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Ol' Dirty Bastard is dead.

We will make a fitting tribute in due time.

Right now, at 4:58 AM on Sunday morning, I am speechless. Suffice it to say I am just amazed that he did not die of gunshot wounds or while in the process of doing crack.
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It's important to not forget the important things in life with all the post-election depression: gin, tacos, and the following. Several links to cheer up your wednesday:

Here's an AP article that should make you angry. Evidently several anti-birth control pharmacists are refusing to dispense out birth control pill prescriptions based on personal moral grounds. Mind you it will often take a women at least a full-day to get the mess sorted out, in which case she may miss one of her pills. What's worse, state governments are moving to protect these actions:

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

Listen. A quick word for the pharmacists out there: We understand that this is a major issue for you, in which dozens of academic articles about your integrity and professional responsibility and everything else will provide fodder for your discussions. Let me give you ginandtacos.com's (and by us, I mean everyone who isn't a pharmacist) opinion: we don't care what you think. You have about as much say in our moral lives as the waiter at the Olive Garden. To us you are the person at the dry cleaner's with an advanced degree – we show up, hand you a sheet of paper, and you get us our product. That's it.

If you wanted to advise people on their health decisions and options, you should have studied harder and gone to med school. If you hate the idea of people using birth control picket a Planned Parenthood in your free time. But when you are behind that counter, you are a service-industry worker, and you better do whatever the customer tells you.

There are dozens of policemen, prosecutors and judges who object to The War on Drugs, but they don't refuse to arrest people or put them in jail because of their personal beliefs. Nobody is paying you the $$$ that pharmacists make to give you a soapbox – they are paying you to do your job and you should be fired for not doing it. I hate to tell you this (no wait, I love to tell you this), but birth control is perfectly legal in this country, and it is your job to dispense it. Find another one if you had an objection to it. You are not the first people to realize you could object to the parts of a job you don't like by doing a half-assed job (that would be the employees of the White Castle in Chicago Ridge, circa 1957).

To state governments – you are lawyers; again if you wanted to be doctors you should have studied harder. If you want to pass laws against birth control by all means try – but don't sneak measures forcing the health care industry to do, or not do, whatever you want. Doctors are professionals; if they say that birth control is an appropriate medical solution for the patient's situation it is the job of other doctors, and distinctly not the job of state congressmen and pharmacists, to object.

It seems that since November 2nd, that Canada's main immigration website had recieved nearly 5 times as many hits from the United States as is typical.

When I first heard this I naturally assumed that NetZero's "Candidate Zero" advertising compain had really paid off. Really, what other explaination could there possibly be for both Ginandtacos and the Canadian immigration website to get an increase in hits? We have nothing in common… or do we?

No, upon reading the article it became clear that no, 5 times as many people did not obtain internet access in the United States in the last week. This is just another pathetic example of distraught democrats thinking about expatriation.

It is kind of sad really. Over 100,000 people decided they wanted to look into moving to Canada. Yes, you know, because its better there. What with the not having George Bush and all.

I have one question for all of you potential expatriates. Is Canada really the best you can do?

First of all lets look at all the old European standbys.

Follow in Ernest Hemmingway's footsteps, move to France!

French Embassy in the United States

I am not going to lie to you. Getting a visa for a long stay and employment in France is one of the hardest you are going to find. Of course, and this is going to apply to any country you go to the more educated (beyond just a bachelor's degree) you are, or the more specialized your skill set, the better your chances. Considering the fact that all of us liberals are highly educated intellectuals we should have no problem….right? More to the point, French immigration gives special consideration to scientists and scholars looking to work in higher education.

That said, think of the rewards! If true America hating is your passion, there is no better recourse than moving to france. Honestly though, the country has an expectionally relevant green and socialist party (former prime minister Lionel Jospin for example). They are a country with legalized civil unions, and get this…a 35 hour work week. Good times.

Add on to this a passion for food, wine, and cycling and you have yourself a far superior option to Canada.

So maybe you are afraid to learn a new language. Try this, move to the UK.

workpermit.com

Although the UK may outwardly seem like the are allied with Mr. Bush, that is really quite far from the truth. If you have any doubt, look here. Truth is, far fewer of them support all these aburd goings on that our goverments have been conspiring on than we do.

On the downside, their food sucks, it is generally cold and rainy, and you would need to learn the rules to Cricket.

However, there are some positives. Even when preaching the same insane rhetoric is George Bush, for some reason Tony Blair left me with less of a feeling of impending doom. Oh, and let us not forget that their beer is pretty damn good and, to aid in its consumption, they have a far more liberal definition of the term "alcoholic" over there.

From the research that I have done, it looks like you might actually have a chance of getting in as well. They have a new "points based system" for highly skilled labor and another system, sector based, system that allows working into specific sectors where a need has arisen. Looks like a pretty good option to me. Plus, I kind of like British food.

Looking for something More exotic?

Try immigrating to New Zealand.

