Why yes, it is quite hot out, isn’t it? If you absolutely must open hydrants (thereby endangering the neighborhood by lowering water pressure when it might be needed to put out fires (or take showers for that matter), and basically treating clean water like it’s an infinite gift from the ass of baby Jesus and not a precious resource that must be cleaned and treated before it can be used again and therefore ought to be conserved), why the fuck can’t you share hydrants? Two on one block and one on each of the surrounding 3 blocks, flooding the streets. This always used to upset me when they showed clips of kids running through hydrant spray on Sesame Street and let me tell you, it’s far more upsetting to see it in person.

There are so many 311 calls about open hydrants that there is a special 311 Open Hydrant Complaint subset which directs callers to a 311 purgatory of waiting for an operator. I waited 11 minutes then gave up.

These people are not even using the hydrant caps that make a controlled spray, just completely removing the caps so the water gushes directly into the street. And then are unwilling/unable to close them again. YOU ARE IGNORANT AND WASTEFUL. I wish you lived in one of those countries where women have to walk for 3 hours to a water source and then lug 40 lbs of water back to their homes EVERY DAY.

Love,
Cari

Giving people access to safe, potable water.

Adam,

Hi.  Any comments on this?  My conservative friends are “terrified that the liberal experiment has begun.”  Hmm.

Hope your day is going well!

Mom,

1) Obviously the president has no obligation to present the opposing view to his plan and cannot be faulted for successfully convincing ABC to cover the issue thoroughly.

2) Since Ronald Reagan abolished the fairness doctrine in 1987, no broadcast entity is required to present equal time to opposing opinions. Is this a good example of journalistic integrity? I’d say no, but it is certainly ABC’s prerogative to cover the issue however they please. If the RNC has a problem with it, the proper recourse is the one they appear to have chosen, which is to take it up with ABC.

3) None of the above can be interpreted as anything other than a very media savvy president doing whatever he can to get the message out on a very important issue. I’m not even sure what “The Liberal Experiment” is, but maybe the folks worried about it could find some more constructive ways to lend their voice to our national troubles.

The “Socialism” argument was bunk, and so is this.

My hope is that people will look beyond their personal agendas, justified as they may seem, and see the bigger picture. 

First up, denying marriage for one segment of the population:

In 1913, 30 states enforced laws banning marriage between whites and non-whites. In 1924, Virginia joined them when its legislature made marriage between white persons and non-white persons a felony. These laws remained in effect until 1967, when the US Supreme Court found them to be contrary to the guarantees of the US Constitution. 

In 2007, 26 states had constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage, 18 of them prohibited the legal recognition of ANY same-sex union, and 19 more had legislation narrowly defining marriage to exclude same-sex partners. On Nov. 4th 2008, California, Florida, and Arizona joined the list, bring the total to 48. 

Further back in history, another uncanny parallel:

Prior to 1835, the Supreme Court of North Carolina upheld the constitutional right of free men of color to vote; in response, the people voted in an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution removing this right by a majority of 55%. 

On May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court of California overturned an unconstitutional ban of same-sex marriage; in response, the people voted in an amendment to the California Constitution removing this right by a majority vote of 52%. 

It took until 1870 (a generation later) for government endorsed discrimination to be overturned by the 15th amendment, and another century before equal rights for all were guaranteed by law. Those ideals are once again under attack, the Constitution that once protected all Californians from discrimination and granted all people the same rights has been rewritten to single out one group of people for discrimination. 

In both historical instances mentioned above, the justifications seemed reasonable to the majority at the time but are now universally seen as wrong.  

Will America find a way to embrace equality once and for all, or must we leave it to future generations to prove us wrong once again? Will our children look at what this generation of voters has done in the name of tradition and hang their heads in shame? 

Regardless of your religious beliefs or your personal feelings about your fellow Americans, equality is equality, is equality. Protect equal rights under the law in ALL THINGS for ALL PEOPLE. 

You can help make a difference, do a little research and make your own choices:

Lambda Legal Defense Fund: http://www.lambdalegal.org/

Equality California: http://www.eqca.org/

Human Rights Campaign:  http://www.hrc.org/

Hey, so maybe the whole “Bradley Effect” was kinda bullshit.

It is fantastic that everyone is going out and voting. I could not be happier about it.

However, many people who have not bothered to vote since perhaps the last presidential election (if that) are telling me how hard it has been to vote today. I do not mean waiting in long lines or encountering technical problems. I mean they do not know where their polling place is or whether they are registered or other such stories of this strenuous and bewildering thing called ‘voting’.

Can I just say, as someone who has made an effort to vote in every election, even the local ones, since I came of age: I sympathize with long lines or technical problems, but not with figuring out where to vote or whether you’re registered. Please do not make yourself out to be this heroic martyr because you just now figured out how to fulfill your civic duty.

