I do have something I want to write about today, and I still hope to get to it. But I also want to say: PLEASE VOTE. Today if you can, tomorrow if early voting is not available in your state (as is the case here). Take a personal day if you have to. Call in sick if you have to. And please, for the future of our country, our economy, and our people, vote for Obama....
October 30, 2008
As we peer into society's future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1960...
September 11, 2008
Here's what I'd most like to see from the news media, or from any respected institution at all: A comparison of Barack Obama's and John McCain's proposals on the economy/taxes, health care, education, the environment, and foreign policy. If you know of a good source for such a comparison, please link to it in the comments. (Update: Here's one comparison, of the two candidates' tax policies, from the Tax Policy Center.)...
September 8, 2008
This headline and blurb in today's NYT e-mail blast caught my eye, partly because my thoughts on Sarah Palin finally crystallized over the weekend (blog post coming soon, hopefully), and partly because of Al's enumeration of the issues that were important to him in the coming election:...
May 27, 2008
Thanks to Al's superior parenting skills (and longer attention span when it comes to playing Car Dealership), I got to spend a lot of time reading this holiday weekend, and I finished Friday Night Lights last night. On Saturday night I came across a section that discussed the conservatism of West Texas in general and the 1988 presidential election in particular, and I was struck by its relevance to the current campaign....
May 16, 2008
I was listening to MSNBC yesterday, as I often do while working, when this crazy shouting match erupted on Hardball. I ran into the other room to watch, and then ran back to my computer afterwards to Twitter what I'd seen. Of course, Twitter was down right then, so I pinged my friend Kristin and gave a breathless account of the exchange between Chris Matthews and Kevin James over IM....
April 22, 2008
I did it. I voted....
March 18, 2008
Two related items:...
March 5, 2008
After hearing the pundits on CNN postulate that the Democratic race would come down to "a showdown in Pennsylvania" last night, I started thinking seriously about registering as a Democrat so I could vote. For a while there it was looking as if Obama would sweep the rest of the primaries or Hillary would drop out, but after winning Ohio and Texas last night, it looks like we're in for the long slog....
February 6, 2008
I'm in San Jose, California for my company's engineering tech summit, which happened to overlap with Super Tuesday this year. Yesterday all my colleagues (well, not ALL of them; the Romanians and Germans were almost as oblivious of the Super Tuesday hoo-hah as I was) kept asking me for whom I voted. "Oh, I'm from Pennsylvania," I reminded them. "We don't vote until it's over."...
April 26, 2007
Please, please go read You Are What You Grow in the New York Times Magazine. Some of its contents will be familiar to anyone who's read the absorbing, eye-opening The Omnivore's Dilemma, but it's more specifically about the farm bill—which Pollan argues should be called the food bill instead. An excerpt:...
April 13, 2007
My friend John, via his blog, turned me on to Open Congress, a new web site that follows the goings on in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. I'm finding their Congress Gossip Blog (link goes to RSS feed) to be a fabulously useful way to keep up with the issues being debated, and the political machinations involved, without having to read a gazillion political blogs (and mentally adjust for their various leanings) every day. If you...
November 8, 2006
President Bush's press conference just started. Listening to him speak is like chewing hot food on the back left molar that desperately needs a root canal....
November 7, 2006
November 6, 2006
This shit just makes me SO FUCKING MAD. Not so much because it's being done by smarmy Republicans; I think I'd be just as mad if Democrats or Independents or Greens were doing it, although for some reason, it always seems to be the conservatives who pull this kind of crap. Actually, now that I think of it, it's more accurate to say that it always seems to be *radicals* who pull this kind of crap. There are some...
June 22, 2006
I think I'd be worn out from yesterday's migraine anyway, even if I hadn't stayed up until almost midnight for the past two nights to watch a Frontline on Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and the way the intelligence communities (not to mention a Secretary of State) were used and abused between 9/11 and the runup to the invasion of Iraq. I did stay up to watch that documentary, however, and now I'm exhausted—and fascinated....
March 15, 2006
This ROCKS. I have a very strong urge to donate money to Jamie Raskin's campaign, even though I don't live in the Maryland suburbs of DC....
March 13, 2006
I'm trying hard not to wish that Bill Napoli could be "brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it." I'm trying hard to find only love and compassion for this man who obviously has no love or compassion for any woman who is not "a virgin[,]... religious[,]....[and] plann[ing] on saving her virginity until she was married." I'm trying hard to pray for this man—who I deeply, firmly believe has, like any other man, no right...
