[Philly] It’s an ELECTION

Believe it or not, we have one Today! Very exciting. I have taken over the civic duty of issuing Election Guides.

Turnout is likely to be 15 percent this year, which is pathetic. But there are some very important, and very boring, races. To wit:

Controller: Al Schmidt (R)
The most important race, and the only Republican you’re voting for Tuesday. In a city controlled so dominantly by one party, the Dems, it’s vital to have a young, energetic, intelligent, non-party-controlled watchdog to look at the money and the city’s internal operations. He’s being endorsed by everyone. The Democratic incumbent is considered terrible. The Republican Schmidt wears bowties and also has a nice web site.

District Attorney: Seth Williams
This contest will not be close, and Seth Williams looks to have potential in ending our Killadelphia rep.

JUDICIAL
Here are the Inquirer’s judicial endorsements, which are different than mine.

State Supreme Court: Jack Panella (D)
The court is now tied 3-3 between Dems and Republicans, and that’s important because the supreme court judges have sway over Census redistricting (solidifying party control for the boundaries of congressional districts). And the Republican candidate loves guns.

Superior Court: NO VOTE
It’s bullshit that we are supposed to vote for judges in the first place, because it means judges have to go out and basically bias themselves by getting all political. There are 4 candidates running in each party, all of whom have to pay the party to get on the ballot, and since they’re all basically the same — and if they weren’t, it’d be impossible to know — you should protest this vote. More protest votes mean one day they will get rid of this system, hopefully.

Commonwealth Court: NO VOTE

Court of Common Pleas: Dan Anders (ONLY)
Again, there’s no contest here, and the votes are just 10-year “retentions” on incumbents. Again, bullshit. But vote for Dan Anders, first openly gay judicial candidate and an all-around good dude.

Municipal Court/Traffic Court: NO VOTE

–

*Publisher’s note: reprinted with permission of totally cool author

Knock-and-Announce Rule (Not) Applied to Bloggers

This is why the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments are important.

When the FCC Visits, It Doesn’t Bother to Knock

If you have a wireless router, a cellphone or a cordless phone in your office or home, the Federal Communications Commission says it has the right to walk right in without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

Toxic vs. Non-Toxic. (Which Type are You?)

Forget horoscopes. Or those placemats at Chinese restaurants. Forget cootie-catchers, and forget MASH.  There are really only two kinds of people in this world.

Take this quick quiz to find out the only characteristic that matters:

1. You break up with your boyfriend/girlfriend of nine months. The next Saturday night you are most likely __________.
a) missing your ex, but out and having a good time with friends who have been, like, so supportive
b) home, constantly checking your phone and refreshing your e-mail, assembling a mix and composing an earnest letter intended to achieve “closure”
c) in the bed of the guy/girl you had your eye on for the past month anyway, achieving closure.

2. You are looking for a new job. You are more likely to __________.
a) commit several evenings to filling out dozens of applications, tweaking your cover letter, and shopping for nice interview clothes.
b) commit one evening on idealist.org finding the perfect job. obsess over an overlong cover letter, then miss the application deadline. complain for six months. repeat.
c) spend your entire interview telling yo mama jokes, get hired, immediately sleep with the boss’ daughter

3. You are out on a first date. You ______________.
a) go to a bar/club too loud to hear each other, dance a little, end the night by making out
b) go to a foreign film, then for coffee, spend hours talking about your past relationship, end the night with a hug, call the next night, just in time for the ‘let’s be friends’ speech
c) ditch your date when (s)he goes to the bathroom, take home the entire waitstaff

4. You have a heated disagreement with a friend. Afterward, you more likely ____________.
a) blame your friend, call all your other friends for corroboration
b) blame yourself, disappear into your room for a couple days, contemplate your place in a cruel, uncaring universe
c) hear the ice cream man, get distracted, forget what you were mad about

5. ___________ is the greatest leading man of all time. Or at least, of these three:
a) Tom Hanks
b) John Cusack
c) Chris Klein

6. If you had to pick a favorite Eric Carmen song – and you do – it would be ____________.
a) “Hungry Eyes”
b) “All By Myself” or “Never Fall in Love Again”
c) “Make Me Lose Control”

Quiz over. Give yourself five points for every b). Give yourself two points for every a). And give yourself negative one point for every c).

