Changing Places

Pew Research Center: Gen Dems: The Party’s Advantage Among Young Voters Widens

Trends in the opinions of America’s youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds. And that appears to be the case in 2008. The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years — Generation X — fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990’s.

In surveys conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, 58% of voters under age 30 identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, compared with 33% who identified or leaned toward the GOP. The Democratic Party’s current lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to 25 points.

In fact, the Democrats’ advantage among the young is now so broad-based that younger men as well as younger women favor the Democrats over the GOP — making their age category the only one in the electorate in which men are significantly more inclined to self-identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans. Use the interactive tool to track generational differences in party affiliation over time.

While more women voters in every age group affiliate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, the gap is particularly striking among young women voters; more than twice as many women voters under age 30 identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party as favor the Republican Party (63% vs. 28%).

Indeed.

Hoffmania! | All That’s Left! Liberal News & Free Speech

I don’t mind my president enjoying arugula.
I don’t care if he or she is smarter than the room.
I kinda like the idea of a president with big brains.

I’ll never have a beer with my president.
I don’t want to have a beer with my president.
I don’t want my president having a beer with me.
I want my president to have better things to do.

I want my president to be the brightest, the smartest, the most imaginative, the classiest, the best person we can muster. I’ll take them as big and as brainy as they can get.

I’m sick of stupid presidents.
I’m sicker of presidents who pretend to be stupider than they really are.
I’m sick of presidents who try too hard not to be presidential.

I want a president I can be proud of.

I like the idea of a president who has worked directly with the streets.
I like the idea of that person having been there.
I can live with them enjoying arugula today.

I want a goddamn president.
Not a bowling buddy.
Not a drinking buddy.
Not a hunting buddy.
Not a poker buddy.
Not someone who will put on figurative pair of overalls to show how folksy they are.
I want a president.

It’s a white collar job.
They will travel in limos.
They will travel the world.
They will meet with foreign heads of state.
They better not embarrass us by acting stupid.

This person will be my employee.
This person will be representing me on the world stage.
This person better make me look good for what I’m paying them.
This person better work their ass off.

I want a president.
I don’t think it’s asking too much.

Stop treating us like your buddy.
Start treating us with respect.

I feel my Roxie girl starting to slip away from me. Tonight, she couldn’t keep her food down, poor girl. Yet she is still so strong and brave, doesn’t let her pain keep her from being her loving self. So much to learn from her…

We’ll keep her comfortable and let go when it’s time. Brave girl…

Know the masculine, but keep to the feminine:
and become a watershed to the world.
If you embrace the world, the Tao will never leave you
and you become as a little child.
Know the white, yet keep to the black: be a model for the world.
If you are a model for the world, the Tao inside you will strengthen
and you will return whole to your eternal beginning.
Know the honorable, but do not shun the disgraced:
embracing the world as it is.
If you embrace the world with compassion,
then your virtue will return you to the Uncarved Block.
The block of wood is carved into utensils by carving void into the wood.
The Master uses the utensils, yet prefers to keep to the block
because of its limitless possibilities.
Great works do not involve discarding substance.

The Sand Traveler is a rendering of 1,000 traveling particles, each in pursuit of another. Over time, patterns of travel are exposed as sweeping paths of color. — j. tarbell

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn’t reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations and doesn’t waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher? What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret.
— Tao Te Ching, 27 (Mitchell)

The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he’s taken isn’t leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware

The traveler is always leaving home
The only kind of life he’s ever known
When every moment seems to be
A race against the time
There’s always one more mountain left to climb

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you’ll know where you are
Remember
Days are numbers
Count the stars
We can only go so far
One day, you’ll know where you are…

– Days are Numbers, Alan Parsons Project

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” — Martin Buber

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” — Paul Theroux

‘While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.” — Anne Tyler

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

“Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.” — Oliver Goldsmith

“Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day’s work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your wildest ambition.” — William Osler

“I said to my longing heart,
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers before you, there is no road.
Do you see anyone moving or resting on that bank?” — Kabir

The heavy is the root of the light.
The unmoved is the source of all movement.
Thus the Master travels all day without leaving home.
However splendid the views,
she stays serenely in herself.
Why should the lord of the country flit about like a fool?
If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
If you let restlessness move you,
you lose touch with who you are.

