The Republic of T.

This Blog Has Moved

The new place is finally ready, and the new address of this blog is: http://www.republicoft.com. This Typepad site will not be updated any longer, but I will leave it up for a while to allow people to find me if they find they're way back here. If you're looking for me, I'm now blogging at the address above.

If you subscribe to my RSS feed on this blog, you'll want to update because the new blog has a new feed address via FeedBurner.

C'mon over!

Get Some "Get Back"

One for the road.

If you're still sulking over the election, Salon has a to-do list that will help you get revenge on red America.

1. Have extremely deviant sex.
   
2. Get a divorce.
   
3. Read a book.
   
4. Go to the movies.
   
5. Give in to the zeitgeist and dumb down.
   
6. Start writing your novel, or song, or splattering your canvases with paint.
   
7. Take a walk.
   
8. Forget your big plans to boycott red states. (Just boycott Wal-Mart).
   
9. Get loaded.
   
10. Exercise your choice now, while you still can.
    

For full instructions and explanations, see the complete article.

Red State, Red Necks?

Via AMERICAblog.

Um. Somebody might want to call down to Alabama and let them know what decade we're now.

With an amendment to delete segregation-era language from Alabama's Constitution headed toward defeat by a narrow margin, state officials say an automatic recount would likely be set for November 29th.

A spokesman for Secretary of State Nancy Worley said the attorney general's office issued an advisory opinion stating such a recount should be held after the completion of the statewide election canvass on November 24th. Unofficial returns showed Amendment Two trailed by two-thousand-494 votes out of the one-point-38 million cast last week. A new state law mandates a recount when an amendment is defeated by fewer than one-half of a percent, and Amendment Two was within that margin.

Officials are still tallying provisional ballots cast on November second, but it did not appear there were enough votes to change the outcome of the unofficial count. Even if a recount fails to change the vote, lawmakers have already introduced legislation to place a reworked version of Amendment Two before voters.

How the hell to you vote not to remove segregationist-era language from your constitution? The amendmet in question would remove language providing for "separate-but-equal" schools for whites and blacks. Exactly how, in 2004, does that happen? How do you defend keeping that language in the state constitution? Well here's who's defending it, and how.

The measure was opposed by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from the bench for defying a court order to remove a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building.

Moore and the Christian Coalition argued that repealing the segregationist 1956 amendment would open the door to court-ordered tax increases for education.

Despite the narrow margin, Christian Coalition chief John Giles declared victory

That's right, folks. The good christian folks that want the 10 commandments in the courthouse also favor keeping segregationist language in the state constitution.

I tend to agree with John on this, in his "Memo to Senate Democrats" post.

If you had any balls, you'd offer an amendment to every piece of legislation that gives out federal dollars to the states (the highway bill, Medicare, etc.) and link that money to each state NOT having segregationist laws on the books. I.e., you have racist laws on the books, you don't get a dime of federal money for that program.

Oh how I'd love to watch the GOP try to defend segregationist laws, or in the alternative, how fun would it be making the GOP slap the red states that remain racist? That's what a REAL party would do.

And let's face it folks, we're not getting a lot of electoral votes from Alabama anytime soon. Might as well force the Republicans' hand with the rest of the country, and in the end, force them to alienate their racist base.

Oh how I'd love to watch Senate Republicans on C-SPAN, attempting to defend segretationist language in a state constitution. That would be real sweet.

The Big Move

No, not me, and not to Canada. (Though the thought has crossed my mind.) I'm talking about this blog. I'm just about ready to move it to its new home. In fact the new place is all set up and waiting for me to import the content from this space. I was tempted to make the move today, but decided to wait until after the weekend, since I'll be out of town and away from regular internet access this weekend. Which means this blog will be rather silent from the last half of Friday through the first half of Sunday.

I'll probably make the move late Sunday or early Monday. When I do, I'll post a notice here, linking people to my new online home.

And, after things have settled down a bit, I might write about my experience of moving from a subscription service like Typepad to a hosting server, and my experiences trying out different kinds blogging apps.

A Citizen of the Urban Archipelago

I found this thanks to Michael at electicism.

Painting My Town Red

Well, now we have evidence that even the "bluest" areas have faint touches of red here and there. DC has some homo-haters in it.

The D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics has scheduled a Nov. 18 hearing to decide if a petition that seeks to define marriage as being between one man and one woman only can be circulated in the District, according to Bill O'Field, DCBOEE spokesperson.

Lisa L. Greene, who claims to represent the group D.C. Citizens for Marriage [no Web site could be found], filed the paperwork seeking a citizen's initiative that would ban gay marriage in the District. If DCBOEE determines that the group's proposed "District of Columbia Marriage Protection Act" is a proper
subject matter for an initiative measure, Greene's group would have to collect at least 19,196 signatures of registered District voters in 180 days to bring the issue to the ballot. That total is 5 percent of the number of total registered voters in the District.

The text of the initiative is this:

The Citizens of the District of Columbia and the District Council defines and preserves marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman only.

Great. Now I gotta be a second class citizen in my own city? Well, maybe. It appears that there may be some chance of fighting this thing.

