Hopefully, I'll just write this in the way so that even if the people involved do read this site, late at night, they agree with how I depict them.  I was at the bar tonight, here in Brooklyn.  "This is the white enclave, the place where all the scenesters go," is how it was described to me by Y.- that's correct.  It's been my local bar for two years.  It's on the border between the huge hispanic neighborhood, Bushwick, and the huge black neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant  There's a bar every 15 or so blocks down the main street here, a few years ago, not even that.  It's basically been vacant/residential around here, but it's slowly filling up with people and business, a lot of construction has been going on the last five years.

I'm a pacifist, a minority position, I know.  Today is Martin Luther King  Day, which is a holiday for a pacifist celebrated by a overwhelmingly war-like country.  I was brought to the idea by a professor of mine who was a registered pacifist during World War II, and the movie Ghandi.  Sometimes different Christian groups can be very inspiring too.  I got my family to go with me to the Shaker meeting in New Glouster, Maine a few weeks ago.  There are four Shakers there, the last members of a religious community that started in England in 1772.  Shakers are sort of Buddhist Monks mixed with Quakers, with some feminism thrown in (I'm sure they would disagree with this).  Some of the elements that set them apart from other groups are their pacifism, celibacy (no marriage or children) and their emphasis on the female.  These ideas they have preserved since the 1700s, when they were even more unpopular than they are now.  Their first leader was Ann Lee, who brought the original group of nine people from England to New York State.  They refer to God as both male and female, which is something unique among Christian groups, I think (maybe the Universalists do that too).

Today John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards. John Edwards. John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards? John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards!  John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards, John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John; Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards, John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards John Edwards.  Read on...

I drove to Iowa for the holidays, staying with my dad's family on their farm, north of Marshalltown, for five days.  I checked on the schedule of candidates appearences, but there was nothing nearby when I was there, aside from a Fred Thompson thing about an hour and a half away.  Which I didn't go to.  We took a lot of small roads to go here and there, into different towns, and I was surprised by the lack of political signs.  Considering how much I hear about Iowa, I thought the landscape would be a signage battleground.  

Who did the best in the debate?  I didn't see a poll anywhere.  I thought Kucinich and Richardson did good.

Forty-five percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans said the early Nevada caucus would be good for the nation, but 49 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans predicted it would make no difference nationally.

The sampling error for those questions is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Sixty-three percent of Nevadans responding to the poll said the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States should be decreased, and 66 percent said they oppose a plan by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to offer undocumented immigrants driver's licenses.
advertisement

Spitzer said earlier Wednesday he was dropping the controversial proposal. The sampling error on the license question is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The poll was conducted by telephone November 9-13 with 2,084 adults in Nevada, including 389 likely Democratic caucus-goers and 304 likely Republican caucus-goers.

I'm going to Iowa in 4 days.  Hope there's something fun political to do.

A state of emergency was declared for 15 days in Georgia today and basically a low-level military rule has replaced the democratic society.  The Georgian president was originally going to just have a short state of emergency in the capital Tbilisi, but then extended it to the whole country.  There have been large protests over the arrest of a political opposition figure.  The protest outside parliament was broken up by tear gas and water cannons today.  

I'm watching the Values Voter debate online.  Some things about it; it's a Christian group; Guiliani, Thompson, McCain and Romney skipped it.  Seven others showed up, which was a surprise to me.  John Cox and Alan Keyes are somewhat official?  Will they be showing up at all the rest of the debates?  

Another interesting thing is they have a speed round going right now, where questions are asked and then the candidates press a button and a red or green light goes on.  I thought the hand-raising set-up was bad, but this has the dignity of "Press Your Luck."  

Actor-politicians (a disease that has effected many countries like India, Canada, Poland, as well as the United States) are, you may have noticed, usually Republicans.  I have heard that it is because (R)s are more interested in making you believe something, appealing to the dramatic, etc.  The actor-politician has become much more common in national politics in the last 20 years.  Is this caused by Reagan or was Reagan part of the trend?  Will overwhelmingly Democratic Hollywood actors start running as Democrats one day?  Do people like fake jerks who say things like they're really serious?  (The answer to that one is Yes).

Here is a list of the major characters/politicians in our history:

Number one and chief among them is Ronald Reagan who was a pretty big movie star for a while and then a huge political hemorrhoid for eight years, my least favorite moment being everything associated with Iran/Contra.  Did he end Communism, or did Communism just work badly and end?  No one knows.

I like to think of the AP as a pretty neutral source, but every once in a while, I see something like this.  
The story is about a free spirited, freedom-loving man being hounded by his conformist neighbors.  So of course the hero is inspired by the constant persistent voice of the right wing.  

One day, sometime after the Iraq invasion, I was coming back into New York City on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of the major routes into the city if you want to go to Brooklyn or downtown Manhattan, and I saw facing the road a large billboard reading "Worst President Ever."  It was immediately a fixture in my life.  I went down to the street where it was in Williamsburg soon after and looked up at it.  It was actually pretty hard to see from the street- but it was perfect for the in-bound traffic on the highway.  No logo, no bla bla.com.  Just the words.  In the dark days of 2003 and 2004 it was like the new statue of liberty to me.  She'd always had her back to the city anyways, and then, after 9/11, you weren't even allowed to visit her anymore.  

[This is a blog my friend Suzanne wrote and she said I could post it here.  I thought it was pretty interesting.  She is living in Cape Coast, Ghana with her boyfriend Joel, and she teaches at a Teacher Training College.]

Two weeks ago Joel and I sat on the rooftop of Sammo's Guesthouse drinking beer and waiting for dinner when an evangelical preacher by the name of Ezekiel approached us.  He was selling drums. Besides selling drums, he was trying to start a church.  Ezekiel had an earnest, emphatic way of speaking that Joel and I liked immediately.  He talked to us about his travels, his personal path from being a rockstar Rasta to a preacher.  He spoke about his drums, how they are made, etc., and I realized that yes, I wanted a drum.  In fact, I've always wanted a drum.  A lifelong dream that I had around the age of three of being a drummer returned to me and I became immediately excited about my new future as a drummer for a world music percussion band.

Last night, I was listening to the BBC interview with a Taliban spokesman, who was explaining in very rational terms their strategy for their war against the coalition forces, and the extent of their determination.  I looked up the transcript today, and for the first time I realized that as with tyre and tire, color and colour, we've managed to make another break with Great Britain's language.  England has officially gone with Taleban, while we, of course, have gone with Taliban.  When did that happen?  Why?

The interview is strange, a little beyond anything NPR will do, I suggest reading the whole thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

I'd say these quotes were key for me (Yes, I understand the PR mindset that probably went behind them):

The last time that there was an election with neither an incumbent president nor vice president was in 1952 in the Stevenson/Eisenhower election.  (I know, there was 1968, but Nixon had already been a two-term vice-president, and that election was an aberation in so many ways).  

1952 offers many parallels.  The incumbent president, Truman, was at the end of his term, and was about as popular as Bush, because of the Korean War.  When Truman fired MacArthur, the country turned against him.  Nothing like that happened when Bush just fired Pace (though Republicans have taken some umbrage).  

More

I was watching cartoons recently and thought to myself, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (if you're not familiar with this...maybe go watch it on adultswim.com a little bit) is like our government.