Also note that there are more pics and videos after the jump!

(Courtesy of Whole Wheat on Flickr)

Celeste and I were on our way to the Prop 8 protest last Saturday (11/15) & halfway there I started wondering whether we should go home and get Trikeasaurus. It was a bit of a debate because obviously you don’t want to detract from the cause or trivialize it.

It’s a tough call because the gestalt here in our fair city is strange: ecstatic, hopeful, and in giddy disbelief about Obama, but devastated, angry, and really heart-broken about Prop 8′s victory. (It doesn’t matter whether you are straight or gay – everyone I know is heartbroken about Prop 8.)

So what to do?

In the end, the gorgeousness and warmth of the day carried it. We figured “The Gays” + “sunny, gorgeous day” meant that in addition to being a protest, it was going to be a party.

So we turned around, went home, put together Trikeasaurus & headed out again.

It turns out we were right! PEOPLE LOVED IT and my wee trike became a bit of a rallying point.

Did I mention how much I love “The Gays”

I tried to keep the music “gay” & “love” themed (got a lot of ABBA & Madonna on) but the two biggest musical highlights were marching to MIKA’s (fantastic) “Grace Kelly” and realizing how appropriate it was (it could even be about being gay):

Do I attract you?
Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?
Am I too dirty?
Am I too flirty?
Do I like what you like?

I could be wholesome
I could be loathsome
I guess I’m a little bit shy
Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you like me without making me try?

And then the second highlight, which was by far the biggest slice of awesome, was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” a.k.a the song that has taken over my life. Someone suggested I play some Journey just as we were marching up to Powell & Market, and I hit DSB like I often do on Trikeasaurus. THE CROWD (AND ONLOOKERS) WENT WILD.

So since then, in addition to constantly playing DSB because I and everybody else around loves it, I’ve started getting on the mic & introing it with “To everyone broken hearted about Prop 8….”

Some will win some will lose some were born to sing the blues.
Oh the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on…

Don´t stop believing.
Hold on to the feeling.

Celeste works the cute….

And, as usual BK takes great photos, here’s one, but he has many….

UPDATE:

More Videos from Bill:

Also note that there is a video & the playlist after the jump!

(courtesy of May-Li Khoe)

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Flashdance 18 was just amazing. Maybe 100-150 people dancing at any given time and maybe 200 people over the course of the night. But as usual, the real story was just the vibe. A warm night and fun music were part of it, but really, as usual the key to such a great FlashDance is all the awesome people who came out to 24th & Mission and made it so fabulous! I love my peeps! Thanks for making 3 years of FlashDances so amazing!

Here’s the playlist below. Honestly, I’m getting happier and happier with my playlists. As I’ve said numerous times, it’s hard to balance all the factors: the need to keep it fresh, the need to handle the requests I get, and also the need to keep the music broad enough to appeal to a lot of folks. But lately, I’m having blast with the music & hope you are too.(Thanks for all your suggestions & please keep them coming! Apologies in advance if I decide they don’t fit, or don’t get to them.)

And yes, I have been playing “Boyz” by M.I.A. a lot – but I love our “Boyz” Slide!!!! Thanks for the video Liza! (And if anyone else has pics please send ‘em)

Flashdance Nov08 from lixy on Vimeo.

