Lauren Tells You How to Vote 2014!

Oh hey guys, tomorrow's Election Day. There are few things in this world I take seriously. These include the emotional roller coasters of Korean dramas, caffeine, high quality kleenex, and participatory democracy. GUYS, WE CAN VOTE AND IT WILL PROBABLY COUNT. This is, like, a big deal and hating all the candidates is not a valid excuse for opting out. People are terrible but people (remember, corporations also = people) run this country, so you should express a goddamn opinion for once in your life. Even if you think your one little vote cannot possibly make a difference, go cast it anyway. This is AMERICA and our laws and representatives should not be the result of 300 million people saying, "I dunno, who do you wanna vote for?" back and forth.

If you are like, "But I forgot to/never felt like registering to vote" THAT IS NOT AN EXCUSE IN THE LIBERAL UTOPIA OF MINNESOTA. Minnesota has same-day voter registration. The requirements are easy, you need an ID and proof of address or another registered voter willing to vouch for your name and place of residence. Here is an easy link to find out your polling place. Those are the practical questions answered about how/where to vote. If you don't live in Minnesota, look up your state's Secretary of State's website and there should be a section on voter information. Another option nationwide is the League of Women Voters' Vote411 site, which provides non-partisan info on registration, polling places, and actual voters' guides. You have no excuses. I was just having some trouble with the state's website, so I'm using my local Ramsey County Elections page to get a personalized sample ballot.

They give a sticker to lord your responsible citizenship over other people with. It's great!

Now I will provide you with my personal voting guide since you are probably still too lazy to do any research and this forces me to do so. (TL; DR vote for all the Democrats)

US Senate- Al Franken (DFL)
Duh. He's the nation's most adorable, hard-working, clever, and did I mention adorable? senator. Let's not let this one be so close, guys. Al Franken: he will take you to the doctor to take out your stitches and also make sure you've got affordable insurance. I've given that guy, like $50 or something and I don't even have a job.

US House District 4- Betty McCollum (DFL)
Vote Betty! She is a badass lady protecting ladyrights all over the place.

Governor and Lt. Governor- Mark Dayton and Tina Smith (DFL)

Attorney General- Lori Swanson (DFL)

Secretary of State- Steve Simon (DFL)
He is the most generic white man you've ever seen, but he promises to protect Minnesota's progressive voting laws and recommends not voting for people who don't want people to be able to vote. I think that's pretty good advice.

State Auditor- Rebecca Otto (DFL)

State House District 64A- Erin Murphy (DFL)
She's the House Majority leader and the MN House has kind of been killing it lately, so let's keep riding that train.

Ramsey County Commissioner District 4- Toni Carter
She's unopposed, but vote for her anyway because she seems pretty cool. She and her son, another local politician, spoke together at the Franken GOTV event I went to a few weeks ago (Oh, Hillary Clinton was there too, NBD.) and they were adorable and they should run for Pres/VP on a Carter/Carter ticket.

County Sheriff- Matt Bostrom

County Attorney- John J. Choi

Conservation District Supervisor District 1- Paul Gardner

Conservation District Supervisor District 4- Carrie Wasley

State Supreme Court Associate Justice 2- Mimi Wright
Her opponent is named "John Hancock" (sure) and has been working as a special agent for the DHS. That makes me nervous for some reason.

State Supreme Court Associate Justice 3- David Lillehaug

Court of Appeals and 2nd District Court judges all running unopposed- vote or don't vote for them I don't care, I'm not finding easy info on these races or candidates.

No ballot measures.

GO VOTE TOMORROW, YOU ASSHOLES. If you don't, a bald eagle will cry. Majestically, sure, but you still don't want that.

"Go home, Yankee scum. BTW, nice luggage."

Moral of this cartoon: donkeys hate Ohioans. Sorry, kids.

So: carpetbaggers. These were the cats who moved to the South after the Civil War to take over the local governments and, like, make sure the newly-freed slaves had some rights. The carpetbaggers were mostly white reform-minded types, as the Wikipedia article so aptly describes the situation: "Many schoolteachers and religious penises arrived in the South, some of them sponsored by northern churches." Yes, that is exactly what it said. Seriously. Apparently they all carried classy carpetbags (Christmas gift ideas, anyone?). Some of them leased or bought plantations and hired freedmen to work on them. Most of them were Union Army veterans.

