No dog in this fight but a yellow one

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Tuesday February 12, 2008 · 6:57 AM PST

2008/02/12 · 06:57

I am one of those Potomac voters. Or Chesapeake voters. (I am a Virginia voter. Is it too hard for the media to say, "Maryland, Virginia, and DC?" Does everything need a catchy name? Ah, well, that is the least of the media's transgressions.)

I am not voting. Until this afternoon. (Gotcha?) My kids want to vote with me, as they have done every election since they were born, so I'm waiting until they get out of school to go cast my vote.

I'm still undecided as to which button I will push. (Our precinct has touchscreen machines.)

poppyseed

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Wednesday January 30, 2008 · 3:02 PM PST

2008/01/30 · 15:02

For a couple of weeks, I stewed and fumed about the candidate wars here. Because I had finally decided to throw my lot in with Edwards, I was particularly drawn into the near-enmity between Obama and Edwards supporters. My opinion of Obama has been influenced, at least to some extent, by the attitudes of some of the more vocal and strident Obama supporters here. Then, a couple of days ago, I had an epiphany: my primary is February 12. I can do nothing more than support Edwards in my primary, and then support whomever gets the nomination come November. Getting mired in the personal attacks and crossfire between the Edwards camp and the Obama camp was pointless. I actually had it easy – I would get to vote for my guy in my primary (a first – I have yet to vote for a candidate I really like) and then, in November, would do the right thing regardless of whoever got the nomination, and vote for the Democrat. Coming to this realization did my blood pressure and sanity a lot of good, because I felt like I could finally overcome the rubbernecker within who insisted on being invested in the Obama/Edwards wars here.

And then, of course, today happened. And now I have to choose a different candidate.

poppyseed

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Friday January 25, 2008 · 9:10 AM PST

2008/01/25 · 09:10

Check my comments history, and you'll quickly realize that I am an Edwards kinda woman. I'm not really sure how it happened. I was uncommitted for the longest time, and then I caught a bit of Q&A Edwards had with voters at a diner in NH it was, I think, and that's when it started.

I'm embroiled now, though, however slow I was to come to the Edwards camp. I don't even talk to my husband on the phone unless it's an emergency, but I'm planning to phone bank for Edwards. I am dedicated. Hell, I even wade into the candidate diaries these days!

poppyseed

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Friday January 11, 2008 · 7:58 AM PST

2008/01/11 · 07:58

Until earlier this week, I had studiously avoided all the candidate diaries. I was undecided as to whom I would vote for. I was leaning toward Edwards, but open to the other Dem candidates. And ultimately, I will be voting for whomever is nominated as the candidate.

What got me reading candidate diaries was, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the onslaught of appeals - or demands, rather - from Obama supporters to Edwards supporters to tell Edwards to give it up, throw in the towel, and make way for Obama. These demands also pretty firmly put me in the Edwards camp, made up my mind for me, even as I had determined on Tuesday night that Obama's graceful concession speech caught my ear enough for me to give him another look. And then I came here and read all the entreaties to me to give up my say in our democracy in order to make room for Obama.

And now, we have Lawrence O'Donnell doing the same thing in HuffPo.

poppyseed

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Monday September 03, 2007 · 5:17 PM PDT

2007/09/03 · 17:17

It's four-and-a-half months since Mama died. I've visited my parents' house - my dad's house, I'm finally beginning to be able to say that - the last two weekends. I walk in, and nobody's home. I can count on one hand the number of times I've come to their house when no one was home; usually there is always someone there, usually Mama. I walk in and there are no lights on to welcome me. In the twilight, it is dark in the living room. I am briefly overwhelmed by the darkness and the stillness. I cut on the lights. That isn't much better. The house smells like old people. I cannot reconcile this. My parents aren't old. My mother was sixty-one, my father is sixty-two. Too young for the house to smell so close and elderly. It is too empty there, too. It feels sad in there. How does Daddy come home to this every day, to this gaping absence and the stillness and the emptiness?

poppyseed

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Monday August 06, 2007 · 3:51 PM PDT

2007/08/06 · 15:51

I am more spiritual than tied to a particular dogma, though I suppose I would class myself as a Christian before I'd peg myself as anything else. Nonetheless, I grew impatient with the people who, when my mother died, told me, "At least she's in a better place" and expected me to take comfort in that.