February 3, 2006
From my washingtonpost.com e-mail update this morning, this shocking news of insurgent activity RIGHT HERE IN THE U.S.:...
January 30, 2006
This makes my skin crawl and my heart ache. Oh, how those crafty conservatives must be doing a "you-liberals-think-you're-so-smart-but-WE-WIN!" dance right now, and justifiably so. I don't hate that they get to do that dance because they're conservatives; I hate it because they seem to take such ridiculous GLEE in chipping away at my personal freedoms....
December 13, 2005
From an editorial in today's New York Times about the Bush administration finally agreeing to send delegates to the climate change talks in Montreal, as long as any agreements made were non-binding:...
October 27, 2005
The Democrats I heard on the radio this morning would have you believe that my proposed strategy of letting the right wingers duke it out over Harriet Miers' nomination worked, and that the reason she withdrew her nomination was that she wasn't able to convince the far right of her "conservative credentials". Harry Reid, for one, believes that she was eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, and it was only those goofy hard-core conservatives who got in...
October 5, 2005
I think Al thought I was arguing in support of Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supremem Court the other night when I suggested that she might have had some experience writing opinions on Constitutional issues during her tenure at the White House, but I wasn't. At the time, I was reserving judgement. Although I found it deeply creepy that Bush thought it was appropriate to appoint someone on the basis of personal friendship and loyalty, and I suspected that...
September 18, 2005
Via John: A poignant call to cooperation by Carrie Lemack....
July 6, 2005
Last night I thought of like five different things I wanted to blog about (some parenthood-related, some politics/media/news-related), but I figured rather than trying to type while holding the baby, I'd wait until I had both hands free today to blog. Of course, now I can't remember what I was going to say.... Random results of the Google search I'm running on my brain in the background: We found a new babysitter on Friday, and she started today. So...
January 21, 2005
The bill for Austen's delivery and the subsequent 4-day hospital stay arrived yesterday. Together with the bill for the anesthesia, which arrived in December (I'm pretty sure they charged me for both the spinal and the epidural, even though I correctly predicted that a spinal wouldn't work), and the bill for the amniocentesis we got last summer, the total cost of bringing Austen into this world was roughly $20,000. The amount we were actually responsible for paying? $555.45. This...
January 14, 2005
I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago that the weather in Philadelphia had been quite balmy lately, but in the past few days, it's been positively screwy. On Wednesday Austen and I left the house at 10:24am (I was timing us) en route to my six-week post-partum checkup (I'm fine, all systems are go). I was wearing my fuzzy-collared winter coat, but I didn't bother donning my hat and gloves. Soon I even had to unbutton the...
November 12, 2004
MSNBC anchor: "We just heard President Bush mention 'capital,' which seems to be one of his new words since the election..." Yep, that's our president: Building his vocabulary one term at a time....
November 11, 2004
For anyone who still believes that "moral values" were the leading issue in the election last week, consider that the "moral values" voters were only 1/5 of those polled. (It's not like this number is a mystery; it's just that everyone who quotes it—and all the major news organizations have—does so as if one fifth is a WHOPPING number. It's not.) Frank Rich has an illuminating op-ed piece in the New York Times today on this very subject: On...
November 4, 2004
From Deficits and Tax System Changes in Bush's Second-Term Economy: Federal tax revenue was $100 billion lower this year than when Mr. Bush took office, but spending is $400 billion higher. Moral values don't come cheap, apparently. My question is: Is it moral to saddle your children with a mountain of debt? Is it moral to ask for a tax cut while saying you support the war in Iraq? (What exactly are you supporting it with, if not tax...
November 3, 2004
What I want right now is a box of See's chocolates, to sit here in bed and drown my sorrows in sugar. I probably shouldn't be blogging in this state. I'm exhausted, I'm despondent, and I'm VERY pregnant—a bad enough combination without adding to the mix the fact that I haven't had time to process what happened last night, to think less emotionally about what it means to me, to us as a (soon-to-be-expanding) family, to us as Americans....
November 2, 2004
We're back from the childbirth class, and I've finished posting the remainder of the election day photos. A thumbnail sampling of a few of the shots:...
I'm posting the photos I took between about 11am and 12:30pm today over at about town II. I have a few more to add (including two more of Bush supporters), but we have to leave for our childbirth class now. I'll add them when I get home tonight. One important thing to note when you look at the photos: I didn't photograph every Kerry sign I saw, but I did photograph every Bush sign I saw. (If I had...
