Quote of the Day

from the extremely interesting Panic! How it Works and What To Do About It on AskTog:

"When we create technologies where similar actions produce dissimilar results, such as placing a brake and accelerator pedal side-by-side, to be actuated in the identical manner by the identical limb, people will periodically die." You could say the same about voting machines!

Frontrunners

Best show of the year: The Coctails at the The Hideout, 2004-11-14. I had stumbled upon the very end of their set on the second stage at Lollapalooza 3, way back in 1993, and I recognized them from a segment I had seen on the Movie Time channel (the precursor to E! on my cable service). I bought their Long Sound CD, which I came to love despite my general ambivalence toward jazz in general, and I loved each of the successive CDs more and more. They were one of my favorite bands, and could hardly wait until I turned 21 so I go actually see a full show at Lounge Ax -- but alas, they broke up just months before I came of age. (Why didn't I just get a fake ID? Because I was a total teetotaller. But still!) They had a one-off reunion show for Lounge Ax's last night in business, but that was during the 10 month period I lived in L.A. Finally, they are playing again, and the show was just heavenly. Runner up: The Pixies at Milwaukee Theatre, just a week and a half ago.

Best release of the year: Popcorn Box by The Coctails. With perhaps the best packaging of any release, ever. And music to match.

What now

Despite the song going through my head, there's still hope.

I got home from work and put on pajamas and ate some comfort food (Raviolios, which I haven't had in years) but the feeling sorry for myself has to end there. It's time to think about what I can do going forward. I didn't do nearly enough for this 2004 election.

The work on 2006 and 2008 starts tomorrow.

My state of Illinois is securely Democratic, right? So what are my goals? I look at the election map and I try to picture this as a game of Axis & Allies. I see a peninsula of red (Ohio and Indiana) extending into our little sea of blue. Oviously, if those surrounding blue states can project their influence into their red neighbors, we have the advantage in 2008.But let's not get ahead of ourselves: if you look at the county maps forIllinois and Wisconsin, it's easy to see how Democratic influence could be more strongly distributed. We shouldn't take Chicagoland for granted just because we can count on Chicago. If we can secure Wisconsin for the Democrats, then valuable resources can be shifted to the next battleground state in '08. It'd be nice to see the whole southern third of WI colored blue. And why not start trying to erode the Republican trend in Indiana? The state went heavily toward Bush, but there's no reason the Michiana corridor couldn't count for our column. Those districts send Representatives to Washington, and we really need to start thinking long term. We liberals need to start working, right now, on projecting our influence outwards regionally (you Californians and Oregonians need to get to work on the western parts of your states so you can get to Nevada) using a dialogue of ideas, not parties or candidates. We need to turn this whole thing back into a discussion of policies, not so-called "moral values" (which can't be debated rationally) and "character issues" (which only enter the picture when candidates are named).

Seriously, guys, we dropped the ball this time. We need to get active, and we need to start now.

I know what half of this means

Song that was going through my head yesterday: "Wandering Star" by Portishead
Song that's going through my head today: "Hopeless Bleak Despair" by They Might Be Giants

In defense of the Electoral College

I wrote the following in the online forum for the Feeding Frenzy Fantasy Football League I participate in (named one of the Top 5 fantasy football leagues by The Football Guys website!) in response to comments that the electoral college should be abolished because, for instance, a Republican in New York didn't feel like his vote counted. Someone else pointed out that state law, not the electoral college system itself, dictates whether your state gives its electoral votes all-or-nothing to the winning candidate; any state could decide to award them district-by-district or proportiately to their popular vote, and they would still be operating legally within the elecotral college system. Below is my ineloquernt defense of the electoral college; nothing brilliant, but since I took the time to write it and it's topical, I'll re-post it here:

I have been frustrated by the electoral college and winner-take-all system this year; since most people I know live in Illinois, Indiana and California (none close to battleground status), I felt like it was a waste of breath to discuss political ideas with these people in hopes of, y'know, influencing their vote. Ultimately, I think a democracy is healthier when everyone tries to have an influence beyond their own vote by engaging in some political discourse. But the notion that these states are already decided discouraged me from bringing up a topic that could turn into a heated debate (I can get a little too excited talking about this stuff sometimes).

But having said that, I'm into the idea of federalism and state governments determining the federal leadership. In the current system, we each have a (more or less) direct influence on our state government, and through them an indirect influence on federal government. That makes a lot of sense to me -- when you vote for the governorship of your state, that's an all or nothing vote; he/she is going to be 100% Republican or 100% Democrat or 100% Jesse Ventura. The majority rules the state, and the federation of states determine the leadership which will govern the states.

We're not a direct participatory democracy, we're a representational democracy. If you're a political minority in your state, then you should be fighting your politics at the local level; heck, we all should be.

I'll just put it in one more over-simplified way: if you have a beef with some issue at the national level, you can write the president, but he don't really give a damn and he'll never read your letter. You write your letter to your senators (who also won't read your letter) and your representative (who possibly will), and they do give a damn, or at least their staff will write a letter than pretends they do. In other words, I think the kind of representation you're asking for in the presidential election is more practically embodied in your legislative representatives.