Now use this rubric:

30 pts: Mmmm. Most Poisonous.
14 – 29 pts: Toxic
13 pts: Normal*
-5 – 12 pts: Non-Toxic
-6 pts: Flavor Flav

*it is impossible to get exactly 13 points

You may be confused at this point as to what I mean by toxic.  It is not, in my world, a catch-all term to describe anyone you don’t like, as you may assume after Googling “toxic personality.”  Toxic/Non-Toxic is a phrase a friend and I slowly developed in conversation as we navigated our way through our 20s, finding that people – and, often, ourselves – are divided into two types.

Continue reading…

Yay! Election on Tuesday!

Remember elections? Very few Philadelphians know this, or care about it, but there’s a pretty crucial local election on Tuesday.

I wanted to summarize what’s going on so you can take 2 minutes out of your Tuesday and get your democracy on.

No one you ever heard of is running, but some of these races could really affect whether you get your ass shot while walking around the city.

This summary is for the Democratic primary; there is no competitive race with the Republicans. (Full coverage here.)  There are three races–for various judicial seats, for district attorney and for controller. There’s also 2 ballot questions.

The most important race is the District Attorney. There are five candidates, and this is why it’s important.
[ad#postNews]
CANDIDATE SUMMARIES (from the inky) (after the jump)
Continue reading…

The Internet: Democracy’s Defence?

“In an age where participatory democracy is seen to be in decline, the emergence of the internet as a tool for communication seems variously to be an agency for that breakdown of democracy, yet also a vehicle for mass communication and political participation on a scale exceeding anything our governments have yet been able to achieve. The internet is a medium which requires significant financial and intellectual investment, yet it is also without centralised control.”

The Internet and Democracy by Joanne Jacobs

The world is at a tipping point. Democracies are being challenged. Philosophies are being criticised. Politicians are becoming the scapegoats of societies. In a world that has become a mass of failure and controversy, what role does the Internet have to play in restoring faith in Democracy?

– read. like. support. –

– read. like. support. –

There is great interest in the potential for the Internet to invest its focus on democratic processes and the continued development of a ’self-regulating structure of information’ (Self-Regulation of the Internet).

Proponents of this view include Howard Rheingold who argues that “virtual communities could help citizens revitalise democracy, or they could be luring us into an attractively packaged substitute for democratic discourse.”

The argument has both positives and negatives. Rheingold suggests that those with access to hardware can, in essence, revitalise democracy. He also suggests that we, as a community, have the potential to create a version of democracy.

Which is better; the revitalisation of democracy or the development of a systematic government based on democratic governance?

Continue reading…

And so it begins…

This post was originally going to be titled, “Let it begin…” Something with a little more optimism, some hope, some glee. But all of those happy people feelings were dashed last night at 8:45pm.

At exactly 8:45pm last night, a large part of the student population at the large southern state school I attend received the following text message via our campus emergency alert system:

The monkey got out of the cage.

Up until this point I was having a good day. The candidate I voted for had just taken office with a tempered humility that I have to come admire and take comfort in. He had warned us of the long ardous journey ahead and assured us that we would still be standing at the end. Others around him celebrated his and the nation’s accomplishment(s), mainly that a majority of nation was willing to put a person of color, a minority, someone who does and does not look like them into the highest civil office of the land.

– sponsored link –

– sponsored link –

Then mere hours afterward, I was brutally reminded of how far we haven’t come by the above text message. Racism is still rampant in this country. It is better hidden, in dark corners, spoken only in whispers and in ominous glances and stares most of the time. Occasionally it raises it’s bitter head (sexual innuendo intended) to spit in our faces (again, intended). I fear now, with the conspicuous presence of color in our nation’s capital, that we will be forced to face other’s prejudices uninhibited. We will be confronted with difficult decisions on a regular basis of how to engage, defend, and/or combat racist remarks and actions. But perhaps this is a good thing. Perhaps walking by the dark recesses in which racism has heretofore hid, pretending not to notice it loitering here and there, has not been such a good tactic. Perhaps, this forced confrontation with the prejudices within others and ourselves is exactly what we need right now. We are being forced, as a nation, to face the economic and foreign relations arrogance that has come to define “America” across the globe. So maybe it is time we also face our internal arrogance. We were arrogant to believe that racism was dying in the United States. That is far from the case. Across much of land, I would not hesitate to say that racism is flourishing, being brandished even.

