Posted 11:30pm,
Sunday, November 28,
2004
No
thanks
Thanksgiving
is hard work.
Since
becoming a homeowner two years ago,
my house has become Thanksgiving central;
the gathering place for family, extended
family and friends. I spent last weekend
scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming and washing
everything in my house.
My sister
and her husband hauls their family
up from Southern California every year,
driving through the night to avoid
the holiday rush. They have three daughters,
an 8 year-old and 5 year-old twins.
Thanksgiving
is patience.
My sister's
twins are a handful. And she lets them
run riot... which puts me in a shitty
position. I have to be disciplinarian
when they visit. This is not a role
I want to play.
I want
to be the nice uncle, who showers them
with gifts. I want them to look forward
to visiting each year. Instead, I'm
telling them to stop running and keep
your voices down and clean up your
mess.
This year,
one of them really pissed me off. One
of the twins wrote on my wall with
lip gloss on Thanksgiving. Three walls
to be exact. Her parents lectured her
for twenty minutes. Then they took
her to see a movie and bought her candy.
She returned from the movie obivious
to the fact that I was pissed off.
That is
not punishment; that is bullshit.
My sister
says she spanks her kids when they
cross the line. Now, I personally have
no opinion of corporal punishment one
way or another. (Our dad spanked us
when we were kids and we don't suffer
any mental scars.) I am not endorsing
spanking, but if my sister is a spanker,
one would think that writing on your
host's walls would be an occasion for
a spanking. But no; instead, her kid
gets to go see "Christmas with
the Kranks" (some would argue
that the child has suffered enough
from seeing the movie).
The offending
lip gloss was a gift from my wife to
my niece. Upon learning of this fact,
my sister said, "Oh, so it's your
fault she even had the lip gloss."
This only
pissed me off further. Was she actually
suggesting that it was my wife's fault
that her undisciplined daughter wrote
on 3 of 4 walls with lip gloss? She
was. And that's my sister all over.
Wrapped up in her own little world;
totally self-involved. She never listens;
she only waits for her turn to speak.
Lest you
think I'm some sort of curmudgeon,
you should know that last year, these
same nieces ruined our dining room
rug. we said nothing. Because it was
an accident.
In the
interest of full disclosure, I should
mention that my brother-in-law spent
all-day Friday repainting the three
spots his daughter defaced. The issue
here is not the stains themselves,
but the totally lack of disipline or
punishment for a highly offensive act.
Ah, Thanksgiving.
I'm thankful it only comes once a year.
I'll keep
my politics talk brief this post.
There's
been a lot of bullshit on how this
election was lost on "moral" issues.
If by "moral" you mean gay
rights and women's right to choose,
then I guess I'll have to live with
loss because you can't compromise on
people's basic rights.
::Permalink::
Posted 10:50am,
Wednesday, November
3, 2004
Shit.
Take a
couple of days. Recuperate. Rest. Then,
get ready. Roll up your sleeves. We're
starting the whole thing over.
If you
feel like giving up. Don't. This is
still a great country and it's still
worth fighting for. Especially when
you know in your heart that everything
you believe is right and just and morally
correct. Don't let the bastards get
you down.
Fuck 'em
all.
::Permalink::
Posted 7:10am,
Wednesday, November
3, 2004
Ohio!
Still
waiting for Ohio. Don't concede yet
folks. Could be a week or more. As
a Kos reader
points out:
Bush is currently leading
in Ohio by 136,221
If there are 250,000
provisional ballots outstanding. The
highest number I've seen.
And 90% of those ballots
are good, as they were in 2000. That
leaves 225,000 votes.
If 85% of those ballots
prove to be for Kerry, about the
number that Gore got in 2000. That
leaves us with 191,250, giving us
a lead of 55,029.
If there are only 200,000
provisionals, following the same
calculation would leave us with a
lead of 16,779.
If the provisional
ballots are only 175,000 that leaves
us with a deficit of -2,346 that
will leaves us in a position to get
an automatic statewide recount.
Or, to put it another
way, an automatic recount is triggered
by a margin of 0.25% or between 13,000
and 16,000 votes.
::Permalink::
Posted
10:30pm, Monday, November
1, 2004
As
if your life depended on it
This is
the big day. Vote.
I'm going
to get up at 6am and try to get to
my polling place for the 7am start
of voting.
If the
lines stretch for blocks and takes
hours, vote. If you have to get up
at 5am, vote. If you have to skip dinner,
vote.
If you
believe in gay rights, vote. If you're
an African-American who feels disenfranchised,
vote. If you believe in reproductive
rights, vote. If you think we were
mislead into war, vote. If you have
draft age kids, vote. If you're mad
that Bin Laden is still at large, vote.
If you're sick and tired of voter fraud.
If you
pay too much for gas, vote. If you're
worried about the deficit, vote. If
you want kids to have the education
they deserve, vote. If you're tired
of big business taking their jobs overseas,
vote. If you want the rich to pay their
fair share of taxes, vote. If you're
concerned about the environment, vote.
If you want to close tax loopholes
for big business, vote. If you're sick
of Fox News, vote. If you want a health
plan that is affordable, vote.
If you
think Condi Rice should have focused
more on terrorism, vote. If you're
pissed that Donald Rumsfeld still has
a job after the Abu Gharib prison scandal,
vote. If you want a vice-president
who's not beholden to big power, vote.
If you think Bush can't admit his mistakes,
vote.
If you
want to sing and dance and party and
go hoarse shouting into Wednesday morning
while watching John Kerry win in a
landslide victory that is such a blow-out
that no one dare challenge it, vote.
Vote dammit,
vote. Make that man up top really sad.
Vote.
(Don't
forget Furious
George!!!)
Bush knows he's toast.
Look at him sweat...
Vote.
Vote,
dammit!
For
God's Sake, Vote! The man fell off
a Segway,
a vehicle designed specifically not
to fall down!
::Permalink::