• Flash – Queen
• Billie Jean vs Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (Michael Jackson vs Indeep) – UPDATES SPIN
• Don’t Stop the Music – Rihanna
• Soul Desir (Aretha Franklin Vs. Noir Desir) – Zebra
• Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours – Stevie Wonder
• American Boy (feat. Kanye West) – Estelle
• Runaway – Jamiroquai
• Can You Feel It – The Jacksons
• Hung Up – Madonna
• Boyz – M.I.A.
• SOS – Rihanna
• Walkin’ Out Yo Girlfriend (Unk Vs. Avril Lavigne Vs. Toni Basil) – Lobsterdust
• Boyz – M.I.A.
• Mundeya De Dil Hil Gaye – Kais Feat. D.S.I.
• Dil Le Gayee – Jassi
• Hey Ya! – OutKast
• Play Your Part (Pt. 2) – Girl Talk
• I Wanna Be Your Lover – Prince
• Last Night A DJ Saved My Life – Indeep
• Lady Marmalade – Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mya & P!nk
• That Dude – The High Decibels
• We Are The Ones – The Coup
• Say Hey (I Love You) [feat. Cherine Anderson] – Michael Franti & Spearhead
• Hello Remix (ft. Lifesavas) – Lyrics Born
• Don’t Stop Believin’ In Planet Rock (Journey vs. Afrika Bambaataa) – A plus D
• Harder, Harder, Harder, Harder! (Daft Punk Vs. Passions) – Electrosound
• Technologic – Daft Punk
• P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) – Michael Jackson
• Love Today – MIKA
• Don’t Start Me Down – Pink vs. Electric Light Orchestra
• Late In The Evening – Paul Simon
• Canto de Ossanha – Jurassic 5
• MMMTipsy (J-Kwon Vs. Hanson) – King Of Pants
• Lollipop – MIKA

Note: click on the playlist to go to it on the iTunes store. Note that some of the songs (mostly mashups) are missing because they aren’t on the store.

I’m sooo sorry. For all of us.

‘deep

I’ve always been fascinated with race & civil rights. I’ve read a lot, studied a lot, been affected by it a lot, and just plain thought about it a lot. So, it came as a bit of a shock to me that I only remembered Obama was black yesterday as the vote totals were coming in. I’d kinda forgotten it until then

I had been worried that we might win close even though we had 10 times the ground-game McCain had. I would be happy of course, but deeply unsettled about what that would say about us as a nation. This has been a vast national push the likes of which I have never heard of. What would it mean if all that effort only squeezed out a victory as close as our last two losses? That would be a deeply shattering statement about our country. But as I drove back down to Columbus last night, listening to the early vote totals coming in & hearing all the states that were going McCain, I realized that it would only be troubling only if our candidate was white. And I had forgotten that he was black.

We are in many ways a country not ready for a black President, but we have exceeded our worst truths to attempt our best truths.

If you had told me it would take a Herculean effort, but we could narrowly elect a black man to be President, I’d have been happy with that. The fact that it is a stretch for us as a people, makes it all the sweeter, and all the more hopeful. Greatness isn’t about doing things that are easy. Last night we showed greatness.

That being said, it is important to not fool ourselves into thinking that race was somehow not a factor in the election. While the state by state electoral map shows that Obama did far better than Kerry or Gore, a look at the county by county maps show that in the many southern states, he did worse than Gore or Kerry. Here are the two maps from the excellent NYTimes site, that show how the voting patterns SHIFTED in this election as compared to the last two:

This is a comparison of last night vs. 2004 (Kerry):

This is last night vs. 2000. (Gore):

The redder areas, shifted to the Republican while the bluer areas shifted to the Dems. Last night, large tracts of the South went much more Republican even though the country as a whole shifted much much more Democrat in each case. I wonder why?

Race. Our national bête noire.

Nonetheless, while we are still a nation struggling with race, it is fantastic to know that at times we can transcend it. I’ve never been more proud to be an American.

.psHere are some other excellently instructive maps!

.pps Here is a GREAT image. One of these things is NOT, like the others… (Thanks Jeff M.)

(Geauga County, where I went, is the red one, next to Cleveland)
(from NY Times map)

WOW WOW WOW.

This is the first day in a long, long time I’ve felt real hope. The end of the of 2006 elections was a relief & it meant that the long nightmare was at least ending. But it wasn’t a time to start a new national dream. Today is that day. The last eight years have shattered almost everything that I loved about our country. We have laid bare all the ugliness we are capable of as a people*. We have done and said things I believed were impossible for us until we did and became those things. It was 8 years of looking in the mirror and finding evil and ugliness. It has been a hard, hard time (tears come to my eyes even thinking about it). What a beautiful way to turn the page. The difference between just yesterday and today is best summarized by Barack himself, as he said last night:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

I spent the last two days of the campaign working on getting out our vote in Republican Geauga (“Gee-Og-A”) County. Just how Republican?:

