Life is a State of Mind

If you live anywhere near the 33rd Virginia State Senate district, please lend a hand to candidate Mark Herring and vote for him on Tuesday, January 31st. Mark Herring (former Leesburg supervisor) is running against Mick Staton (Loudon County Board of Supervisors). Mick Staton has been refusing to debate Mark Herring in anything approaching an open forum run by unbiased debate hosts.

The 33rd district is most of Leesburg, all of Eastern Loudon, and part of Fairfax (between US 50 and VA267, and West of Reston Pkwy/West Ox Rd). The polls are open January 31st, from 6am to 7pm. The State Board of Elections has the locations of the polling places for each voter online (should also be on your voter card).

The Republican primary was a replay of last years Republican primary for the 67th district (South Riding) where a whack-o wing-nut managed to beat incumbent Delegate Gary Reese (who was a fine moderate Republican) for the Republican nomination by getting out the new-conservatives. Lucky for everyone in Virginia that by the general election the voters of the 67th figured out how extremist the Republican nominee was and they voted for a very conservative Democrat instead. Heck, why didn’t the Republicans ask former Delegate Gary Reese to run for State Senate? He already has great name recognition.

The sad truth is that virtually no one shows up for the primaries of either party, so one wing-nut neo-con church’s attendees can decisively swing a primary election. Can’t we revoke tax-free status for any church that dabbles in civic government affairs?

Sources for those interested in the election:
2nd debate cancelled
Help out Mark Herring
Find out if you are in the 33rd
State Board of Elections Map of the 33rd (requires Java/Script enabled, grrr)

I had placed Nettwerk music label on my boycott list a couple years ago because they were listed as an RIAA member, but apparently their management does not membership too seriously - or perhaps they are only reporting to the RIAA sometimes, because they are defending a girl who is being sued by the RIAA! Way cool!

Marketwire Story
BoingBoing Coverage

Time to stock up on Sarah McLachlan, Conjure One, Delerium, Barenaked Ladies, Mediaeval Baebes, and Paul van Dyk albums. Woo hoo!

Interesting - their website says that Nettwerk is independently owned, and I somehow had the impression they’d been bought by one of the big labels a few years back. Was my impression wrong, or did they get split off?

For years I have used NPR (Radio) and BBC (Internet and TV) as excellent news sources because most corporate owned “mainstream” media news sources in the U.S.A. have become lame at best (CNN, NBC, CBS), and outright neo-conservative propaganda machines for their corporate owners at worst (FOX, ABC). About the time the tyranny of Bush and his corrupt oligarchy began pushing for war in Iraq, I had to switch to CBC (Internet), Deutsche Welle (TV), and Pacifica (Radio) for reliable news as even NPR and BBC temporarily became soft on the Bush and Blair administrations during the war.

BBC became pretty reliable again once their funding was renewed, and NPR started being more reasonably critical of Bush after the capture of Saddam Hussein; so I slowly drifted back to my old habit of relying on BBC and NPR for my news. Now I have to re-think that.

Last night’s NPR coverage of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s talk at Georgetown University only mentioned briefly that a “few” students stood and turned their backs on Gonzales, then allowed him several minutes of air time to spread his misleading lies and attempt to justify spying on Americans. I was annoyed at the time, but this morning I am shocked to find out what else they omitted; check it out for your self on BoingBoing and Insomnia’s LiveJournal.

(picture taken from BoingBoing to burn my own bandwidth instead of theirs)

Well, I caught the crud that’s going around. I perpetually have stuffed and useless sinuses the last few years, which is a shame because I used to be known for a shockingly keen sense of smell, though certainly not anytime recently.

Wednesday morning I awoke at about 3 am with a dry and pasty tongue from breathing through my mouth only, tried to work a few hours to give my sinuses a chance to drain. Thursday morning I awoke around 4 am with the same conditions, but also with mildly sore ears and throat, so I figured my allergies must have developed into a full blown infection. I managed to get an appointment with the doctor at 2 pm, who agreed with me and prescribed Rhinocort and Clarinex and a general antibiotic. I skipped dance practice Thursday night as I was not feeling up to it. That turned out to be wise, as Friday morning I began spiking fevers and felt much worse. I tried being out sick, but ended up working from home most of the day between cat naps. I can’t stay warm, then I break a fever; that has cycled several times. I am beginning to suspect I caught the crud (virus) though I probably was weakened by the infection. Sigh. At lease Anne was wonderful enough to send a Bossa Nova & Samba: The Gold Collection boxed set with Erci last night, it is cheering me up. Thanks Erci and thanks Anne.

Here is an interesting editorial from the New York Times about what Judge Alito has revealed in three days of hearings. The democracy is already at stake without this puppet of Imperial Presidency on the bench, we need to stop this appointment now. Please contact your senators (yes both of them) immediately.

So in their first days in session for the new year, Virginia’s legislature decided to prioritize new bills to address Virginia’s biggest problems first, right? Wrong. Instead our elected law makers spent the a day debating the merits of amending our state constitution to ban gay marriage. Why? Gay marriage is already illegal. Do we really need to waste time making it a constitutional amendment?

Any amendment to the state constitution must be passed by the legislature, the senate, and the voters. That means there will be an expensive ballot question to track and vote on for an issue that is already closed. Like our law-makers don’t have any other pressing problems to solve.

A. Barton Hinkle wrote a nice piece in the Times Dispatch about Delegate Marshall’s disregard for fundamental rights and how strange it is that his fellow delegates don’t chastise him more often.
Thanks goes to Waldo for pointing out that some folks in the media are finally paying attention to Delegate Marshall’s lunacy. We need to write to our delegates and encourage them to make a stand and stop coddling this lunatic and clearly state if they stand with him or against him. None of his bills make any sense, we need to get the Republicans to clean their own house.