Garland,Tx---
Still at home. I sat down with my bubble-gum chewing, iPhone using, Cheerleading sister and watched Britney: For the Record, the MTV documentary on the resurrection of the career of one Miss Britney Spears. When I saw the promo for this a week ago the first thought in my mind was "Ok, here's another 20/20 special for a celebrity to try and humanize themselves...I'll watch it."
I was surprised with its honesty. The documentary followed Miss Spears for two months as she filmed videos for her new album and dealt with the constant hoard of paparazzi that follows her on a daily basis. Miss Spears is presented as a human caught in a world of flashing bulbs and screaming crowds, Alice in a heavy metal Wonderland.
While it is most likely to serve as a ploy to get people to buy her record, as someone who has never given her more than a cursory or stranded listen at a party, I found it oddly eye opening. She didn't plead to be left alone or even try that hard to avoid the cameras. Instead we find someone who has, begrudgingly, excepted that the cameras and screaming are simply apart of her life. I find this a sad commentary on the state of culture in this country.
I know we are supposed to view celebrities as these spoiled sub-humans who are oblivious to pain and suffering. We are told that whenever a celebrity whines or cracks under the strain of their fame that they should just shut up and barrel through it. Well, Miss Spears doesn't take any time to complain, nor does she seek the viewer's sympathy at any part of the doc, since it mostly deals with her spending time working and resurrecting her career.
Here is a woman, not a celebrity, but a person who was nearly destroyed by her own fame, by the zombies with cameras that made it their mission to destroy her life.
Celebrity culture is one of more disgusting things about Contemporary America. Our obsessions and projections upon the famous, turning them into these idols to be worshiped, feared, loathed and destroyed, is simply a cop out so that we don't have to deal with our own problems, instead placing them upon the shoulders of the famous. The sooner we begin to treat celebrities like normal people, the sooner we can move beyond our own petty insecurities and inabilities to handle this post (post) modern world.

In her recent Hatchet op-ed, UPD Chief Dolores Stafford makes a point about UPD and professionalism:

While the reaccreditation process is not related to the study the University will soon conduct on aspects of safety and security at the University and whether to arm the police force, the editorial addressed the criticism of a couple of our "prominent community members accusing officers of being too 'unprofessional' to carry guns." As GW and Foggy Bottom community members reflect on this issue, I want to share some important facts about UPD, its employees and what we do for this campus.

UPD conducts a citizen survey every three years to gather feedback. The most recent survey was conducted in the spring of 2008 and realized a 33 percent response rate. Ninety-two percent of the respondents rated the overall performance of the department as "excellent" or "good," and 81 percent rated the officers professionalism as "excellent" or "good."

Point taken, but it's worth remembering that the (best) argument against arming UPD--the statements of some writers for The Patriot aside--has nothing to do with allegations of incompetence within UPD. Repeat after me, children: we oughtn't arm UPD because it is unnecessary to do so, not because UPD officers are incompetent.

To be fair, most opponents of arming UPD do seem to think that UPD's officers are Keystone Kops. That's why op-eds like Stafford's are necessary. We need to differentiate, though, between popular arguments and sensible arguments. Advocates of arming UPD have shown that UPD is not incompetent. They have yet to provide any reason to think that UPD's work requires guns. What pressing problem will arming UPD solve? What pressing threats (not including fevered invocations of incredibly rare events like the Virgina Tech shooting) would it relieve? Would the benefits gained be enough to counterbalance the risks involved? Answer these questions, and you'll be on your way to crafting a serious, defensible case for arming UPD. Don't, and as long as you continue to talk about arming UPD, you'll be sparring with midgets.*

(*I don't mean to imply that the writers of The Colonialist are midgets, or that there's anything wrong with being a midget. It's just that their argument against arming UPD is piss-poor.)

Isn't Botox good enough?