– Tao Te Ching, 26

McCain, in Lower Ninth Ward, Blasts Bush Katrina Response | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Touring the Lower Ninth Ward this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and vowed to respond differently if elected president.

“Never again, never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled,” McCain told reporters after walking a few blocks through the still-devastated area.

Change and risk-taking are normal aspects of the creative process. They are the lubricants that keep the wheels in motion. A creative act is not necessarily something that has never been done; it is something you haven’t done before. — Margaret Mead

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
– Julia Cameron

“We are the yin and the yang of the creative process.”
– Cynthia Weil

“Imitation is at least 50 percent of the creative process”
– Jamie Buckingham

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
– Bill Moyers

“Of all the qualities in your being, that which is most god-like is creativity” - Pir Ilayat Vilayat Khan

“It moves me when anybody is just wandering through life, sleepwalking, and then wakes up. It’s like the caterpillar to butterfly thing - the chrysalis. It’s just so moving because they’re not going to go to their grave with a slipping down life.” — Lili Taylor

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” — Chuang Tzu

“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”

— William Stafford

“The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.”
– Primo Levi

I’ve always been fascinated with the process of change. I remember as a kid doing things like letting berries ferment in water, literally turning water into wine. I didn’t drink it, just enjoyed the process of it and the smell. I would bury things in the yard to see what happened to them, play with the moss that grew in the fountain. I was fascinated by things like my dad’s compost pile, seeing yard clippings change into fertilizer. I loved it when ice formed in the fountain and I could take it out in big sheets. I love watching the changes in my garden, watching plants grow, seeing the little chrysalis form when the caterpillars who munch holes in my passion flowers are ready to change to gulf fritillaries.

I suppose I come to the creative process the same way. I’m not too worried about the results, I just enjoy trying different techniques and materials and playing around with them to see what happens. I admire and appreciate artists who aren’t afraid to do something different, and I think that is ultimately why we consider an artist great - because they create their own unique approach. I was trying to show a friend why I love impressionistic art the other day, with the bright colors and the way the impressionist uses dark and light color contrasts to create movement in a painting. He seemed surprised I knew so much about art. But I would say I know about the art I enjoy, and try to figure out why I enjoy it. My husband is a fabulous art critic, something I didn’t know until I started asking him what he thought about my art. He always mentions something I didn’t even consciously realize I was doing, which is great.

So change and art go together naturally for me. But the risk to show myself through my art - ah, now there is the challenge…

Yeah, I want to be a rich woman so my husband can sponge off me too, like John does off Cindy, and all my rich friends could give him money so he can help them keep oppressing women and minorities. How will we ever get rich so our husbands can just travel around the country spouting inane idiocies?

McCain opposes equal pay bill in Senate

“I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”

The bill sought to counteract a Supreme Court decision limiting how long workers can wait before suing for pay discrimination.

It is named for Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., who sued for pay discrimination just before retiring after a 19-year career there. By the time she retired, Ledbetter made $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor and claimed earlier decisions by supervisors kept her from making more.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 last year to throw out her complaint, saying she had waited too long to sue.

Democrats criticized McCain for opposing the bill.

“Senator McCain has yet again fallen in line with President Bush while middle-class families are falling by the wayside,” Clinton said in a statement following the vote. “Women are earning less, but Senator McCain is offering more of the same.”

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said: “At a time when American families are struggling to keep their homes and jobs while paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, how on Earth would anyone who thinks they can lead our country also think it’s acceptable to oppose equal pay for America’s mothers, wives and daughters?”

