OK, so we're woefully behind. The Halloween birthday blitz with incriminating pictures of Harry Potter, Hermione, Walter Sobchak, and Maude in full fantasy regalia have not yet made it to cyberspace. Nor have madcap adventures at the West Hollywood Halloween parade/streetfair/whatever it is. Nor the recent Thanksgiving festivities and the exploding turkey. (OK, fine, the Deep Frying went smoothly and I have video to prove it.) I still haven't even blogged about our trip to SF, Skywalker Ranch and Pixar last APRIL.

We will remedy all this very soon. Hopefully as soon as we figure out how to share and consolidate iphoto libraries among various household computers here. I know that sounds overcomplicated. But here's a question to the IT-savvy out there. . . We have at least three computers on our wireless network, which is created by two Apple Airport Expresses. These computers can see each other, talk to each other, share files, share printers etc. Yet the one other machine (which is also a Mac) is on a hard line, still on the same subnet, connected ultimately to the same router -- but it cannot see or interact with any of the others. Is it supposed to be this way? Surely not, is my thinking. Does our problem lie with the Airport network, with the router and its settings (firewall etc.) or something else? Any ideas would be appreciated. I would call Tech Support, but it's 2:30AM.

In the meantime, here is a modest piece of media to hint at the latest Holiday Creation with which Gregg has lit up the neighborhood. . . You will be seeing more of it, I'm sure.



-jw

I've seen every one of Bill Maher's shows for the last couple of years, and I've never seen someone take the floor for such a large chunk of time and leave the other guests, including Bill and his arsenal of sarcastic comebacks, virtually speechess through the simple poignancy of what is being said.

Here, Mr. Hooper is talking about Civics. "What the heck is civics," you ask? Well that's exactly why you should watch this.



-jw

Coming down from the shell-shock of Tuesday night in the Casa election war room. The Tivo was bouncing between networks, and Gregg and I sat compulsively loading and reloading municipal election web pages and blogs for constantly updating tallies and rapid-fire projections. Gravy was whinier than usual, I think he could sense the tension in the air. Biscuits was attacking the Dubya Cutout. I was still awake, bleary but edgy, at 5:30 PST as Tester's lead in Montana started to erode as they recounted Yellostone County. . .

The Senate was a squeaker and their were some really close House races, too. I'm convinced that the netroots movement made a difference. ACTBLUE raised $17 Million in small donations for this election. Nationwide, MoveOn.org members made over 7 Million phone calls.

While a lot of people may be gloating. . . It's not a time for gloating. Getting back the Congress wasn't necessarily the easy part, but it was just a first step. Now Reid and Pelosi and all the rest have a lot of work to do. This is where things get interesting.

In summing up my feelings, allow me to defer to someone named Ken Swensen. I have no idea who he is other than the fact that he lives in Pound Ridge. But he wrote a real zinger of a letter to the NYT yesterday:

"To the Editor:

Now that our electorate has finally woken from its stupor, we should ask ourselves why it took six years to recognize the incompetence and demagogy of this administration and the responsibility of the Republican leadership that blindly followed its lead.

The damage done is enormous, in Iraq, in the United States and around the world. Years have been squandered while the critical issues of our time have gone unattended.

How and why were we fooled?

We have a fascination with personalities instead of policy, a desire to be entertained rather than enlightened, and a need to have an enemy to define us and give our lives meaning.

Thankfully, our democracy is still functioning, though we will not see really meaningful progress until we can disconnect the electoral and legislative processes from the flow of corporate cash.

Let’s not forget that the Senate voted to give President Bush authority to start a war in Iraq. Our euphoria should be short-lived, and our vigilance should be redoubled.

Ken Swensen
Pound Ridge, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2006"

We get the government we deserve.

And that's not to say that dirty tricks and election tampering haven't contributed to Republican political victories in the last few years. I believe they have. But. . .

I know a lot of people, including some very good friends, who are as concerned as I am about the way things are going in our country and in the world. I know that it's hard to feel like you have a voice or a say or any recourse to do anything about it. I know it's easy to get caught up in day-to-day life and look at the news and read the paper or the blogs and feel like it's up to someone else to get involved. That's my natural inclination as well, frankly. But I humbly submit that it's wrong. Our system still, at least, resembles a democracy; and if you pardon my liberal pontificating, I think that we're lucky to live in this country and to have the relative freedoms and opportunities that we do. As such, I believe that it's our obligation as citizens to voice our opinions and participate to the extent that we can.

This election is crucial. Karl Rove has his minions and his network of footsoldiers and is notorious for the final 72-hour "Stealth Campaign." The Republicans, largely through a vast network evangelical "Megachurces," excel at the process of "getting out the vote." Which means, basically, putting pressure on people to go the polls. Tweaking voter turnout. Remember that quite a bit less than half of registered voters actually vote in any given election, so the mundane and unglamorous process of encouraging people not to be complacent and actually GO is an absolutely vital part of winning races. Rove and his gang love dirty tricks. They've been engaging in them for years. In 2000 they went door-to-door in Tennessee, Al Gore's home state, and warned people that Al would take away their guns if he was elected president. (Gore is a lifelong hunter; it was a lie.)

MoveOn, with it's over 3 million members nationwide, has put together a counterassault called Call for Change. In my opinion, they've done a brilliant job at organizing this effort, and they've made it very easy for anyone to help. Yesterday I went to another "calling party" right here in our neighborhood and spent a few hours talking with a really great, incredibly diverse (even for LA) group of like-minded concerned citizens and making calls to encourage Ohio democrats to make sure they get out and vote for Sherrod Brown, the Senatorial candidate who's in a near dead-heat with Republican incumbent Mike Dewine. In these tight races, every vote really does count. Frequently, it comes down to a difference of just a few hundred ballots. MoveOn's method has proven to be effective, and as of today we've made a total of over five million phone calls in this election cycle.

