Health Care Town Hall with Sen. John Kerry
Somerville High School Auditorium
81 Highland Avenue
Somerville, MA 02143
Today, Wednesday, September 2nd
Arrival Time: 6:30 p.m.
Start Time: 7:30 p.m.

Maybe there will be some crazy people there to have shouting matches with.
Bonus points for bringing a sign. You don't have to wait in line for a microphone to hold up a sign.
(I'm not sure if I'll be there, might be working late.)

Keith Olbermann on Faux News' incitement (9:03)

From this morning's Democracy Now:

"... people who are incarcerated in Upstate communities are actually counted as residents of those districts, not as residents of the districts in New York City, where the majority of our state’s prisoners come from."
"... can’t vote, but count as residents ..."

So, a positive feedback cycle: powerful state legislators get prison projects built in their districts, get more people for the count but have a relatively smaller voter base. Small voter base likes the money coming in to the district, likes the power they have, re-elects their legislator.
I wonder how pronounced the situation is. I should check the Census data to see if there is an "in prison" column to the data along with all the other attributes.

you know what would rock? if at Obama's first press conference as President, he gave the first question to Helen Thomas.

Smart, successful people voted for Obama (says The Economist)

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

(seen at daily kos)

Best 2008 Election Maps I've Seen Yet
They're all squishy and purple.

I just realized I scheduled myself to be sitting alone in a hospital
for my medical study on election night. No exciting returns parties
for me. Maybe I'll get some hacking done.

For picking on one of my least favorite books, half just for the title, dailykos++ for "RIP John Galt"

A little something I made:

based on this moment

Michael Moore made a film and showed it on the Net.
In that film, he whined a lot, of what he didn't get.
He travelled all the country,
and rallied raucous crowds,
But Kerry v Bush wasn't his to win,
So Obama/McCain, he'll try again.
I'd rather he go back to muckrakin'

Debates don't matter*, ballots do.
( rant )I reiterate my asserion that their platform should be:
1. Election reform. (rankings ballots, ballot access laws, etc.)
2. The rest of their platform.

I regularly watch Democracy Now! as part of my daily news intake. Since Monday they've expanded the 1 hour show to 2 hours of coverage from Denver about all things around the convention (they'll be in St Paul next week). I recommend getting the shows by bit torrent (MPEG4 video, about 800MB for 2 hours). I've been amazed by the coverage of the big money flowing around the convention and the protest and police atmosphere that aren't being covered by the news that focuses on the speechifying and politicking going on inside. The money is audacious. The police are big and scary. Today there was a good moment about IVAW and how they're doing the most effective street theatre I've ever heard of, they're reenacting Iraqi streets in Denver streets. Duck and cover!

But wait, there's more from MPR, St Paul police paranoia and intimidation, and the RNC hasn't even started yet.

I recently added Media Matters to my RSS reader. I think that was this morning. I'm amazed and disgusted. It looks like they're regularly finding a dozen things a day where the putative news media on TV and Radio who are supposed to be informing us are spouting off mindless stupidity, bald lies and malicious distortions.

I'd heard about MM before, but what pushed me over the edge and made me want to follow their feed was this recent outrage from Faux News in which they distort photos of people to dehumanize and make monsters out of the people they attack (instead of addressing the content of what those people are saying). The Fox Noise has got to stop. They need to be maligned loudly and often for the stupid shit they do until no one in the country takes them seriously and no one watches and their ratings are zero and the only thing that keeps them on the air is the desperate bankrolling of interests they propagandize for.

I hadn't been watching, but millions of people probably are, and they need to know what kind of garbage is being dumped on them.

A bitter politics rant with another theory on why we're not being well represented
When you lose the ability to walk away, you lose the ability to negotiate or get any concessions.
Democrats can't walk away (to Republicans? to un-viable minor parties?) and thus can't get any change out of their candidates and elected leaders. Republicans have the same problem. Neither of them need to negotiate for our votes. They need to negotiate with the press for good press. They need to negotiate with big corporate powers for campaign money or for deals to bring "jobs" to their district. So, voters are taken for granted and taken for all we're worth.

So, to the extent that the problem is we can't walk away, we need the power to walk away. The power to not vote for the slightly-better-loser and vote for someone actually better. (my usual solution)

My mind is still being blown by Wednesday's appearance of Scott
McClellan on "Democracy Now!"
I got used to the weekly Scotty-bashing on dailykos.com. For years we
had a reliable punchingbag/windbag spewing obviously absurd crap as
the official mouthpiece of the Bush regime. Now here he is on my
favorite quality alternative-liberal muckraking journalism show!
Possibly my favorite moment was when they played a couple clips of him
sparring with Helen Thomas at press conferences, to which he replied:

"I think we need more Helen Thomases ..." Scott McClellan,
2008/06/11 on "Democracy Now!"

Dear fifty million Americans, please don't elect another liar/idiot.
The Real McCain, part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

And I felt myself getting sucked in last night.

OMG s/he said what!?

Specifically there's this Hillary quote going around that can be construed in a racist way. I fell for it because I'd like to find any evidence in hopes that it's the feather to break that camel's back.

We should spend less time criticizing sloppy speech and more time criticizing things that she meant to say that were wrong.

Like her lame health care proposal. Or (and I wish I had better citations for this) how her rhetoric when she's scripted and on-message is still insufficiently progressive and gets trapped in the conservative mode too often. Or how the McCain/Clinton gas-tax-holiday is dumb.

There! Content! Reason! I feel better now.

I'm bored of Clinton and Obama, but I like the new DNC ad featuring "100 years is fine with me" McCain. I gave money to put this kind of ad on the air.