Dr. Sour Puss

DAMN that felt good! Hell *yes*, the King County Charter shall be amended to make the offices of King county executive, King county assessor, and King county council nonpartisan, and establish the nonpartisan selection of districting committee members! Take that Elite Media!

Tony, Xian, CJ, and I caught Dengue Fever last night at Neumo's in Seattle. These people are the hippest, funnest band I have seen in a very long time. Ch’hom Nimol's stage presence was incredible and such a voice! The band members were having such a great time and were so gracious, politely shaking hands and talking with fans after the show. There were several Cambodians in the audience and Nimol twice invited them on stage to sing with her in Khmer. A large portion of the audience was actually dancing, not just head bobbing, but dancing with arms waving in the air, totally unheard of in our cold, rainy, reserved city. Just amazing.

The role of the presidential debate as a factor in the election is probably over, and even Batman knew it. When campaigns go on for years and both sides insist on total control of the message, what use is this? Who really thinks this is an exchange of ideas between two learned men? And who the hell are these people who haven't made up their minds yet? **Update!** It has come to my attention that everyone in the world who has a blog posted this video this week. I, for one, am proud to be a member of the blogosphere and never have I felt such unity as this. Rock on, bloggers.

Now this is leadership. I was getting all bothered and ready to post about the Palin Mob video when someone in a heated discussion thread linked to this speech by Michelle Obama about the role of fear plays in American politics. I was going to write about how reckless, unpatriotic, and plain stupid it is to insinuate that a major party candidate for president fraternizes with terrorists, how such speech is just asking for a crazy redneck with a gun to take drastic action, how inciting such fear is almost the very definition of terrorism. I was going to write about how maybe someone with no experience, who's spent time as a radical secessionist is a wee bit riskier than Obama for electing to high office. I was going to write about how terribly indecent it is for McCain to not loudly denounce this kind of speech. Then I was reminded what real leadership means. 10/9/08: Obama 364, McCain 174 with Pennsylvania, Virgina, Colorado, Ohio, and Florida nearly in the bag.