Foreskins have long been treasured by cosmetic dermatologists because they are rich in fibroblasts, tiny cells that play a crucial role in healing wounds and generating collagen and connective tissue. (One foreskin can be bioengineered into a piece of lab-grown skin the size of a football field) The makers of Vavelta extract them by finely dicing the foreskins and treating them with enzymes.

In preliminary studies, Vavelta has worked well at eliminating wrinkles and scars without any side effects other than mild redness and itching (and the weirdness of knowing that you’ve got a foreskin in your face).

Radley Balko over at The Agitator brings up a great point about who exactly owns the foreskin, and whether parents should receive compensation after a circumcision. There has been harsh debate over whether someone can sell an organ for financial gain. I wonder if people will be a little more accepting of this type of body part sale?

Seems like your stocks are not entirely "worthless."






(HT: CNBC)

Thanks to the magic of TIVO and my inability to do my homework, I watch a good deal of television. One of my favorite shows is the ABC quirky brightly-dark comedy Pushing Daisies , about a pie maker who is hired by a private eye because of his ability to temporarily bring dead people back to life. This weekend I learned that Daisies was canceled and will cease to exist after what would be the mid-season thirteenth episode airs. This is most disheartening. Pushing Daisies is a rare show; a mix of police procedural and quirky comedy. Think Law & Order meets Six Feet Under meets a Tim Burton movie. I found it to be one of the better shows on television, as did a fair amount of critics.

Pushing Daisies is being canceled perhaps for the worst reason, it is too good (aka no one is watching it). It is too smart and too dark and too quirky for a viewing audience that loves brain-less shows like Gossip Girl and Grey's Anatomy and thinks phony-arc heavy shows like Lost (my disgust with Lost is best served elsewhere) are great.
I believe though that like other brilliant but canceled shows, like Arrested Development and Firefly, Pushing Daisies will become a DVD cult classic, and I for once can I say that I liked it before the hype.

The Patriot is now making public our hidden-camera footage of the CRs' tragic election party.



H/T The Agitator

• New York Can't Afford To NOT Have School Choice
  
• Nations Competing With Tax Cuts, Not Increases
• Bankruptcy Is Best Option For GM
• The Other Side Of The Big 3 Bailout: Honda
  
• No Excuses For Liberals
  
• After Taxes, World Series Of Poker Winner Finishes Second
• Halloween: An Opportunity To Test Voter Preferences

What is it with Our Fair University and hoax posters? I will give them credit, though, for a funny idea. Beats the hell out of just pulling the fire alarm at four o'clock in the morning. (I'm looking at you, Ivory fifth floor.) The furniture suggestion was also ace.

So with everyone getting all riled up over Andrew Clark's op-ed, I felt it was time to lighten the mood.

Live Puppy Cam!

From the sound of it, I didn't miss too much, though I would have liked to have seen the debate on Glatter's ethics bill. (It was an excellent piece of legislation, which explains why the Senate voted it down.)

Two reasons that I wasn't there:

1) I forgot that that S.A. Senate was having a meeting. Yeah. Sue me. Go to Logan for a short recap.

2) I'm basically cleaning the Augean Stables right now, in terms of my workload. I've had papers, tests, reading, classes, and my job to contend with. In one 24-hour period this week, I wrote twenty pages, and I still wasn't done with schoolwork after that. Piled onto that are graduate school applications. (Getting into grad school requires a fairly large, time-consuming amount of paperwork. Who knew?) The cherry on top is a pending honors thesis deadline: antebellum democracy in Virginia ain't gonna analyze itself.

So when I tell you I'm busy and my coverage of the S.A. may be spotty from time to time, you'll believe me. It's not like anybody actually reads this damned blog, anyway.

I can promise that future coverage of the S.A. Senate will be full, fair, and frequent if Senator Bindelglass comes through on her promise of cookies.