Along with the backing of the U.S. Army's enforcement of martial law, northern Republicans and black freedmen effectively dominated state and local governments in the former Confederate states until the Compromise of 1876. White Southerners called their cooperative counterparts "Scalawags," which is a pirate-tinged insult that should really be used as much as possible outside the pirating world. White planters were kind of pissed that their economy had been destroyed by that whole "Emancipation Proclamation" thing, and poor whites were pretty pissed about having to compete with blacks for paying jobs. I'd say if I had to sum up postwar Reconstruction in one word it would be RESENTMENT.

Here's some more words to summarize some of the Carpetbagger-era's action:
Industrializing the South was the name of the game
Northern appointees were accused of rampant government corruption
Tennessee was the first Confederate state readmitted to the Union
Every black man was supposed to gain citizenship and suffrage with the 14th and 15th Amendment
Railroad monopolies were a carpetbagger specialty
Leagues of paramilitary whites like the KKK and the Red Shirts tried to intimidate blacks and Republicans
Obama's historic predecessor was elected in Mississippi
Prince of Carpetbaggers Milton Littlefield railroaded North Carolina's economy and government
Economic panic in 1873 helped usher out the era of Reconstruction 
Rutherford B. Hayes removed the troops and left blacks to Jim Crow
Southern experience should have taught us that America is just no good at reconstruction*

One more charming fact: KKK-fighting Republican judge Albion Tourgée once claimed that "Jesus was a carpetbagger." 'Nuff said. Apparently hot, hot Jenny Lewis has a new album where she sings this "Carpetbaggers" song with Elvis Costello:

 

*Have I mentioned that I want to have Naomi Klein's babies?

FDR: You think you know, and you probably do know some of it

FDR enjoyed both smoking and being seated in public. So, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the President of America for, like, thirty or forty years. It is possible you don't know everything about him, though. This is why I have consulted the internet for you. HEIR TO A DRUG FORTUNE Were you aware that he was a Frenchy-Dutchy-American? You did not? Well, that is probably because his ancestors had been in the U.S. for a long time and had given up the native pronunciations of their last names because Americans have always been lazy and xenophobic. He should have really been Franklin de Lannoy van Rosenvelt. Seriously, go ask Wikipedia. Also, his cousins Ellen and Grace Roosevelt were pretty much the Venus and Serena Williams of the 1890s. He was the 42nd grandnephew of John McCain's boyfriend TR and married his half-sister (or something) Eleanor. I for one don't know why she didn't start going by Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. I mean, people still took Boutros Boutros-Ghali seriously, right? FDR is also apparently Sarah Palin's ninth cousin. This means that if he were still alive, they would be required to have a threesome with at least one other relative and/or shoot some elephants from a wheelchair-accessible airplane.* Also, FDR's maternal grandfather made his money selling opium-based "medicines" to the U.S. War Department during the Civil War. FDR's maternal grandfather was kind of a badass. LAW SCHOOL DROPOUT Little Frankie was an only child who grew up playing rich white guy sports like polo. He learned French and German traveling in Europe with his mother. He went to boarding school, then Harvard, then Columbia Law School. He dropped out but passed the New York Bar Exam anyway. Another successful law school dropout: KIND OF SLEAZY, LARGELY(?) PARALYZED FDR had an affair with a woman named Lucy who worked for his wife. He started having an affair with her before he and Eleanor (who was an awesome badass how was probably too good for him and/or possibly gay, as we all know) even stopped procreating. Did you know Franklin and Eleanor had, like, twelve kids? Well, actually, six. But the first FDR, Jr. died as a baby, so they named a later son FDR, Jr. Like, as a replacement. Is this or is this not kinda creepy? Discuss. Lucy was with him when he died, their rekindled affair facilitated by his daughter. Which kind of creeps me out. Also. And by now he was all paralyze-y. Or paralyzed, as you might say if you were to use actual English morphology. So I kind of wonder if they could get it on. Only kind of. If you have any information on this topic (I refuse to google that shit), let me know.

Me with an inexplicably Blues Brothers-esque FDR statue a couple of years ago.

AWESOME PRESIDENT, BLAHBLAHBLAH DEAD So, FDR is credited with the creation of the modern American welfare state, what with that New Deal thingamajig. He totally tried to pack the Supreme Court, but he was President so long, he actually ended up having appointed eight of the nine justices by the time he died. Also, he sent Japanese people to internment camps. Michelle Malkin would totally want to have 6-12 of his babies if he hadn't been a dirty liberal Democrat. He was a chainsmoker. After twelve years of his chainsmoking in the White House, I kind of wonder how they got the smell out of the curtains. Too bad Chester A. Arthur was no longer around to advise Truman about new decor. But anyway, any man who can evade public discovery of massive health problems/paraplegia, bail us out of the Depression, help win WWII, go through three vice presidents, and carry on an extramarital affair has got it going on. Also, modern scientists think that instead of polio, FDR actually had some Frenchy nervous system disorder or something. It was nice of him to start the March of Dimes anyway, though. *Too soon? Or just trying too hard?

