Bored now. Stressed now. Taking a break from posting until at least the New Year. Happy Holidays everyone, thanks SO much for sticking around, and hope to see you back here in 2005!

Forget about Fire, Famine, Pestilence, and Death; the new Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse are Gay Marriage, Cohabitation, Casual Divorce, and Deliberate Childlessness. And to think, I just started on the Pill; guess that makes me Horseman #4!

Aaaawwww, poor wittle Pwesident Bush is so afwaid of being heckled, that he may not address Parlaiment during a planned visit to Canada later this month.

WASHINGTON—The White House is leaning against having President George W. Bush address Parliament when he visits Ottawa, citing fears the U.S. president would be heckled during his speech.

No final decision has been made, but those involved with the planning of the visit (Nov. 30 and Dec. 1) want to avoid pictures on U.S. network television of a president being booed or shouted at as he embarks on a second term seeking warmer ties with allies who had cooled toward his administration.

The haggling over a potential speech is a sign of the wariness with which the White House views Ottawa after a series of rebukes from north of the border during the Chrétien years — and the damage done by MP Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga-Erindale), who was expelled from the Liberal caucus this week by Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Parrish has promised to hold her tongue if Bush speaks in the same venue where former New Democrat MP Svend Robinson famously heckled then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1987.

Of course, what else would we expect from the guy who couldn't even handle the sight of anti-Bush tee-shirts at his campaign rallies; who made sure any protests held against him during the campaign were confined to areas where he would never have to see them? He can't handle the reality-based community, so he tries to create a fantasy world where he's always right, always above reproach, never questioned. Too bad those of us in the reality-based community have to live with the consequenses of his fantasy-inspired screw-ups!

Quote for the Day: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"--George Carlin

Quote for the Day: "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"--Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

Idiotic Quote for the Day: "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."--George W. Bush. (Uh, Mr. President, not only should those doctors get out of the business, they're supposed to get arrested for that!)

Via Air America Radio, it's the Give Bush a Brain game! Use the mechanical claw to drop brains into Bush's empty skull, and see what profound words of wisdom come out of his mouth!

Quote for the Day: "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."--Oscar Wilde

Via The Sideshow, Sorryeverybody.com features people who voted against the President apologizing to the world, in pictures, for the election of George W. Bush. Please don't hate us!

Via Turquoise Waffle Irons in the Back Yard, I've got your Bush Mandate right here! (Bush Mandate link may not be work-safe.)

The WaPo, on Bush's 51% mandate.

When is a mandate a mandate?

President Bush won more than 59 million votes last week -- more than any other presidential candidate in history and enough, his supporters have said, to claim a mandate. But other comparisons between this year's election results and those of previous contests suggest his win was somewhat less decisive.

Bush's unofficial three-percentage-point margin of victory, for example, was the fifth smallest since 1920. John F. Kennedy won in 1960 with 0.2 percent more votes than Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, in turn, won in 1968 with a slim 0.7 percent advantage over Hubert H. Humphrey. In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford by 2.1 percent. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral one. Conversely, 10 of the previous 21 presidential races were won by at least 10 percentage points -- and five of them were decided by more than 20 points.

Bush's chunk of the popular vote -- unofficially, 51 percent -- also places him in the middle of this historical pack. Thirteen of the winners of the previous 21 elections won a larger share of the vote. Lyndon B. Johnson won the highest percentage, when he swamped Barry Goldwater in 1964 with 61.1 percent. Bill Clinton won with the lowest, when he took 43 percent in 1992. Bush, however, is the first to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988.

While he won more votes than any previous presidential candidate, second place goes to John F. Kerry, who took 56 million votes. Ronald Reagan came in third with 54.5 million in 1984, when he defeated Walter F. Mondale by 18 percentage points, followed by Al Gore with 50.9 million in 2000 and Bush, again, who won 50.4 million votes the same year.