(I particularly liked the “I’m a BITTER Gun Owner & I VOTE” sign). McPalin signs outnumbered us about 8-1 in the particular precinct I was working, but for the county we hoped to get 43% of the vote nonetheless. This would help offset the pressure on Ohio’s more democratic areas. We got 42% in the end. (Mandy, Amy & Matt – you ROCK!). My last day was spent driving around knocking on doors, leaving polling place info, talking to the few (but enthusiastic) Obama voters, observing Amish, and getting the sheriff called on me. Also, I managed to do this :

(thank you Geauga County Volunteer Fire Department)

As red as the area was, and as apprehensive as I was about leaving state HQ, it felt really, really good to be a part of the effort in an area that needed it and in fact to be a part of that area’s success.

That actually brings me to the question of why did I go to Ohio? Did they really need my help? Would things have been different If I didn’t go there & put in 19 days of (honestly) around 14 hours a day of work? Well, yes and no. On a small scale, I don’t believe for a second that my tiny role in such a vast enterprise** was of great significance. But as true as that is, I also know I helped a lot and the campaign was better for me putting my skill and enthusiasm into play. But that is just a small scale. On a larger, and more important, scale the fact is that without people in aggregate deciding that they could help in the same way I did, this would not have happened. That whole idea of “you’re just one person, how can you matter” eats at me constantly and makes me angry. The only thing that ever matters is aggregations of many such “one persons”. And in fact, there were many people there who worked just as hard as I did (if not harder) but had definitely been doing it for much much longer. Most of them were paid staff, but there is no way they were getting paid what their time and effort and dedication was worth. We all owe some SERIOUS thanks to the many people who worked so hard for months and months and months on the Obama campaign. (I’m looking at you Natasha, Jill, Amy, Campy, Gene, Eric, Romulo and Sam!)

And on a more “boy do I fascinate myself!” level, I guess the other reason I went is that I don’t like being a spectator. I like being in things. Especially things that mean a lot to me or where I think I can help.

Anyway, I’m home now. Thank god. I love SF & I missed all of you guys. I’ll be eating vegetarian for a week to deal with my Obama belly. And yes, I’ll be wearing my Ohio Staff badge for a week too

We have a lot of work to do, and Barack has set our expectations so very high. I can’t wait to see how this all turns out, and of course, keep trying to play my little part And to my fellow Obaminos who took it to the campaign trail: Adrian, Liz, Bob & Kristina in Nevada, Eric in Wisconsin, Alpesh in Colorado, and Doug in Oregon, I SALUTE YOU and give you my sincere THANKS!

‘deep

*Prop 8. Prop 8. Prop 8. Even now our worst is on display. This hurts so bad. A special HUG to Kelly & Brian who fought SO HARD for this.

**I can’t wait to read & hear more about Obama’s campaign. After being a tiny part of it, I’m grateful to have been part of something so impressive and righteous. The idea that we would ask everyone for their vote, not just those that we knew were Democrats, but push for a vast “50-state” strategy was fantastic. And the sweetness of the Republican-derided community organizer, winning such a vast mandate in some large part by creating a campaign based around community organizing, is deeply deeply satisfying.

(click Barack to see more pix from my trip)

Many things have CHANGEd since my last post. CHANGE! I’ll drop some quick notes before I go to bed – tomorrow I have to get up crazy early and help squeeze the relatively small # of Obama votes from this area to offset part of the red wave from this part of OH:

• I’m now in the red red red Republican hinterlands in the northwest – near Cleveland & Lake Erie. McPalin signs outnumber us at least 2 to 1.
• My new Obama belly has grown considerably (soooo much campaign junk food everywhere & the aforementioned “would you like iceberg lettuce with that bacon?”-salads. What’s hi in the middle & round at both ends…. (sigh) …me
• I saw Barack at a rally Sunday – he rocks. Clearly a little tired, but the confidence, charm, and stature is impressive. 60,000 people showed up for his rally at the state capitol.
• I rented a car and drove up here from Columbus. On the way here (late Sunday night) I dropped off various things at various other campaign offices on the way. The energy and excitement at each, LATE on a Sunday night was amazing. Given, it was 2 nights before election day, but check these (1) articles (2) at 538 for comparison. Anyway here is the picture I took at a small office in Cleveland – it doesn’t quite do justice to the noise, energy & buzz, but perhaps it does do justice to the the diversity and youth. It really is cool to see. As The Who albums says, “The Kids Are Alright”. I am amazed not just at the youth and energy, but also the intelligence, focus, & drive. It gives me more HOPE.
• When I decided to come out, I was a little leary of staying at host housing & considered getting a hotel room for myself. I’m always a little leary of staying with hosts – mostly because I am always worried about inconveniencing benefactors, so I’m never relaxed. But after staying with 2 different Ohio families, I have to say, I’m glad I didn’t stay in a hotel. It is really really nice to connect with people who you don’t know anything about, and stay in their homes, and to enjoy their generosity (Thanks, Jeanne & Hal, Elizabeth & Jim!)
• The technology angle of all this is once again noteworthy. Using my iPhone 3G’s GPS to get me anywhere and everywhere in these completely unfamiliar surroundings has been AWESOME. I navigated to Cleveland, & all around to various campaign locations, & all around this pretty rural area with ease! Thank god I found that Wal-Mart open late Sunday night with an iPhone car-charger though….

.PS – GO VOTE TODAY & EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT MY VOTING GUIDE A.K.A THE ‘DEEP SLATE!! (Yes on H! No on 8!)

.pps I miss you guys & can’t wait to get home.

.ppps: TO ALL OF YOU WORKING ON CAMPAIGNS BOTH AT HOME & IN SWING STATES – YOU ROCK! THANK YOU!

Reporting…. from….. Ohio…. sooooo….. tired…… must. focus. type.

Ok kids -

So I’ve been meaning to blog from freezing Ohio, but I’m just working too hard and am too fried to think of anything coherent to say. This is one of those “you’ll think about it when it’s over” times in my life. Mostly I’m just working my ass off, trying to use my powers for awesome.

So given the lack of coherent narrative structure, I’m just going to drop you some notes: I really do want to capture some of this moment & I know that some of you have been wondering what I’m doing & how it’s going…:

• Tired: first off, I’m tired. So tired. I’m pretty much pushing 14 hours days. Every day. I get up, go to the office, wrestle with technology in the name of Hope. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve been here for a little over 2 weeks & that has been every day. I’ve taken a few breaks for a few hours here and there, but honestly not many.*
• The work, a.k.a. what the hell am I doing?: Well I’m here officially as part of the Data Team, but really I’m helping a few teams & constantly looking for places to help.
  • Data team: The data team is in many ways the center of the Ohio effort. They are basically the Oracles to the Universe of What is Known in Ohio. The campaign is run out of two major databases: the list of registered voters in Ohio, and the list of people of any interest that the campaign knows about. Are you a Obama vote? Are you leaning McCain? Have you volunteered? Are you likely to vote for Obama? You’re in the database.

    This system allows for finding voters, finding volunteers, targeting mailings and door-to-door efforts and phone banks and volunteer recruitment. In short almost everything that goes into the direct-voter interaction of the campaign comes through the database system at some point.

    This is a massive massive undertaking & I believe it is unprecedented in scope and power for the Democratic Party (does anyone have good articles on this? I’m desperate to read more). Karl Rove was involved with the vaunted Republican version of this type of vast voter tracking/slicing/dicing system & it is widely credited with winning the close election in 2000 (that and the f^%$ng Supreme Court). The Dems have finally gotten their act together on this front & from what I’ve seen, it is impressive. Very impressive.

    My jobs on the data team are really skating around the edges, doing some daily updates and maintenance tasks & occasionally pulling more complex information out of the database for other groups. But mostly I’m just a lowly accolyte on all things data. The real data jockeys are a bunch 18 to 25 yr olds (of both sexes) who have been doing this for months and are evidently really really good at their jobs. That brings up another part of the Ohio phenomenon: The Obama campaign has moved its A-List folks to Ohio (& presumably other battleground states) & so the level of competence and focus around here is high. These people feel very battle-tested and I think the long primary fight really helped whip this organization into shape. There is a remarkable efficiency in what they do here.

