What the fuck?!

Cleveland 22 New York 0

OK, had to get that off my chest. What was the Yankees' lead over Boston back on August 16th? 10.5. Today? 3.5. I knew I was asking for too much today. Had a great day in lab (i.e. - got a result that was much better than I had expected. Of course, it still needs to be repeated so check back to see how I'm feeling after the second attempt.); got the new Bjork album as well as Tool's "Lateralus." (I know, "Lateralus" has been out for a while but I never got around to getting it. Glad I did. Fun stuff. Although I suppose one can't deny the early Metallica influence, what with all the intricate arrangements.) Anyway. I guess hoping for a Yankees win was just getting greedy.

I'd have something snarky to say about the Republican convention but I just haven't had the heart to watch any of it. There's only so much "They don't represent the real America. We do. (And by extension, if you agree with them, then you must not be part of the real America either. Go back to where you came from, fucking pissant.)" that I can take. And by "only so much I can take," I mean "only so much I can take over the course of my entire fricking lifetime."

One thing I've realized recently while stewing over what exactly it is that drives me batty when it comes to the Republican Party of the past twenty-some years is that the Republicans have always managed to dictate the terms of debate and distract the public's attention from the core issues of any discussion to the more emotional, but ultimately less substantial aspects of the same discussion. Pick a topic, any topic. Gay marriage? Abortion? Gun control? Dare I say it, the war on terrorism? You name it, the Republicans have managed to push the public's buttons and manipulate it to respond with whatever knee-jerk response is required to turn the discussion against the Democrats. This gets at the double standard that Rolando brought up a little while ago. In a similar vein, here's the most recent column from Jonathan Alter in this week's Newsweek that explores the Democrats' seeming inability to take off the proverbial gloves.

OK, now I'm getting pissed off again. Humiliating late-season Yankees loss coupled with the Republican convention is going to pop a vein in my brain. Must go kill monsters in Diablo II. That'll make me feel better.

Florida again?!

Here are the second and third pieces from a recent series of columns by Bob Herbert from the NYT on recent shenanigans going down in the Sunshine State. In a nutshell, it seems that the powers that be in Florida (i.e., Governor Jeb Bush and Co.) are quietly but diligently working to intimidate black voters by investigating "charges" of voter fraud. The people who have been targeted have tended to be retired black citizens who have been active in voter registration drives. This from the state that demonstrated in spectacular fashion how to mismanage an election back in 2000 and 2002. And there's still the suspicious business about purging the names of former felons from the lists of eligible voters. Particularly the subtle point that those charged with removing the names of felons didn't seem to go to great lengths to check to see if they actually got the right person in the event that two people had the same name.

So much for my previous fretting about the subversion of the democratic process by the Democratic Party with regard to their efforts to undermine Ralph Nader's presidential bid.

(Note: the New York Times archives its online features about two weeks after they first go up. After that, the links will give you the first 50 words of the first paragraph of the article. If I get around to it, I'll try to figure out how to link the full text of both columns as independent HTML files rather than just as links.)