For the seventh election in a row, Pickacup Coffee will be giving out free coffee to anyone who presents their voter’s receipt on Tuesday, February 5th. This isn’t cheap, over-roasted, acidic coffee either, but artisan roasted, organic, fair-trade coffee: the good stuff. On Tuesday, go cast your ballot and stop by for a cup of coffee on us.

Nonetheless, both Carol and I have been attending to the business of citizenship and paying close attention to the debates and candidate positions. As next Tuesday is our primary, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the election. Of course, I am not nearly important enough to make an endorsement, but like most Americans I speak with friends and family, and even strangers, about the candidates and our voting preferences.

Like many I see this particular election as a turning point — a change in the national zeitgeist. And while watching the final Democratic debate last night I came to the conclusion that both Sens. Clinton and Obama, are both fine candidates. Senator Clinton has an excellent understanding of both the details and effects of the policies she is endorsing. Her grasp of the nuances and complexities of the federal government would suggest she would make an extremely effective president. Senator Obama, on the other hand, seems to be a true visionary. An orator of such unparalleled skill that his reflections and hopes seem able to conjure a better America then we have today. Such men have often gone on to be our greatest leaders.

The most disquieting thing about the upcoming election is the fact that we are no longer voting for a traditional president, but are now electing the unitary-executive, an emperor-president. By failing to impeach GW Bush, the congress has passively accepted extended presidential powers. Powers which include the ability to violate domestic laws, ignore international treaties, and refuse congressional oversite. There is absolutely no reason to believe that any future presidents would not fight to maintain these extended powers, and there is little evidence to suggest that congress will attempt to revoke these accepted powers from the next president. Certainly one party or another will claim that they never expected the succeeding president to assume the powers granted to the current one. But this will mean very little. We have come to a point where the only check on presidential authority is the process of impeachment, and regardless of how much power a president asserts, we have seen that party members will stand behind her or him to prevent removal. Therefore, when choosing our next president we must accept that we are, in fact, electing a person to a position closer to king then chief executive.

It is with this in mind that we must choose our next president carefully: to try to choose one which is willing to, at the very least, try to set some precedent of checks and balances, and not overly use the greatly empowered position of president. Among the current crop of candidates there is only one, from either party, that seems to understand the need to build consensus and respect the rule of law. Barack Obama has practiced civil rights law and taught constitutional law. These two facts alone set him far apart from the current occupants of the White House, whose business experience has honed their skills at circumventing the law, rather than upholding it. Obama’s further experience as a grassroots organizer in Chicago certainly suggests he can he can bring together diverse and even antipathetic groups to work together.

As I said, I’m not nearly important enough to make endorsements. I can simply pass along my own thoughts on Tuesday’s election. I have no illusions, Sen. Obama’s voting record has not been stellar, though acceptable given the current atmosphere: while he stood against the war in Iraq early on, he continued to support funding; and though the Senator has voiced his opposition to the extensions of warrentless wiretapping, he has not taken to the Senate floor to oppose it. But Obama often preaches hope, and he may have the voice and the experience to offer it. After years of failed policies and corruption, it seems that hope is all we may have left.

We gave this to our cats just before Christmas. There’s nothing that says happy holidays more then watching your cat tear into a George W. Bush stuffed with catnip.

This is the primary reason conservatives despise unions as much as they do. Unions represent a shared burden and a shared goal. It is far more profitable to pit one worker’s salary and benefits against another then it is to deal equally and justly with all workers. It is easier to mistreat people if you can convince them that they are alone and isolated then if they stand together as a group. While conservatives love to proclaim that we all share a moral agency as Americans, to support the troops or support the president, or as Christians, to control women’s bodies, or discriminate against gays and lesbians, they loudly deny that we share any economic bonds. The ‘market’ they say should determine if you work 5 or 7 days a week; they market will decide if children should mine coal or not; the market will weed out unsafe workplaces, etc. The truth, of course, is that as a country, as a people, our shared economic interests far outweigh any trumped up culture war. It does matter if I buy tubesocks made in a sweatshop China versus those made in a union shop in South Carolina. One may be cheaper, but the other helps feed my neighbors, funds their schools, and pays their taxes.