"new Kiwi.com"
New Zealand Immigration

This would not have been my first choice, but hey, its good enough for Peter Jackson. They are pretty fucking close to Australia, speak English, make some fantastic wine, and word on the street is that they have already gotten 10,000 new visa aplications from americans since November 2nd. Who knows? New Zealand might be the new mecca for American expatriats.

But don't be limited by what you see here, the sky is the limit. What about Argentina, Morroco or Mongolia… East Timor. All of these might prove better options then living another 4 years with George Bush.

Oh, but remember to come back or cast an absentee ballot in 2006.

With some time to cool down and reflect, here are my humble thoughts on the events of this election. First off, I take some solace that we are not the first Americans to deal with the red state-blue state divide. From John Updike’s introduction to this collection:

The [American literature of the] 1920s…are a decade with a distinct personality…the urban minority of Americans that produced most of the writing felt superior, if not hostile, to what H.L. Hencken called the “booboisie”, whose votes had brought on Prohibition, puritanical censorship, the Scopes Trial, and Calvin Coolidge.

How little has changed! Here we are, 80 years later, watching counties with cities go blue and the rural/exurbs go red, trying to convince people that we shouldn't be teaching Creationism in a science classroom!

It’s also important to remember that this isn't the second time this trick was pulled. The only campaign platform I can think of that is more outright cynical in it's manipulating people's values, fears and concerns was Nixon's "Law and Order" platform. "Law and Order'! Like "moral values", it's a nice way to convince white people that their way of life is under seige and only the Republican party can save them.

As Kerry was a prosecutor and Bush was elected in Texas on a platform of capital punishment and throwing teenagers in prison, I was surprised during the debates to not see any of the normal bullshit posturing of who is the most tough on crime. Little did I know that it was probably because the Bush team found a new urban minority population to terrorize suburban and rural (and sadly, increasing numbers of blacks and latinos) with.

Now do the numbers bear this out? We’ve had some time to crunch number and find new data, and by far Kerry’s biggest hit was among working class white people (where they are defined by white adults who do not have a four year degree from college). Clinton carried this group during his terms; Gore lost ground in 2000, the Democrats lost even more in 2002, and it looks like they all went rushing to the right in 2004.

The thing that really carried this group for Bush, I believe, is that the term ‘moral issues’ was not only gay marriage and abortion. These issues were major parts of energizing the base, but for Bush everything is a moral issue. Why reduce capital gains taxes? Because it is wrong to tax income twice. That simple. Is it good for the economy? Bad? It doesn’t matter – it’s a wrong thing to do.

Kerry is a legislator. I thought he ran a good campaign and was right on many issues, but at the end of the day he proposed what he did because he thought that they were good policy. His ideas weren't values as much as they were tools to create good policy (How un-French is that!) – Why did he want to roll back the capital gain taxes? To fund dock searches. In other words: to enact policy. The idea that it is Right or Wrong in and of itself, a notion crucial to the working-class vote, is never conveyed.

Question: Who was the only person to say that we should roll back the capital gains tax cut because it was the right thing to do? Bill Clinton, during the DNC convention.

From now on, no more Senators running for office. Democrats need people who will talk about their beliefs in social justice as the most important personal thing they feel, and not just a series of good policy measures. This may not help, but it's the best hope we have. No matter what we will continue to watch the burden of funding our country falling upon work instead of wealth. Americans who depend on wages to survive (ie most of us) are getting screwed, and this is one of the most moral of issues we face. Here’s hoping that the Democrats can find someone to explain that to the people.

I need to put the Presidency aside for a minute (it's way too awful to think about). Another thing to get worried about is the Senate results. Alan Keyes' staunt-pro-life, anti-gay, anti-income-tax, pro-war-hawk platform collapsed in Illinois, and I'm proud to have casted a vote against it (and for Obama). But it turns out that many white men in red states won by running essentially on the same platform.

NBC interviewed John McCain last night. They congratulated him on his win, and Tim Russert (my favorite, god bless him) jumped at the opportunity to ask "there are many very culturally conservative Republicans entering the Senate, how will that effect more moderates like yourself?
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" McCain dodged it by pointing out moderate Arlen Specter was re-elected, a move that does nothing to address the new major problem of the Republican party.

That problem, which was hinted at during the Republican Convention, is that the party is going to be split between big-name moderates like McCain, Schwarzenegger and Giuliani, who are pro-choice, pro-stem cells, pro-balanced budget and centrists, and bible-thumpers with the most regressive set of social and cultural views imaginable on the other. And the second half of their big tent took a huge win last night. If 1994 was the year that the House ran off to the Right, 2004 may be the year the Senate did. Let's look at some of the winners in the Senate for 2005:

Did it go smoothly? Where did you vote? How long did you wait? Paper ballots? Share a little bit about what, if any, melodrama played out in your life today.

I voted on the south side of Bloomington, at the fire station and maintenance vehicle garage. The setup was very confusing. Certain precincts had to line up in different places which were not labelled. For example, Precinct 22 voted by lining up on one side of a hallway in the main garage and Precinct 12 lined up opposite them. So one hallway was really two mutually exclusive lines. The compound also has 3 or 4 different buildings on it, and again the different precincts in each were not (or poorly) labelled. Election officials helped people figure out where to go but they were all about 90 years old and quite overwhelmed by the turnout.

