at least someone's floating on air

after a horrendous european parliamentary election yesterday, where an actual convicted racist from denmark's xenophobic party (the so-called danish people's party) won the most personal votes of anyone ever, the part of the country with functioning brain cells is reeling. i guess tho', that an awful lot of the country cannot be said to be sensible, but instead insular, protectionist, fearful, racist, xenophobic and easily fooled by a smooth talker. hmm, sounds familiar somehow...

but in the garden, the sun was shining and sabin was levitating and somehow that made it seem like everything would probably be all right in the end.

waiting game

i was interviewed about the election live on the radio late this afternoon, during the afternoon drive shift. it was fun. i could get used to that. i have now announced to all of trekantsområde that i am considering seeking danish citizenship if romney wins.

we just had to turn off the television again and i had to close huff post, msnbc and nytimes. i can't take any more. i just want it to be over with. fittingly, i'm reading jon ronson's them - a book about extremists and conspiracy theorists.

however, i'm sure i'll turn it all back on in an hour or so. i am both repelled and attracted. hopeful and in despair. but mostly rather sick to my stomach. it's just a waiting game now.

pondering the world she will inherit

four years ago at this time, this blog was filled with politics. after eight years of dubya, and with the colorful figure of sarah palin (i actually kinda miss her) involved, i just couldn't get politics off the brain. plus, the air was filled with hope and promise with obama in the race. now, four years later, i find i feel much less passionately about it. and i don't feel even a glimmer of hope. what i feel is an inability to comprehend and a great degree of fear for the world which my child will inherit.

that said, i think obama is getting a bad rap. memories are short as to the mess he was handed after eight years of dubya. no one really yet knew at that point what the financial crisis meant. i would postulate that we still don't fully know. but he does seem to be a bit mired down. partially in an uncooperative house and senate and partially in an overwhelming array of things gone wrong. there aren't any easy answers.

i am bewildered that anyone could possibly be against universal healthcare. just read this story by nicholas kristof and tell me it makes sense. we have universal health care in denmark and although i was frustrated last winter with my local doctor, that had far more to do with a lack of customer service-mindedness than it had to do with socialized medicine. it is an enormous relief to know that if something is wrong...sabin falling from her horse in a riding lesson...we don't have to hesitate to go to the ER to find out if her collar bone is broken. we don't even think twice (tho' next time, we will get food before we go there, as there can be a wait - but that's true of ERs everywhere and again, has nothing to do with socialized medicine).

i am puzzled that anyone accepts the rhetoric against women being spewed by the republican party. it is the twenty-first century and it's simply unacceptable that in the so-called developed world there should be any question about access to birth control or a woman's decision-making ability over her own body.

and how romney can be forgiven for his 47% statement, made to a group of people he was sure were like-minded. he has said outright that he has no respect for half of the population. he won't release his tax returns. and he doesn't give a single detail of any concrete plan. and his supporters and their shirts saying, "let's put the white back in the white house" are simply beyond shameful. how anyone with a functioning brain can consider voting for him is beyond me.

but i really, truly don't get people who should seriously not be voting republican - for example, because they are living in a lesbian partnership and work for the federal government on an indian reservation and until recently had a child that was in state-sponsored care in a home - are intending to do so. because that seriously makes no sense.

it's like there's another logic in play in the US, one to which i no longer have access.

but that said, i have cast my absentee ballot for obama. i think he's the best choice if i want the world to still be a place i can in good conscience hand over to my child. plus, i want my president to be smarter than me. and i'm sure he's that. i can't say the same for slippery mittens romney.

i voted today!

after a horrible panic due to the fact that i hadn't yet received my absentee ballot (and i had been patiently waiting, thinking it would come), i got in touch with the chicago election commission and found out they hadn't received my request! arrgh! the good news was, it wasn't too late and because they have great service, i actually was able to request and receive a ballot via email, all in one day! i've filled it out and sent it, so it's on its way! i would have been devastated after all of this, not to be able to vote.