McCain stated his opposition to the bill as he campaigned in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is worse among women than men. The Arizona senator said he was familiar with the disparity but that there are better ways to help women find better paying jobs.

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

“It’s a vicious cycle that’s affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least,” he said.

They might just have decided it was a nice reward…

11 students suspended for banana prank - UPI.com

ZION, Ill., April 23 (UPI) — A Zion, Ill., high school has suspended 11 seniors involved in a prank that featured a student in a gorilla costume chasing banana-clad seniors in the hallways.

Zion-Benton Township High School handed seven-day suspensions to the costumed students, who phoned in sick before the stunt and wore pantyhose over their heads to conceal their identities during the prank, the Waukegan (Ill.) News-Sun reported Wednesday.

Some of the students said the school overreacted with the harsh punishment.

“What’s funnier than a gorilla chasing bananas through a school? Nothing,” said Andrew Leinonen, the prank’s mastermind and the student who dressed as a gorilla. “It was a harmless prank.”

However, others said they were just thankful the school decided not to bar them from prom and graduation.

“We think this is a just punishment,” said Brendon Epker, one of the students who dressed as bananas. “We broke rules we shouldn’t have broken.”

Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’ - New York Times

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.

San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner.

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

My Earth Day celebration. I already have a slew of tomatoes coming up in the garden, but I felt like planting a few more today.

This planter was an old fountain barrel that developed a leak. The tomatoes are grape and cherry tomatoes, and a “Dona” tomato (gotta love that name!) that I haven’t tried before, but the description sounds good:

This excellent variety was bred by the French specifically for their customers in markets, where flavor and quality standards are uncompromising. Slightly flattened, almost seedless, round tomato with a sweet/acid balance (just like the commercial hybrid) that few modern tomatoes can match. The heavily producing plants yield 6 ounce, juicy fruits that are smooth, meaty, and deep-red in hue. Good disease resistance.

from Wikipedia:

Mudita is a Buddhist (Pali and Sanskrit) word meaning rejoicing in others’ good fortune. Mudita is sometimes considered to be the opposite of schadenfreude.

The term mudita is usually translated as “sympathetic” or “altruistic” joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. Many Buddhist teachers interpret mudita more broadly as referring to an inner spring of infinite joy that is available to everyone at all times, regardless of circumstances. The more deeply one drinks of this spring, the more secure one becomes in one’s own abundant happiness, and the easier it then becomes to relish the joy of other people as well.

The traditional example of the mind-state of mudita is the attitude of a parent observing a growing child’s accomplishments and successes.

Mudita is also traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the brahmaviharas to cultivate. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.

The “far enemies” of mudita are jealousy and envy, two mind-states in obvious opposition. Mudita’s “near enemy,” or quality which superficially resembles mudita but is in fact more subtly in opposition to it, is exhilaration, perceived as a grasping at pleasant experience out of a sense of insufficiency or lack.

Somehow, I am still working on this one. I received some excellent news from a friend this week, and it was a bit hard to just be happy for him. He’s one of those friends who has cut me off to a great extent, though not as completely as others, and sometimes I simply miss those people very much. The saddest part of bipolar is that people are often so unforgiving of things that happened during a manic time, in a way that is hurtful. And even when they do forgive, the closeness that was there is lost and can’t be recovered.

Still, I am happy for my friend and wish him all the best. He has all that I ever wished for him and all that I tried to show him how to attain - so I should simply be pleased with that. But intentions are often misunderstood, especially when they are expressed by someone in a hypomanic state, as I’m sure anyone who has dealt with bipolar disorder knows all too well. Even those fun shopping sprees can have repercussions we don’t expect later on. It’s good to not be in that state anymore!

So while I don’t work to “just be normal” anymore, now I think I work beyond that even, to try to come to a place where I can be glad even for those who do not wish me well. And finding joy even for those who cannot let me be a part of their lives is a difficult, but necessary, step for me.

One of my most favorite blogs EVHAR has returned!! Woot! Go enjoy….

Fafblog! back to save the universe.