My plan was to vote at around 10am this morning, after the people with day jobs had had a chance at it, but as I woke up at 6:20 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, and the dryer repairman came at 7:55 and was done by 8:15, Al asked me if I wanted to go vote with him. I agreed, figuring that if the lines were too long, I would just come back later. The line *was*...
November 1, 2004
How many people think that tomorrow's election will be a blowout? Well, maybe not a blowout, but a lot closer than all the pundits are predicting? I contend that it could happen. I believe—and this could just be wishful thinking on my part, I admit—that I will wake up on November 3 and know who the next president will be. (Although it's true that many states will be counting absentee ballots well into next week.) I even believe—and again,...
October 31, 2004
Allow me to direct you to the op-ed piece by Thomas L. Friedman in this Sunday's New York Times, entitled The Apparent Heir. If you don't get the paper, register to look at the online version—it's free. I'll be voting for the heir on Tuesday. Please consider doing so, too, for all the reasons Friedman outlines in his last paragraph....
October 29, 2004
I love that Wolf Blitzer just said [paraphrasing here], "this isn't the October Suprise everyone was expecting."...
There's an article in the New York Times today (Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache, free subscription required to view) describing a video shot by a Minneapolis-based TV news crew that purports to show intact IAEA seals at the Al Qaqaa munitions complex, as well as the now-missing crates of HMX explosives. When was the video shot? Nine days after the fall of Baghdad. I was a bit frustrated by the article; in an apparent attempt to be balanced,...
October 28, 2004
When we lived in California, we got an official Voter Guide for every election—one that listed every candidate and every proposition on the ballot, including arguments for and against each. It also listed our polling place on the back, and usually included an application for an absentee ballot (handy if you knew you'd be travelling on election day). I've been waiting patiently for such a book to show up at my house in Philly, but so far, none has...
October 27, 2004
Among the comments on blurbomat's endorsement post from a few days ago was this one from a woman named Melissa: I support Bush for national security...like it or not under the Democrat presidency of Clinton, military/intelligence spending was cut so drastically that this country could not defend itself. Historically the Democrats are not big on a strong military presence. Ask yourself who Al Queda, Saddam, Ossama would vote for...KERRY...so I have to vote against them. According to a blurb...
October 26, 2004
A few random items: dj blurb opened up comments on his endorsement post, and I loved reading all most of the different points of view. (Most—but not all—commenters support Kerry, but whom each person supports not as interesting as why.) Al and I start childbirth classes tonight. This week's pregnancy newsletter from ParentsPlace.com seemed to suggest that I'd be nervous about the birth by now, but for some reason I'm not. I am loving The Price of Loyalty: George...
Yesterday Bill Clinton, and later John Kerry himself, were here campaigning for the Kerry/Edwards ticket. There was a big rally in and around Love Plaza, which I usually walk through to get to Al's office; yesterday I was turned away by the crowds at 17th Street, about a block and a half away. It was good to see so many supporters of the Democratic ticket earnestly doing their parts to cheer on the nominee and the former President. In...
October 25, 2004
That was my husband's question when we started talking about the shocking story of missing explosives in Iraq, and wondering whether the Bush administration would characterize the explosives as evidence that Saddam was reviving his nuclear weapons program. Interestingly, the White House's response to the theft seemed to go in the other direction: White House spokesman Scott McClellan played down the threat posed by explosives missing from the Al Qaqaa military installation. He said there was no threat of...
October 18, 2004
Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, wrote a fascinating piece for yesterday's New York Times Magazine called "Without a Doubt" (link via Silt, via my well-read neighbor, Mr. Rittenhouse). It's about the role of faith in the Bush White House—the kind of faith, as George Seaton (and Kris Kringle, in Miracle on 34th Street) put it, that is "believing in things when common sense tells you not to." I don't know about you, but I'd prefer a...
October 17, 2004
I saw this interesting item on Suburban Guerrilla about the difference in the British and American responses to the Chiron debacle, but I wasn't sure how reliable the source was (especially given the dodgy editing, the lack of attribution, and the numerous server errors I got on my first visit to the site). It seems the story's accurate, if the Washington Post is to be believed. What's interesting to me is that this could be yet another example of...
October 14, 2004
var canadaQuote = "HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?\n\nBUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you. And that's why the FDA and that's why the surgeon general are looking very carefully to make sure it...