A couple of months ago the Writer’s Guild of America (West) voted to strike over residuals for new media payments. Frankly, like many of my friends, I assumed the Guild would fold in less then 60 days –after all, we’d all watched as unions have broken over the past years, and had little hope for the WGA. But something unexpected happened: the writers fought back using the Internet, and they came to see themselves as a union of workers, linked with other workers. The issues surrounding the WGA strike are issues of basic fairness and pay, both StrikeTV, and United Hollywood, lay out the issues involved. The success of the WGA strike effects all of us — not simply because it save us from yet another tedious award show. The WGA is fighting for issues which will effect the future of media in this country; they are fighting for a living wage for their members; they are fighting for all of us, because we are all in this together.

FDL has a petition up where you can contact executives in charge of your favorite show and inform them of your support for the WGA. I urge you to sign it.

I wish you all a happy and joyous holiday.

There is nothing inherently illegal with private or local currencies — in fact the United States has a long history of alternative currency models. Private currencies, however, cannot be represented as legal, government backed, tender. This point was always stressed to any of our Liberty Dollar users. Most of our users, however, didn’t care, as they saw the coins — made of silver — as having traditional fungible value. Personally, I have some issues with metallic currency standards, and a number of the folks with Liberty Dollar and I had some heated discussions about the topic. However, I always found the Liberty Dollar people to be very thoughtful, well informed, and committed. So I would be surprised to find that there was any real illegality occurring within Liberty Dollar itself.

It does seem odd that the government would choose this time to act against the Liberty Dollar, and in such a heavy-handed fashion. It may be that some in the government are concerned about the perceived value of the US dollar –presently trading at 1.47€ and $1.02 to the Canadian dollar, a drop of 50% in the past 9 months. If even a small percentage of Americans began to loose confidence in the dollar and began to adopt a commodity based currency, the result could be disastrous: we could easily find ourselves in a period of hyper-inflation and economic depression. Of course, eliminating commodity currencies does not prevent this from happening anyway. If such a downturn would occur it would be the result of the disastrous monetary policies followed for the past seven years, far more then it would be the fault of the Liberty Dollar.

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Today is Armistice day - Veteran’s Day. A day to try to remember all those of sacrificed their lives and more for their countries. It is a truism that as time passes, we forget the conflicts of the past: the reason’s they were fought and the people who sacrificed for them. For how long will we remember today’s conflicts? How long until we repeat the same mistakes over?

Four hundred and two years ago today, Guy Fawkes was seized outside of the House of Lords. When captured, with matches and fuse, he gleefully admitted his intention to blow up the King and his lords. Fawkes was taken to the Tower and tortured, under the explicit permission of King James I, for three days. On the fourth day, Fawkes named conspirators who had already been known or arrested. Fawkes jumped to his death at the scaffold, saving himself the gruesome punishment of being drawn and quartered.

Fawkes, and his conspirators, had planned their act because the religion and politics in England had become too intertwined. Catholics and Puritans were being heavily discriminated against by James I and his Archbishop, Richard Bancroft. The roundup and trials of Fawkes and his compatriots were War on Terror of the day.

In participating of Kevin Drum’s Wingnuttiest Blog Post of All Time competition, I was reminded of the great American poet Wallace Stevens’ Emperor of Ice Cream for some reason. So here it is:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart relayed how Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends had been scared as a child, transcript courtesy of C&L:

Jon: “Luckily for my pre-conceived notions about the FOX network, the conversation soon got back on the express to Crazy Town.”

Brown hair guy who’s not Steve Doocy: “Here’s the problem, though. In 1970 or ‘68, Barbara Eden lowered the bar by wearing that sexy outfit, traumatized me as a child, and then every kid wore the Barbara Eden outfit…”

Well, I too was traumatized as a child. Not by Barbra Eden (aka Jeannie) , but by Diana Rigg (aka Mrs. Emma Peel). And that trauma has left me scared with heterosexual tendencies throughout my life. But I didn’t realize just how deep my trauma had scared my until a few months ago when a friend mentioned to me that Diana Rigg is now the Chancellor of the University of Stirling, in Scotland. This explains such terrible traits as my love of books and learning, my questioning of the world around me, and, of course, the fact the I never watch Fox & Friends.