Archive for July 14th, 2004

2004.07.14

Election D(el)ay

Yes… Now you, too, can be President for Life! Just make out the terrorist threat to be greater than the Nazi threat in Europe and you can delay the election until the world is safe again (never!).

Stupidity. Fortunately it won’t happen, but for this or ANY administration to even consider postponing elections seems to me much worse than a President getting a blow job and lying about it. Impeach Bush? No, but watch the hat trick. First we start losing our liberties and attempt to stigmatize and Constitutionally exclude a segment of our population while our country goes to war for all the wrong reasons (interesting interview here) while the administration is still in denial.

Though it won’t happen this way, let’s speculate we really start losing our liberties, that segments of our population ( the non-white, straight, Christian, educated, middle or upper class male population) are really Constitutionally oppressed by new Amendments, that this war and perhaps new wars really are fought without just cause, and that elections really are delayed indefinately because of “terrorist threats”… Where does that leave us? Remember that Nazi threat to Europe just over 50 years ago?

2004.07.14

Jury Duty

So I am sitting across the street from the Superior Court of San Francisco on lunch break doing my civic duty. Jury Duty… I am insanely bored.

Jury duty seems to require a lot of waiting around, and not in comfy chairs. It would be one thing if they at least had couches (or better, a bed!) for you while you wait to hear your name in roll call or for your group to be sent off to a court. Instead they have these aweful plastic chairs from the 70s in colors from that era: orange, brown and mustard yellow. All of them stained with the ages and probably not cleaned since aquisition.

They did have a clever video introduction produced to inspire more civic evangelism than the poor workers there feel. No wonder they made the video; if the person who did the roll call were in charge of making us feel like we should be happy being there they’d have to hand out razor blades.

I’ll have to post this later in the day (though I will date it to the correct time) since I’ve no internet connection. Here in the cafe near the court house there’s an open WiFi, but whoever owns it turned off the actual internet connection. Their base station is wide open, though, and if I were feeling particularly malicious I could change the name or password protect it so they can’t even get into it. But I’m not mean (that way) so I’ll just begrudge them not leaving the lights on.

(later)

The day is over and I am free till next year. I realize in hindsight that my previous writing was a bit cavalier. Not that I regret that, but I do want to say that while it is sometimes inconvenient doing my civic duty, I do believe it is very important for our society. Between that and voting there isn’t much more we can do to claim the system as our own so it’s important we, as citizens, do both.

I am not looking forward to catching up on everything at work, though!