October 12, 2004
Slate magazine has an interesting analysis of how Kerry blew the second presidential debate by William Saletan (link via nj). As much as I think Bush is an idiot as a debator, I have to say I agree that Kerry is even worse at taking advantage of what Saletan calls hanging sliders (and what I called pucks flying through the slot after the first debate). Kerry gave interesting responses, but they often weren't the ones I expected. WHY, oh...
October 9, 2004
Impressions of tonight's debate, the first part of which I heard on the radio while in the car (everything up to domestic policy), and the second part of which I'm currently watching on TiVo (everything from domestic policy on): I'd rather listen on the radio than watch on TV, though being able to pause and think about/discuss points made is nice. I'm finding Bush creepily defensive—at the rate he's screeching his responses, he won't have a voice left by...
October 7, 2004
It's always bugged me that the Republican Party has a reputation of being the party of fiscal responsibility, since they obviously can't balance a budget to save their lives. (Heck, I wonder if they could even balance a checkbook.) I found it particularly amusing that in the first presidential debate, Bush shook his head and laughed at Kerry's long list of proposals, wondering how he was going to pay for them... and then proceeded to brag about how much...
October 5, 2004
This is what I hear when Dick Cheney is talking: Blah blah blah murmur murmur blah blah murmur murmur blah blah blah... blah. This is what I hear when John Edwards is talking: What John Kerry should have said. Other random observations as I watch the debate: When I *am* able to distinguish words while Cheney is talking, he's saying things that should be valid criticisms of Kerry and Edwards—and yet they're falling like punches in a dream. They...
September 30, 2004
Am I wrong or insane for finding this debate so fucking hilarious? Yeah, Bush has made one or two good points—I'm happy to admit that, because he's put me in such a good mood. All the whining, the goofy facial expressions while Kerry is speaking, the punchy emphasis on certain words (VICTORY!), the almost bluesy tone he adopts when talking about what it's like to lead the war in Iraq ("and it's SO HARD [babysittin' these guys]"), the talking...
September 28, 2004
These editorials ran on the same page of Friday's New York Times, and they're both excellent. If you haven't registered to read the NYT online yet, now's the time—it's totally free. Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns By BOB HERBERT With deaths mounting in Iraq, the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances. Let's Get Real By PAUL KRUGMAN President Bush claims that John Kerry's plan to rebuild Iraq...
This weekend Al and I were in San Francisco for the beautiful wedding of two friends. When the officiant asked the bride's father, who walked her down the aisle, "who gives this woman in holy matrimony?", the father replied in a booming voice, "she gives herself!" All RIGHT!! As the bride and groom joined hands, the officiant said some things about marriage that I can't begin to articulate now but that were so true they made my heart burst...
September 8, 2004
I upgraded the blogs at lori-and-al.com to Movable Type 3.0D weeks ago (though I've yet to rebuild the completely hosed about_town databases, which accounts for why I haven't added to them in forever), but I've been procrastinating when it comes to upgrading over here at avocado8. Well, today's the day I take the plunge. Things might look broken or weird for a while, so please bear with me while I get things organized. Thanks! In the meantime, for your...
September 1, 2004
I put the computer away while Laura Bush was speaking last night, mainly because I needed time to absorb what she was saying before I could comment on it. After the Beavis and Butthead-like performance of the Bush twins (huh huh, heh heh heh), Laura Bush's speech was compassionate, coherent, reasonably upbeat, and surprisingly smirk-free. It's really too bad she's married to such a schmuck. This morning's Washington Post has a column by Tom Shales (I actually just looked...
August 31, 2004
OK, now I'm just embarrassed....
I'm listening to Arnold Schwartzenegger speak at the Republican National Convention at the moment, and while he's often compelling, he's not always coherent. I didn't really understand the comment about all the troops he's met not buying the "two Americas" concept—or rather, I didn't believe it. Many of those troops are the best example there is of the gulf between rich and poor, between those who have opportunities and those who don't. How many of those troops *are* troops...
August 30, 2004
Is it just John McCain's speaking style, or is this how he sounds when his heart's not in it?...
I was out running some errands in the car today, and I ended up listening to NPR rather than putting in a CD. In a promo for an upcoming show the local WHYY announcer noted, "One of this country's richest men, Warren Buffett, has a birthday coming up, and it has people wondering..." Was I wrong to assume that she was going to say "what to get him"? Isn't that the thing you usually wonder when someone has a...
