Thank you for the jury duty, Patrick, as others have said.
I seem to be in the middle of my winter cold right now. It feels like I have contracted it over the Internet from all the people who were sick during the inauguration, though that can't possibly be true. It's the sore-throat-and-achy-muscles type, but very low-grade on both counts. Strange. Am having lots of hot drinks and Tylenol/Advil, and remembering to eat.
May you sleep well and feel better soon, Patrick.
Damn, that's cool. :D
There are twelve hours left in the Bush administration as I type this (counting from noon when Obama will be sworn in).
I am writing on Jan. 20, 2009. I want to write to my past self and tell her that yes, it will happen, this day will come.
Even though I agree with Lee @#4 that we ain't out of the woods yet by a long shot.
Rev. Gene Robinson's invocation is very much what I'd like to ask for.
#57 Laura from Faraway: "In the House of the Seven Librarians" is available free online as both a pdf and a podcast.
Would you happen to have a link to the PDF version handy, by any chance? My Google-fu gives me only the podcast, which is alas of little use to me (half deaf).
#86 albatross: I've had that oral history of the Bush administration open in another tab all week. Can only psych myself up to read it in very small portions, because, as Caroline says, it's all still too real and fresh. But I will finish it eventually: it's very important. I am very glad to read the parts of the story particularly that are from non-American sources: it feels like someone else is bearing witness, someone from outside the abused-spouse household that's been America for the last eight years.
(I, myself, was in Canada until 2005, but I've identified so strongly with the American left since I became aware of what was going on that I don't feel like I have any kind of perspective.)
On Obama, there's a quote from Rep. Barney Frank in this article that I found salient: Obama tends to overstate his ability to get people to change their opinions and underestimates the importance of confronting ideological differences [....] He says, ‘I don’t want to fight the fights of the nineties,’ but I don’t see any alternative to refighting the fights of the nineties if we want to change things.
(That article gives me some hope that there's folks in congress and around Obama that will be pushing him. I hope he listens--and yes, I'm still utterly thrilled about the inauguration! Joy, gladness, and the sounds of singing!)
Had I understood Spanish, I would have been excluded from the jury because I might have responded to the actual testimony rather than the official translation.
Wow.
Thank you so much for this retrospective. I remember many of these posts, and while I'm forcibly keeping myself from clicking the links to re-live all the wonderful comments or else I'll not get anything done today, it's wonderful to have them all in one spot like this.
Such genius and friendliness in this place.
May 2009 be a good year, and in the ways it isn't, may we all pull together.
#11 odaiwai, my mother bakes bread, too. When I was younger, she used to make it for our church (~30-40 people) weekly or so, and by hand. Now, she uses a bread machine and bakes it just for my dad and whatever kids are around (three, at the moment); it is, as you said, devoured with great glee. She likes to experiment with different recipes, usually various whole grains, but even her plain wheat bread is terribly tasty fresh from the oven.
For the last few years I've had a tradition of going to lunch on Sundays after church with a couple of people I met in my confirmation class; at the moment, it's down to one other person and we don't always have the money to spend at a restaurant. I miss it. But we had some wonderful times.
When I was in Boulder back in September, I got a chance to meet Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little, and spent five or six evenings in coffee shops with her and friends. Very, very warm memories. I hope to do it again sometime. :)
I fucking hate that justice is so slow that we don't ever KNOW about these things in time to stop them from happening in the first place. I mean, we knew since 2004 at least that it had been happening--but not as it was starting, and no one in power seemed to care even when the first reports came out.
It's almost 2009 and the Senate is finally doing a report on it. I'm glad they are, but it makes me so angry that it happened at all, and that it takes so long to even acknowledge it.
(Of all the things on the Obama administration's plate, this is the one that matters most to me--more even than the economy.)
This all reminded me that I wanted to read Joe the Vice President-Elect's book. I have now ordered it at the library. Hooray!
My maternal grandfather was in the European theatre during WWII, and was wounded and captured by the Germans. I knew that he had been a POW, but it was only about two years ago that he was comfortable enough to sit down and write (even in abbreviated form) the whole story for his kids and grandkids. I don't think he was in the worst prisons, but there was forced marching to escape the Allies involved.
He's now a fisherman and church elder in a little town in northwestern Ontario, having been sponsored in his immigration to Canada in the 1970s by the only other man in the country with his specialty (music engraving)--who happened to be a German-Canadian. He now has six kids, twelve grandkids, and two great-grandkids. He fishes avidly but refuses to handle guns.
I should go give him an e-hug. I love you, grandpa Ted.
I left a note (probably rather too long and effusive--I was in a "omg can't believe we did it" mood), and asked for two things: CLOSE GITMO, and don't forget LGBT citizens. There are lots of other important things I hope they do, but I figured prisoner abuse was #1 for me (I don't worry so much about the economy, since I know they're paying lots of attention to that, and I have no advice for them, not being an economist). And gay rights, while not immediately important to foreign policy or people being bombed in Pakistan, does still matter to me & mine.
