A new year, a new effort.

Yes, it’s been a while. My journey of political discovery has been, at times, painful. George W. Bush has continued to grasp on the title of “Worst. President. Ever.” and shows no signs of wanting to let it go.

A lot’s happened since I last wrote here, too much to catch up. But, I expect to be around a bit more often, as 2006 is an important Congressional race, and will define the remainder of Mr. Bush’s term in office, and quite likely determine what happens in 2008.

One item I’ll note is I wrote into my two senators (Boxer and Feinstein). Twice, in fact. The first time was to express my support for continued investigation of the illegal wiretapping programs Mr. Bush has admitted to authorizing; the second was in support of Senator Feingold‘s censure resolution against Mr. Bush for this illegal wiretapping.

I know it’s not much, but I found myself feeling somewhat thrilled by my actions. I don’t expect much to come of these email messages (and in fact only Senator Boxer has responded to either of my messages), but if I can add my voice to a chorus of others, perhaps our elected officials will hear us and take action.

Don't call it the stomach flu

Back in college, everyone drank way too much alcohol, leading to the inevitable purging in front of the porcelain god. When it was bad enough that we couldn’t make it into work that day, we used the standard excuse: “I had some kind of stomach flu”. This was code for “I had way too much to drink last night, and I am still paying for it” and everyone knew it.

Had any of us experienced the real “stomach flu”, we might not have been so cavalier in throwing the phrase around. This week, I had the dubious pleasure of catching the real “stomach flu”, and after spending four-plus hours in the Emergency Room flat on my back with an I.V. sticking out of my arm, I’ve gained a whole new level of respect for this “stomach flu”.

In fact, “stomach flu” doesn’t really begin to explain the extent to which this nasty bug can wreck havoc on your system. When even plain water gets forcefully expelled, and the yellowish bile that is your stomach acid is all that’s coming out and you’re still trying to vomit up more, you need stronger language, scientific language, language with lots of syllables. Gastroenteritis is the right language here. What did gastroenteritis feel like? Kind of like Mother Nature had grabbed me by the balls, flipped me upside down, and shook me until I’d released all the contents of my stomach, shook me some more until vital bodily fluids had likewise been expelled, and then kept shaking me, simply because, apparently, she liked the sound I made.

It all began Monday night. Since my girlfriend’s plane was delayed a day, I picked her up on Monday afternoon instead of Sunday evening, and we grabbed an early dinner at an Indian restaurant a few blocks from her house. Immediately after I finished eating, I felt a knot in the top of my stomach, just below the breastbone. I knew something was wrong, but it felt like I’d just eaten too much, or too fast. I figured I’d be spending too much time in the toilet that night.

We got home, and the feeling didn’t get any worse, but it didn’t go away either. We went through our activities, finally going to sleep about midnight. I awoke about 3AM with a desperate urge to evacuate my bowels, and then, a few minutes later, started to vomit.

I still had no idea what I was in for.

I spent all of Tuesday vomiting. Everything I tried to eat or drink eventually found its way back up, including Pepto Bismol and plain water. It had gotten so bad that even with nothing on my stomach, I was vomiting, meaning I was bringing up stomach bile.

As you might imagine, that’s neither a pretty sight nor a good thing for your body to be doing.

About 9PM I started thinking that I might want to go to the E.R. since I wasn’t keeping food or liquid down, and my body would start dehydrating. About 10PM I called my health insurance’s nurse hotline, described my symptoms and answered a bunch of questions, and was told “based on what you’ve told me, you should go to an emergency room”.

In all honestly, that’s not what I was expecting to hear.

So about 10:30PM, Ying drove me to the E.R. which is conveniently located about five minutes from my house. A 30 minute wait and I was in to see a doctor. A few forms, and the charging of my co-pay (nothing happened until they had my credit card in hand…) and suddenly I was getting poked in my arm and hooked into an I.V. drip.

They say there’s a first time for everything, and this was one of those times. Never had I been connected to an I.V. drip, and never did I think it would happen. I associate that with sick people, and I just don’t get that kind of sick.

When it was all over, I’d had three liters of fluid pumped into me (the body gets chilled when this is happening, since the fluid is not warmed), had my blood drawn for testing, and received a third needle in my rear to calm the nausea I was feeling. And, at 3:30AM  I walked out of the E.R., with a couple of prescriptions to fill. (Ying found a 24 hour Walgreens to fill the prescription.)

I returned home, took the prescription, and passed out in bed. I awoke several hours later, and Ying, who was an angel of mercy during this, went out and grabbed the few staples I was allowed to eat, including bread and apple juice. I lived on this diet for another day, and by the end of the third day I finally felt like I was at about 90%.

(Ying really was great throughout this, by-the-way. She stayed with me the first day, took me to the E.R., spent the next day with me, did some grocery shopping and even managed to do some cleaning around the house. I’m very lucky to have her.)