August 28, 2004
OK, I will be the second to admit (Al was first) that I might have been wrong about Arnold Schwartzenegger. He's actually starting to look like a pretty decent governor. My main objections to him at the time of the recall were (a) that he was taking advantage of the recall at all; it seemed more like a coup than an election, (b) that there was apparently some disrespect of women and their rights not to be groped in...
August 18, 2004
Just drove back from my sister's house in Maryland. After three days of sisterly bonding, swimming in a fabulous inground pool, and baby-soft fabrics (for both me and the bambino-to-be), I must say that it was quite disconcerting to see highway sign messages exhorting drivers to REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY posted at regular intervals during the two and a half hour trip. After the fourth sign, I started to wonder if I was driving through Communist China or 1984. I...
July 30, 2004
I'm always amazed at how quick pundits are to proclaim, "if the election were held today, I believe [insert name of candidate whose convention just concluded here] would get the nod" after the first convention of the election season. It's like a jury member saying, "well, I think he's guilty" after only hearing the prosecution's case. I certainly HOPE that Kerry, Edwards, and the rest of the Democrats/non-Bushies can sustain the good feeling they've generated this week through to...
July 29, 2004
I watched part of the Democratic National Convention last night at my husband's urging, despite my discomfort with watching political speeches delivered live. I'd much rather hear the highlights and analysis post-speech than the live speech, I think because I'm nervous for the speakers. I'm afraid that they'll say something horribly stupid or embarrassing, and that I will be embarrassed for them. When I agreed to watch we switched over to TiVo, which actually made Edwards' speech easier to...
July 26, 2004
The New York Times has an article (free subscription required) this morning on bloggers getting credentials for the Democratic (and also the Reuplican) convention. A quote from the article: "I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail, professor of media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to objectivity. They don't cover both sides." As if traditional media does anymore,...
April 21, 2004
Something's fishy in Philadelphia. I don't know what mailing list Al got on recently, but yesterday we received a photo of George W. and Laura Bush in the mail, thanking us in advance for our support of the Republican campaign in Pennsylvania, and today Al got a membership card for AARP. OK, so we might be investing a bit conservatively these days, but that doesn't mean we'll be voting conservatively. As for AARP, I'm completely puzzled. Could it be...
March 30, 2004
Yesterday was the deadline for registering to vote in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. (Yep, that's right: Pennsylvania still hasn't had its Democratic primary. That won't happen until April 27, which is about two months after John Kerry was annointed the de facto Democratic nominee.) I let the deadline pass without re-registering as a Democrat. As much as I wanted to vote my conscience, I chose to preserve my Non-Partisan status and save my vote for the November election....
March 9, 2004
At a family event in Rochester, NY this weekend, my uncle expressed the opinion that coming out (no pun intended) against gay marriage was going to be Bush's downfall. While I do think that gay marriage is a tidal wave in the making, I'm not sure that any one issue can make or break an election. (I didn't get too many answers to my "What goes into your decision about which candidate to vote for in the general elections?"...
March 3, 2004
Greetings from the Apple store in Palo Alto, CA. Al is getting his hair cut, and I came over here to check e-mail, but the Apple store employees seem to have gotten wise to that ploy—they've stuffed and encrypted the Terminal program. Drat! I wanted to record a couple of random observations that came up yesterday: During a discussion about outsourcing and the jobless recovery, Al noted that back in the 80s, when Japan seemed to own everything, Honda...
February 2, 2004
My parents, one of whom is a registered Democrat and the other of whom is a registered Republican, seem to be the swing voter types that I'm so puzzled by. Neither of them is particularly impressed with Bush, but they didn't have a real sense of which Democrat they should get behind. Mom has a strong aversion to Edwards (whom she had occasion to meet while she was head of a Community Watch group in North Carolina), and Dad...
January 30, 2004
It seems like every interview I hear or read these days with average-Joe Democrats on whom they're going to vote for in the primary has the following gist: "I just want to vote for the guy who can beat Bush." I'm wondering: Is there any Democratic candidate who is so compelling to Republicans that they'll vote for him instead of Bush? And, given this "anybody but Bush" sentiment, is there any Democrat who will vote for Bush just because...
August 20, 2003
Gubernatorial sounds an awful lot like goobernatorial, especially when it's used in a sentence that also contain the words "Arnold Schwartzenegger." Maybe we should get George Lindsey to run. Why not? everybody else is....