http://www.democraticunderground.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:23:36 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:23:36 I heard about Fort Hood this morning on the radio. One thinks first, of course, about how horrible this is for the victims, for the families of the shooter and the killed and wounded alike. I know there are people here who have family in the military who might be at Fort Hood right now and I am hopi... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/204 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:42:44 Some of you may remember that a couple months ago, after the Department of Justice filed that brief defending DOMA, I sent Obama a letter about that with a picture of our family, and [a href="http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid%20Adder/200"]encouraged others to do the same.[/a] After a w... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/203 Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:09:03 So, I wake up to the sound of NPR telling me that Obama just won a Nobel Peace Prize. My first thought was, "Damn, that was quick."

The morning goes along, I wonder why they would give it to him so early, blah de blah, then I get online and because AT&T is my ISP, to get to my email I have to loo... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/202 Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:15:49 I've now been inactive here for so long that most of you have probably forgotten who I am. The birth of our daughter back in the summer of 2007 led to a drastic decline in the amount of free time I had to piss away on the internet, and then I sort of went on sabbatical from politics after Obama's in... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/201 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:20:41 I encourage others who are affected by the Defense of Marriage Act to do the same. I figure it might help make more of an impact if they can see who they're hurting.

Note that on the White House official site, they explicitly ask that you NOT send "personal items such as family photographs" becau... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/200 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:47:28 I doubt that the DOJ guys who wrote that brief were intentionally dredging up the most inflammatory language they could find. I think the "language" Dean was complaining about can be explained by something very simple:

The point of the brief was to defend DOMA. There is no way to defend DOMA with... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/199 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:04:27 You all haven't seen much of me since the election. Nobody online has. Since PJ's birth, my internet life is one thing that has had to be cut back. Along with that, I have been spending a lot less time talking about politics to people, except to participate in other people's conversations about how ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/198 Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:30:35 Sorry. I'm still getting used to this.

You remember what it was like under the Bush regime. Every time he got up there to make a "major speech" his PR machine would crank up and everyone would be talking about how it was going to transform everything with fresh new bold ideas...and then when he g... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/197 Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:54:24 Bush and Cheney are out of office.

Driving to work and listening to NPR I was struck by the difference between the way the media covers this inauguration and the way I, at least, experience it. And this time, I am not sure that my way is any better than their way. It is just different. For them, ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/196 Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:24:36 A good friend of mine got laid off last week. We discussed the fact that it's hard to find a "sorry you got laid off" card in the Hallmark aisle. She's always wanted to have a second career as a writer of cheesy Hallmark greeting cards. So in her honor, I wrote this "sorry you got laid off" card for... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/195 Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:42:58 My partner has a theory about Obama's slogan. She believes that "change we can believe in" really means "not very much change." Because *big* change would be difficult to believe in, at this point.

Well, here's one thing that hasn't changed: a Democratic politician deciding that he can afford to ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/194 Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:47:16 I've decided now is a good time to transition back out of GD : Presidential and into General Discussion. Here's my last GD : P post for the 2008 election cycle.

Shortly after the election, I talked to my mother. I mentioned that it was weird to finally be on the winning side of something. She sai... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/193 Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:44:11 This morning I head Sam Nunn's name. I thought, "You know what, after Prop 8, I'm really not in the mood for THIS."

Then, as I was thinking about what it means that Nunn was picked for the Pentagon "transition team," I remembered an email I got from one of my mentors a while back with advice on h... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/192 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:23:06 Yesterday I sent an email to a friend of mine out in California. A little over ten years ago, my partner and I drove a tiny rented Geo Metro through the hills of California to watch her get married to her partner. It was then and is still the best wedding memory I have. Of course, this was in 1997, ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/191 Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:38:33 Man, I'm still waiting for it to sink in. It's so WEIRD for an election to be OVER on election night!

Yesterday I posted saying I was sick and wouldn't be around much today. Well, today I felt better; but my partner is coming down with whatever it was that I had. So she didn't get down to Indiana... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/190 Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:24:48 Well, I have some kind of fever. I've been home sick all day feeling like crap. I sure hope I'm better tomorrow, cause I still need to vote. My partner kept saying I should vote early, but nooooo, I wouldn't listen...

Anyway, I will probably not be around much tomorrow, but know that I am with yo... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/189 Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:37:04 1) The fact that she got pranked is not in itself what matters, really. These guys are apparently very good at what they do and they have done this to people a lot smarter than Palin. One of their diabolical methods is to exploit the rest of the world's almost-total ignorance of the ins and outs of ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/188 Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:34:57 So, we're headed into the home stretch.

For me, as I imagine for a lot of us here, everything that's happening now is tinged with our memories of the pain of 2004. And 2000, of course; but the thing with 2000 is that a lot of us didn't quite understand how awful that situation was until *after* ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/187 Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:55:26 My partner has been trying to figure out for the past few weeks where to go to help out on election day. She's a lawyer, so she originally planned to get trained on voting rights protection in, say, Ohio and then go out there and do that. Well, when you have a kid, it's hard to schedule stuff, and t... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/186 Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:00:20 Before the fateful day arrives, I just want to thank all of you who take the time out to post polls and poll analysis in here on a regular basis. It's been very important for me, and I imagine a lot of other DUers, to be able to come here and see people actually looking at the broad spectrum of poll... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/185 Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:44:57 I posted this in one of the "it's already stolen!" threads but I figured I would give it its own post:

This bullshit about ACORN and voter fraud is not primarily, IMHO, about attacking Obama's character or honesty or any of that bullshit. It's about laying the grounds for a challenge to Obama's u... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/184 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:36:23 Now that the debates are over, I'm just going to do my core dump about stuff that has bugged me all along:

1) We Are Winning The War In Iraq!

Of all the things that kept coming up, this was the bit I got most frustrated by. Obama never addressed the question of whether the surge was working or... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/183 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:26:37 And this is yet another reason why you don't want this guy running the country: he's got no @#$! idea how he comes across to other people.

The reason he was so much more chipper at the end of the night this time was that he really thinks he did well. He got in all the zingers that he'd loaded up... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/182 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:34:25 Came up with it after reading all comments on the original thread that disagreed with my assessment of Palin's performance:

I absolutely agree that Palin came across as a photogenic but emotionally and intellectually void android loaded up with canned answers and programmed to spew them in respon... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/181 Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:59:15 At some point during the postmortem on PBS one of the talking heads said, "I think Democrats are disappointed she didn't implode," and I said, "Yes. You have said a true thing. I AM disappointed she didn't implode." Later on in the evening, I summed the experience up thusly: "Well, it's too bad she ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Plaid Adder/180 Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:28:42