The Big Day in SD

If anyone in South Dakota is reading this, please, PLEASE go vote for Stephanie Herseth tomorrow...

watch this site for completely non-comprehensive coverage Tuesday (i.e. whatever I can find from actual news sources)

Hong Kong March Marks Tiananmen Killings

"This year's protests marking the 15th anniversary were more highly charged because Beijing last month ruled out direct elections for the territory in coming years..."

livin' cheap the Goodwill way

My finds today:

a dust buster

a tall skinny CD rack. Small apartment living means think vertically

a VHS copy of U2's Rattle And Hum movie. VHS movies are a bargain these days as people dump stuff and replace it on DVD. Just like vinyl ten or 15 years ago.

an old back heating pad. In ugly 70s brown and white, without new-fashioned safety shutoff stuff

a Magic 8 Ball

ISS - Visible Passes

A couple nice, near-overhead passes tonight and Sunday.

UPDATE: Caught the 9:36 pass tonight despite hazy skies.

Poll: McCain/Kerry Ticket A Winner

All 'Nam, All The Time...

I don't like this but it's not actually gonna happen. I'm more worried about Gephardt (All Dull All The Time).

But even though McCain keeps saying no, No. NO, he's NOT jumping up and down yelling Bush, BUSH, BUSH!.

What will kill the John and John Dream Ticket story is a big rally in Phoenix with Bush and McCain in the traditional Victory Team tableau, hands joined, arms raised in the air. Followed up by a McCain Express tour for Bush.

And I'll bet a maxed-out contribution that Dubya is BEGGING for it even as I blog.

Notice that since The End, Dean has said and done everything a Good Little Donkey is supposed to say and do for Kerry. Is McCain doing what Good Elephants should do? If not, why not? Well, we KNOW why not. You don't BOARD a sinking ship...

I'm now completely in the local election bubble and have lost all capacity to remark on bigger world events. So let's just get a Deeth update.

A dozen plants are beginning to inch up the pole bean fence. I replanted four or so slots where the seads didn't sprout. The scattered old seeds are popping up all over and aggressive thinning is underway. Dill seems to be winning the race. Whatever sprouts is better than actual weeds. Those helicopter-seeded tree things are pretty fertile...

I decided a few months ago NOT to upgrade my cable to get HBO for the Sopranos season. I figured for the price of three months of HBO I could BUY the DVD set. So it's been a challenge not to hear what's going on. Well, in the last couple days I heard The Big One. I had the character at Number One on my Most Likely To Get Whacked list (was pretty easy), and it seemed a foregone conclusion after news reports of other developments in the performer's career. Still, woulda been nice to see it.

Just found out one of my old pals is running for office in another state. Wrong party but he's a good guy and it's a solid GOP district. So if you're gonna have a Republican anyway, at least get a good one. So in the first Republican endorsement in the history of this blog, everyone in Michigan House District 100 should vote for Libants. (this offer is only good through the primary, ha ha ha)

And I upgraded the picture page with some nephew/niece pictures from last weekend's family reunion. Check it out if you care - and who ARE you people reading me, anyway?

Poll puts Herseth in lead

Herseth leads Diedrich 52 percent to 41 percent, according to a poll of 503 likely voters conducted May 19 and 20...

The Onion: Fed-Up Cheney Enters Presidential Race Himself

"I don't have enough time in my day to spend half of it cleaning up George's mistakes," Cheney said. "I'd rather be preparing strategy for the next couple of wars. Those things don't just plan themselves."

I finally took it down



The Dean sign went up in my window last July. It stayed there through the Sleepless Summer, through Bat after Bat after Bat, through the heady frontrunner days of the fall. It faded just a bit as January approached, through the attack ads and the Harkin endorsement and the Perfect Storm and the glorious night-before caucus rally at the IMU and third place and YEAAAAAH! and months and months of "what happened? We were picking running mates in December, what happened?"

After it all ended in Wisconsin I just couldn't bear to take it down. I'm not the only one, the Dean signs are still scattered around town.

I knew that I'd do it the way I do haircuts. Impulsively, spur of the moment, now or forget it.

This evening I got a sign for one of my primary candidates. I struggled just a bit with the mini-blinds, then I replaced it.



The Dean bumper sticker stays on the car.

Uncooperative Hair May Be Genetic

My definition of "cooperative hair" is "hair that stays in my head"

Call the Church Police



"Voting for politicians who support such un-Catholic practices as abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia and stem-cell research is essentially a sin, according to Bishop Michael Sheridan, head of Colorado's second-largest diocese in Colorado Springs..."

Last I checked sinners were in the majority!

Argus Leader - Editorials

"Herseth is the choice"...

Road Trip

Might not be an update for a couple days. Off to the annual Deeth family reunion in Chicago. With the folks still in Onalaska, Brian in Michigan and me here in Iowa, that's the best central location.