Regardless, people waited patiently. I waited almost 2 hours. Total time at the poll was about 2.5 hours. "Registration challengers" were present but looked scared shitless to actually do anything. One challenge was raised against a voter who did not have proof of residency and tried to vote provisionally, but the crowd (500+ strong) got very angry and was shouting "Let him vote!" and "Leave him alone!" The poll watcher who raised the challenge looked like he was going to wet his pants.

We voted electronically, an experience I did not like in the least. Overall, though, it was a labor-intensive yet seemingly smooth process.

So I'm hearing from Republican friends (yes I have a few) that the major strategy on the right this year is going to be getting a large number of pollwatchers to go to polling places and just challenge the residency of every identifiable hispanic or african-american they can find. The challenge may or may not be effective, but it will slow voting to a halt in democratic areas, and may cause people to just go home rather than waiting the additional hours.

Not sure whether or not to believe gossip, a quick google search for residency laws is already showing a headache in the making. Random link from Maine:

Two years ago, however, Republicans challenged nearly every voter at the polling place on the University of Maine's Orono campus, creating long, slow-moving lines, according to people who were there.

Orono Republicans say they were just making sure that residency laws were enforced. Democrats charge that it was a deliberate tactic designed to discourage voters.

For people working the polls, it was a headache. "I don't know if it was a delaying tactic, but it definitely held things up," Orono Town Clerk Wanda Thomas said. "They were challenging just about everyone."

Now just replace 'student' with 'hispanic' or 'african-american' and we have a surefire way to create a hostile voting atmosphere. Democracy is on the march!

Wow, I love how when Iraqi's cultural legacy was looted nobody really was concerned. Now that we are realizing the looting had more military implications, people are coming out of the woodworks.
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Heads up for this editorial by Former ambassador Peter W. Galbraith:

On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.

When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated.
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He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts.
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They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

I supported President Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein…
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In spite of the chaos that followed the war, I am sure that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein…It is my own country that is worse off…Someone out there has nuclear bomb-making equipment, and they may not be well disposed toward the United States. Much of this could have been avoided with a competent postwar strategy.

Ouch. I still also feel that this is a result of our military being too effective during the war.

People often talk about the violence and inhumanity of the Grand Theft Auto videogame series, which is valid, but they are missing what is probably one of the most inventive features of the game – driving around listening to the radio.

The fake DJs and bad commericals that gave GTAIII a really humorous twist turned into the Vice City 1980s radio stations that set the game firmly in the time period more than the fashion or setting ever did (doing drive by shootings while Blondie played was an entertaining way to spend an evening).

So along comes the new GTA game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is set sometime in the early 1990s. God bless Rockstar games, for they truly know where their ages 23-28 audience inside out. If you were discovering music between 1992-94, as I was, then you can spend this game driving around flipping the radio stations and time-lapse.

Pitchfork reviewed Zack de la Rocha's new single and refered to it being "1996alicious." I have that feeling going on; this music couldn't possibly be more set in 1992-94 (presumably Ms.
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Love wouldn't give them the Nirvana rights for a song license – so they are missing).

The DJs they have found are fun choices as well (Axel Rose is the DJ of a classic rock Petty/CCR station).
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Here is a sampling of the radio track listings (full list here):

Radio X: The Alternative
1. Helmet “Unsung”
2. Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus”
4. Danzig “Mother”
8. L7 “Pretend We’re Dead”
10. Soundgarden “Rusty Cage”
11. Rage Against the Machine “Killing in the Name”
12. Jane’s Addiction “Been Caught Stealing”
14. Alice in Chains “Them Bones”
15. Stone Temple Pilots “Plush”

CSR 103.2
DJ: Philip “PM” Michaels, voiced by Michael Bivins (the "Biv" from BellBivDevoe)
1. SWV “I’m So Into You”
4. En Vogue “My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get It)”
6. Ralph Tresvant “Sensitivity”
9. Boyz II Men “Motownphilly”
10. Bell Biv Devoe (BBD) “Poison”
12. Wreck-N-Effect “New Jack Swing”

Bounce FM
DJ: “The Funktipus,” voiced by George Clinton
3. Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster”
4. Rick James “Cold Blooded”
5. Maze “Twilight”
9. Lakeside “Fantastic Voyage”
10. George Clinton “Loopzilla”

Radio Los Santos
2. 2 Pac “I Don’t Give a F***”
4. Dr. Dre “Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang”
5. Dr. Dre “F*** Wit Dre Day”
8. Cypress Hill “How I Could Just Kill a Man”
10. NWA “Alwayz Into Somethin’”
11. NWA “Express Yourself”
12. Ice Cube “It Was a Good Day”
13. Ice Cube “Check Yo Self (The Message Remix)”
14. Eazy-E “Eazy-Er Said Than Dunn”

I have to say, if this is how 1990s nostaglia will proceed I am pretty comfortable with it. If a Boyz II Men song played at your grade school graduation (or worse, a school dance), then you have a moral obligation to seek out this game.