It’s time for another edition of BARACK OBAMA: THE FINAL THROES! Last week Giblets revealed the dangerous levels of pussification inherent in Obama’s bowling skills and orange juice consumption while exploring the damage done by persistent rumors that the senator is secretly black. But this latest scandal has doomed the Obama campaign more than any dooming doom that has doomed it before, because this time Obama has Insulted America by saying that poor people in impoverished rural areas are somehow “bitter” about being poor and impoverished. For shame!

Well Giblets knows the real Americans of the heartland, Barack Obama. He has flown over them and driven past them and grimaced amiably in their direction on the way to hotel rooms on numerous occasions, and in that time he has come to appreciate their primitive yet unique culture. These salt-of-the-earth folk don’t need your condescending liberal elitism to tell them how they feel! They need Giblets’s condescending conservative elitism to tell them how they feel! These people aren’t “bitter.” Far from it! America’s impoverished working class are a chipper and cheerful lot, prancing and scampering about their foreclosed homes and crumbling industrial sectors with a spirit of adorable pluckiness, smiling and laughing through their unemployment and their black lung disease like a pack of hardscrabble leprechauns!1 And Giblets is sure they are outraged to hear Barack Obama imply otherwise - just as he is sure they are even outraged-er to hear Obama scorn their honest midwestern folkways, mocking the simple beauty of their long, proud tradition of recreational possum-killing and their homey, heartfelt gay-bashing! Well Giblets has a long if purely theoretical love of our nation’s yahoo population and their mysterious ways, and would be proud to join them himself were he not so busy wiping their hideous yokel-germs off him with copious quantities of hand sanitizer.

We took Darwin to the San Diego Humane Society’s Doggie Café for a meetup with the San Diego Golden Retriever Meetup Group. You can see more pictures here. We all had a very good time!

My poor Roxie girl. Yes, I know it’s common for goldens to get cancer, and I knew when I rescued her we might get here one day. Today is the day.

My older golden retriever girl Roxie has been diagnosed with fibrosarcoma in her right hind leg, and I’m trying to get her comfortable and spend as much time with her as I can while she is still doing well. She was limping, but is now walking fine with her painkillers for now. She is a rescue we’ve had about three years, and a very old girl, so there will be no drastic measures that would cause her suffering, but we’re gonna make it fun for her while she’s with us.

If you are interested in helping dogs with cancer, you can donate here:
http://store.landofpuregold.com/#Give

Rochell, who runs the foundation, also keeps a wonderful blog, mostly about goldens but also other working dogs, here:
http://landofpuregold.wordpress.com/

I’ve got your offering right here for you, McCain…

For Obama and McCain, the Bitter and the Sweet

So much for the liberal media.

John McCain and Barack Obama both appeared before the nation’s newspaper editors yesterday. The putative Republican presidential nominee was given a box of doughnuts and a standing ovation. The likely Democratic nominee was likened to a terrorist.

At a luncheon for the editors hosted by the Associated Press, AP Chairman Dean Singleton quizzed Obama about whether he would send more troops to Afghanistan, where “Obama bin Laden is still at large?”

“I think that was Osama bin Laden,” the candidate answered.

“If I did that, I’m so sorry!” Singleton said.

“This,” Obama told the editors, is “part of the exercise that I’ve been going through over the last 15 months.”

Bitter, are we?

The past few days have left a bad taste in the mouth of the Democratic front-runner. In his worst gaffe of the campaign, he asserted (in San Francisco!) that Middle Americans have turned to God and guns and against immigrants because they are “bitter” about their economic lot.

That let Hillary Clinton and McCain portray Obama as a member of the effete elite, alongside John Kerry (Turnbull & Asser shirts) and John Edwards ($400 haircuts). Regular gal Clinton (Wellesley ‘69, Yale Law ‘73, family income $109 million since her husband left the White House) even made the point by tossing back a shot of Crown Royal at a bar in Indiana on Saturday night.

