"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Voting with your feet
We've already had one letter from an American blogospherian over at Atrios asking about immigration to the Great White North.
(See this guide and this commentary with its broad collection of excellent links and a questionaire on the idea)
This official government questionaire will help you figure out if you qualify as a skilled worker

While I heartily encourage all red-state (Jesusland) progressives to move to Canada, I think the best all around solution (barring a sudden epidemic of common sense among red state voters) would be for them to mover to Maine, Michigan or Vermont and demand seccession and entrance to Canadian Confederation.

Thursday, November 04, 2004


Provinces dammit, not states! PROVINCES!! Posted by Hello

Well apparently it was fixed

don't belive me, check out the numbers

I must share this admirable concession one with you

Adam Felber concedes the election with admirable grace:
"I concede that I overestimated the intelligence of the American people. Though the people disagree with the President on almost every issue, you saw fit to vote for him. I never saw that coming. That's really special. And I mean "special" in the sense that we use it to describe those kids who ride the short school bus and find ways to injure themselves while eating pudding with rubber spoons. That kind of special.
I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That's pretty powerful stuff, and I didn't see it. So let me take a moment to congratulate the President's strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio... well, that was just genius................"

What happens next

For my blue state friends and progressive and liberal bloggers trapped in the red zone, Slate has kindly published this timely and handy guide on How to Move to Canada

My suggestion is that Paul Martin ought to pick up the phone tomorrow and offer Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine a chance to join our Confederation as a single province. Next year we'll extend the same offer to Massachusetts and Minnesota,then Rhode Island, then Connecticut, Wisconsin and finally New York. Secession and assimilation into Confederation will have to be done slowly, a state or two at a time to allow them to get used to the shock of universal health care, properly run elections and currency that comes in more than two colors.

After being glued to election coverage on CNN and the internet(s) all day, I went to work the night shift at the paper. Our late Tokyo edition goes out at midnight and Ohio was still tied. I got home at 1:30 and turned on the TV and did what any sensible intelligent politically-aware individual anywhere in the world does the night of a U.S. presidential election -- I drank a half a bottle of irish whisky before the ice cubes could melt and muttered obscenities to myself while I watched the good guys concede "for the good of the country" so that the "healing could begin." Then I went to bed and tried not to cry myself to sleep.

Please tell me the fix was in
Tell me it was the Diebold machines, tell me it was missing absentee ballots in Florida, tell it was voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, tell me it was little green men from the planet Zorgo using a mind control ray. Tell me the election was rigged, because the alternative is just too depressing to contemplate.

The U.S. presidential election saw a record turnout of about 60 percent of eligible voters, nearly 115 million. This means that unless the polls were rigged, 59 million Americans are stunningly ignorant, easily-led, bloodthirsty reactionaries who believe God talks to George W. Bush.

This means that fear, superstition, knee-jerk flag waving, intolerence and blind faith trump reason, science and egalitarianism in public discourse and politics in America.

I'm a Canadian that lives in Tokyo. For me the Bush presidency has been like have a belligerent drunken hillbilly for a next door neighbor. He sits on the porch in his undershirt, spitting tobacco juice on your driveway while he cleans his gun collection and lets his pack of hounds dump on your lawn. The whole neighbourhood hates and fears him.
After four years of this a "for sale" sign goes up next door and you're overjoyed. A few weeks later, a guy comes to your door and says he's thinking seriously of buying the hillbilly's house. You chat and he seems like a decent, reasonable person. You begin to hope. Then a few days later, with a "yeehaw" the hillbilly sets fire to the sign and tells you he's decided to stay after all and proceed to tell you that you better take that durn fence down and move it closer to your house before he gets mad.


Monday, November 01, 2004

Election day is upon us - let the lawsuits begin

I am a lonely visitor.
I came too late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life towards that goal.

I hardly slept the night you wept
Our secret's safe and still well kept
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got
Soul.

Traffic cops are all color blind.
People steal from their own kind.
Evening comes to early for a stroll.
Down neon streets the streaker streaks.
The speaker speaks, but the truth still leaks,
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got it,
Soul.

The podium rocks in the crowded waves.
The speaker talks of the beautiful saves
That went down long before he played this role
For the hotel queens and the magazines,
Test tube genes and slot machines
Where even Richard Nixon got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got it,
Soul.

Hospitals have made him cry,
But there's always a free way in his eye,
Though his beach just got to crowded for his stroll.
Roads stretch out like healthy veins,
And wild gift horses strain the reins,
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got
Soul.
I am a lonely visitor.
I came to late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life towards that goal.

-"Campaigner" by Neil Young

Why I like Canada better than our neighbour to the south reason #726

Sensible laws designed with Peace, Order and Good Government in mind instead of fear-mongering to stop progress toward Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Everything you want to know about Sumo

One nation, one people, one leader

Billmon at the whisky bar has the best take on the new bush loyalty oath I've seen so far