By Friday I was eating normal food (though very cautiously), and Saturday night I had my first large meal in almost a week. I’m still not back to “normal”, however, as I still cringe at the slightest stomach rumble or twinge. It’ll take a while before eating isn’t given a second thought.

Canon Err 99 shooting car fire

On my way home today I noticed a van engulfed in white smoke. My first thought, of course, photo-op! Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I sped home, grabbed my camera bag and dashed off to take a few shots. By the time I got back, whatever fire there was was put out, and the van was soaked with foam and water. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I took a few shots of what was left (and of the firefighters):

CRW_1083 CRW_1086 CRW_1089 CRW_1097

While shooting, I encountered an error with my Canon 10D. Several times, the camera locked up, with none of the buttons or controls working, and the top LCD displaying “Error 99”. I was able to resolve it by removing and reattaching the lens, but I ended up losing several shots.

Searches for “Canon 10D Error 99” on Google showed that several others were seeing this problem, and some tracked it back to Sigma lenses (I own one) and others to deleting photos in-camera (which I’d done while shooting). I’ll probably contact Canon about this next week. The camera is long out of warranty, however. Is this the excuse I need to buy a new Canon 5D?

Let the FUD-flinging begin!

Tonight, George W. Bush announces his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Tonight also marks the start of FUD-flinging season.

What a coinkidink!

Professional FUD-flingers, such as Mr. Bush, Karl Rove, and many in the Republican party and in the media, will converge on Washington, the birthplace of FUD-flinging, in an all-out attempt to declarify and obfuscate the history and politcal leanings of Mr. Bush’s nominee, all the while attempting to convince everyone that this is the biggest story around, and not, say, the Karl-Rove-leakeda-covert-agent’s-identity story, you know, for example.

Let’s see how the media covers the action….

Supreme Court: extreme measures to win support.

Supreme
adjective
• very great or intense; extreme

Court
verb [ trans. ]
• pay special attention to (someone) in an attempt to win their support or favor

• go to great lengths to win (favorable attention)

– New Oxford English Dictionary

What, you’ve never heard these definitions before? It’s what George W. Bush has been doing for most of his political career, and what you can expect him to do when selecting a candidate to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Conner on the United States Supreme Court.

His “base”, those generally wealthy, generally White, generally conservative, generally Christian individuals to whom he generally caters, want someone on the Court who will, among other things, remove the rights of a woman to control her own body, support the imprisonment of American citizens with no access to a lawyer, and agree to continued invasions of personal privacy.

George W. Bush is indebted to this base: they were instrumental in getting him elected, after that long period of courting them, and now they want payback, and you can bet that will come in the form of a candidate who will support their conservative agenda.

This, of course, will be devastating to this country, as the Court already is rather conservative, with O’Conner being the so-called “swing vote”. Replacing O’Conner with a conservative will tip the precarious balance of a supposedly non-partisan deliberative body far enough to the right that it might take decades to reverse the decisions the new Court puts forth, assuming we continue to have the opportunity to do that.

Now is the time to make your voices heard. The choices Bush makes for the Supreme Court (and there will be another, you can be sure of that) will affect our lives for a generation or more, and might forever change the course of this country. Do we want to return to a time where women had to undergo dangerous back alley “medical procedures”? Do we want to live in a country where being a citizen has no meaning, and the right to privacy doesn’t exist?

Stand up. Fight any Bush nominations who make judicial decisions based ideological believes rather than Constitutional convictions.

Equal rights under the law?

I know it’s been a long time since I posted last, and this is just a drop-in, but I felt it was important enough to make this available. Here’s a sample of some of the 1000+ Federal privileges denied to same-sex couples because they cannot get married:

  • The right to make decisions on a partner’s behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
  • The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.
  • The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
  • The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, non-biological or non-adoptive parent’s right to visit a child – or responsibility to provide financial support for that child – in the event of a breakup.
  • The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.
  • Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.
  • The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will.
  • The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Think about these the next time you think same-sex marriage is “morally wrong”.

Fight your own battle, damnit.

From John Kerry’s latest email:

Tomorrow, members of Congress will meet to certify the results of the 2004 presidential election. I will not be taking part in a formal protest of the Ohio Electors.

Despite widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote, our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

[…]

I want every vote counted because Americans have to know that the votes they stood in line for, fought for, and strived so hard to cast in an election, are counted. We must make sure there are no questions or doubts in future elections. It’s critical to our democracy that we investigate and act to prevent voting irregularities and voter intimidation across the country. We can’t stand still as Congressional leaders seek to sweep well-founded voter concerns under the rug.”

Wouldn’t you think it might be helpful in investigating those “well-founded voter concerns” if the person who might be most obviously affected by them “[took] part in a formal protest”?