New York Times discovers Minnesota has the internet; I tell Al Franken how to run his campaign

Maybe the fact that my mother constantly repeated this phrase while I was growing up explains some of what is wrong with me.

This story has been bouncing around for a bit (a week is a long time here on the interwebz), but apparently not only have The New York Times' intrepid reporters found out that we have the internet here in the MN, but there are these people called "bloggers" who write about "politics," and they sometimes have "readers" that they "influence." Ahem. Sorry, got kind of out of control with the quote marks there. That's right, kids: Senate Race in Minnesota Shows Power of Bloggers. That's a shitty headline, am I right or am I right? I guess blogs are still "news" to some people (some people who don't spend all day at their computers, ruining their hands and wrists, like us cool kids).

The long and the short of the story is about how douchebags serious political bloggers in Minnesota are striking out against Al Franken, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate. SHOCKING, I tell you. Did you have any idea that people express strong feelings on the internet, and sometimes it reflects negatively on their targets? I, for one, think that people should keep their opinions to themselves and off the toobz. As far as the Franken himself goes, my inappropriate crush on him has already been covered on this humble blog, but the actual meat of the NYT story involves conservative bloggers successfully exploiting his campaign's missteps. The gang over at Minnesota Democrats EXPOSED (all caps added for dramatic effect*) EXPOSED some back taxes Franken owed, and now are totally playing up the "Al Franken wrote stuff for Playboy" angle. I personally don't give a shit that Franken used to employ a shitty accountant, and I'm certainly aware of his notable past as a public figure and a comedian, but I think Jeff really hit the nail on the head as to where the campaign itself has gone wrong:

If Franken were upfront about this stuff, if he’d rushed to disclose it and apologized where necessary, maybe he could brazen it out, like Jesse Ventura did with some of his more colorful** past exploits. But that’s the other problem: he hasn’t been. Quite simply, [the Playboy] column should have come from the Franken campaign itself.

Anybody who has been gung-ho about Al Franken from the beginning already knows about Al Franken. I mean, he has an awesome feud with Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. He's a comedian who's been saying funny and outrageous things in the public sphere for a few decades. If you know him and like him already, the fact that he (at least) once joked around about porn isn't really your top concern as far as his candidacy goes.*** But for the people who are unconvinced, or don't find him funny, or have been living under a rock since the '70s, some of this stuff is going to be shocking and possibly fatal to his senatorial campaign. Regardless of the relatively objective lameness of these people, I agree with Jeff that all this stuff should have been right out on the table in the beginning.

Al Franken has been running for Senate for like two years, it's not like they just threw this campaign together last week and then realized that he once wrote for Playboy. For all the regular Minnesotans who aren't as pathetically steeped in pop culture as some of us big city internet-addicted types, I think it would have been beneficial to just say, "Hey, Al Franken has said some crazy shit, but it was funny, and he is awesome, and it's time to get over it." And then they could just spend the rest of their time reminding everybody what an undeniably huge douchebag Norm Coleman is. I mean, COME ON. Have you seen his MySpace? He's got like ten times fewer one-tenth as many friends as Al Franken, and his top friend is the Minnesota Young Republicans. And we all know that MySpace is pretty much just like real life.

Anyway, Franken's campaign should take back control of the story. Bloggers will blog, much like I am blogging right now, and there's nothing you can do about that. But the campaign has got to stop trying to brush Franken's comedic past under the table. Face it, love it, move on. I have. Now go win an election. (People like you!)



*I think I might get more traffic if I changed the name of this blog to Blonder and Thinner EXPOSED. Although anyone who is Googling that phrase will probably be sadly disappointed by my content.

**"Colorful" is officially one of my favorite euphemisms.

***Note: my personal feelings about actual porn are mixed at best, but I can't muster up the wherewithal to care about shit like this.

Exploring the American Empire: WTF is with Guam?

I decided to take a break from presidential blogging this Thursday and instead took a closer look at one of America's not-states. Because I've kind of been wondering what the deal is with them, and I know you're dying to find out too!

Guam is pretty. And full of U.S. military installations.

