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Mandate, schmandate, part two

From What Mandate: A Report on the Joint National Post-Election Survey:

A majority of voters backed the president, but they still thought the country was off track and preferred a different direction in America’s relations with the world and on domestic social policy…[T]he public’s priorities are wholly different than those the president put forth in the days after the election. That is particularly clear if one looks at fiscal and tax policies, health care, and Social Security privatization.

(Via DonkeyRising.)

November 2, 2004 wasn't *all* bad for the Democrats, at least in Colorado...

Democrats May Use Results in Colorado as Political Primer (washingtonpost.com): “‘The notion that moral issues won the 2004 election was disproven in Colorado,’ Gates continued. ‘We offered solutions, not ideology, and won almost everything.’”

I took a lot of comfort in the fact that, despite being utterly bummed that Kerry lost the election to an incompetent, evil, arrogant fool on November 2nd, Democrats in Colorado pretty much cleaned up. If we produce some results over the next few years, I’ll predict that my beloved home state will go blue in 2008.

Die Bold With A Vengeance

Great gallery of fake n’ funny (cause it’s true!) Diebold ads.

Mandate, schmandate...

Bush voters: think your man has a mandate? Think again….

Link to my RSS subscriptions updated

Come on, you know you have been waiting for this moment: I updated my OPML file. Check the main page if you’re hurting for RSS feeds. It’s on the right.

Bad freaking luck

Please…make…it…stop:

1. Last Friday, my 2-week-old Powerbook encountered a kernel panic trying to update the operating system to 10.3.6 and would only boot up into single-user mode. As I was unable to get the network subsystem to fire up or to get it to mount an external firewire hard drive, I was unable to recover the 10+ hours of work I had done for a performance I was supposed to give last night at Fiske Planetarium, and had to cancel.
2. Winds up I would have had to cancel anyways, as yesterday Melissa, quite accidentally, bumped into my Powerbook and broke the cable off coming out of the CardBus interface (which goes to my audio interface). The cable and CardBus card were both damaged. Cost of replacement: $380.00.
3. While driving back from dropping Jalen off at school last week, I noticed that my car seemed to be losing power even as I accelerated. When I finally got on my road and started driving up the hill, smoke started coming from underneath my hood and I smelled burnt asbestos. After getting the car towed to Super Rupair in Boulder ($60), I was informed that my clutch needed to be replaced ($668), along with the rear access cover & rear main seal ($115), the throwout bearing sleeve ($165), and a machining of the flywheel ($30). I also needed to replace the right rear wheel bearing ($358), and threw in a tune-up ($197). I’ve been informed that I really should also replace the steering rack ($725) and the front struts ($535) as well as get new tires (~$400).
4. Melissa’s truck also needed new tires ($460), and the 4wd mechanism won’t engage and is blinking on the dash; there’s also a funny engine smell and it’s increasingly difficult to unlock the doors with the key. Add to that there’s something wrong with the rear door latch such that the “door ajar” light always stays on, which meant that we had to disconnect the interior lights or risk running down the battery.
5. We ran out of water Thursday night and did not have water in our house until Saturday morning. The well repair guys came out and did a “reset” of the pump system. Cost: $60 service call.

There’s also been some bad luck with some other shit that I won’t go into here, but let’s just say that it also involved losing money and is too embarrasing to go into, even for a blog as frank as this one.

I can't decide which is more depressing...

Realizing that I actually fell into a bona-fide depressive funk over Bush getting elected, or actually being in the bona-fide depressive funk because Bush got elected.

Not that one exists in a vacuum of course; the recent deaths of my uncle Don and my wife’s grandfather were some of the heaviest things I’d dealt with in a long time — but Bush’s reelection seemed to be the equivalent of coming home from a long hard day at work and finding that the dog shit all over the carpet. The last thing one wants to do when one is tired, down and exhausted is clean up dog shit — or realize that Bush is gonna be with us for the next four years.

Fuck The South

As a former resident of red-state Missouri, I’d say this sums up my feelings pretty accurately.

MarsEdit

Here’s a test post using Ranchero Software’s (the same people who make NetNewsWire) MarsEdit.

Although Movable Type’s web interface works just fine for me, I hope that having a specific tool for editing and posting to my weblog will somehow result in more posts.

Mostly though, this post is meaningless.

The obligatory George Bush post

So, like many of my friends, I feel a great deal of sadness and deflation that George Bush was elected to four more years. I’ve read a lot of commentary on the subject, and feel no need to reinvent the wheel. However, I will say one thing….

I read a while back that “A vote for Bush is a character flaw”. I agree. While alot of people who voted for Bush are undoubtedly good people in their hearts, all the Bush voters I personally know have one thing in common: they’re all pretty much assholes of one kind or another (and to one degree or another), and they all have a personal taste for power. I guess in that regard it’s not suprising they voted for Bush — he appeals to their inner asshole.

If you happen to be reading this and consider yourself to be one of the people I’m talking about, well, I’m sorry, but it’s the damn truth. Console yourself with the fact that your asshole will wield unprecedented power for the next 4 years.