Iowa, and people starting wondering if he could win New Hampshire. His polling numbers were great, the exit polling looked good…and then Hillary Clinton won the damned thing.

Which means that Democrats, faced with a choice between the old-guard representing everything that is wrong with the party and the fresh face who promised hope…still managed to go in the wrong direction. Again. How in the fuck can a political party be so god-damned stupid? How in the fuck can a party that has lost, and lost, and lost, and lost, continue to look at presidential candidates and pick the one least electable?

There is no way that I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m not holding my nose for a third consecutive election and endorsing a candidate that I have no particular interest in. If the Democrats are so fucking stupid as to push Clinton through as a presidential candidate, then that’ll be one less vote their candidate is getting. This is a strategy that is stupid beyond words; frankly, it deserves to lose in the big election.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal for Barrack Obama. South Carolina favors him, and potentially Nevada. And a run on Super Tuesday isn’t impossible, because he’s an appealing candidate to all kinds of people, not just the sort of Democrat loyalists who don’t know their heads from their asses. Here’s hoping for a great run from Obama, who predictably sounded better in defeat than Clinton did in victory.

Incidentally, I want everybody who is claiming that Hillary is being opposed because she’s a woman to stop - she’s being opposed because she’s a terrible candidate. Her gender has absolutely nothing to do with it. Or at least, it didn’t, until the media starting killing her for allegedly crying. Way to fuck that one up media punditry. As soon as it came down to something as small as a candidate crying, Hillary went from being a loathsome candidate who came to a state like West Virginia and demanded $1,000 from anybody wanting to be in the same room with her (true story!) and turned her into a victim. All the media had to do was let Hillary pull the rug out from under herself - in their rush to do it for her, they accomplished the exact opposite result, and now we’re stuck with the very real possibility that we’ll be enduring her throughout a prolonged presidential campaign.

Rambling

-Go check out Thursday Cover Page, my nascent web project. We’re updating again. I just rambled on about hip-hop lyrics that blow my mind for pure strangeness. Good times.

-The art show at Wild Zero went well. People actually purchased my Lego recreations of historic scenes. Don’t ask me who these people are, but good on them. Incidentally, my JFK series didn’t sell, so if you’re insane, and you want it for only $50, head down there with your checkbook ready. (I really like that in the above recreation of Ruby shooting Oswald, there are at least two spacemen, one with a very astray helmet, and some pirates. I think we all know that there were spacemen and pirates there that day. Don’t let the government tell you otherwise. Also, I especially like that one of the spacemen is staring directly into the camera. I think serious modelers would be aghast at the oversite, but there is no way that I’m a serious anything, let alone modeler.)

-I turned down an invitation to spend yet more time with Libertarians, this time in regard to professional planning and tenure earning. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, but I’m doing things my way, or I’m not doing them. It’s a bad strategy, but the only one that I’m capable of. Also, the more that I get invitations to these things, although very nice, it seems like entering a very small club in which only the “right” kind of thinkers are welcome. I just want to think; I’m not terribly concerned about being right in anybody else’s eyes.

-Incidentally, my ongoing exploration of the ideas surrounding rationality and rational decision making have led me to the belief that it is impossible for human beings to make irrational decisions. I just don’t see how it is possible. I will grant that a human being’s stated goals can conflict with decisions made, but I don’t see why we should do anything but question those stated goals. Again, if a man tells you he doesn’t like jumping off bridges proceeds to jump off the bridge, aren’t you more inclined to think that he was lying when he told you what he did, as opposed to doing something that he didn’t like?

-Also, had another argument about the basis of natural rights, and the more I discuss them, the more absurd I find the notion to be. In fact, it seems to be an awfully lazy way of winning the argument about what governments should or should not regulate. More soon, as I attempt to further my understanding of these complex problems. I’m really like the six-year-old wading into the deep end - way over my head and having no idea how to swim.

-Finally, I will be attending the Meeting of the Marked at the end of October, and will be sitting for a six-hour tattoo. My ocean legging will be almost finished in this time period, and I’ll be one cranky dude immediately afterward. I’m not entirely sure why I judge this to merit a blog mention, but, it’s my name on the website, right?

Man Executed Because Bureaucracy Sucks

There are problems with the death penality. This, however, is beyond my ability to comprehend. A man was executed after a court decided it didn’t want to stay open to hear a man’s appeal. So the man was executed.

The mind boggles at the implications. I’ve almost finished a degree in Public Administration and in one class, we read the horrible story of bureaucratic actors who allowed a baby to die because they lacked the permissions from the rules to feed the damned thing. How callous does a bureaucratic office have to be to say, “Sorry, we’re closed, let the man die.” How is it possible that these people exist?

What is the feedback mechanism? What happens to these callous people for their horrible decision? A week’s pay? A suspension? What brings the fucking man back? I don’t care whatever crime he committed; it doesn’t matter. He was allowed an appeal and it was denied not by the justice system, but by the person running the office who decided that 20 minutes of staying open late wasn’t worth a person’s life.

The frustration is killing me.