Scott Rettberg

I just wanted to allow myself an exclamation mark to celebrate the first USA national election in a long time that I’m pleased with. I didn’t vote in this one, since I’m no longer sure what state I can vote in, but I’m sure glad that my fellow Americans made the choices they did. Look at all them blue states! And goodbye Rummy! Au revoir! I just heard that the architect of the worst quagmire the USA has managed to get bogged down in since Vietnam has put on his sailing shoes and hit the road. Now would be a great time for Bush to join in on the resignation trend. Geez, just when I thought it was wise to relocate to other shores, America gets it mojo back. I’m getting homesick, my country is turning into a democracy again.

Just for kicks, I attempted to summarize/narrate the 2006 State of the Union Address over iChat with Nick Monfort while I watched it on television, as he was writing some kind of interactive fiction program instead of taking in the important annual national narrative.

the violent are trying to take the earth
but we love our planet and we will keep it
trying
you listening to W?
) nope
) I’m trying to do serious IF work here
fishious attackers battlefield own shores no honor in retreat
9:20 PM
the UNITED STATES WILL NOT RETREAT FROM THE WORLD
Hell Yeah!
we saved liberty in Europe, and faced down an evil umpire
Read more…

I watched George Bush’s speech tonight. He was speaking to me directly, as one of the people who were opposed to his war on I Rock. He acknowledged that mistakes were made, although he fell considerably short of admiting that he was lying through his teeth about the WMD. He then left me only two choices: victory or dee feet. I appreciate that he is able to reduce things to kindergarten level for us. Victory somehow involves domestic spying, setting up CIA operatives whose husbands don’t agree with you, throwing out the Geneva convention, setting up secret prisons and torturing people, and the like. What dee feet involves is unclear. If it has anything to do with impeachment, I’m all for it.

I'll miss the pagentry of all those gay weddings, but I'm behind Bush. Although I voted against him, after the election we once again become one nation, and so I'm now a Bush-backer, and I've come to a personal decision. Because there are so many wounds, because we are so split, so divided as a nation, I have come to a firm resolution. In the interests of bi-partisanship, I can offer a concession. I will not marry a gay man in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Oklahoma or Utah. Not even in Michigan. In fact, because the people have spoken, I will not marry a gay man anywhere. I will not even marry a gay man in New Jersey, nor will I appoint a gay man to a position of security in my homeland in exchange for certain unmentionable favors. I will however continue to ignore any issue of real substance, such as the general distress of the economy, a slippery slide away from the civil liberties promised by an extremely liberal and clearly outdated “bill of rights,” a hemorrhaging deficit, and an ever-expanding stack of bodies resulting from a war I can't logically justify. Some things should be kept in the closet. Let the healing begin.

I've got to be at school for precepting day at 9AM tomorrow but I can't sleep until I know about OHIO. Cuyahoga County, come on, Cuyahoga County. It hasn't been a great election so far. Republicans maintain their majority in the Senate and the House (or gain), and the map is about as polarized as you can get it. But hey, they're gonna do Stem Cell research in California. Superman would proud. Superman, where are you now? Fly on out to Cuyahoga County. Oh, that's right, he's dead. Help! Someone, anyone. Spiderman?

I'm also cheering for my own personal index of states where I've lived. My native Illinois has done me proud. Obama suggests that some kind of future might be possible for democracy in the U.S. regardless of whatever damage this election does to us. Just look at that margin for Kerry. And New Jersey? Battleground state, my behind. Jersey did us proud. My only remaining concerns in my personal index? Iowa, where I attended Coe College (trending Kerry). Wisconsin, where I lived for nine glorious months in Madison before grad school (record turnout, trending Kerry, way to go Wisconsin). And last but not least, OHIO, where I did my Ph.D. Come on, OHIO. Please, please, buckeyes, whatever, don't let me down. Let's make that whole personal index blue.

Must . . . win . . . OHIO.

Must . . . sleep.

I'm guessing nightmares about the Supreme Court will leave me with spooky eyes tomorrow morning.

I knew I left Ohio for a reason.