today's election quote translated from danish :  "sarah palin has had the same effect on the campaign as  halloween candy. at first, voters got a proper sugar high and afterwards a bellyache."

and looking ahead to 2012, i bring you today's tangobaby campaign button:

and because i adore the campaign button maker :

hope you're having a lovely weekend.

won't you join us?

as part of my ongoing campaign to be tangobaby's secretary of state, i give you today's campaign button:

i am beginning to think i should have nominated myself for vice president since i'm doing so much active campaigning here...hmm.

through another's eyes

i wish you guys could read danish (i can think of only one reader who can and another one who can probably read norwegian, which is really like badly spelled and properly pronounced according to how it's spelled danish). what i actually love about living in denmark during my 3rd american presidential election is reading the coverage of the election in the danish (quality) press.  i would love to link to a whole list of great articles i've read lately (and i no doubt will), but it does seem a bit overwhelming to translate them. so, i will offer a synopsis and share some of the thoughts these great articles have led me to.

berlingske, which is, in my opinion, by far the best danish newspaper (tho' a recent redesign has given it a disturbing feel of one of those free-on-the-train papers) in terms of the writing itself, has a particular reporter in the US. i think i've probably mentioned him before. his name is poul høi and he lives in santa fe. during the first two elections i was here, he was berlingske's man in DC. apparently now he's achieved sufficient seniority and cachet (due to his brilliant writing) to be allowed to do whatever articles strike his fancy and to live in santa fe. not a bad gig, it would seem to me.

in yesterday's paper, he published the first of two articles from wasilla, home of sarah palin. he went there to try to get to the bottom of who she is by seeing where she came from. as i've said before, i have an addiction to writing in the margins of books and this article was so good that i actually had to underline and scribble all over it.

høi's analysis of the country of my birth helps me see it with new eyes. he's lived there about as long as i've lived here, so he has both an inside and an outside perspective. his descriptions are apt and often poetic, setting the scene:

• characterizing a weather change as the sort that demands a wagner overture.
• and wasilla as a town with no city planning, built according to the lowest common denominator--by kiosk owners, for kiosk owners and ruled by kiosk owners.
• walking into the local "mug shot saloon" he felt like the children in the narnia books--as if he'd stepped through a wardrobe, back in time, to a place with nicotine-colored hessian on the wall, populated by people who have seen it all, done it all and given up.
• describing churches being built according to the principles of plastic silverware architecture (engangsbestik-arkitektur).

then, with historical perspective, he reminds us of the divide in the republican party between the goldwater-types and the wallace-types (tho' wallace was a so-called dixiecrat (democrat turned independent), he inspired an entire generation of right of the right republicans). the divide between intellectual and down home (we know this now as the real and the fake america). he talks about sarah palin's mediocre grades (sound familiar?) and her need to move from college to college in order to finally collect a degree in sports journalism. he talks about the teachers who had no recollection of her. he discusses her bizarre anti-intellectualism--if she couldn't be a leader among the educated, she would by god lead the uneducated against the educated. serving on the local city council was her way up the ladder, then she stomped on those who helped her in and ran against them, mobilizing the "wal-mart moms," which worked for her all the way to the governor's mansion (there are apparently a LOT of those in alaska).

in short, høj masterfully weaves together fifty years of history of american politics, cultural analysis and a feel for the present into the conclusion that sarah palin is in actuality a natural and even inevitable conclusion...once republicans admired people like abraham lincoln and winston churchill, today those on the pedestal are joe six-pack and joe the plumber. sarah palin is, like george w. bush before her, simply the embodiment of this zeitgeist.  as poul høj says in his blog entry this week, if you cross lipstick with a pitbull long enough, you eventually do get a pitbull with lipstick.

all of this makes me realize that those of us now fake americans--the ones who bothered to get higher education and a passport--simply must stage a revolt. we've sat back long enough, not really believing that this is where reality was headed and thinking these people were too moronic to bother arguing with.  it's so, so, so important to vote obama. our right to be intellectual or even just to be thinking and thoughtful in our decision-making depends on it. we must show this woman the way back to her wal-mart. if she's going to give back all that valentino anyway, she'll need some new, more affordable clothes.