My mother suffered terribly with her short illness. I don't suppose anyone doesn't suffer with cancer. I was grateful that she was no longer suffering – I still occasionally hear, in my mind, that terrible strangled breathing of my mother's the last couple of weeks of her life as first, she slept, and then, slipped into a coma. But it enraged me whenever someone offered up the vision of my mother in heaven, breathing freely, as a reason for me to put aside the suffering I was feeling. I found myself wanting to scream any time anyone pointed out the obvious fact that, with my mother dead, she was no longer suffering. It infuriated me to the point that I literally had to bite my tongue a couple of times to keep myself from sarcastically snotting, "Oh, so you were there by her bedside when her breathing was so ragged and wet it sounded like someone slurping the last bits of milkshake from bottom of the cup? You want to tell me about my mother suffering?"

poppyseed

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Tuesday July 31, 2007 · 12:24 PM PDT

2007/07/31 · 12:24

There have been times when Mike Stark has spoken for me. I loved what he did with the whole "macaca" thing. I was proud, then, that Mike Stark was a fellow Virginian. I love the fact that Mike Stark will do things that more timid folks like me only dream of doing, that he will fight back and fight hard. Certainly, nobody can accuse Mike of lacking chutzpah. But I believe Mike has taken it too far this time.

poppyseed

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Wednesday November 08, 2006 · 6:47 AM PST

2006/11/08 · 06:47

I have undertaken the odious task of heading over to Free Republic to see how the other side (the parts not fully represented and expressed by "liberal media" CNN, that is) is taking last night's events. I'm somewhat innoculated - I am the daughter of a Freeper. And here's a dirty little secret: I used to be a Freeper myself. But that was years and years and years ago. A lifetime ago, really. More than half a decade. If the Republicans have done anything in the last six years, it's to make a lot of hard-core, never-look-back Lefties like me. Read More

Hey Fairfax and Loudoun Virginians! Let's ask Felix some questions!

poppyseed

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Tuesday October 31, 2006 · 6:37 PM PST

2006/10/31 · 18:37

We all, by now, know about George Allen's goons roughing up one of his constituents for having the temerity to ask Allen a question. And we know that there are rumors of George Allen's abuse - verbal or otherwise - of not only bullying brown folks, but also women.

So I'm thinking, you know, if he thinks nothing of thugging out on Mike Stark, and maybe thought nothing of spitting on his first wife as well as being abusive toward his sister - would George Allen's henchmen rough up a woman "heckler" at one of his events? Read More

Bush-o-Tron 2006 translates Bush's speech from yesterday

poppyseed

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Wednesday September 06, 2006 · 8:34 AM PDT

2006/09/06 · 08:34

I've made a new invention, inspired by the supremely clever karateexplosions*. My invention translates Bushspeak to something real Americans can understand, and it brushes aside the cobwebs of the lies - I mean moral and intellectual confusion that trips from Bush's mouth as easily as proselytizing comes from a fundamentalist's tongue. It's hard work to come to a reasonable translation (the Bushspeak is obfuscating and riddled with inaacuracy), but I think the Bush-o-Tron 2006 has done an admirable job. Read More

The more things change, the more they stay the same

poppyseed

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Tuesday August 22, 2006 · 6:49 AM PDT

2006/08/22 · 06:49

Mr. Poppyseed works at the Library of Congress, and occasionally on his lunch hour, he will explore the exhibits in the gorgeous Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Last week he noted that there is a pretty comprehensive Herblock exhibit on display until January 20, 2007. The exhibition is well worth a look, because these cartoons, many of which are from the '60s and '70s, have a great deal of relevance to us today. Read More

VA-Sen: Virginia primary turnout seems shockingly low

poppyseed

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Tuesday June 13, 2006 · 1:13 PM PDT

2006/06/13 · 13:13

My kids' school is a polling place for our fairly active little corner of voting Virginia. I live in Northern Virginia, in the 'burbs. Admittedly, many of the outlying areas even in relatively progressive Northern Virginia are purple-to-red, but in the past, I've seen extremely encouraging voter turnout when I've gone to vote.

Not so today. Hardly anybody seems to be voting in today's primary. Read More

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No dog in this fight but a yellow one

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O'Donnell: John Edwards is a Loser

The Grieving Room - Going Home

The Grieving Room - a Better Place?

Mike Stark doesn't speak for me

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning!

Hey Fairfax and Loudoun Virginians! Let's ask Felix some questions!

Bush-o-Tron 2006 translates Bush's speech from yesterday

The more things change, the more they stay the same

VA-Sen: Virginia primary turnout seems shockingly low