Month: September 2004

Red Quadrants, Blue Quadrants.

“‘A good war is based on honor, not deception,” says K’tok (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from Lair Hill.’” Finally, some good news on the political front…Kerry is winning handily among Portland-area Klingons. Hopefully, they can offset Dubya’s considerable pull with the Ferengi in and around Salem.(By way of Usr/Bin/Girl.)

Florida Redux.

“The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.” Former President Jimmy Carter calls out Florida officials for negligence in implementing voter reform and for transparent bias. “A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons.”

The Day After Tomorrow.

“In recent weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more politically palatable.” Apparently, the Bushies have prepared an onslaught of awful legislation that they’re hiding from us until November 3. While this tends to happen every to some extent every election year, notes Consumers Union director Gene Kimmelman, “‘[w]hat is unusual this time…is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and market place risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food. The pattern of slow rolling will ultimately benefit the largest players and hit consumers in the pocketbook.'” Oh, swell.

Read books, repeat quotations.

“A few years earlier Ronnie Gilbert, one of The Weavers, had introduced me at one of the Newport Folk Festivals saying, ‘And here he is…take him, you know him, he’s yours.’ I had failed to sense the ominous forebodings in the introduction. Elvis had never even been introduced like that. ‘Take him, he’s yours!’ What a crazy thing to say! Screw that. As far as I knew, I didn’t belong to anybody then or now.” On the eve of Chronicles, his long-awaited first volume of memoirs, the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan sits down with Newsweek and offers up a choice excerpt on the price of fame (which reveals why Self-Portrait is pretty lousy.) It sounds like he’s elided over some of his more interesting periods for now (Blood on the Tracks, the Christian years), but this should still be quite a fascinating read.

Filming the Fantasy Shelf.

Much recent news on fantasy-fiction-to-film projects has materialized of late: Christopher Nolan preps for The Prestige post-Batman, WETA readies Prince Caspian as the second film in the Narnia series (after The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe), and director Chris Weitz discusses his adaptation of His Dark Materials.

Our Secret Weapon?

“A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.” Well, this is a spot of good news, particularly when you consider that these folks often don’t show up in the polls. Now, let’s just hope the Diebold machines count their votes properly…