Ok, Bush won, fair and square, his first unquestionably legitimate election as President. The evangelicals and the hawks and the millionaires will have their golden slumbers tonight. We're stuck with him and four more years of an even more deeply entrenched conservatism, and probably decades of a conservative court. Forget the balance of power. So much for all that hope. This is where we live now. Welcome back to life in terror.

It's Election Day. If you haven't voted yet, what are you doing reading my blog? Go vote for Kerry/Edwards, or go vote for the status quo. As a special incentive, if you go vote, you may access, read, and print the last installment of Implementation, which we have released today, Election Day 2004, exclusively to American voters (and international readers). Those of you who have not voted are not permitted to read the last installment today. On the honor system, of course.

You can imagine my surprise. While I didn't see the President himself, this sure looks like the type of vehicle they might use to cart him around.

Harry Shearer offers this musical tribute to one of George Bush's debate mantras: It's Hard Work being the President of the United States of America.

VOTE!!! This is the mother of all elections. I'm proud of the Stockton students, most of whom report that they've registered to vote, and I'm proud of the faculty who've manned the registration table for the last two weeks. Today, I noticed that they moved the registration table from a respectable distance from the cafeteria to the front door, and that one of the two faculty members at the table today was asking every single person to enter the cafeteria if they had registered. When I asked students in my night class if they had registered, only one or two didn't raise a hand. Whether you're a Democrat, a Green, an Independent, or a Plutocrat bent on redistributing the wages of the poor to the wealthy and cashiering American lives on the altar of freedom, it's your turn to exercise your franchise. VOTE!!!. Registration ends Saturday. The election is Nov. 2nd.

The line for the “Evening with Michael Moore” at Stockton College stretched all the way around Big Blue. More than 5,000 people showed up, the most people to attend a single event in the history of the college.

There was a lot of solidarity in the Kerry line in Philadelphia on Friday, though it was hot and once we got in it took forever to work our way up the Penn Democratic hierarchy to Kerry.

On the whole, the two experiences left me hopeful. As Moore pointed out, if the majority of Americans simply vote their self-interests, and vote on the issues, rather than on the force of cynical manipulation, there will be a change for the better come next January. A lot of people are fired up, and I don't think anyone is exaggerating when they say that they believe this is the most important election of their lives.

So tomorrow night Michael Moore is speaking at Stockton, and then Friday morning I'm picking up William Gillespie and meeting Nick Montfort at the John Kerry talk at Penn. I'm looking forward to getting a close look at Kerry, and deciding whether I'd rather vote for him or whether I'd rather vote for President Halliburton. I'm a big fan of the longest sustained job loss since the Great Depression, but on the other hand, Kerry has a lustrous coiffure, and he speaks English, sophisticated English even, and he's breathing. I was considering voting for my pet rock, but now I'm leaning Kerry.

I'd imagine I'll have politics on my brain until it's overwhelmed with experimental literature Friday night at the Digital Arts and Electronic Literature event with William and Talan.

CNN reports another great victory in the war in terror:

A plane bound for Washington from London was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as pop singer Cat Stevens — showed up on a U.S. watch list, federal officials said.

“He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds,” said Homeland Security spokesman Dennis Murphy. He said the man would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

The New York Times marked the 1000th American military death in Iraq with this informative (and moving, an in information graphics kind of way) interactive graphic A Look at Those Who Died. A thousand gray boxes appear on the screen. As you mouse over each of the boxes, a picture of an American soldier killed in Iraq appears, along with the dead person's branch of service, date of death, hometown, home state, gender, age, and type of death. You can also sort the whole chart by these criteria. I think it brings home the cost of this war.

Speaking of the cost of this war, I was thinking the other day — the only real justification that the Bush adminstration has provided for the war that has held up to scrutiny (remember those WMD?) is that Saddam Hussein tried to kill Bush's dad. Considering that, in some ways we can consider the mission of the War in Iraq accomplished. But thinking further along those lines, if the real reason for the War in Iraq was to get revenge on Hussein, just how much has that cost? I can't find information on how much Saddam Hussein weighs (he looked pretty thin when he was captured), but let's be generous and say the man weighs 200 pounds. If that is the case, then we have sacrificed 5 American lives for every pound of Saddam's flesh. One man or woman per 1/5th of a pound of Saddam flesh. It gets even worse when we take into account the economic cost of the war. If the war has cost roughly $132 Billion to date, that means we have spent roughly $660,000,000 per pound of Saddam's flesh. $660 Million and 5 American lives per pound of Saddam's flesh. To speak momentarily like a Republican, that's a lousy return on investment.