When you register, they mail you your polling information. And then they send a follow-up card before the Primaries that lists your polling location and your Election District number.

Sorry to be so petty and bitchy, but you would think from the griping that these people had to climb Mt. Everest.

Thank you thank you thank you for voting. Thank you for making a difference. But please do not think you are now eligible for sainthood.

Just Stop Thinking About It 

And Care of Samuel L. Jackson Himself 

1) The apocalypse has NOT occurred, despite what your friends working on Wall Street might have told you.
2) People have gotten exactly 0% smarter. Or to put it another way, while all people are probably getting stupider each day, there are other people actively working to hurry the process along.

The result of the above pair of incontrovertible facts is Proposition 8. This is the latest endeavor by mostly out-of-state interests to codify discrimination under the California Constitution. They offer no apologies, no arguments of any believable substance, nor do they really try to disguise their Proposition as anything more than what it really is: An effort to deny constitutional rights and freedoms to a specific sub-section of our populace simply because supporters of Prop 8 woke up one day feeling like fucking assholes. 

Oh shit. Excuse me. Pardon the expletive. It just slipped out. I totally did not mean to brand my fellow Californians (and also the Floridian and Utah Mormon financial backers) as total assholes. And yet…um…yeah…I sorta did. Don’t Mormon’s have enough damned discrimination to worry about? And after 8 years of Bush, frankly I think it’s time we took a long, hard look at why we’re listening to people from Florida at all anymore.

Proposition 8 is indefensible. If you’re not against it, please try to drag yourself aboard the train headed towards modernity where we all try to treat eachother with some basic human respect and don’t waste our time trying to Constitutionally discriminate against people just because they’re different. I have this feeling that it won’t even take you a trip to Wikipedia to refresh your memory as to why this is a shitty idea.

On November 4th, Vote NO on Prop 8. Don’t be a douche.

3rd Grade Gay 

Gay Speakeasies 

After the multitude of recent apocalypse-level meltdowns on Wall Street, followed by the subsequent bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then AIG shortly thereafter, it seems our Democracy has found itself desperately wanting for some reliable economic expertise and guidance. Suddenly, as the government is “forced” to wave it’s magic wand and single-handedly usher in the largest socialization of private interests since The Great Depression, it seems high time Americans take a good, hard look at our core economic values. It’s time to stop assuming “the professionals” know what they are doing, and to begin evaluating the situation on our own.

For at least 30 years, Republicans and Democrats have drawn their economic lines-in-the-sand according to some pretty basic differences: Republicans have espoused a belief that freeing up businesses through market deregulation and lower taxes, will lead to more efficient markets, and in turn, a more profitable and successful economy. Democrats, long-branded as big fans of social programs and high taxes, have largely failed to present a compelling alternative to this argument.

Today, it appears, we stand at the brink of an entirely new brand of economy. After years of Republican-backed deregulation efforts, which have no-doubt marked many successes, we now seem unwilling to fully trust the principles which make up the core of our economy. The current brand of corporate bailouts ostensibly amounts to allowing businesses the luxury of privatizing their profits, while simultaneously socializing the risk. To even the casual economist, this should serve as an indictment of free market theory, at least so far as we seem willing to put such principles into practice. Furthermore, this sounds NOTHING like the economic principles by which Republicans have claimed to stand, and after last week, there is certainly no shortage of Republicans and Libertarians who would be more-than-willing to agree with that assessment.

Given the above, it bears consideration that if one studies a little history, it’s easy to conclude that since the rise of the nation state, socialism has been a bit of an inevitability. This isn’t to say such a fate is necessarily good or bad, but clearly as our own country has advanced, we have identified numerous ways in which we saw fit to employ some rather socialist programs in an effort to protect those who we deemed unable to protect themselves. So now we have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, a nationwide system of public schools, and then on statewide and municipal levels, the list continues. In sum, for a country so committed to commerce and the free market, we’re looking more and more like a Socialist country every day. And what’s wrong with that? Well, what’s wrong is that it isn’t doing us any damn good.

America suffers from an identity crisis: As we become more like a Socialist country, our inability to admit as much and find solutions appropriate to our problems, makes us worse off. Not only are we not a true free-market economy, but we’re not a true Socialist country either. Meanwhile, in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark — true bastions of Socialist principles to be sure — we find they surpass us in numerous virtues such as education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality, just to name a few. 

The net result of this identity crisis doesn’t appear to benefit the “Average American” by any metric. Though this shouldn’t be construed as an endorsement of Socialist ideology, I will admit to being generally at a loss to explain how, exactly, we have it better off than them. I’m no longer so sure that our system is the better one. And at the very least, I think we might have a bit of an irrational fear of Socialism that, in the face of recent events, isn’t entirely supported by the facts at hand.

It’s just brilliant.