I get to meet my newest niece for the first time and be the goofy free-spirit uncle. Unfortunately my own kid won't be with me. Roommate Lite is watching the cats (and my TV).

So I'll leave you with the latest garden update: ten nice healthy bean sprouts. The Romanos aren't sprouting yet but we'll see in a couple days.

Kerry meets Nader, but doesn't ask him to quit

Hm. That's more than Gore ever did...

The aide said the two candidates spent the rest of the meeting talking about their common fights against corporate welfare and for consumer and abortion rights. The aide said they did not discuss the Iraq war.

“It’s my intention to speak very directly to those people who voted for Ralph Nader last time. I believe my campaign can appeal to them and frankly reduce any rationale for his candidacy.” - John Kerry

Let's hope so. As for me, John Kerry is not Al Gore, Joe Lieberman or George Bush and that'll have to be enough.

I'd still like a troop withdrawal date, though.

The Boys of Strummer

Just biking home and saw a fellow who couldn't have been more than 19 wearing a t-stirt of the Clash's first album cover. I hollered over "nice shirt" but he either didn't hear me or ignored me.

Back about the time he was born, when I was roughly his age, Don Henley was roughly the age I am now. He watched his generation age and sell out or buy in however you want to call it, and summed it up in the indelible image of a Deadhead sticker on a Caddilac.

I have become my generation's version of that guy, driving my van with this on the back:



Last year Joe Strummer died in his sleep after walking his dog, two months after my other political hero crashed in the forests of Minnesota. And some nu-metal band covered "The Boys of Summer."

I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy
Remember how I made you scream

More wattage but less impact than the original. A wistful, slowed down version of "Working for the Clampdown" would have been better. You might say I'm a wistful, slowed down version. I sure hope I'm not.

At least they could have changes the Deadhead line to "I saw a bald old man/with a punk rock sticker on a mini-van." That would have been more generationally apropos AND they could have sent me royalties.

---

Half a dozen beanlets pokin' through the Iowa soil today. The thunderstorm last night didn't do any damage.

Side order of bean sprouts

A garden update from the smallest farm in Iowa: my first bean is poking up out of the soil, proving that the two years in storage didn't hurt the seed. I also have lots of little sprouts of who knows what popping up. I scattered assorted herb and flower seeds, some dating back to 1999, around just to see what happens.

And there's a fungus among us: mushrooms are popping up around one of my giant boulders. I told the guys downstairs they were welcome to check them out to see if they were the special kind. The said they wouldn't know anything about that. Oh well, they don't look like morels either.

It's getting close enough to our June 8 primary that I'm developing that tunnel vision I get in election season. I have no idea what's going on in the larger world but I know a whole lot about the Johnson County Sheriff's race...

Meanwhile, my hit counter keeps spinning but no one says hi, no one comments, no one emails (over there, to your left...) The hits are probably just search engine spiders or people searching for some political artice and I was the only one who linked to it. I'm reasonably confident it's not Nicole or Jodie, and Stephanie is busy the next couple of weeks.

Håppÿ Syttende Måi

Håve söme lütefisk

Kerry Praises Gephardt in Effort to Win Over Teamsters

"As Kerry courted one of the unions most skeptical about his presidential candidacy with promises to enforce the nation's trade agreements, the group's president, James P. Hoffa, offered a simple hint about how to win over his members: tap Representative Richard A. Gephardt as a running mate..."

After the sliming in Iowa, this would be a big, BIG problem for the Deaniacs. And it would be really hard to get anyone under 60 excited about Kerry-Gephardt.

It would be nice payback for Dick: He took one for the team in Iowa, killing us Deanics off but destroying himself in the process.

But everything that happens now is so far over our little local heads that our influence is nil.

So I'll just make a stereotypical joke:

How many Teamsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Oh, I don't know, how many Teamsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Twenty-four.

Twenty-four?

Youse gotta problem wid dat?

UPDATE

Someone seems to have objected to the joke above, as I have just received a package

Crowds Gather for Gay Weddings in Mass.

"We came here because I've been waiting seven years and I don't want to wait another day, another second."

"Like fans anxious for concert tickets, same-sex couples waited in line for hours Sunday outside Cambridge's City Hall for an event they once thought they'd never get to experience: marriage."

It's a great day tomorrow, and I don't just mean because of Syttende Mai.

"Democrat" (sic) Miller rips Kerry in speech to the GOP

"Sen. Zell Miller, the Bush campaign's most famous Democratic (sic)attack dog, called John Kerry an "out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" in a speech before Georgia Republicans on Saturday.

Miller, the lone Democratic (sic) senator publicly backing Bush, made the remarks during a Bush-Cheney grass-roots event at the state Republican convention, where he was greeted as a hero..."

See, that's one advantage of a parliamentary system. You can throw an SOB like Zell Miller out of the party.