Quote for the Day: "Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."--Mao Tse-Tung

Idiotic Quote for the Day: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."--former Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his letter of resignation. Does that mean we can get rid of that stupid color-coded alert system now?

Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred
by: Dylan Thomas

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.
Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun
And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire
When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang.
Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart.
The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound
Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage.
O keep his bones away from the common cart,
The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.

Quote for the Day: "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."--Friedrich Nietzsche

The Hand that Signed the Paper Felled a City
by: Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand the holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

Moderate Republican Arlen Specter warns President Bush against nominating ultra-conservatives for Supreme Court Justice, should any of the seats be vacated during his term.

The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush on Wednesday against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.

Sen. Arlen Specter, fresh from winning a fifth term in Pennsylvania, also said the current Supreme Court now lacks legal "giants" on the bench.

When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
...

With at least three Supreme Court justices rumored to be eyeing retirement, including ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Specter, 74, would have broad authority to reshape the nation's highest court. He would have wide latitude to schedule hearings, call for votes and make the process as easy or as hard as he wants.
...

While Specter is a loyal Republican — Bush endorsed him in a tight Pennsylvania GOP primary — he routinely crosses party lines to pass legislation and counts a Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, as one of his closest friends.

A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.
...

A former district attorney, Specter also bemoaned what he called the lack of any current justices comparable to legal heavyweights like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo and Thurgood Marshall, "who were giants of the Supreme Court."

"With all due respect to the (current) U.S. Supreme Court, we don't have one," he said.

Though he refused to describe the political leanings of the high court, Specter said he "would characterize myself as moderate; I'm in the political swim. I would look for justices who would interpret the Constitution, as Cardozo has said, reflecting the values of the people."

Quote for the Day: "Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."--Dylan Thomas

My friend Patrick's truly eloquent thoughts on the outcome of Tuesday's election.

President Bush will not kill this nation. Kerry wouldn’t have either. Nor will Osama, or China, or the EU. None of them have to, because we’re doing it for them – when the dream is gone, this nation will collapse into a sea of ethnic factions who hate each other, just like half of everywhere else seems to be in the process of. You can already see it beginning to happen here, really. They can’t kill the dream, but WE can. And just as certain, only we can save it.

And yes, I know that all of the scared folks are ready to hit me with “we have to shut out the foreigners to protect ourselves and our jobs!” and that kind of crap. And you know what… you’re right. The better question, and one that I’m amazed is never asked, is: but is it worth living if we have to live like THIS?

I don’t think so many people would think so, were it thought of in that manner. I know I certainly don’t think so… if the consequence of being the open and free society is that I must die, then so be it. If the consequence of being the open and free society is that people I love die, then so be it. If the consequence of being the open and free society is that our entire nation is wiped off the face of the earth… well, so be it. The dream, that American Dream that anyone can come here, and thrive here, is worth it. I don’t want a girl half a world away, crying her eyes out every night because she can’t come here, I want her here pursuing the dream we all pursue, that dream that in America you can make a better life for yourself if you’re willing to work for it. Defending the existence of that dream is worth any cost.

I would rather die in America than live anywhere else.

And that’s why I’m not going to fume, and I’m not going to threaten to move away, and I’m not going to lose sight of what matters. The dream doesn’t exist anywhere else, even if it’s in danger here – if we lose it here, we lose it for all of humanity, and we’ll never see it again in our lifetime. The dream is not dependant on presidents, or congressmen, or any of us. It depends on ALL of us, and we need to decide together to get back to being the nation where everybody wants to be, and we need to decide together that we’re going to be brave enough to let them. And if we don’t and the dream dies…

Well, then we should all still be grateful we ever lived in that wonderful place.

In the wake of Kerry's defeat, the Daily Kos calls for a change in leadership in the Democratic party, and Howard Dean is his man.

The McAuliffe reign has ended in disaster, with the Democratic Party in worse position electorally than when he came in as Chair in February 2001. We have lost seats in the House and Senate, and failed to cleanly take out the Worst President Ever.

