djmitche

Until Obama ran for President, I considered myself something of an independent. Sure, I'm fairly liberal (more accurately, progressive), but I've never liked of the two-party system, where parties seem to exist only to keep themselves in power.

Well, no more.

The Republican party, in its flailing, is now devoted to destruction by means of lies, fear, and unrepentant racism. A party that is so devoted to nihilism as to destroy any good that might be done by its opposition and simultaneously pollute all semblance of civil political discourse in this country not only lacks my vote, but I will do whatever it takes to protect my country from that party, so long as it remains on this disastrous course.

This is a big moment:

Today, it seems like everyone in my life would rather spend endless hours debating the merits of various proposals, preparing exploratory reports, and formulating strategic plans rather than actually doing things.

It makes kittens cry.

There's been a noticeable drop in my LJ posts since, oh, about November 4, 2008. I guess I just don't have that much of interest to say. Life goes on. I'm now involved in a local campaign (Zina Pierre for Mayor - http://zinapierre.com). As further evidence that I'm always thinking about my dear readers, I've spared you all the daily campaign rants. You can thank me later!

Anyway, I'm doing similar things to what I was doing in the Obama campaign -- local field organization, phonebanks, canvasses, massive voter contact, the whole nine yards. My friend H is working for an opposition candidate (it's a primary), doing pretty much the same stuff. I suppose at some level this is personal :)

I'm really looking forward to post-election, when H and I can unite under a single candidate (it will probably be Zina or her guy) and swap war stories over Frangelico shots.

Obviously, the party is adrift at sea, with the four stooges (Palin, Jindal, Limbaugh, and Steele) battling for the helm, and the Obama administration skillfully stirring the waters every time things begin to calm down. I will admit to no small measure of schadenfreude.

Fivethirtyeight as a nice analysis of the republicans' childish use of the term "democrat party." Our Democratic representatives really can't respond to this schoolyard taunt, being the responsible electeds they are.

But we can! So, without further ado, here are my ideas for new names for the "r" party:

• Hippocritican party
  
• Loser party
  
• Minority party (although this can be spun as "yeah, we have black people in our party!")
  
• Conservative party (precludes them re-taking the center)
  

Any other ideas?

Election season is over, and we all know what that means -- time to brew more beer!

Since my last batch, I've purchased a 19L enameled pot, a high-BTU propane burner, and a pretty glass carboy. I made two recipes today -- a Brewferm Gran Cru (technically a no-boil recipe) and an Annapolis Homebrew "Winter Seasonal." The former will be ready in early 2009, but the latter should be ready in time for the Georgia Congressional run-off.

I have yet to make a batch of beer without some calamity, although the calamities have yet to actually ruin a batch. Today, I discovered that the paint on the frame of my new burner is flammable. Nice design decision, guys! Next, I forgot to turn off the heat while adding the malt extract, resulting in a good deal of burned extract floating around in the wort. This may be my first "ruined" batch. We'll see. Not to be outdone, while making the Winter batch the plastic bag containing 8.5lb of malt extract tipped over and spilled about 1.5lb of malt extract onto the ground. So that might be a 4-gallon batch.

Anyway, at about $50 each, it's no great loss to have a batch fail, as long as it's a learning experience.

From last night's speech:

I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

When can I start?

(Originally written on Saturday 11/1, but only posted now)

GOTV -- "Get Out The Vote" -- started Friday the 31st. I won't get into specifics, but the Obama campaign has an aggressive, comprehensive plan for these five days. If you live in a battleground state, and want us to stop calling you, vote now or keep your cell phone charger handy. If you don't live in a battleground state, vote now anyway, because we'll call you too. Did I mention "vote now"?

My part in all of this is as the phonebank supervisor for an office in one of our county's offices. S is the same in another office. We're there all day every day, keeping the phones ringing, putting out any fires that come up, and interfacing with the state campaign's "boiler room." As you'd expect, this is absolutely exhausting, but it's also the first time since I stopped teaching that I've come home completely wiped out with the feeling that I'd given my all to something that truly deserved it.

