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More Politics

So I haven’t had a lot of time to blog but I fig­ure if I’m putting in 18 hour days I can allow myself a lit­tle blog time with­out feel­ing too guilty.

After work today I finally got started on my attic lad­der project. I made the fam­ily eat left­overs (even poor Chris, who is feel­ing sick)and worked on the instal­la­tion of the attic lad­der (includ­ing length­en­ing the attic entrance, installing the actual lad­der, hand saw­ing the ply­wood “door” (which I had to build myself as it wasn’t included in the lad­der pack­age), and clean­ing up my mess. I wasn’t able to get the “door” installed because it got to be mid­night and Kate needed to go to sleep (fair enough!) do the rest will have to wait until tomor­row but after that I should have both a func­tional lad­der and a func­tional and weather-proofed “door” to my attic. There’s a lot of unfin­ished space up there but luck­ily for us the builder left an 8 x 10 space with proper floor­ing at least so we can get started.

Any­way.…

While I was work­ing I could hear the TV on and kept hear­ing polit­i­cal news. I find the state of pol­i­tics either baf­fling or enrag­ing at the moment. How the hell did we get from Obama’s com­ments to” Joe the Plumber” (that icon of virtue) to “Obama is a Social­ist” who wants to steal your money and “redis­trib­ute” it to “the poor” (which means those unde­serv­ing brown-skinned wel­fare queens)? I mean, seri­ously, can you spare 5 min­utes and LISTEN to Obama’s actual response before jump­ing on the “OMG, he’s a COMMIE” bandwagon?

Mean­while Wash­ing­ton State bal­lots have been deliv­ered to all of us “absen­tee” (aka Vote By Mail) vot­ers and I’ve filled in every­thing but a cou­ple of ini­tia­tives and King County Amend­ments which I haven’t researched prop­erly yet. For me, for all intents and pur­poses, the elec­tion is over. I’ve black­ened the cir­cles for my choice for Pres­i­dent on down. My mind is made up, my alliances are deter­mined. Even so, I’m still think­ing pol­i­tics for the next week. There are cam­paigns I’ve been fol­low­ing that I don’t have a vote in but would like to see turn just the same. A few of those have to do with Wash­ing­ton state or Min­nesota (land that I love).

In Wash­ing­ton, I’ve been fol­low­ing the Darcy Burner (with her Com­puter Sci­ence degree from Har­vard, with an Eco­nomic minor… how per­fect for our region?!) since the last elec­tion cycle where she lost a close race to douchebag Dave Reichert who played up his Green River Killer cap­ture cre­den­tials (and, appar­ently, he played up his “degree” from Con­cor­dia) to win a tight race last time around. I’m all about get­ting Darcy Burner into Con­gress even though I can’t vote for her directly. I’ve con­tributed to her cam­paign a few times now and I sin­cerely hope she wins this time. All of Wash­ing­ton will be bet­ter off under her representation.

I also have to admit that I have a strange attrac­tion to the Min­nesota races. My Scan­di­na­vian heart belongs to Min­nesota even if I don’t live there any­more. I was SO PROUD of Paul Well­stone(from my high school home town of North­field whose denizens are fea­tured in many of Paul’s early ads), whose first speech on the floor of the Sen­ate was against the First Iraq War. Min­nesota is often painted as this provin­cial back­wa­ter, a place where peo­ple know about cows and fish­ing, per­haps min­ing or corn, but not a whole lot else. Bah, I say! Min­nesota gives us the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party which “has its roots in third-party protest move­ments” as the DFL site says. Min­nesotans not only gave us Paul Well­stone, but Keith Elli­son (the first Mus­lim elected to Con­gress), Gov­er­nor and for­mer pro­fes­sional wrestler Jesse Ven­tura, and, most embar­rass­ingly Michelle Bach­man. Min­nesotans shouldn’t be counted out! I’m watch­ing the Bach­man and Elli­son re-election cam­paigns (and seri­ously pulling for El Tin­klen­berg). Min­nesota could also give us Ash­win Madia, son of Indian immi­grants who went to the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota, NYU Law School, and served as a United States Marine in Iraq.

I’ve now pushed myself to a 20-hour day that included man­ual labor (and I’ve got the sore mus­cles and bruises to prove it) so I’m going to wrap this up but I’ll go to sleep tonight hop­ing that next week will finally see an end to our long, dark Bush/Cheney-fueled night­mare. Help us out, won’t you?

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12 comments to More Politics

  • Already voted … and other polit­i­cal stuff

    Here in New Hamp­shire, you can only vote absen­tee if you are out of town dur­ing vot­ing hours or have some health prob­lem that keeps you away. My two daugh­ters are vot­ing absen­tee. Holly and I will be hold­ing signs at the polls for Obama. Our shift is 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. I may do another shift at noon, if needed. We are also going to make some type of dish for the “hun­dreds of vol­un­teers” expected in Con­cord this week­end. I expect they are mostly from Mass­a­chu­setts (and other states) that are not bat­tle­ground states — bet­ter to help get out the vote in New Hamp­shire than a state that Obama is sure to carry — like Mass.