I told my students today that our standard measure of time is insufficient to use when considering the struggle against racism. How can you measure the effect of over 200 years of slavery, and over 300 years of general legal discrimination? We cannot measure the healing process by years. If we must measure it, we must measure by generations. It has not been a long 40 years since the Voting Rights Act. It has been merely one generation. It has been only two generations since the heydey of lynchings and Jim Crow laws. It has been only three generations since the shackles and chains of slavery were broken. We have not yet had enough time to heal.

I have seen something new and great. Not an end, but a beginning. Not a goal met, but a step of an everlasting process. So I cannot say how many years it might be before we take another significant step in the progression of our own humanity. But I will echo President Obama’s own words. Let our children’s children say of us, “They did not solve the problems of society and of our greater humanity, but they did not stray from the path of positive and ethical progress.”

I Have Nothing To Say (a.k.a. the nonpretentious Reaction to Obama’s Inauguration)

I find it relevant to point out that not one contributor – on the left or the right – weighed in on the momentous day that was yesterday.¹

Does this mean that we’re burnt out?  We needed a breather after the raucousness that was our twitterized Vice Presidential debate.  Or, we’re we too busy to tweet our experience because we were actually IN D.C. (for our first – and, probably, last – presidential inauguration)?  Did we even watch it on TV?  on CNN.com?  Youtube?

Were we paying attention by this point?

Did we hear about the “flubs” via the Huffington Post?  More importantly, did we care?

As a diverse group of contributors, is our reaction representative of the whole population or is our reaction representative of how we feel about our relationship to nonpretentious.

I’m going to think positively.  My conclusion is that our reaction was that January 20, 2009, as momentous as it was, was nothing more than a boring, antiquated ceremony in its climax.  (*controversial comment alert!*)

Here are a few announcements to show you that we will see CHANGES in 2009 (from Obama & nonpretentious).²

Continue reading…

I Have Nothing To Say (a.k.a. the nonpretentious Reaction to Obama’s Inauguration)

I find it relevant to point out that not one contributor – on the left or the right – weighed in on the momentous day that was yesterday.¹

Does this mean that we’re burnt out?  We needed a breather after the raucousness that was our twitterized Vice Presidential debate.  Or, we’re we too busy to tweet our experience because we were actually IN D.C. (for our first – and, probably, last – presidential inauguration)?  Did we even watch it on TV?  on CNN.com?  Youtube?

Were we paying attention by this point?

Did we hear about the “flubs” via the Huffington Post?  More importantly, did we care?

As a diverse group of contributors, is our reaction representative of the whole population or is our reaction representative of how we feel about our relationship to nonpretentious.

I’m going to think positively.  My conclusion is that our reaction was that January 20, 2009, as momentous as it was, was nothing more than a boring, antiquated ceremony in its climax.  (*controversial comment alert!*)

Here are a few announcements to show you that we will see CHANGES in 2009 (from Obama & nonpretentious).²

Continue reading…

IQ: Any Plans for the Inauguration?

I bet your schedule isn’t as full as Obama’s.

But, if you wanna go out and party, the AP has provided: “A schedule of some official and unofficial activities surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20…”

Here’s a brief snippet from the article:

SATURDAY, JAN. 17

_ President-elect Barack Obama and his family ride the train from Philadelphia to Washington, stopping in Wilmington, Del., for Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his family. Train will stop in Baltimore for speech before heading south.

_ BET Honors, an awards ceremony, at the Warner Theater.

_ People’s Inaugural Gala Celebration at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

_ Will.i.am “Yes We Did” concert.

_ Concert with Mary J. Blige, Common and Nelly at nightclub Ibiza.

Wanna know more?  Here’s the full article:

A schedule of events for Obama’s inauguration

By The Associated Press – 1 day ago

Any Plans for the Inauguration?

I bet your schedule isn’t as full as Obama’s.

But, if you wanna go out and party, the AP has provided: “A schedule of some official and unofficial activities surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20…”

Here’s a brief snippet from the article:

SATURDAY, JAN. 17

_ President-elect Barack Obama and his family ride the train from Philadelphia to Washington, stopping in Wilmington, Del., for Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his family. Train will stop in Baltimore for speech before heading south.

_ BET Honors, an awards ceremony, at the Warner Theater.

_ People’s Inaugural Gala Celebration at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

_ Will.i.am “Yes We Did” concert.

_ Concert with Mary J. Blige, Common and Nelly at nightclub Ibiza.

Wanna know more?  Here’s the full article:

A schedule of events for Obama’s inauguration

By The Associated Press – 1 day ago