My friend
Pinky
isn’t the only one suffering from “blog apathy.” I’m so pissed off (even about some local stuff) that I can hardly think straight.
Author: Ruby Sinreich
Streaming panel
This is the panel of guys talking about how they created the very first online radio simulcast from WXYC ten years ago, with the help of what is now ibiblio.org . You can listen to the conversation right now on http://wxyc.org .
Don’t Mourn
More words I can’t muster:
Meteor Blades on dailyKOS.com @ 7:01 am: Not a few
people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist
authoritarianism emerging out of the country’s current leadership. I think
that’s not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not
bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of
behaving as if “what’s the use?” It’s tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our country’s history, abolitionists, suffragists,
union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians,
feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of
Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another,
but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks. After a
decent interval of licking our wounds and pondering what might have been
and where we went wrong, we need to spit out our despair and return –
united – to battling those who have for the moment outmaneuvered us.
Otherwise, we might just as well lie down in the street and let them
flatten us with their schemes.
Except this guy still thinks we can do it within the Dmeocratic Party. I
don’t see how. Where was the DP for the civil rights movement, the
anti-war movement, etc? We have to win it in spite of them, not on behalf
of them.
Voters: The Next Generation
Josh Koenig at MusicForAmerica.org has put together an electioral map reflecting the 2004 results for voters under 30. Kerry comes out wih 375 electoral votes to Bush’s 163. It’s nice to think (hope?) this is the direction our electorate is going in.
MFA also points out that this year had the second highest youth turnout ever (51%). The highest was in 1972 when 18-year-olds were first allowed to vote. Voters under 30 came out even more (64%) in targeted states this year. This is certainly progress, but it’s still a little depressing to think their max turnout is about the same as the average across age groups. I bet it will be even higher next time, though. There will be a lot of pissed off kids.
Paging the 4th Estate
Where is the mainstream media while real life is going on? I can’t understand how they keep talking about how this election went so smoothly, without problems or legal challenges, etc.
Salon.com reports that “voters in 39 states reported problems with e-voting machines… That’s every single state that uses electronic voting machines, including swing states, such as Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.” And dailyKOS.com has documented widespread voter intimidation across the country. And we all know some voters in Ohio had to wait in line 9 hours to vote. This might be considered a “smooth election” in Haiti or Afghanistan, but if this is “the greatest democracy in the world,” then the world is even more fucked than I thought.
The media is not reporting the facts. The 4th Estate has crumbled. Go blogs!
What to do now
Harpers Magazine has published “Electing to Leave” about the options for aspiring expatriates including renunciating American citizenship, moving to other countries, and starting your own.
In your search for alternate citizenship, you might naturally think first of Canada and Mexico. But despite the generous terms of NAFTA, our neighbors to the north and south are, like us, far more interested in the flow of money than of persons.
Fuck!
Kerry has called Bush to concede.
I am so pissed off at so many things, but let me vent about the
electoral college for a bit. You can argue, as many will, that Bush won
the popular vote and so it wouldn’t matter if it was counted that way
instead. BUT, if the President was selected by a national popular vote,
the campaigns would have been run very differently. Kerry has incredibly
strong support in most urban areas, but if they were in “red” states this
year, they didn’t see much campaign action. Similarly, Kerry wasted a lot
of energy on rural voters in large swing states when we could have been
courting his natural supporters in cities across the country.
Don’t Mourn
More words I can’t muster:
Meteor Blades on dailyKOS.com @ 7:01 am: Not a few
people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist
authoritarianism emerging out of the country’s current leadership. I think
that’s not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not
bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of
behaving as if “what’s the use?” It’s tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our country’s history, abolitionists, suffragists,
union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians,
feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of
Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another,
but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks. After a
decent interval of licking our wounds and pondering what might have been
and where we went wrong, we need to spit out our despair and return –
united – to battling those who have for the moment outmaneuvered us.
Otherwise, we might just as well lie down in the street and let them
flatten us with their schemes.
Except this guy still thinks we can do it within the Dmeocratic Party. I
don’t see how. Where was the DP for the civil rights movement, the
anti-war movement, etc? We have to win it in spite of them, not on behalf
of them.
Speechless
I can hardly find words, so I will let my friends at AmericaBLOG.org start:
John @ 1:28 am: …until this party grows a set of balls and gives as good as it gets, it’s going to continue to struggle.
The worst thing we can do is to wake up tomorrow and decide that we need to change our message while keeping the same wimpy messengers in charge of the party. It just doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal-dem waffler or a conservative-dem waffler. If all you change is the message and not the messenger, nothing is going to change.
This is exacly what I’ve been talking
about.
If the Democrats continue to choose leaders like Bowles and Kerry, who
stand for nothing but moderation, they will be left with an agenda that
stands for nothing. I think they’re about 75% of the way there. As much
as I want to get the Evil Ones out of office (more now than ever), I find
it harder and harder to get behind “leaders” who don’t espouse any common
principles or values with me. How long can they expect half the country
to keep loyaly supporting the lesser of two evils?
All that said, I’m not conceding Ohio yet, either.
Michael @ 3:25 am:
Ohio is STILL casting ballots and there are provisional ballots AND
overseas ballots AND absentee ballots. I am disconsolate at this moment that it was even close, much less that Kerry is trailing in the popular vote. But is it too much to ask that we count every vote or at least wait until people have stopped voting in Ohio before calling it a day?
And I also just can’t beleive that in the face of the largest voter
registration and mobilization effort in history that the results would be
almost exactly the same state-by-state asthey were in 2000. That spells Republican foul play and Democratic incompetence.