To shed the elitist label and regain his common-man credentials, Obama picked an inauspicious venue — the annual gathering of the media elite, the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The result is likely to make the Democrat even more bitter. On the same day, the two media darlings of the presidential election cycle came to address their base — and McCain easily bested his likely opponent.

McCain’s moderators, the AP’s Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti, greeted McCain with a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “We spend quite a bit of time with you on the back of the Straight Talk Express asking you questions, and what we’ve decided to do today was invite everyone else along on the ride,” Sidoti explained. “We even brought you your favorite treat.”

McCain opened the offering. “Oh, yes, with sprinkles!” he said.

Sidoti passed him a cup. “A little coffee with a little cream and a little sugar,” she said.

Too bad they didn’t ask Sprinkles about that G.I. education bill he refuses to support….

Oh, and McCain? I’ve got your pony right here, too:

Think Progress

Appearing on Hardball’s “College Tour” today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked about the recent offensive led by the Iraqi government in Basra. Admitting that the performance of Iraqi soldiers was poor (at least 1,000 deserted), McCain claimed the rest of the forces did “pretty good”:

In full disclosure and frankness and candor and straight talk, the Maliki movement to Basra had a very big downside to it. As you know, we saw a thousand police and military desert their posts. But the rest of the military did a pretty good job, did a pretty good job. We did secure the port of Basra. Maybe I’m digging for the pony here.

Officially 97.7 °F. Our backyard thermometer, in the shade, is reading 100…..

It’s too darn hot….

According to the Kinsey report
ev’ry average man you know
much prefers to play his favorite sport
when the temperature is low
but when the thermometer goes way up
and the weather is sizzling hot
Mister Adam for his madam is not
cause it’s too too
it’s too darn hot, it’s too darn hot
It’s too too too too darn hot…

Man, I wish I was still in this good of a shape…. I do pilates and yoga, but was never a runner. I can sprint pretty fast, but distance running just never was a good thing for me. Run, Joan, run!

Marathon Matriarch Is Still in the Race - New York Times

She keeps a home for her husband, Scott, who was her college sweetheart and is now a marketing executive. She keeps an eye on her 20-year-old daughter, Abby, a sophomore at nearby Bates College, and her 18-year-old son, Anders, a high school senior.

She confers with neighbors on how to replace an old neighborhood bridge that was recently closed. She makes speeches and appearances.

And she runs an hour or two a day in preparation for the women’s United States Olympic marathon trials next Sunday in Boston, which raises questions:

Why would a 50-year-old woman (51 next month) want to run 26 miles 385 yards against potential Olympic medalists?

Why would she compete as the oldest of the 160 or so starters? (The next oldest are four 46-year-olds.)

Because she is Joan Benoit Samuelson, the matriarch of American distance running, the winner of the first Olympic marathon for women in 1984 and a pioneer in bringing acceptance to women’s distance running.

In a recent interview at her home, she said she would be running “just because it’s an Olympic trials and I qualified. But if the weather turns up terrible, I might not run and just race in the Boston Marathon the next day.”

The first three finishers in the trials will qualify for the United States team for the Beijing Olympics. Can Samuelson make the Olympic team?

“Oh, God, no,” she said. “It’s just me against me. I want to run 2:50 at age 50.”

If she averages 6 minutes 30 seconds a mile, she will reach her goal of 2 hours 50 minutes. Her career best is 2:21:21, but that was 23 years ago over Chicago’s flat course.

“This will be my fourth Olympic trials,” she said. “I qualified for all of the previous six, but in 1988 I just had Abby and in 1992 I had a full mother load with two small children. But I’ve always had the urge to run.”

Samuelson said she used to run 120 miles a week. “Now I’m down to 70 or 80,” she said. “That’s all I can do.”

Giant crane flies. I hate these things. There are about 50 of them outside my front door right now. I’ve killed six of them in the house tonight.

Thank goodness they die in a few days and are easy to kill. I smack ‘em with a towel.