Ever since I first knew it existed, I had a vague idea that Guam was some Puerto Rico-like island holding of the U.S., but in the Pacific Ocean. And like Puerto Rico, we won Guam in the Spanish-American War. Unfortunately, Teddy Roosevelt never went there. In my very limited research, it looks like the only President who has been there is Bill Clinton in 1998. And he managed not to throw up on anyone, so bully for him! Now, the island of Guam is about 210 square miles, or roughly the size of three Districts of Columbia.* Now you can picture it. It is the biggest and southernmost of the U.S.-held Mariana Islands, as well as the largest island in Micronesia. Which is not a country, evidently. Guam apparently doesn't have the shady reputation for forced labor practices, etc. like those silly Northern Marianas Islands. So, you know, that's good. Guam was occupied by the Japanese for a few years during WWII; which, as you can imagine, did not bode well for the local population. But the U.S. won it back in the Battle of Guam in July 1944, and we let them have their own civilian government and U.S. citizenship in 1950. They're a "territory" and I just learned that we have a Territorial Clause in the Constitution that we've been using to fuck over brown people for a long time.

Now, speaking of the local population: who are they? you might ask. Well, that is why you have me to read the Wikipedia articles and then summarize them in an amusing manner (hopefully). The Marianas have been inhabited by the indigenous Chamorros for about 4,000 years. People who are experts about this sort of thing think today's Chamorros' ancestors came by boat from Indonesia in about 2000 B.C.E. And then they built, like, a culture and were traders and sailors, and even invented a stringed instrument called a belembaotuyan, which is made out of a gourd. Which is probably cheaper than a guitar. I would guess. So Magellan--no, not THAT Magellan, the explorer--hit Guam in 1521 during his ill-fated round-the-world cruise. Some other guy claimed the island for Spain 1565, at which point it was considered part of the Spanish colony of the Philippines (we also won that in the Spanish-American War. Wow, we really kicked those conquistadors' asses!). Some priest guy took it upon himself to bring the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church to Guam in the seventeenth century. The Chamorros didn't really appreciate the Church's efforts. There was a war. For like a quarter-century. But the Church always wins.**

Luckily, the Chamorro matriarchs were able to preserve some of the indigenous culture through the centuries of European rule. About 85% of Guamanians (giggle) are Catholic to this day. Sooo... good job with the forcible conversions, team. Most of the island's population is Chamorro, with large Filipino and white minorities. English and Chamorro are the official languages of Guam. Chamorro is an agglutinating language. Which has nothing to do with bread. It is related to other Austronesian languages like Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese. Chomorro has borrowed a lot of Spanish over the years, but it's not a pidgin or a creole, it just takes words and incorporates them into the Chomorro morphosyntactic rules. But English is starting to replace Chomorro with younger Guamanians, many of whom choose to move to the mainland U.S. It is now time to stop writing paragraphs, and start listing random facts about Guam:

1. Guam's economy is propped up by Japanese tourists and U.S. military bases. In fact, we're moving a bunch of marines or something there from Okinawa in the next several years, bumping up the island's population by like, 25%. Sorry in advance, Guam.

2. Guam elects a non-voting member to the House of Representatives. But they're just a motherfucking territory, so they count for nothing. Their presidential straw poll doesn't count for much, either, since they have no electoral votes, but at least the parties let them send delegates to the convention. Wouldn't it be awesome if HRod Clinton staged a comeback with a bunch of delegates from all the U.S. territories? Suck on that, Iowa!

3. It's hot there. 76-86 degrees Fahrenheit. And sometimes they have earthquakes because they're right by a huge fault line or whatever. Luckily the active volcanoes are only in the Northern Marianas. But they do get typhoons.

4. Guam is sometimes called "America in Asia." This is apparently because rich Japanese people come to the resorts and go shopping at all the duty-free designer retail outlets.

5. Guam's natural animal population has been fucked up by bioinvasion, especially by the brown tree snake, which I saw in a picture and it looked yellow. But it could've been the flash 'cause it was nighttime 'cause they're nocturnal.

6. Guam has a K-Mart.

7. I have a sinking feeling that things do not bode well for Guam. Bless America's heart, but seriously, I'm sure we'll fuck it up like we do everything else.


* But the same amount of federal representation! (-1 congressperson)

**Some may say that this is because god is on their side. I'm skeptical. The Sexy Gay Jesus would certainly never involve himself in oppression and genocide. But I suppose that's probably why it was never called the "Holy Sexy Gay Jesus Empire." 'Tis a shame, really. I would totally join that empire.