Andrew Clark, if you ever have trouble publishing for the Hatchet, I am extending, unilaterally, an invitation to write for the Patriot. Why? Mr. Clark has inspired a level of vitriol normally reserved for Patriot staff after writing this piece in the Hatchet. Our own Bill Flanigen has called it "Dumb, dumb, dumb." Travis at the Colonialist--you remember those guys, the ones that drooled over "the most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, intellectually honest, honest, beautiful speech I’ve ever heard in my life. His face, his eyes, his voice: a serrated poem of a man," followed by enormous joy over the ground breaking notion that Obama is getting a puppy for the White House (OMGGZ KIRK!)--refers to Clark as "a backwards thinking individual tolerant of discrimination." How open-minded! That being said, Clark is off-track in his argument, but I'll get there in a moment.

Travis's claim that "this isn’t about opinions" is right for all the wrong reasons. Culturally, the definition of marriage was decided long ago, and no California proposition can change that. Whether the State redefines marriage to include homosexual, poly-amorous, bisexual, etc. marriages is irrelevant to the institution itself. It will always be between a man and a woman because it is religious in nature, and the state does not apply to the same authority the Church does. As St. Thomas More once declared, "I die the king's good servant, but God's first."

It may seem contrary to my point to declare the religious argument irrelevant. I do so because, whether I believe it should be this way or not, the state has become extremely involved in marriage for some time. Indeed, it is my own personal belief that monogamous, faithful couples of all stripes should be given tax breaks, and if that means universal civil unions than so be it. If marriage was just about consenting civil contracts, than it would be solely the business of the state, as Bill presupposes. But it's not.

Travis, rather comically (they are a humor blog, right?) confounds the right to marry to the right to clean water for blacks in the 60's. But the states have prohibited citizens from marriage for a long time with little objection. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile and in love. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one's spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other diseases. Are these the next boundaries to go?

I do not mean to say that all of these situations are equal (I can see the comments now: YOU BELIEVE HOMOSEXUALITY IS A VENEREAL DISEASE??), but rather that marriage is an institution with strict rules. Marriage, founded as an institution between man and God, is subject to moral and religious scrutiny. This MUST be addressed. Travis and others urge folks like Andrew Clark to "just think" but they fail to articulate an argument deeper that "this is love" and "their love for one another is real."

If marriage was about love and only love, than this would be an easy issue. Unfortunately, this logic is absurd. Marriage is a cultural, moral institution meant to be a steadying force for societal progress. For centuries, the basis for marriage has not been love (imagine how romantic a proposal from your's truly would be) but the transmission of one generation to the next through the creation and nurturing of new life. Dr. Somerville of McGill University's Centre of Medicine, Ethics, and Law has said: "By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life."

Dr. Somerville continues:

To change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would destroy its capacity to function in the ways outlined above, because it could no longer represent the inherently procreative relationship of opposite-sex pair-bonding. It would be to change the essence and nature of marriage as the principal societal institution establishing the norms that govern procreation. Marriage involves public recognition of the spouses' relationship and commitment to each other. But that recognition is for the purpose of institutionalizing the procreative relationship in order to govern the transmission of human life and to protect and promote the well-being of the family that results. It is not a recognition of the relationship just for its own sake or for the sake of the partners to the marriage, as it would necessarily become were marriage to be extended to include same-sex couples.

What the world seems intent on doing at the moment is completely changing what marriage is supposed to mean. The benefits to society of monogamy and stability in relationships is unquestioned, and should be rewarded by civil unions and any other governmental benefits possible. But as society's degredation can be measured by the destruction of the nuclear family by the out-of-wedlock pregnancies and innercity deadbeat fathers of heterosexual couples, further degrading the institution's child-rearing nature will only do more damage.

What about couples that do not intend to have children, you ask? Irrelevant, says I. Marriage between opposite-sex partners symbolizes the reproductive potential that exists, at a general level, between a man and a woman. Society is built on a societal-cultural paradigm where symbolism is just as important and is often indiscernible from actual rules and boundaries. The reproductive potential of opposite-sex couples is safely assumed at a higher level and the societal-cultural paradigm won't allow for a case by case analysis. Such a case by case philosophy would submit any law to constant illogical scrutiny.