While McAuliffe was an artful fundraiser, the party continued to lack the ability to develop a clear message or properly frame the political debate. And it's been killing us.

Even if Kerry can pull off the victory, it's clear the Democratic Party as currently constituted is on its deathbed. It needs reforms, and it needs them now. Quite frankly, the status quo simply won't cut it.

Howard Dean for DNC Chair.

Quote for the Day: "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."--Plato

Idiotic Quote for the Day: "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."--John Pappageorge, Republican, Michigan state legislator

This election day, Alternet has an article about the current Supreme Court's hostility toward voters, and the possibility that state legislatures could ignore their states' popular votes, and choose electors themselves.

Raskin persuasively argues that this Supreme Court has subverted the very democratic principles that millions of new voters believe await them: the right to vote, participate, have access to the ballot, and faith their vote will count. Indeed, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court wrote, "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote" in presidential elections (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104) Moreover, in Bush v. Gore, the court was emphatic that state legislatures have the power to bypass the popular vote and select presidential electors. "The State legislature's power to select the manner of appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself." (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104)

That's the nightmare scenario of 2004. As millions of Americans join the new democracy movement, the Supreme Court has given this opening to the Republican Party: if Tuesday's vote is disruptive enough – polls not closing on time, allegations of voter fraud, lawsuits, perhaps violence by frustrated voters – then legislatures in the disputed states can come in and appoint its own electors. The popular vote would not matter.

That's not a crazy paranoid theory. Conservative legal scholars, including this Supreme Court, have repeatedly pointed out the Constitution has no specific clause giving individuals the right to vote. All the "one person, one vote" doctrine comes from Supreme Court rulings, mostly in the mid-20th century, when the court was seen as liberal. But that's not today's court.

So consider the possibility that the more the GOP does to disrupt the vote, the more likely Karl Rove can be confident that there is a legal basis to push the selection of electoral college electors to legislatures in those states. What swing states have Republican majority legislatures? Colorado. Florida. Iowa. Michigan. Minnesota. New Hampshire. Ohio. Oregon. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin.

What does this mean for the democracy movement in 2004? It means people must turn out and vote in a tidal wave that washes away Republican tactics to produce another presidential coup. And then it means, once the election is over, a new constitutional amendment to firmly and finally assure the right of all Americans to vote – and at the same time, putting the electoral college where it truly belongs: in the dustbin of history.

Via Patrickville, the Puffy for President campaign out-fear-mongers Dick Cheney. Now THAT'S talent!

The Mighty Jimbo is trying to raise some money to repair the damage a bunch of homophobes did to his friend's car. Click on over if you'd like to donate. He also re-posted an old piece he wrote on the utter insanity that is homophobia.

Seriously. It's not like gay men have done anything to piss of the straight community. Sure, we aren't too happy about Will and Grace, but we can live with it. They aren't competing for women, so they certainly didn't steal your girlfriend. It's not like these homophobes were getting their asses kicked by the neighborhood gay street gang. Honestly. Have you ever once met a gay bully? No gay terrorists. No masked men are running around cities forcing innocent citizens to redecorate at gun point. Though that's not a bad idea. Most people need all the help they can get. And they aren't out there recruiting like the fucking army.

Don't like getting hit on? Is that it? Come off it, assface. Women aren't hitting on you either, and most of the gay men I know wouldn't come near you if you were touring with the Village People. And if you do get hit on, so what? Women have been putting up with your bullshit pick-up lines and unwelcome advances for years. Take some of your own medicine. Personally, the best pick-up line ever directed at me was from a gay man. He asked me, "You're not gay are you?" "No, I'm not", I replied. "Don't worry. The first time, doesn't make you gay." Priceless. And no, it didn't work.

Couldn't have said it better myself, Jimbo! And speaking as a woman, you're right. Most of the homophobic men I've met would be lucky to get hit on by a starving $5 hooker (male OR female). No self-respecting straight woman or gay man would want anything to do with them!