I'll be interested to see how the transition website develops, and the ratio of actual information to generic PR BS that ends up there, and on the White House site once they've been sworn in. I love that ML and BoingBoing are following this stuff.
"B. Hussein Obama"? Are they so desperate to drive up the "Ack! Muslim!" fear factor that they can't even be bothered to mention his first name?
Yes.
Which is a pity for a number of reasons, including the fact that "Barack" and "Hussein" are actually both really good names, meaning "blessed" and "handsome/good" respectively. As the Wikipedia page on the given name Barack notes, it means exactly the same thing as "Benedict". And it's certainly not Sen. Obama's parents' fault that the name Hussein would remind a lot of people of an Iraqi dictator who didn't come to power until their son was 18 years old.
I plan to watch at least some of the election results at the local bar & grill that I watched Obama's DNC acceptance speech and the 2nd debate at. But I will definitely drop in here at some point.
I'm expecting Tennessee to stay very red, but will be watching the neighbours (VA & NC particularly) closely. I've heard that either of those could go for Obama, an it would be neat to see if one or both did.
This is the first election my 10-year-old brother remembers, I think. And he's firmly in the Obama camp, despite the disagreements on specific policies that his parents and I have over his head. (I still don't know how my parents voted last week: two days before we went in to early-vote, my dad was considering writing in Ron Paul because he dislikes McCain but wasn't sure he could support Obama being pro-choice.) My 12-year-old sister reports back that while most of her dance class are Republicans, one is wearing a "Republicans for Obama" button. Both kids are clearly impressed by the anti-war things they've heard from their parents and me. I hope the first few years of their political awareness shows them good people overturning previous bad decisions. I'd like despair not to be the first thing they associate with voting.
Ho-leee frell, I had not realized that Nixon and Reagan got such huge landslides!
I...wow. Surprised. I guess that's why everbody (for a certain value of "everbody") still thinks Reagan was so great--they thought so at the time, and he really did have a mandate. Nixon, though, I know little enough about to know what was going on there.
This white Canadian is pulling for Obama. (She also happens to be an American citizen, and utterly thrilled to have been able to cast her ballot already via early voting.)
It will be really, really nice to have a US president who's competent and in touch with reality. I know my country of birth and my country of residence often have differences, and we Canucks sometimes dislike the US on principle--we're not the 51st state, after all, y'know! and all that--but that gets worse with leaders like the current one, and better with ones who at least deal with the rest of the world like adults. At the worst of times, it feels like Canada is being dragged along to destruction by its proximity to the US, and that's scary. At the best of times, we're siblings arguing, but still affectionate towards each other. I'd love to see that happen again, and while Obama won't fix everything wrong, he's hella better than the other guy.
I'd heard references to this song, but hadn't seen the lyrics or hunted down the video.
*dissolves into giggles* Thank you. I, too, needed that. I just got an email from a (Canadian! ??!) friend, some forward conceding that Bush may have messed up a little, but at least he nominated Roberts and Alito, so yay--
On the other hand, this article made me happy. It's kind of neat to remember that Obama's white, too. Hurray for love.
I'd heard references to this song, but hadn't seen the lyrics or hunted down the video. A
*dissolves into giggles* Thank you. I, too, needed that. I just got an email from a (Canadian! ??!) friend, some forward conceding that Bush may have messed up a little, but at least he nominated Roberts and Alito, so yay--
On the other hand, this article made me happy. It's kind of neat to remember that Obama's white, too. Hurray for love.
About being afraid to hope for a win:
2004 was the first American election I ever really paid attention to (I was aware of the 2000 election but not at all of any of the issues or the differences between the parties or candidates). I remember watching the progressive "netroots" organize and pour their energy into Kerry's campaign. We all thought the young people would come out--and some did. We didn't win--but. I do really think that all the work that was done in 2004 wasn't entirely in vain: it laid the groundwork for this year. Obama's been brilliant at campaigning and drawing people in, but he also had the support of networks of people that had been formed during Kerry's campaign. Back in '04 some of us heard about this new candidate for senator in Illinois, and whispered rumors back and forth that maybe in four years' time he might be ready for the presidency....
My point, I guess, is that while I am still skittish and afraid to hope (and have been avoiding political news most of the week, now that I've gone and early-voted), I think the momentum behind Obama this year is greater than it was for Kerry. Maybe it's just who I hang out with, but I saw a lot more "anybody but Bush" voters last time, and a lot more "I'm voting *for* Obama" voters this time.
Somebody wake me up in two weeks? I'll be over here playing Puzzle Pirates and surfing for webcomics.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 6 |
| 2008 | 14 |
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