  • Early Voting Team – In Ohio, people have been allowed to vote since 9/30/08. The Early Voting Team has been doing a lot to identify the people who said they were going to vote early for Obama and to get them to actually go do it. I helped them to do a bit of data analysis on how many people actually early voted out all the people who told the campaign they would, and some work to identify where people were at in the process of early voting.
  • Vote Protection Team: Most of my work the last week or so has been here in VoPro land. Vote Protection is all about setting up systems to deal with the possibility of voter disenfranchisement. I don’t know the scale and scope of all the efforts, but I have been heavily involved with generating the massive numbers of forms required to get various different types of observers various different types of access to individual polling places all over Ohio. Think database accesses, think Excel macro programming (I taught myself Visual Basic this week) & think a lot of mail merging in Word. Now multiply the number of documents you are imagining by 200x. It is fairly brutal in that it is multi-step, pretty complicated, and very repetitive work. The upside is that my MS Excel, MS Access & MS Word skills are growing by leaps and bounds! Another month of learning like this & I can be a gainfully employed office worker if the whole Apple thing doesn’t work out! Seriously though this may well be the most important of the things I’ve been doing here – we’ll see.
• Ground game: The most stunning thing about all this is the scale & the scope of this effort. Last Monday or maybe Tuesday, the Ohio organization knocked on over 200,000 doors in one day all across the state of Ohio. Two hundred thousand doors. That was a weekday. That is just vast. I have never heard of anything like it. We’re doing stunning, stunning things in terms of people on the ground making voter contact. I’ve never heard of anything like it. Has anyone else? And this is just Ohio. I know for a fact that Pennsylvania is doing something very similar. The two states’ Obama organizations are fiercely competitive in a fun-loving talking-smack to each other kinda way (you should hear the conference calls ) And reading through fivethirtyeight.com’s reports from the various states, it seems like other battleground states (at least) have fairly hard core Obama organizing going on. Also from those reports, McCain’s offices (at least the ones that fivethirtyeight has seen) are fairly small and understaffed.

  This leads to all kinds of questions that can only be answered on election day. Does this mean we’ll win? If we lose close after working this hard what does it say about our efforts or our country? Similar questions if we win close. If we don’t win, what will it do to the legions of folks who have been pulled in? If we do win, can this translate into something sustaining? I’ve heard some people talk of a movement – is that possible? And also I am really curious about the historical significance of a ground game like this – has it been done before? Also how did it develop, some have told me that it really comes from Obama’s community organizing history – is that true? What does that mean in terms of how it was done?

• Geeky notes: As a side note, this whole little adventure has been a plethora of geeky moments:
  • I needed a PC to run MS Access! Ok quick use VMWare Fusion to run Windows on my Mac!
  • I need MS Access! Hey look – Microsoft has a 30 day free trial version
  • My iPhone 3G has shone – GPS with Google Maps in a strange new City has been amazing
  • On a scary note, my Mac’s hard drive is slowly dying – so far it is mostly effecting the Windows partition on my drive (THANKS BRIAN RICE & MATT GINTZON from VMWare for all the help!!). I’m hoping it will hang on til Tuesday.
• Ohio: I haven’t gotten to see much of Ohio. I’m pretty much locked up in Ohio Democratic Party HQ all day. But Columbus seems like a really nice town. I’m staying in a beautiful home (nicer than mine) with a really nice host couple, and it is in a cool old German area of town called German Village. Small streets, paved with brick, a few little shops here and there and an AMAZING deli (katzingers.com). My hosts hooked me up with a bike & with warm clothes (thank God – it is FREEZING) so life is good

  The biggest drawbacks to this place, other than the occasional anti-abortion protesters outside HQ, & the cold is the fact that it is almost impossible to get a salad around here that does not have bacon, salami, or beef in it. What is up with these people?

*Most of the time that I would have been taking a break was devoted to getting the SF League of Conservation Voters slate card mailer out back home & that has been a considerable chunk of work too!

