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What is your stand on…..
Created by spyndakitrose and taken 15494 times on bzoink!
Abortion?	A legal choice for every woman.
Death Penalty?	The state should not have the power to kill people. Period.
Prostitution?	Make it legal and then regulate it.
Alcohol?	Single-malt, by preference.
Marijuana?	Legalize, regulate and tax.
Other drugs?	Some are just insanely unsafe, but for many others, legalize, regulate and tax.
Gay marriage?	Either the same as heterosexual marriage, or the state entirely out of the marriage business
Illegal immigrants?	Stop looking the other way while these people are exploited as cheap labor to line the pockets of American businesses.
Smoking?	Take it outside, or, better yet, just quit.
Drunk driving?	Jail time on the second offense.
Cloning?	Research and regulate.
Racism?	A way for those in power to set people with common interests against each other.
Premarital sex?	Yes.
Religion?	Freedom of, and, where the government is involved, freedom from. Worship your god(s) and leave me alone.
The war in Iraq?	A bad idea from when G.W. first started lying about it, and now an endless, bloody quagmire.
Bush?	Liar, thief, and deluded fool.
Downloading music?	Try, then buy.
The legal drinking age?	21 works, but 19 may be fair too.
Porn?	Hardly the problem some make it out to be.
Suicide?	Assisted suicide should be legal, with plenty of safeguards.
Create a Survey | Search Surveys | Go to bzoink!

From msnbc.com:

Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry has called President George Bush to concede the 2004 presidential election.

So all of the people who said that Kerry, unlike Gore, would actually stick it out until every vote was counted, were wrong. Thanks a lot, John.

It’s the morning after the election.

I’d expected that this would probably end up being a race that wasn’t decided
for weeks after Election Day, but I’d hoped that I was wrong, and that Kerry
would manage to pull in enough votes in Florida and/or Ohio so he’d be a clear
winner. Instead it’s going to be lawyers, recounts, provisional ballots,
absentee ballots, and charges about those damned electronic voting machines
for many days to come, all while Bush and his cronies sit around and smirk.

In the end we may end up with four more years of G.W. Bush trying to run the
United States even further into the ground, with more tax cuts for the wealthy,
more cuts in whatever social programs he can lay his hands on, more ballooning
deficits, more erosion of our rights, and more American men and women spilling
their lifeblood onto the ground in Iraq, Syria, Iran.

Or we’ll end up with Kerry in office by a razor-thin, court-mandated margin,
facing a Congress that is now even more in the grip of the Republicans, which
means that it’ll be exceedingly difficult for him to roll back many of Bush’s
policies.

Either way we’ll have to deal with the fact that apparently at least half of
the voters in this country think that having a liar-in-chief in office is just
fine, either because they’re so deep into Bush’s fantasy-based world that they
won’t accept that he’s lied, or because they don’t care as long as he supports
their side on this issues. The half of America that wants to have a monster
in office, as long as he’s their monster.

Frankly, it’s pretty depressing.

The Poor Voter on Election Day
by
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
Today, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.

Today, alike the great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves today upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!

The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong today;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

Today let pomp and vain pretense
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.

Today shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there’s grief to set redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust-

While there’s a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man’s a man today!

[via Dave Farber’s IP list]

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
mcurry goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as A pirate monkey.
arcaedia gives you 13 yellow banana-flavoured hard candies.
baeyr tricks you! You lose 10 pieces of candy!
bryant tricks you! You get a rock.
glyneth gives you 16 dark blue strawberry-flavoured gummy worms.
jaylake tricks you! You lose 11 pieces of candy!
lintra gives you 2 dark green tropical-flavoured nuggets.
matociquala gives you 3 red passionfruit-flavoured gummy worms.
smoemeth tricks you! You get a rock.
suricattus tricks you! You lose 8 pieces of candy!
wojsvenwoj tricks you! You get a rotten egg.
mcurry ends up with 5 pieces of candy, a rock, a rock, and a rotten egg.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

It’s simple really. If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can go down to your local polling place on November 2nd and vote, or you can sit it out and come up with excuses about how you’re too busy or your vote doesn’t matter. You can tell yourself that you’re making some sort of protest by not participating in the farce of choosing between the far-right guy and the center-right guy, neither of whom you agree with on the issues. You can pretend that who runs this country for the next four years isn’t going to have an effect on you. Or your family. Or your friends. You can make it easy for the powers-that-be to ignore you and your issues the next time around, since you’re not going to be voting anyway.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just vote? To put in that small amount of effort on the off chance that it might make an actual difference? If you really can’t stomach voting for either Kerry or Bush, then cast your vote for David Cobb of the Green Party or Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party. And while you’re there, vote for your senator, your congressman, your mayor, your local school board, and whatever other offices might show up on your local ballot this year.

Just vote. Unless you’re one of the wealthy elite, it’s the only voice you’ve got.

[And yes, for the record, I’d prefer that you vote for John Kerry, and vote Democratic for your local Senator and Congressman too!]

How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness. — John Cleese

[via William Gibson’s blog]

I’ve finally put a few Worldcon photos (I didn’t take many, and some of those didn’t come out at all) up on my new flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcurry/.

The Scary Truth About Your Friends (monty python style) by Mellifera
Username
Has a silly walk	jmhm
Hates spam	djinnthespazz
Weighs the same as a duck	colomon
Sells shrubbery	smoemeth
Has an outrageous accent	jaylake
Didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition	lintra
Sells dead parrots	brannanjp1
Ex-leper	goldfired
Has a gweat fwiend in Wome named Biggus Dickus	wojsvenwoj
Splitter!	geoffroi
Really hates the Romans	autopope
Quiz created with MemeGen!

Over the Labor Day weekend I attended my very first Worldcon, conveniently held in nearby Boston. I returned home late Monday evening both poorer and darned tired, but I’m really glad I went.

A rather long con report behind the cut….