In medias res

I wanted to love Sam Adams. He’s attractive, gay, a skilled politician. All things in his favor. Unfortunately, his smarminess turned me off a few years ago, so when the mayoral race kicked off, I wasn’t interested. The fact that a lot of white East Coast interlopers I know were CRAZY about him didn’t help [...]

On the occasion of the 44th president’s inauguration, I wanted to say “Fuck, yeah!”
I have been delighted, seeing millions of Americans in the streets of Washington, D.C., celebrating the regime change we’ve been needing for eight years. Moved, seeing the joy on the faces of normal unknown people, celebrities, and politicians alike. Inspired, hearing Obama’s [...]

I think that might make a nice tagline for a new blog franchise. ‘Cause, really, that’s all it takes for so much of what’s out there to get posted. Case in point:

A political wannabe who was briefly employed by my old employer has begun writing exposés of that organization on his “blog.” While I loathe [...]

Here’s a good one for you:
“In 2003, John Jost, a psychologist at New York University, and colleagues surveyed 88 studies involving more than 20,000 people in 12 countries that looked for a correlation between personality traits and political orientation. Jost uncovered some intriguing connections.
People who scored highly on a scale measuring fear of death, for [...]

Check out Obama’s new blog at, get this, http://change.gov/newsroom/blog/. Change.gov. Love it. I had never stopped to consider the internet-y power that being the president-elect could confer.

Your status updates are pathetic. Make up your minds: is Obama going to make us all into communists, force us to have abortions, or make us all get gay marriages? All of the above?
1. Socialist is about as far to the left of Obama as the center is from Bush.
2. Abortion rates declined under Clinton [...]

I can go to bed proud to be an American for the first time in recent history! Obama! Yes, we can!

Ok, scratch that one–it’s absurd. But, if I were a ballot initiative activist, here are some measures I’d try to get on the ballot. Big disclaimer: the only reason I’d try for a ballot initiative would be that at a national and state level, politicians seem to have little interest in fixing some really big [...]

We just spent six hours completely reorganizing the kitchen. I had to do something to keep my mind off the election, and it worked, somewhat. But now I’m back to where I was this morning, worrying about the level of election-stealing skills the Republicans have been building for most of my voting life.
I can’t wait [...]

I’ve been lurking around the Mult Co elections site lately, watching ballot return rates. I’m surprised that the daily turnout is quite a lot lower than in 2004.
November 2004 general election turnout [source]

Date

Ballots Received
(Cumulative)

Voter
Turnout

Mon., Oct. 18, 2004
6,915
1.6%

Tue., Oct. [...]