    I remem­ber that a friend of mine voted absen­tee in 1972. He had the fore­sight to pho­to­copy the com­pleted bal­lot so he could prove that he voted for McGov­ern. If I were vot­ing absen­tee, I would pho­to­copy it and frame it! I told a friend of mine (from my leg­isla­tive days) who is an elected “reg­is­ter of deeds” that I would get a sam­ple bal­lot. I would then frame the bal­lot with my name on the same bal­lot as Obama!

  • Already voted … and other polit­i­cal stuff

    Here in New Hamp­shire, you can only vote absen­tee if you are out of town dur­ing vot­ing hours or have some health prob­lem that keeps you away. My two daugh­ters are vot­ing absen­tee. Holly and I will be hold­ing signs at the polls for Obama. Our shift is 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. I may do another shift at noon, if needed. We are also going to make some type of dish for the “hun­dreds of vol­un­teers” expected in Con­cord this week­end. I expect they are mostly from Mass­a­chu­setts (and other states) that are not bat­tle­ground states — bet­ter to help get out the vote in New Hamp­shire than a state that Obama is sure to carry — like Mass.

    I remem­ber that a friend of mine voted absen­tee in 1972. He had the fore­sight to pho­to­copy the com­pleted bal­lot so he could prove that he voted for McGov­ern. If I were vot­ing absen­tee, I would pho­to­copy it and frame it! I told a friend of mine (from my leg­isla­tive days) who is an elected “reg­is­ter of deeds” that I would get a sam­ple bal­lot. I would then frame the bal­lot with my name on the same bal­lot as Obama!

  • Already voted … and other polit­i­cal stuff

    Here in New Hamp­shire, you can only vote absen­tee if you are out of town dur­ing vot­ing hours or have some health prob­lem that keeps you away. My two daugh­ters are vot­ing absen­tee. Holly and I will be hold­ing signs at the polls for Obama. Our shift is 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. I may do another shift at noon, if needed. We are also going to make some type of dish for the “hun­dreds of vol­un­teers” expected in Con­cord this week­end. I expect they are mostly from Mass­a­chu­setts (and other states) that are not bat­tle­ground states — bet­ter to help get out the vote in New Hamp­shire than a state that Obama is sure to carry — like Mass.

    I remem­ber that a friend of mine voted absen­tee in 1972. He had the fore­sight to pho­to­copy the com­pleted bal­lot so he could prove that he voted for McGov­ern. If I were vot­ing absen­tee, I would pho­to­copy it and frame it! I told a friend of mine (from my leg­isla­tive days) who is an elected “reg­is­ter of deeds” that I would get a sam­ple bal­lot. I would then frame the bal­lot with my name on the same bal­lot as Obama!

  • Already voted … and other polit­i­cal stuff

    Here in New Hamp­shire, you can only vote absen­tee if you are out of town dur­ing vot­ing hours or have some health prob­lem that keeps you away. My two daugh­ters are vot­ing absen­tee. Holly and I will be hold­ing signs at the polls for Obama. Our shift is 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. I may do another shift at noon, if needed. We are also going to make some type of dish for the “hun­dreds of vol­un­teers” expected in Con­cord this week­end. I expect they are mostly from Mass­a­chu­setts (and other states) that are not bat­tle­ground states — bet­ter to help get out the vote in New Hamp­shire than a state that Obama is sure to carry — like Mass.

    I remem­ber that a friend of mine voted absen­tee in 1972. He had the fore­sight to pho­to­copy the com­pleted bal­lot so he could prove that he voted for McGov­ern. If I were vot­ing absen­tee, I would pho­to­copy it and frame it! I told a friend of mine (from my leg­isla­tive days) who is an elected “reg­is­ter of deeds” that I would get a sam­ple bal­lot. I would then frame the bal­lot with my name on the same bal­lot as Obama!

  • Here’s hop­ing.

    When you get a sec, could you check your links? It’s an inter­est­ing post, but I’m see­ing raw HTML and not links, and every­thing else on the page seems to be work­ing, so I don’t THINK it’s my machine this time.

  • Here’s hop­ing.

    When you get a sec, could you check your links? It’s an inter­est­ing post, but I’m see­ing raw HTML and not links, and every­thing else on the page seems to be work­ing, so I don’t THINK it’s my machine this time.

  • Here’s hop­ing.

    When you get a sec, could you check your links? It’s an inter­est­ing post, but I’m see­ing raw HTML and not links, and every­thing else on the page seems to be work­ing, so I don’t THINK it’s my machine this time.

  • Here’s hop­ing.

    When you get a sec, could you check your links? It’s an inter­est­ing post, but I’m see­ing raw HTML and not links, and every­thing else on the page seems to be work­ing, so I don’t THINK it’s my machine this time.

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