One possible legal challenge to the initiative is a 1980s era District law, pushed through at the request of local gay activists, that bans D.C. initiatives or referenda that would remove civil rights protections conferred by the D.C. Human Rights Act. It's unclear whether same-sex marriage could be considered a civil rights protection conferred under the city's human rights law, but some activists could attempt to use this law to block the anti-gay marriage initiative.

Here's my take. If they manage to get a referendum on this thing, it will pass; even in "true blue," heavily Democratic D.C. My reasoning? While D.C. is a pretty liberal city, it's also a predominantly black city, and it's already been noted how the gay marriage issue helped give the Bush campaign team inroads into African American communities where there weren't many before. My guess is that if this becomes a referendum, the black churches in D.C. will support it, and it will pass.

All That Need Be Said

I feel, given the news, as though I should write something about the death of Yasser Arafat. The saga has been playing out all week. The thing is I never quite feel like I know enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to comment on it without leaving something out. Still I believe there's reason for Americans to think twice before simply dismissing Arafat as a "terrorist." I'm just not sure how to say why. Fortunately, someone else has already said it. And said it very well, I might add.

We would like to believe that no sane American would ever willingly pull the trigger against the skull of an innocent, but just one century ago lynchings were common in our country. The fruit of our prosperity was purchased by the toil of the ancestors of those black men and women who live amongst us. Children in Africa who live in crushing poverty mined the chalice we drink from at the communion rail. We awaken each morning enraged by the headlines, horrified by the bombings in Baghdad, and we rightly and loudly condemn those who engage in them. But the most peace loving among us speak of Napoleon and Caesar without a shudder. And we know and are taught that we did not win our independence by having a chat with George III. We raised armies and killed people. History objectifies death, but the scream of a single condemned person is unforgettable.

We sleep well.

The questions that haunt us now are precisely those that we refuse to formulate: can terrorism be defeated by force of arms? Are terrorists simply sick and evil people who enjoy violence, who bathe in the anguish of others? Do those who oppose us use terrorism because they have no values, no religion, no point of view? Do terrorists hate democracy?

I wish more people asked themselves these questions.

RedMorals

This is an interesting idea. Someone's started a blog called RedMorals which I'm guessing intends to keep track of the behavior of "red state Republican" politicians, etc. Only a few entries, since it's relatively new, but still maybe worth keeping an eye on.

Secession? Seriously?

Remember that "Jesusland" map everyone was posting and/or emailing around a few days back? Yeah. That one. Well, after the election, more than a few blue-staters (yours truly included) were heard to muse about how the "blue states" seceding might just be the way to go. OK. We'd just lost an election that was important to us, but we were just kidding (mostly). We didn't expect people to take us seriously, but now it looks like a few people have done just that.

I usually don't read or link the "Moonie" Times, but I could n't help myself when I came across this.

The idea isn't just a joke; one top Democrat says, "The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."

"Some would say, 'Oh, poor Alabama. It's cut off from the wealth infusion that it gets from New York and California,' " said Lawrence O'Donnell, a veteran Democratic insider and now senior political analyst at MSNBC. "But the more this political condition goes on at the presidential level of the red and blue states, the more you're testing the inclination of the blue states to say, 'So what?' "

&hellip...The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy, including one screed circulating by e-mail that features a map of a new country called "American Coastopia" and proposes lopping off the Northeast, the West Coast and the upper Midwest to form a new country, away from the "rednecks in Oklahoma" and the "homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming."
    
"We were all going to move to various other countries, but then we thought — why should WE move?" the anonymous message asks. "We hold our noses as we fly over you. We are sickened by the way you treat people that are different from you. The rest of the world despises America, and we don't want to be lumped in with you anymore."
    
The secession movement has already spawned commercial opportunism. One Web site is selling T-shirts that read "I seceded."
   
No one at the White House would comment on the calls for secession, but one top Republican official with ties to the Bush administration said the recent talk is not surprising, coming off an election in which the president received more than 59 million votes — the most in history.

I can't believe they called the White House on this one, but there it s.

Actually, when I think about it, I don't think it's such a bad idea. I mean, to use an analogy, if the relationship ship between the blue and red states were a marriage it would most definitely be an unhappy one, and perhaps even an abusive one at that. Would you recommend that two parties in an unhappy marriage—who seem to downright despise each other—stay togther just for the sake of staying together?  Of course, not. Most people wouldn't. Why not part as amicably as possible now, before things get truly ugly?

 

The iPod of Death

OK. I've heard a lot about iPods, but I didn't know you can kill people with them.

A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod.

Arleen Mathers, 23, was arrested Thursday morning after she called Memphis Police and said she had killed her boyfriend, according to a Sheriff’s Department report.

When deputies arrived at Mathers’ apartment at 528 Poplar Avenue, Mathers led them to the body of her boyfriend, Brad Pulaski, 27.

Brad Pulaski had died of blunt trauma to the head after being repeatedly bludgeoned with an iPod, a popular MP3 player produced by Apple.

… According to law officers, Mathers was hysterical when police arrived and told them that she killed her boyfriend only after he accused her of illegally downloading music and erased about 2,000 of her MP3s. Mathers complained that it took 3 months to build her music collection.

An autopsy performed Friday afternoon at Methodist Hospital showed that Brad Pulaski had been beat multiple times in the face and chest by a blunt metal object, and died of internal bleeding, said Dr. Felix Klamut, deputy coroner. [emphasis added]