I work with a truly talented person I'll call "H". We've been sharing the full-time position of Anne Arundel County Obama coordinator for a while now, and have managed to divide the work pretty cleanly. H takes care of communication with all of the other organizations -- Dem clubs, party offices, churches, community organizations, and so on. She also deals with and organizational and personality conflicts that come up. I have tried to handle a few such conflicts now, and failed utterly -- so I am both indebted to and in awe of her mad skillz in this department. H has also been the person to schedule all of the "staff" (= volunteers with responsibilities) at the offices.

For my part, I take care of the minutae of our day-to-day operations: keeping the phonebankers stocked with scripts and phone numbers; reporting numbers as required back to the campaign; filtering and answering questions from my phonebank captains; and dealing with any other situations as they arise. Of course, the fact that I'm a software developer by trade immediately qualifies me as a "tech guru," so I also spend a lot of time kicking our donated/loaned computers back into working order. S is actually better at this than I am at this point, but few people seem to have figured this out yet, since they assume girls can't be geeks. But that's another LJ post entirely.

sesara asked me to talk a little bit about the work I've been doing for the campaign, instead of just posting my opinion. Here goes.

Since the primaries, I've been working with a group called aac4obama -- Anne Arundel County for Obama. It's a volunteer, grassroots group, with no official campaign staff or other privileged links to the national campaign. This sort of thing is much more common in Obama's campaign than in any other campaign in history. During the primaries, S and I helped out where we could -- phonebanking, canvassing, and doing GOTV work leading up to election day.

Once the general campaign got started, I decided to step it up a notch, and take on some more responsibilities. Together with some other volunteers, I put together an online presence (aac4obama.org) and began editing a weekly "stuff to do!" newsletter to our volunteer corps. I also help staff a walk-in office, where we talk to new volunteers, register voters, and connect people with the Obama gear they always seem to want.

Maryland is polling even better than Illinois for Obama, so there's really not much sense in working here. Virginia is the battleground state nearest us. So today, S and I cruised down to Alexandria to canvass about 150 homes. We'll probably keep this up on a weekly basis, and I'm looking for ways to spend my weekday evenings making phone calls, too.

As a note for others unfortunate enough to live in a dark blue state (hi, Chicago, Peoria, and San Diego friends!): if you can't make it to a battleground state, you can phonebank right from home. This seems like less sweat equity than hitting the pavement, but consider that you can probably contact 5x more voters this way, and that you can do it on your own time -- spend just 10 minutes a night, if that's what you have!

Finally, you all know I'm not much of a political junkie. I've gotten into this race because I think it's the most important race of my lifetime. It's almost over, and I will be very relieved to return my life and the blog to the usual catalog of minutae. In the interim, though, let's make sure this isn't the most important missed opportunity in our lifetime!

Hillary Clinton has given the speech I was hoping she would make. I will admit that I was worried for a while there.

She made the case perfectly: we -- Clinton supporters and Obama supporters alike -- cannot afford to lose this election by remaining divided. It's really that simple, and that direct. She did not permit her supporters any other options.

This is what we needed. Full steam ahead to victory in November!

This story is about a run-of-the-mill "prudes get all het up over nothing" story from Indiana. With a twist. I'll quote the relevant section:

Baughn identifies himself as a conservative Christian, which is why, he says, the uproar—especially in the comments on the Indy Star's website—is even more baffling.

"This has turned into a liberal vs. conservative issue, and I didn't expect it to go there," he says. "I've received dozens of e-mails and phone calls from people saying they support me, they support the photograph—but no one from the conservative right, which I think I am, felt compelled to [contact me]....People are saying there's no way I could love God, or no way a Christian could support this....it makes my chest ache," he says. "I want to say, 'drop the bat! I'm on your team!'"

"..no way I could love God"? ".. on your Team"? Is that what this nation has come to in these ridiculous political debates? Is this the level of depravity to which American Christianity has descended? Was Jesus on a "team"? Did he attack the "other team" with bats?