In short, the issue is all about what marriage actually is. If marriage is about loving relationships and if the reason for denying homosexuals marriage privileges is our inherent disrespect for their loving and possibly stable relationship, than we are wrong to exclude such people from marrying. But if the reason to exclude homosexuals and others from marriage is to keep the very essence, nature, and substance of the institution intact, than such exclusion is ethically acceptable for society.

If anyone just skipped here to the end, simply read Sam Schulman's nearly-flawless defense of marriage, or even just this snippet:

I believe, in fact, that we are at an "Antigone moment." Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with "unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time."

Admittedly, it is very difficult to defend that which is both ancient and "unwritten"--the arguments do not resolve themselves into a neat parade of documentary evidence, research results, or citations from the legal literature. Admittedly, too, proponents of this radical new understanding have been uncommonly effective in presenting their program as something that is not radical at all but as requiring merely a slight and painless adjustment in our customary arrangements. This is simply wrong... The gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.

In the end, Travis is right. It's not about opinions. It's about history, culture, and society. The rules were written a long time ago with a very specific plan in mind. It's time we started playing by them.

It would take too much effort to catalogue the large number of stupid errors that Andrew Clark makes in his recent Hatchet op-ed on California's Proposition Eight. In the comments discussing the article there are a few decent posts that do that well enough (in addition to the vast majority, which do little but recycle the equally terrible, sentimental arguments dragging down the gay marriage movement). I won't bother with a comprehensive rebuttal here--especially since we've talked about this issue on The Patriot's blog before.

Let me address one point, though, that Andrew makes. I choose to talk about it because it's a unique argument--one I haven't seen before, and one that is particularly, startlingly stupid.

Take it away, Andrew:

First of all, although supporters of gay marriage would like you think it, this struggle" is not at all equivalent with the oppressive civil rights wars of the 1950s and '60s. The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave individual human beings of all colors the fundamental human rights to equality that our Creator endowed to all of us upon birth. In contrast, the gay marriage movement is seeking rights for "couples," a vague societal concept that is formed much later in life and easily made or broken.

Anti-discrimination laws in the workplace and laws that protect individual homosexuals against discrimination based on their sexual orientation are one thing. Pushing to legalize gay marriage and the rights of couples is quite new and quite another thing.

Who do you have to blow to get a proofreader around here? Anyway, Andrew is attempting to make the argument that gay marriage (indeed, any marriage) constitutes a "couples'" right, as opposed to an "individual" right. He contrasts this with the civil rights movement, which sought, ostensibly, to gain individual rights previously denied to blacks throughout the United States.

Forgive me, but Andrew is talking out of his ass.

Firstly, the right to marriage is not a couples' right, but an individual right. The fact that a marriage involves two people should not deceive us: it is still just a "group" of two individuals who are both individually exercising their rights to form a marriage contract with the consenting adult of their choice. The gay marriage movement, then, is no different from the civil rights movement in that respect. (Nevermind the fact that Andrew never tells us what, exactly, is wrong with couples' rights. I imagine he would probably equate "couples' rights" with "group rights," and make some philosophical argument about the untenable nature of claims to "group rights" in contrast to rights exercised by individuals. But then, he didn't make that argument. I bet he just didn't have enough room in the op-ed. Right, Andrew? Right?)

Secondly, if marriage is a couples' right, then the right to freely contract--by virtue of the fact that all contracts involve at least two parties--is a couples' or group right. If Andrew is attempting to undermine the basis for private property and capitalism, he's right on track. But something tells me that he's not. Instead, he's probably just recklessly brandishing any argument he can find to justify denying gays the right to marry, without properly thinking through the larger, longer-term consequences of those ideas.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

At the recommendation of none of my colleagues, I decided to restart my dormant blog. I will still be contributing to the Patriot, of course, but this gives me a bit more freedom to publish posts without bothering the other editors.