It's getting to be that time of the season — the DNC and RNC are right around the corner, the theaters are filled with documentaries recounting the Bush administration's first term tragedy of errors, and the Web is offering a host of Flash and Quicktime videos parodying the Prez and his opponents. Moveon is sponsoring Outfoxed, a look at Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism, selling copies of the DVD for $9.95 while distributing a bunch of quicktime videos detailing the Fox/Bush team tactics for free download. Brother, Can You Spare Me a Job is a choice bit of animation, utilizing depression-era style to describe the first presidency since Herbert Hoover to end his term with job losses. Meanwhile, Ben of Ben and Jerry's is engaging in a bit of agitprop, sponsoring the PantsOnFire-Mobile, a float that's travelling around the country trailing a mammoth effigy of W with his pants on fire. For a balanced and fair jab at both candidates, take a look at Jib-Jab's This Land, a parody sure to bring a chuckle to both liberal weinies and right-wing nutjobs.

I just got back from the theater, where I saw Fahrenheit 9/11, a film which made me laugh and almost cry a couple times. Although I expected to pretty much agree with Moore, I have a hard time imagining that anyone could walk out of the theater after watching the film wanting to vote for Bush the next time around. The connections between the Bush family and the Bin Laden clan aside, Moore does a great job of demonstrating the more obvious forms of duping that have occurred over the past 4 years (weapons of mass destruction and so on). The film is most effective not at micro-level conspiracy theory, but at pointing out the blatant and immoral manipulation of the American people, and particularly in demonstrating in a touching way the consequences of a war that has been fought by many for the benefit of a few. I thought Moore was on the whole respectful, not of the Bush administration, but to the American people, in particular to those who serve in the military. It's the most patriotic film I've seen in a long time. Should be food for thought, even for Republicans.

And hey, Moore's got a brand new blog.

Just a quick note to say Hurrah for the recent Supreme Court terrorism decisions. Even the conservative court partially responsible for the Bush presidency thought the system of checks and balances established by the Consitution and rights guaranteed by the first ten amendments to it are worth preserving.

Yesterday was World Intellectual Property Rights Day. And I didn't even know that was a holiday. At the festivities celebrating the event, they gave away NOTHING and got into several disputes over who actually thought up the event to begin with and therefore owned the right to trademark the phrase “World Intellectual Property Rights Day.”

Highlights from an antiwar protest (on the anniversary of the launch of “major combat operations” in Iraq) stumbled onto while visiting Chicago last weekend included:

A truly impressive police presence. Cops in helmets, cops in riot gear, cops on horses, cops in helicopters, cops in prison buses. More cops than I've ever seen.

The “Pink Bloque,” a group of girls dressed in pink dancing dissent giddily to “Hey Ya!” by Outkast.

A marching band of flowerheads leading thousands of protesters down Clark street.

Lots of creative signage.

And a massive crowd chanting “Drop Bush not Bombs.”

One funny moment — Jill was visiting from Norway so we had to cut out early in order to accomplish at least some of our tourist agenda in addition to our political one (I still owe her a visit to the top of either the Hancock or the Sears Tower). As we crossed out of the crowd, a young police officer nervously confronted us: “Where do you think you're going?” “Uh, to Giordano's — for lunch.” “Oh, okay. Carry on then.” There were a lot of odd interesting moments. Many of the peaceniks in the crowd were in their fifties and sixties, folks who'd been there in 1968 but who had gotten jobs, paid taxes, driven volvos and retired in the interim. Not a lot of molotov-cocktail tossing anarchists, which is what the police in riot gear seemed prepared to handle.

A British newspaper reports that the Pentagon has told Bush that the world is melting, or rather freezing, in parts. In response, we will be developing more weapons and reinvesting in nukes. Whew! For a minute I was worried that America could be in danger. I'm glad we're in good hands. (via Jill and Andrew)