Magnetbox: Lots of good home-cooked internet gumbo. The _____ is the new _____ is priceless alone.

I brought this up to the top because A-Stock did indeed offer the best explanation ever.

When confronted with this seemingly disturbing photo from the Portland Tribune of a Bush supporter muzzling a young protester:

One might be tempted to think this is an assault on the 1st Amendment -- which it isn't as Jeremy pointed out in the comments as the Bush supporter isn't the government. One might also be tempted to think of this as battery of some sort.

But then the context emerges. This young protester was talking about Shaft, and the Bush supporter was merely urging her to "shut yo mouth." As Alex said, it's clear as DAY.

Interesting.

Yahoo! News - Police Turn Up Volume for GOP Convention

At the Brooklyn training site on Thursday, police practiced disarming a truck bomb at a checkpoint. Scores of officers also made mock arrests of police academy cadets who posed as protesters.

Chanting "no justice, no peace," the cadets surrounded a bus full of "delegates" before officers in riot gear raced in, slapped on plastic "flex cuffs" and led them away to vans.

The unanswered question is, did the cadets enjoy their chance to play protester? I know from my experiences on Feb 15 2002 that many NYPD personnel are sympathetic with the cause, and I'm certain that many are angry with Bush. It will be interesting to see how it all goes down.

I want to give my most heartfelt apology to all of you for things I failed to apologize for before. I also want to thank all the people I was too internalized to thank -- I'm very poor at taking compliments, and I don't often give people who lift me up the credibility and recognition they deserve. And I want to pre-emptive offer my deepest regrets for what is about to transpire.

I'm a participant. That is now the best way to describe my philosophy. It is an aggressive philosophy, visceral and active and curious; but it is not about domination or even (necessarily) competition. Rather this philosophy is centered around engagement: the whole-hearted soulful committment to life, to the moment, to what it is you're doing.

I've been doing a lot of shit lately, what I think might really be pretty important shit, but I've also been distant, removed, selfish, overriding, overly critical, haughty, preachy and in a few very regrettable instances, downright mean. For all these things and more, I'm sorry.

This paradigmatic shift, radical change in lifestyle and undetaking of a rather massive responsibility weren't planned to coincide, but they have. I'm under pressure, as they say. This isn't meant as an excuse for any of the above -- though it is an explanation of sorts. But really it's not even a bad thing. Sometimes great things happen under pressure; phase shifts, diamonds in the rough, the big bang and all that jazz. Pretty pressurized times.

Back to the point: the real reason I bring this up is that it's about to go to another level. I've been campaigning for some time, but the next two months are going to kick it into performance gear; we have to execute over the next 10 weeks. That means planning, following through, getting feedback and staying focused. That means I might become even a bit more distant and selfish, so in advance I'm sorry.

And so with all this the final lap begins. As things go to the next level, I'm going to lean on all of you I know quite a lot. I'm going to ask you to volunteer, I'm going to ask to crash on your couch, or even with your parents in Salt Lake City as the case may be. I'm going to be irritable some of the time, and if you cath me in the wrong moment from the wrong angle, I might snap a little. This happens. I'm generally conscious of it, just powerless to stop. Although I don't admit it as often as I should, I make mistakes just as frequently as anyone.

But it won't be all bad. You're going to see a lot from me in the coming months. I'm pulling out all the stops, committing to the campaign trail 100%. I'll do any interview, travel to any festival, work with any organization, do whatever needs to be done to make everything I've worked for in the past two years worthwhile. I'm going to do it all with flair, should be real grand fun, and I'll do my best to tell you all about it.

So that's that. The quest is on, and goddamnit the quest is on. Decompression date: November 3rd 2004

The Sea Collective -- Adventures In Piracy

My old roommate Molly's amazing pirate adventure. Kind of puts my forrays into the square world to shame. Also, they wrote a great tutorial on knots.

When it comes to cutting through the hysteronics of the radical right with movement, Margaret Cho is like a laser:

Also the apology Corsi made is questionable, as I can't imagine that he would be really sorry for what he said, because he is so flip and arrogant about it. The casual nature of his hatred is evidence of his absolute devotion to this kind of non-thinking. He is not sorry for what he said, rather, he is sad that people are calling him on it, because in order to appear as one of the dutiful Americans of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, he must not be what he is, a ruthlessly immoral, adolescent, irresponsible, cowardly and unfunny bigot.

The backstory: Jerry Corsi wrote a book full of allegations about John Kerry's service in Vietnam and was being bathed in the warm loving glow of the Republican Noise Machine until it was revealed that he liked to write really awful things on the internet. Freerepublic.com is truly a spirit-crushing site to visit, and Corsii was a particularly ugly participant.

This is an example of why the net is ultimately going to be unfriendly to right-wing movement politics; transparency and memory are two things their movement has never had to contend with before. They've relied on small-circulation paper newsletters and talk radio, but once there's an institutional memory of what was said, and anyone can access it and bring statements to light, relying on prejudice to motivate people becomes a loosing political strategy in a society which has a consensus against prejudice.

Apropops yesterday's obsession with Venezuela, Chavez cleared it by a good margin. The opposition had a pre-set plan to cry foul; it looked like they had pre-printed signs saying "fraud!" Winning by more than a million votes in an election with 75%+ turnout isn't really fraud. The opposition says its argument is based on exit polls, but I also read yesterday that both parties both swore off exit polling. Kind of a bad-faith move if you ask me.

Bonus question: how long will it take the rabid right to trash Jimmy Carter for observing the election and certifying this result? Looks like negative 8 hours.

On exit polling, The LA Times has it:

Official results were expected today. Although Venezuelan regulations forbade release of results from independent voter surveys until the outcome was announced, the New York-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates forecast a landslide vote to oust Chavez.

The firm's exit poll of more than 20,000 voters suggested that 59% of an estimated 8 million votes cast by early evening were against Chavez.

In fairness, there was another exit poll done by a Venezuelan PR company that showed Chavez winning by 55%. And then there's also this, from the Christian Science Monitor:

Before the referendum, many observers had also questioned the electoral council's decision to use an electronic voting system which had not been used in any previous election, and which they said was vulnerable to manipulation. As well, they decried the revelation that a government agency owned an interest in the company which developed the machines' software and had an employee on the company's board of directors. The government later promised to sell its interest and remove its employee from the board, though it is unclear if they actually did.

At least their electronic voting machines print paper recipts. Seems like with the margin of victory in the million-votes range that any fraud would have to be truly massive, and it aught to be tough to either pull off that kind of fraud, or credibly frame anyone of falsifying that many ballots. Real election fraud happens when the margins are closer, or where the system is obviously biased (e.g. cops harassing people as the go to polls, poll tax, etc). Unless a manual spot count of paper recipts shows disagreement with the electronic tally, it would seem like this election is settled.

I'll be making a run to Utah on the 22nd to speak at SLUG Magazine's Sabbathon. Should be fun!

Watched Amelie with roommates tonight. Damn beautiful romantic French films, bringing out all my latent and un-attended personal needs. Two more months, and then there's a lifestyle overhaul. Oh yes, who knows what tomorrow brings.

Venezuelan elections have been extended to midnight to cope with unprecidented turnout.

There's been a little trouble:

Voting was mostly peaceful but a 28-year-old woman was shot dead and 12 others were injured when an unidentified gunman opened fire on people outside a polling station in a poor east Caracas neighborhood, emergency service officials said.