I've imported some old posts, some of which have appeared on here and some which were before I joined on to the Patriot.

Also, for anyone who enjoyed my Daily Links, its has been getting increasingly difficult to provide daily links and fulfill my obligations as, you know, a student. So I will be synthesizin' the links and providing a weekly batch of links.

...is a Football team. But super naive freshmen Lucas Hagerty seems to think otherwise.

What Hagerty fails to mention is that football teams are incredibly expensive, hence why schools drop them or simply do not have them. We don't have the money, school spirit or the alumni support to create a football team. If you want a football team, do what the rest of us do and cheer for your favorite team back home. Get your guns up!

or just coming down from its Obamagasm? They haven't updated in two weeks.

thoughts, questions, concerns, Travis?

In order to inspire dirty hippies everywhere by simultaneously appealing to their blind idealism and their lack of a basic grounding in economics or international affairs, the sort of folks who think that the New York Times is "too conservative" have, well, released their own (from six months in the future).

It rather looks like they approached the whole endeavor with pinko-tinted glasses.

Sen. John McCain on Tuesday's Tonight Show. He seemed like he's back to being the "Old McCain":

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

• Lobbyist Swarm Treasury For Piece Of Bailout Pie
• Progress Doesn't Come From Washington
• Bloomberg News Sues Government To Get Bailout Info
• Golf And The "Putt Entitlement"
• Who Owns The Rain? In Utah...Not You!
• Why The GOP Is Losing The Young Vote
• 5 Things You Didn't Know About James Bond

Ninety years ago today, the Armistice at Compiègne ended the First World War in Europe--you know, the war that was supposed to "end all wars," but didn't. Funny that. Anyway, celebrating a cease-fire ("Armistice Day") is for wimps, so we call it Veterans' Day now.

I'm sure you're worried. It's Veterans' Day, you think. How will I honor my nation's veterans today? How can I possibly do justice to the sacrifices of so many who have fought for me, while acknowledging the moral complexity of war in an Imperial Age? How can I show my gratitude for them without slipping into banal hero-worship or inadvertently praising the minority of them who deserve no praise at all? How do I maintain an appropriately cosmopolitan attitude toward the horrors of war, while embracing the salutary effects of those wars on the freedom and prosperity of my country and my world?

With a mad-lib, of course! Just fill in the blanks here using the prompts as a guide, and you'll have your own overlong paean to the troops to share with friends:

(NAME) was (AGE) when he joined up to serve his country and the cause of (AMERICAN IDEAL) by fighting (ENEMY) in (CONTINENT). He was (AGE + 2) when he died there. America owes its (VARIANT OF "LIBERTY") and (VARIANT OF "DEMOCRACY") to (NAME) and his comrades. We ought to spend some time remembering that, instead of worrying about our (EVERYDAY TRIFLE) and taking our ability to (EVERYDAY ACTIVITY) for granted. The next time you see a veteran, thank him for his service, and imagine the sort of country we would have, were it not for men like (NAME) and his (POSITIVE PERSONAL ATTRIBUTE).

Fill in the blanks, milk the language to stretch the entire thing out to about three or four pages, and (ta-da) you've done your annual penance and can go back to not giving a flying s--t about veterans for another 364 days. Post it on your blog or send it out as a chain e-mail to your friends, so we all know how much you love the troops. If this process takes more than 15 minutes, you're doing it incorrectly.

Honoring the troops has never been so easy! Happy Veterans' Day!

Obviously, with the only piece of legislation up for discussion slated to be tabled (due to the absence of its sponsor), it's not worth it.

I will still be attending, and if anything worth mentioning goes down (which is...not likely), I'll post a recap.

What conclusion might we draw from all this 'baggery? The Student Association Government is pointless and too lame to long exist in a just world, and ought clearly to be dismantled. In the spirit of our anarchist epiphany, I give you some light evening reading from Lysander Spooner.