Somehow, CNN must have gotten their text message from the Obama campaign before I did, because I learned the good news from them at 1:30 before my text came in (at 3:38am). Way to own the news cycle!

I don't think he could have made a better choice. Biden is the Democratic John McCain, plus some. He has a long history in the Senate, with a history of bipartisan leadership that few other senators can match. What sets him apart from the Republican candidate is that he has real, in-depth knowledge about foreign affairs. I'm betting he not only remembers that Checkoslovakia no longer exists, but can expound for an hour on the geopolitical background of the split and its lessons for today.

Way to go, Obama!

Has anyone else noticed that McCain seems not to recall anything that might be remotely troubling to his campaign? Reminds me of Reagan. And not in a good way.

So finally some real coverage of the actual numbers of Clinton supporters who say they are going to vote for McCain. The verdict? 2.6% nationwide. Figure that number will go way down once these folks hear the crazy shit McCain says (hint: he's a creationist). Also figure that democrats in swing states will realize that they don't actually want to betray their values to make an abstract point about democracy. I don't think it's going to count for much.

In other news, the slate article linked above mentions Obama's visit to YWLCS, my former employer. From everyone I've talked to, the experience of having the future President walk into your 8th grade stepping-up ceremony was just incredible.

I'm sure you've heard by now that the supreme court ruled strongly in favor of the Constitution yesterday. It's like a breath of fresh air -- a small step back toward the rule of law in this country.

It's not at all surprising that the Bush administration is seriously distressed at this outcome. On their planet, the Constitution doesn't apply, and besides, every one of their arguments was specifically rejected by the majority decision -- several with prejudice!

But what may shock you, if you still think that McCain is a "moderate conservative," is that he called this is one of "the worst decisions in history." Seriously! This isn't some liberal-media out-of-context quotation. This is fox news carrying this story.

As if you needed any more proof that McCain is cheerfully promising four more years of the same terrible, self-destructive policies.

The guy sitting next to me is a spammer. He's bragging about how quickly he can break craigslist's and gmail's CAPTCHA. And using proxies.

I'm already in a terrible mood today. Yet I'm resisting the urge to beat the crap out of him. So far. You should be proud of me.

This is a video of Obama talking to his staff in Chicago (thanks to yesthattom).


I'm amazed how humble he is. Obviously, he knew this would be broadcast (the campaign itself posted it on Youtube), but from what I know of him from, and what I know of Michelle, I'm betting that this is honest. Obviously, he believes he's the best man to be President, but equally obviously, he realizes that it's not just about him.

We have had some big clues recently to how Obama-the-man operates -- clues that can't be forged, and can't be obscured by media sound-bytes. Pay attention -- you'll be impressed. We've also had some clues as to how McCain operates, although they're not so impressive.

Oh, and, I've been there! I've sat in those cubicles. If I recall correctly, he's standing where the ping-pong table usually is.

(cross-posted from code.v.igoro.us)

I'm watching the DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting, discussing the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations. This committee consists of the elite among the Democratic superdelegates. These are all powerful, intelligent, important people (including the wonderful Donna Brazile).

What has me upset is that I've now heard two women explain that they don't have the "mathematical genius" to work out the proper representation for these states; no men have made such a declaration. First of all, that's bull: anyone can work out what 33% of 128 is. The difficult part is in the politics, and everyone on this committee is an expert on politics.

More importantly, though: why is it OK for these women to brag about their mathematical ignorance? What message does this send to PoliSci students struggling through calculus? One of the women to mention this was Alice Travis Germond, who was a VP of NARAL -- hardly an advocate of keeping women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. What is she thinking?

Y'know, my birthday is just around the corner..

http://www.thureon.com/armarac/demonstration.htm

(thanks to http://yesthattom.livejournal.com/829568.html)

I was really hoping it would be over. If the tally was 51/49, we'd probably be done already. Still, 54/46 is closer than anyone thought it'd be.