So please, if you can, get involved. You can still go to a calling party on election day or download a list of calls to make by yourself. They give you a suggested script and a very thorough gameplan for being polite and effective. No dirty tricks involved. You just call people, chat with them about your feelings on the direction of the country, and encourage them to vote. In my last post I believe I said it was fun. I suppose that's not entirely accurate. I've found that doing it is a bit intimidating at first, but it gets a lot easier after you've made a few calls. And there's real satisfaction in knowing that you're trying, at the very least, to make a difference. I know nobody (myself included!) likes to bother strangers, and none of us like to be pestered by random phone calls touting this or that cause. But we're not selling anything here; we're just calling fellow citizens, reminding them of the issues at stake for all of us, and strongly encouraging them to exercise their democratic rights. I certainly can't find anything wrong with that.

Also, again, please go to ACTBLUE and make a small contribution to a candidate of your choice. What you might spend on a movie, or a DVD, or a meal. They'll show you the races in which every dollar really counts.

Keeping your fingers crossed is not enough. . .

-jw

P.S. - Here's a good piece on why the President's claim that the Democrats have no plan for Iraq or the War on Terror is a BOLDFACED LIE.

- Here's a pretty moving take on the war and the election by the brother of Pat Tillman, the former NFL star who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

I'm certain I don't need to preach about the disastrous failings of the current administration and its Republican rubber-stamp congress. The Iraq nightmare. The failure to secure Afghanistan against the people who DID attack us on September 11th. The refusal to protect domestic security and secure our national borders. The Katrina debacle. Resistance to raising the minimum wage or doing anything to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries. Cutting funds for education, after-school programs that keep city children off the streets, and science/medical research while spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a war that has produced nothing but hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold suffering here and abroad. In doing so, racking up a record budget deficit and a national debt that is the largest in the world and which has made the so-called wealthiest nation into the world's largest debtor. Making the threat of terrorism GREATER. At the same time, cutting taxes for the wealthiest under the long-discredited pretense of trickle-down economics. Ignoring the impending climate-change crisis. Continuing to provide corporate welfare to oil companies even as they produce staggering, record profits while the rest of us struggle to pay soaring gas prices. Passing legislation like the Orwellian "Clear Skies Initiative" which, despite its name, actually decreases environmental protections established by the Clean Air Act and allows corporate interests to pollute more. Sanctioning torture, suspending Habeas Corpus and creating immunity for anyone in the current administration, including the President, from ever being charged with war crimes. Spying on and wiretapping American citizens without a court order in clear violation of the law. The unprecedented use of "signing statements" in violation of the Constitution's most fundamental separation of powers.

Alright, I said I wouldn't preach. Here's the bottom line:

There's an election on Tuesday. You may have heard something about it. Well, it's just four days away, and history has shown that the last four days before any election are often the most decisive.

We have a chance to hold this administration and its congress accountable, to begin to change course on many of these issues. The democrats aren't perfect, but getting them to take control of congress is our best hope for positive change. What kind of country do you want to live in? Do you care about the course of national events? Of course you do! Do you want endless war, rampant corruption, and the triumph of big business over the needs of ordinary people? Of course you don't! What our government does directly impacts our lives, our futures, and the future of the world that our children will one day be forced to inherit. We still live in something resembling a democracy and it is our responsibility -- our obligation -- as citizens to participate in the process to the extent that we can. Naturally, that means that we must all vote. But if we happen to live in New York or California or any solidly democratic district, voting alone is probably not enough. . .

There are hundreds of tight congressional races around the country in which Democratic challengers (and more than a few are disillusioned Iraq veterans) are struggling to unseat Republican incumbents. As usual, the Republicans have the advantage. They have a lot more money, and that money comes mainly from special-interest corporate benefactors. They also have the power of false narratives and empty rhetoric that have proven incredibly effective at duping our fellow Americans who don't know better, mainly because the compromised "mainstream media" has not properly questioned the administration's policies. "We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." "We're making progress in Iraq." "We're gonna stay the course." "We've turned a corner." It's all transparently false. Most despicably, the Republican machine makes a habit of questioning the patriotism of any who question the Bush Administration and accusing democrats of being "terrorist sympathizers" because they publicly disagree with the obviously failed policies of the current leadership. Absolutely disgusting.

But you can do something about. We can all do something about it.

Here are two tangible ways in which to help:

1. Go to ActBlue and put ten bucks, twenty bucks, or whatever you can afford on your credit card to support democratic campaigns in battleground states. It's pretty cool, you can either choose the candidates you like or simply donate to the overall cause. Every dollar counts when we live in a country where campaigns are defined by the amount of private funds raised for television ads. Sad but true. But until we reform the campaign process, these candidates need your help!

2. Go join a calling party hosted by MoveOn.org. They've shown that "getting out the vote," encouraging progressive voters to make sure they get to the polls and know who they should vote for and why, is very effective. I've done it before and I'm going to do it again this weekend in LA. You just bring your cellphone and a positive attitude; the good, hardworking folks at MoveOn provide the call lists and the moral support. It's easy, and it's fun. Even if, once in awhile, you accidentally call a right-wing nutjob.

Please do what you can in the next few days. Even better, please invite all your friends and loved ones to do the same. Every vote counts, every effort counts, and it's hard for me to believe that the stakes have ever been higher. Thanks.

-jw