• Take Some Political Risks
• Time To Pull The Plug On General Motors
• "Intellectuals"
  
• Senator Wants To Make Scalping Inauguration Ball Tickets A Crime
• The Rise Of Penny-Pinching Billionaires
• Self-Help Tips From General George Washington
  

The internet is a cold, merciless mistress who never forgets, and never forgives.

I learned this the hard way today, as I noticed (for the first time) that my hometown newspaper (The Free Lance-Star) had published a letter to the editor written by yours truly back in early 2006. I remember writing the letter, but don't remember it being published. The text of this letter is worth quoting at length:

• Detroit Automakers Need More Than A Bailout
• PJ O'Rourke Thinks "We Blew It"
• Should We Really Bailout $73.20/Hour Labor?
• Greg Mankiw's Memo To The POTUS-Elect.
• Top 5 Candidates For Secretary Of State
• 6 Of Baseball's Strangest Trades

Reports of the S.A.'s demise have been exaggerated. But not greatly. The Student Association government at Our Fair University took the wise step of not having a meeting on election night, and real news has been pretty scarce while everyone recovers from their Obamangover. I promise that this will change--some pretty interest stuff is in store this year--but that may not be soon.

The next S.A. Senate meeting, tomorrow night, will be held on the Vern (dumb, I know). Being a conscientious journalist, I will actually be making the trek over there to liveblog it. I think I've worked out the kinks in the liveblogging software, so there should be no trouble with the right margin of the application's window. Whether, unlike last time, the Senate meeting will be long enough for anything interesting to happen, I have no idea. Tune in tomorrow at 9pm to find out.

And, as always, the best place to get the scoop on the S.A.'s utter lameness is Senator Dobson's blog, Inside the S.A.

Really, Obama supporters, when we complain about the bizarre, almost totalitarian quality of stuff like this, we aren't just giving voice to sour grapes. Really.

It really is creepy, and it's a sign of seriously unhealthy politics. Discontent with the Bush administration is fine. Pride in and support for Obama is also fine. Worshipful, heroic, Mao-esque icons covered in eerie platitudes: not fine.

Didn't we all have a nervous laugh when we discovered partisans of the Religious Right teaching their kids to "pray over" pictures of Dubya? How is this tripe any different?

• Equality Of Rights Does Not Mean Equality Of Outcome
• Paul Ryan For House Minority Leader?
• The Great Tax Revolt Of 2012
• Obama's A Poker Player
• 10 Deadliest Jobs

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

• Headlines Of Obama's Victory From Newspapers Around The World
• Swing Voters Don't Want Big Government
• A Post Election Shift Against Free Trade?
• Internet Privacy A Thing Of The Past In UK
• 5 Third-Party Candidates And What They Did After They Lost
• 10 Most Expensive Accidents

If you haven't heard, it has definitely passed. Whether it'll invalidate any of the gay marriages from the previous few months in California is less clear. A few days ago, the San Francisco Chronicle featured a decent article on the controversy:

Some legal commentators say Prop. 8, if passed Tuesday, would retroactively invalidate all same-sex marriages performed in the state since a state Supreme Court ruling legalizing such weddings took effect. Others say the court established rights that can't be taken away, even if the law changes.

The answer could come from the same court that overturned California's previous law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Or it could come from a higher-ranking tribunal in Washington, D.C.

Apparently, ex post facto considerations are irrelevant:

Yoshino said federal courts have ruled that the constitutional prohibition against government interference with contracts doesn't apply to marriage. He also said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that in a noncriminal case, a state needed little justification to retroactively repeal individual rights that were in effect for a relatively brief period.