tangobaby for president

the fabulous tangobaby is running for president and she's also got a fabulous contest going on (i know, that was two uses of fabulous in one sentence, but this is really, really FABULOUS). part of the contest is to make a campaign button for the tangobaby 2012 campaign (you can never start too early). since blogger comments wouldn't allow me to post my badge in her comment field, i had to post it here:

the contest is to join her administration and i have nominated myself for secretary of state.  here are the reasons i outlined in my comment, per contest instructions:

first of all, i am aware that there are other countries. secondly, i live in one of them. thirdly, i frequent them, well...frequently. i speak several very important (and not at all minor(nodding, nodding)) languages, so i could eavesdrop in the hallways and make sure we get the deals we want...like on arms control and space exploration and alternative energy (because we will definitely think that arms should be a little more controlled, space explored and energy more alternative than they are today). another plus, i pass through duty frees the world over and know where the best deals to be had on perfumes and mascara and mac cosmetics are--thereby saving the taxpayer/donors money because this is really largely about the wardrobe. additionally, i do not want, nor have i ever wanted a louis vuitton purse.

one thing that might speak against me, but i want to be up front about it so that you're not surprised by probing fox reporters--is that i tried, and utterly failed, to become miss south dakota , which is right up there in lameness with trying and failing to become miss alaska. but, i wanted you to know because i'm all about the honesty.

if you too are optimistic enough to think there will still be a united states of america which will be in any condition to hold another election in 2012, get on over to tangobaby and nominate yourself for her administration!

what new madness?

i'm sorry, i couldn't stay away from the huffington post this morning, so i'm going back to my political musings. and although this is old (from 2007), you simply must see it, because it completely underlines yesterday's argument that postmodernity is indeed alive and well in election '08:



i'm speechless.

* * *

i also did a bit of research into sarah palin's wardrobe upgrade. remember yesterday when i asked how bad her old wardrobe was that she needed to go all imelda. well, take a look at this, taken just a few months before she became the VP nominee. frankly, i understand better now the $150,000. she needed a LOT of help here, people:

that lipstick on a pig comment is making more and more sense. is it just me or is it a little disturbing that she has the same evening gown competition up-do in this grocery store shot?

i do think this whole wardrobe issue will have a knock-on effect of making the job much more appealing to women in the future. heck, like my fellow julie, i would consider running if it meant a whole new wardrobe. of course, one cools on the idea when the campaign announces that they are giving the clothes away to charity after the election (as if). poor little piper will have to give up her louis vuitton bag. that kinda breaks my heart.

* * *

as i watched the daily show last night (the one from last week with that guy from the PC-Mac commercials--now there's a weird guy!), it hit me that watching it was pretty much the only thing keeping me sane through this election. these people are actually capable of driving people crazy, and thankfully, i'm not even there where i'd have to see all of the awful campaign ads. i feel for all of you who are living there in the middle of it and can highly recommend the safe distance of an ocean between you and the campaign the next time around. larry david has quite a funny piece on keeping sane (or not) in this mad election, check it out.

i've been flipping back and forth between CNN and BBC World these days. one thing that has struck me is how much footage from other networks and shows the news broadcasts are using--especially on CNN, but frankly, BBC is doing it as well (they disappoint me at times with their CNN-ness). clips of jon stewart and this new up and coming woman on MSNBC--rachel maddow (how are we going to keep her separate from rachel ray? dark-haired, perky. but i digress), clips of SNL. it's one thing to use another interviewer's clip, but an awful lot of entertainment is entering the news sphere.  and that seems to me like further evidence that we are in this strange, postmodern, unreal place.  what's frightening is that it's all too real! and not all that entertaining. 

i'll leave you with an especially good (and funny) example of what i mean, which i admit is pretty entertaining:

and now i shall try to restrain for the rest of today. there's only so much we can all take.