The Caucus: America's Lowest Form of Democracy

It's hard to take seriously a form of voting that resembles an elementary school field day.

So last Saturday I went to my local senate-district caucus convention. It was half incredibly boring and half completely ridiculous. I loved it. But I have to throw this out there: CAUCUSING IS THE STUPIDEST WAY TO VOTE EVER. The day began quite early for a Saturday (Roommate A and I left the house at 8:30, ew), and when we arrived at Humboldt High School, we stood in a very long line to register with everyone else who hadn't bothered to show up earlier. (I got a nametag! On a piece of yarn!) My roommate was corralled into some sort of strategy discussion with some other Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer supporters and I found us seats with our other precinct delegates. Now, let me tell you a little story about the Humboldt High School auditorium: the stairs are TREACHEROUS. They are all different sizes. This seems to be by design. WTF? I watched as some woman tripped and fell down a bunch of stairs. They had to call an ambulance. I hope she's okay. She was moving around and stuff, so she's not paralyzed, but she didn't even get to caucus. Fuck you, Humboldt architects. A great way to start the day.

Moving on, the caucus started about an hour or so late. SHOCK. We had to like, ratify the rules and agenda before we could do anything. But before that, we did the Pledge of Allegiance, which I haven't done since, god I don't know when. I hate America almost as much as Barack Obama. (I also do not wear a flag lapel pin. I generally don't have lapels, but I'm still trying to make a statement.) Anyway, lots of people nominating themselves for various local party positions and blah blah blah. Roommate A and I shared the one pen she actually thought to bring and went through all the platform resolutions, voting on whether or not to forward them to the state convention. There were over a hundred. Some of them were good, like the ones about ending the war. Others were vaguely offensive, as in: "Men should stop being forced to pay child support for children that are not their own." I mean, that seems basically reasonable, but I've spent enough time on the internets to see a Men's Rights Activist's fingerprints all over that shit. So I voted no. Maybe I should've waited around to hear people read their statements explaining the resolutions. But I was so not going to stay later than I absolutely had to.

But so there were a few more hours of motions and seconding and saying, "yea" to close nominations and such. I enjoyed observing our hot, young city council member with his adorable small children, because I'm a creep like that. But in the meantime, there were speakers! There were state politicians, but I don't care about those people. I was excited about Betty McCollum, who is fucking awesome, and about the candidates for Senate. Ciresi and Nelson-Pallmeyer both spoke in the morning. Ciresi was blah. Nelson-Pallmeyer was actually pretty good, and I could see why all the hippie types were working for his campaign. But I have a special place in my heart for Al Franken. I was afraid he wouldn't show, but he came right before we split up to sub-caucus. (Strategery much?) He is so short and adorable and funny and I kind of have a crush on him. (THOSE GLASSES!) And he jumped off the stage and almost tripped on a microphone wire. It was great. The crowd was very enthusiastic. Then he came into the audience and he was like six feet away from me at some point, but I am very awkward and shy and couldn't work up the nerve to ask him for a picture/chat with him. But I could have, had I not sucked so much.

Then it was time to do the ol' Sub-caucus Walk-us. OMG ridiculous. I don't know if this is what Thomas Jefferson et al had in mind for our representative democracy (setting aside all the women and black people that were there, of course), but have I mentioned that it is THE STUPIDEST WAY TO VOTE EVER? 'Cause it is. But it was kind of fun. I managed to find a Franken sub-caucus that wasn't also an Obama group (remember how I'm kind of on Team Hillary now? Go Texas and Ohio!) The only Clinton sub-caucuses were uncommitted for Senate, and I really wanted to support Al, so I went for Al Franken/Universal Health Care. I couldn't argue with that. Our sub-caucus was viable, so I didn't have to walk again. During the second walk, though, all the Franken staffers were trying to do mathematical calculations to figure out how to win remainder delegates or whatever. We kept having to shift a few people between Franken sub-caucuses. It was ridiculous. Again, kind of fun, but I really didn't feel like I was VOTING or anything. It felt like a game. But Al won the most delegates to the state convention, so huzzah!

Anyway, that is far more than anyone ever wanted to know about my experience at the caucus. I'm glad I did it, if for no other reason than blog fodder. I might have actually nominated myself for some local party position if I planned on still living in Minnesota six months from now. Oh, well. Mostly, the lesson is this: caucusing is the least-straightforward, most silly way to hold a primary. God bless the Minnesota DFL and my six hours of participatory democracy on a Saturday!



STILL TO COME: I write to Al Franken's campaign to tell him all the things I didn't say when I had the chance.