• A Way Out Of The Wilderness
  
• The Coming College Bubble?
• Unfortunate News: The Loss Of Sen. John Sununu
  
• Nebraska Is Turning Into A National Dumping Ground For Unwanted Kids
• Obama Tax Hikes: A Survival Guide For The Wealthy
  
• The Iraqi Housing Boom
• MLB Agents Ponder Beating Tax Increases
  

HT: (4 Block World)

One of the (many) things that bothered me about those who absolutely were revolted by the Presidency of George W. Bush was when they would shout, wear T-shirts, etc proclaiming that Bush was "Not my President". That bothered be because, apart from being just plain untrue from a governmental standpoint, it seemed to signify this child-like fingers-in-ears mentality of just pretending that the bad things weren't there and if we shouted and ignored them they would just go away. Well, I propose that that sort of mentality stop itself, and that my fellow Conservatives and republicans not continue these juvenile protests proliferated by the left these past eight years.
Barack Obama, for the next four years at least, is our President. He is my President. I will support him with trepidation. I hope that his decisions will be ones based on prudence, thoughtfulness and reason. I know that President Obama will dissapoint me a great deal with some of his policies , however when there comes a time ( God forbid) that our enemies come to crash our doors and windows again and President Obama has to stand up to protect us from the evil the still resides in this world, he will have my support. I wish him the best of luck in these next four years, he will have a hard road ahead of him.

Some sad news to temper your joy. Proposition 8 passed in California. If you've been living under a rock for the past year, this proposition--written to override the California Supreme Court's decision granting marriage equality to gays--will deprive gays of their recently-recognized right to marry in the state. So far, 16,000 gays have married in California.

The results for this putrid resolution can be found here. It passed by a margin of about four percent.

EDIT: Andrew Sullivan, among others, is still holding out some hope.

Also, a commenter asks if ex post facto applies here. It depends on the interpretation of the California Supreme Court, I suppose. I replaced my somewhat fevered and inaccurate description, making it more accurate. Mea Culpa.

Leaving a friend's apartment, I see "CNN Projects President-elect Obama" displayed across the screen. I shake my head. I walk out into the evening. Horns and shouts pierce the air along with illegal fireworks, saved from the 4th of July, fired from the distance. I walk back onto campus. A crowd has formed in front of the Marvin Center. They are shouting. "Obama!". "Yes we did!". I groan. They begin walking to the White House. I follow. I find a group of McCain supporters who are laughing and taking pictures. I decide to join in. They are as unhappy as I am. But, they are letting the moment take them over. I join in their cynical fun. I yell; "Socialism!" and my small conservo-cadre laughs. I giggle. I cough. I arrive at the White House. The crowd grows and grows. The shouts: "Obama Obama Obama". I retort "Three more months, Three more months". They yell at Bush, unaware that he is in Crawford, away from all of this. The crowd grows and grows. I see friends, they are shocked that I am at the rally. They shout more and more, and the crowd's voice crescendos. The barricade in front of the White House is covered by the White House Police, but students clad in their buttons and T-shirts for Obama run past them, they care not for police interference, Change is coming. I grow tired of the crowd and their chants. I decide to leave. I am impeded by the tide of Change that is moving towards to the White House. More and more students running, screaming "OBAMA OBAMA" "YES WE DID".
I put my headphones in. I hope my iPod can drown out the cheers. No use. More and more cheers. I see a group of McCain supporters moving ironically towards the rally, they are in for a fight. I see a friend, an Obama supporter. She gives me a hug to "console" me. It doesn't work. The crowd moving to the White House grows and grows. Their cries are louder and louder. America has spoken. Change is coming. Are we ready?

Here it comes.

My 13 year-old brother supports Obama. To parse the logic of his justification:

1) If we elect John McCain, then Sarah Palin will be our Vice President.
2) We chose not to nominate Hillary Clinton because we didn't want to elect a woman.
3) Therefore, we should elect Barack Obama. Electing McCain and Palin would be simply counterproductive.

P.S. - CNN just quoted John McCain saying "some of the pundits have written us off [...] but the Mack is Back!" Aaaaagghhhchh.

I decided to take the advice of The Colonialist and take today off from all work, so no links today.

That and I couldn't find many cool links...

I've been living a lie for the past few weeks. In that time, I've been asked by coworkers, fellow students, and a few professors whether or not I'm voting.