Stop being such a pussy politician, Mr. Kerry.

“Screw you, America.”

Wow. I just finished reading this article at The Independent Weekly, and hoo-boy, it is a doozy. Thing is, I can’t disagree with anything the author says. For example:

In your befuddling concession speech, you actually called for unity and healing. Sounds good, clown, but can’t you even imagine for a second that the people who supported you so zealously for the past five months might just see that insincere gesture of good sportsmanship as a betrayal? See, unlike you pols, we voters actually believe in shit. We believe that George W. Bush and his henchpeople are a real threat to the survival of democracy. We believe that they’re killing people for profit. And we believe that they don’t have a goddamn clue about forfending terrorism on U.S. soil.

That’s not a position gap; that’s an ideological gash.

Now, I might have used less-harsh language, but he’s right. “Unity and healing” aren’t what’s called for, standing up and fighting for what we believe in is what’s necessary, and having the putative leader of our movement basically say “they’re not that bad” is disconcerting.

Clinton opened his presidential library the other day, and, standing in the drenching rain, asked his listeners “Am I the only person in the entire United States of America who likes both George W. Bush and John Kerry? Who believes they’re both good people, who believe they both love our country and they just see the world differently?”

Damn right, Mr. President.

You are.

And the fact that you are suggesting that Mr. Bush is somehow “OK”, and wants the same things for the world that John Kerry wanted is abominable.

John Kerry is no saint, but he’s light-years apart from Mr. Bush. To quote the article above,

Last week [the Bush administration] were the imperialist pigs who misled us into war and you were the savior. Now we’re the goddamn Getalong Gang?! Screw that. Fight back or shut up.

And the people who voted for Mr. Bush, the fundamentalists, the Religious Right which came out in such unexpected numbers that exit polls in key counties were completely wrong, they don’t get that there’s a difference. But then, they don’t see differences where they exist, and imagine tremendous differences where there are none. As the article notes, comparing America’s Christian fundamentalists to Muslim fundamentalists,

[Y]ou both hate the same stuff–homosexuality, pacifism, Jews, education, uppity women, enlightenment, short skirts, gangsta rap, tattoos, infidels.

And each group thinks they have God on their side. Ever think that if both of you can’t be right, perhaps both of you are dead wrong?

This article stirred up my anger all over again, a good effect, I say. A co-worker remarked that “it makes me wish I had the energy to be angry anymore”.

Read the article. Find the energy. Be angry.

It’s important.

New budget buys the President a boat.

The new budget passed this weekend (344-51 in the House, and 65-30 in the Senate). Included in that budget, along with all the necessary items like paying for Social Security and “funding” the No Child Left Behind initiative, were several items of, shall we say, dubious need. Among them,”$2 million for the government to buy back the presidential yacht USS Sequoia, sold in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to demonstrate frugality.”

Yes, our “fiscally conservative” President and Congress have spent $2 million to buy a boat.

But wait, that’s not the end of the story, as USA Today notes. The budget includes a total of 11,772 “special projects” totaling $15.8 billion in extra spending. Some highlights? From that USA Today article:

  • $25,000 for the study of mariachi music in Nevada’s Clark County School District.
    $225,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina.
    $1 million for the Missouri Pork Producers Federation to convert animal waste into energy.
    $75,000 for renovating the Merry Go Round Playhouse in Auburn, N.Y.
    $100,000 for a weather museum in Punxsutawney, Pa.
    $800,000 for “soybean rust research” in Ames, Iowa.
    $75,000 for “hides and leather research” in Wyndmoor, Pa.
    $1,593 for potato storage in Madison, Wis.
    $1 million for a world birding center, Texas.
    $150,000 to pay for beaver management and damage in Wisconsin.
    $200,000 for the American Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas.
    $100,000 for a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kan.
    $70,000 for a “Paper Industry International Hall of Fame” in Appleton, Wis.
    $1.5 million for the Rep. Richard Gephardt Archive at the Missouri Historical Society.

$1 million to convert hog waste into energy in Missouri?

Talk about your pork.

Undecided? Get a clue!

A friend pointed me to this article at The New Republic. It talks about the undecided voter:

Undecided voters aren’t as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn’t have much luck.

The level of amazement I felt as I read this article can’t be properly put into words (at least, not while I’m in this state). And yet, while I’m amazed, I’m not truly surprised. I’ve always felt that if you’re paying even the least bit of attention, and care even the tiniest amount about how politics affects your life, you have a basic idea of how you want to vote. You might not be sure that’s the right vote to make, but you aren’t “undecided” in the sense of not knowing who you’d like to vote for.

This country is filled with these “undecideds”, and they’re the ones who are making the difference in our lives. By not caring enough to care, those of us who do have to work that much harder to ensure their vote isn’t the deciding vote.

That borders on the absurdly unacceptable.