The state of my fridge, saturday afternoon

Happy Birthday to me. Just so you kids know, at a Binny's Beverage Depot Sir Robert Burnett Gin sells for $12.95 for 1.75L.

Read that again. 1.75L. Most gins at 1.75L top the $30 mark - Sir Robert Burnett stays under the $13 mark. And it has a plastic bottle, so when the other creators of ginandtacos.com and I polish it for my b-day tonight and drop it on the floor, it will just bounce.

I'm not familiar with British customs, but if it is possible to knight a man twice it needs to be done to Sir Robert Burnett.

The Gay Gambit

Last weekend, I went and flyered for a Get out the Vote in Swing States group with strong anti-Bush leanings in the amazing Millenium Park during it's opening weekend celebration. During that time, I learned how much I absolutely hate flyering. I suppose I deserve bad luck, as I always turn away from people who are passing out flyers. Even if someone was to come up to me with a flyer for the "Gin-drinking-Buffy-fan-comic-books-and-tacos-club" I'd still not make eye contact and speed up my walking. I learned I'm not alone in this speeding up process.

It got to the point where I was really thinking that this election is going to be old overweight white men with bad mustaches versus everyone else. One particularly large man in ill-fitted shorts was holding six hotdogs, and gave me this look when I asked him if he wanted to help beat Bush in November that said "I'm an overweight middle aged white-man who is about to sit down and eat six hot dogs - I'm clearly ok with the direction this country is taking."

Every person over the age of 22 was avoiding us except one group: gay people. We eventually stopped counting the number of times two men holding hands came up to us and gave us encouraging words and listened to what we had to say. For those visiting our page from across the universe, Chicago has a very active gay community on the North Side called Boystown - it is relatively close to the Park (it shares a train line anyway) and thus a lot of gay couples were out for the day. And they all hate Bush. All of them. A lot. And who can blame them?

When this whole gay marriage thing came up from the administration, I thought Bush is just circling his wagons and energizing his base. He's not going to be losing votes. And then I learned I was wrong. According to a Jan 2001 post-election analysis by the Log Cabin Republicans: "Bush captured 25% of the gay vote [1.1 million votes] nationwide, a record number for a GOP presidential candidate." Can you believe 1 million gay people voted for Bush?!?! Remember back in those days? Bush didn't say a word about marriage or gay people - he was a "compassionate conservative" chock full of inclusion and bringing people together; Dick Cheney even had a gay daughter who campaigned for him! How progressive!

Mary Cheney, the only gay supporter of George Bush in 2004.

And they only had to pay her $100,000 to do it.

I'm not going to even bother to describe how Bush ditched those million voters. I think what's worse for him is that by not just slighting them, but instead refering to their existence as undermining the entirety of Western Civilization (an insult you can't help but imagine you wouldn't forget), he's gotten them energized to support Kerry, a candidate that one needs to be blamed for the decline of Western Civilization in order to get excited about.

And what did Bush gain? Did he rally his own base? This is the big question, and I honestly don't think he is earning any votes. People who are so opposed to gay people that they blame them as disrupting all of life and want to pass an Constitutional Amendment with the speed and lack of debate as if it was a Highway Bill Amendment almost certainly were going to vote for Bush on election day anyway. I can't imagine someone who is so infuriated by gay people that they would let gay marriage decide their vote in an election in 2004 (with real problems like dirty bombs and occupations and half a trillion dollar deficits) not supporting Bush no matter what.

Kerry et. al get a lot of flak for not really standing strong on the gay marriage issue, but I think that it reflect a lot of popular thinking among adults - "I'm sorta ok with it - I'm not 'not ok' with it." I think a lot of people are generally uncomfortable with it, but don't want to immediately sic the federal government on any minority group. I don't pretend to know what the gay community was thinking about four more years of Bush pre-gay-marriage debate - I imagine they were split like the rest of the country. Well, we can almost be certain, with the notable exception of Mary Cheney in all her self-loathing 2004 campaigning glory, nobody there likes him now - and that's a million votes Bush had that he has now lost.

Perhaps Bush is acting on principle on this and not on electioneering: That's the thought that actually scares me more. But I just don't see it. If he was really serious about a defense of marriage he would be attacking the 50% of boomers who get divorces. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single word.

Governor Schwarzenegger Revisited

When Arnold followed Jesse Ventura in gaining a governorship, the rest of us were left only to wonder how long it would be until Carl Weathers decided to run. For those of us that don't live in California I don't think there is any possible way for us to figure out why exactly this happened. Complicated things like "car taxes" were in play.

To the casual observer, it seemed the Mr. Schwarzenegger was elected based on several principles.

• The people of California were paying too much money to drive their cars.

• Arnold's campaign was largely based around quoting lines he had once said in various movies.

• Californians found that his accent, and virtual inability to speak English inspired trust.

• The desire to not have to see previews for another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for at least 4 years.

The only thing that I had really heard about his role as governor was that he did in fact give all residents of California a rebate on their car tax. The George W. Bush school of economic theory seemed firmly in place. Combat the fact that you are dealing with massive deficit spending and debt by telling your constituents that if you are elected you will cut them a check. Threaten that if anyone else is elected they will take your money away.

Today I saw something even more amusing. Arnold insinuated today that the democrats in the state were, in fact, "girlie-men". So apparently I am too believe that if I am a resident of California, what I really want to inspire confidence that the economic nightmare I am currently living in will soon be over is a leader quoting Saturday Night Live luminaries "Hanz and Franz."

Don't worry, all the state really needs is for democrats to get "pumped up".

Not to let their own personal brand of stupidity be relegated to second place, democrats promptly demanded an apology. No, they were not offended that Arnold had not noticed the time they had spent in the gym recently. They proclaimed that use of the term "girlie-man" is sexist and homophobic. Well yeah, I guess it is. If you were to assume that the use of the term connoted that legislators were either acting like women, or were effeminate men instead of invoking an image of Dana Carvey in a padded sweat suit.

So here is the question I pose, who is the real idiot here? Is it Schwarzenegger for continuing to pander to the lowest common denominator? Or are the state legislators the true political morons for taking his idiotic remarks so damned seriously?