Ask me in public, and I'll tell you that I'm voting for Obama. Ask me politely in private, and I'll admit that I'm not voting at all, and that I regularly lie about this in public because non-voters at GW are stigmatized like lepers. I feign support for Senator Obama because that seems to shut down the conversation more quickly. No one asks bothersome questions of or demands an explanation from someone following the crowd. I'm sure that, if I was a student at the University of Mississippi, I would be proudly pretending to support John McCain.

It's not that I'm not prepared to answer objections. Most people that hear about my real, ballot-less plans for election day--including a few genuinely shocked friends--have wonderful arguments in favor of voting, all of which I've heard, considered, and refuted more times than I care to recall. I'm just so tired of doing it that it's not worth the trouble anymore. Me? I'm voting Obama.

Here's what I really do plan on doing sometime soon, though. I'm a Virginia resident, so I'll be buying a few Virginia lottery tickets (four or five should do nicely), and pledging that all of my after-tax winnings from those tickets will be donated to the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, and a few other worthy causes at my own discretion. If you'd like me to explain why I'm doing this and why this makes me more responsible and political active than most Americans, just ask me in person. Do it politely, and I might not even lie to you.

Otherwise, leave me alone about voting. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Watch the hopeless remain hopeful.

"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
-John Adams

Vote third party, don't vote at all. In the end, the most noteworthy part of this election is that our system has become so flawed that even when most Americans are unhappy with both candidates, that still won't translate into any popular movement against one of the two dominant parties.

Sorry, Mr. Adams. You better choose a side if you want to have an impact.

A post over at Andrew Sullivan's blog had me curious about facial hair and presidential elections..

...wouldn't Barr be the first mustachioed occupant of the White House since Teddy Roosevelt? Even if you don't like the man, vote the mustache! This would be change we can see.

Not quite. The last president to win with any sort of facial hair was William Howard Taft in 1908. And the last winning presidential candidate with a full beard? Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Since Taft, we have foolishly come to the conclusion that a man who had facial hair was a man unfit to be president. Thomas E. Dewey nearly pulled off the feat in 1948, but we all know how that election turned out.

But I do wonder, what makes facial hair a faux pas for a presidential candidate?

For those of you that haven't been on Facebook at all in the past three weeks, Ben & Jerry's is giving out free scoops of Ice Cream tomorrow to celebrate the election. This will also coincide with the beginning of a four year brain-freeze yours truly will suffer through.

Starbucks is also getting in on the bribe game. If you walk into Starbucks tomorrow and simply say "I voted" you get a free cup of coffee.

So get out there and get free Food..er... I mean vote...or die.

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• How We Used To Vote
• Ego and Mouth
• Looking Forward To Being Less Productive
• What Countries Does The NY Times Cover
• Virginity By Major

By way of an overlong confession that he may also have "palled around" with Bill Ayers (back when Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd, et al., were still active domestic terrorists), one doctor blogging at Effect Measure provides a pretty riveting description of his first aid work with the dark(er) side of the Vietnam era's far left:

I will freely admit these guys were now pretty scary. At one point [Weatherman Mark] Rudd stood there, while we were occupied with our first aid stuff, clinking a tire chain up and down, while someone else announced, "Capitalist doctors are still pigs and if necessary will be offed." "Being offed" meant becoming not alive. We got out of there at the first opportunity.

Something tells me that Barack Obama's Ayers stories are not nearly so cool.

Fox has announced that this will be the last season of King of the Hill. As one of the few politically conservative cartoons out there (the other being libertarian-leaning South Park), Mike Judge's King of the Hill has had a nice run, but noticeably began to lose traction over the years. I for one will miss it, but will continue to enjoy the reruns.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081101/ap_en_bu/tv_king_of_the_hill

The question remains, however, will a new conservative, mainstay cartoon-sitcom arise to take King of the Hill's place or is the market this brand of media on the decline?