.ps If you want my SF voting recommendations & I haven’t sent them to you yet, hit me with an email!

“America faces an historic crisis in our political system,” Jawa said in mid-afternoon remarks to reporters in Cupertino. “If we do not act, every corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.”

“We must campaign as Americans, not as San Franciscans or Buckeyes, and campaign until this crisis is resolved,” Jawa said, urging other Californians to join him in volunteering in other states.

“This is a time to rise above locality for the good of the country.” Jawa added.

——–

Seriously, unlike John, I’m actually suspending something to go work on something. I’m headed to Ohio for the last 3 weeks of the campaign to volunteer for the Obama campaign in Columbus.

The polls are looking good for the moment, so maybe this will be unnecessary. But I was optimistic in 2004 too & that was the greatest suckage of my political life. So I’m going. Wish me (& the country) luck.

.ps
Whilst I’m away, please pass Prop H here in SF & pass Prop 1-A at the state level, but most of all defeat the heinous Prop 8 at the state level. I luvs me some gays and some civil rights! (If you want my political recommendations and voting slate, drop me an email. I’ll be sending it out soon.)

.pps
Please Please Please Please consider donating to Yes on H, or No on 8, I did. They both could use the money and are righteous.

.ppps
If you’re interested, I know a lot of folks are volunteering in Nevada on weekends for Obama. I highly recommend it! Others are making phone calls to other states. Please help out! Two words: President Palin.

(from BoingBoing by reader Brian Topping)

Can I get a woot woot!

Random thoughts from political land…..

Yes, on a local level, we lost some truly good races with good people – but the the thing I MOST wanted to happen in San Francisco happened. Chris Daly has been reelected as Supervisor (well, as of this writing he hasn’t technically won – but that will change). For everyone out there who still doesn’t understand why I think this is so great, I’ll say this: Last night at his victory party, every activist I knew who did something important locally – whether it was homeless issues, or housing and tenants rights issues, or gay stuff, or environmental stuff – the people who I KNOW are actively trying to make San Francisco a better place, were there & many of them said the same thing: “When I realized Chris was in a close one, I came in to help out.” Another telling sign is how much money downtown interests spent getting Chris buried. They spent something obscene like $700, 000. Chris spent a fraction of that & won on grass roots support. That should tell you something too. Rock On Chris!

Yes, on the state level, we lost some really important things that would have made a real difference: public financing would have been the best thing to happen to CA in a long time & oil taxes are “hella good” as the kids say. But I can’t help but feel relief: the defeat of 90 was the thing I most wanted to happen & was most scared about. Just a few weeks ago, 90 looked like it was going to win & it had the real potential to be the worst thing that has happened to CA in a long long time.

Then on a national level, the two things that I most wanted to happen have happened – Richard Pombo, perhaps the worst threat to the planet in the House of Representatives, was defeated soundly by Jerry McNerney in neighboring Pleasanton. I spent a few days working over there & damn does that feel good. The other thing I wanted most was control of at least one house of Congress & to get the House & a virtual tie in the Senate (at least) is damn fine. The national election’s large Democratic sweep means at the very least there will be some check and some balance in our “checks an balances” system of government. I’m not sure how much I should hope for (leaving Iraq seems perhaps more disastrous than staying) and the Congress may not be able to get serious about global warming… but nonetheless – today is a very very happy one.

Finally on a personal note – yesterday I started thinking about everything I had done politically this cycle to figure out why I was so burnt out:

• coordinating putting out 25000 SF League of Conservation Voters endorsement slate cards in 3 districts here in San Francisco – a major amount of work (big props to everyone at SFLCV who helped)
• hours and hours of candidate interviews with the SF League of Conservation Voters (thanks Michelle Jesperson for getting all this going this year)
• chairing the SF Bike Coalition‘s endorsement committee & all the work that entailed (thank god for Leah Shahum who did so much more!)
• some last minute canvassing for Jerry McNerney with the Defenders of Wildlife (big props to Liz Pallatto for forcing my ass out to Pleasanton)
• a little tiny bit of canvassing for Chris Daly (and learning a little about the reality of supportive housing in SF)
• a little work with Alix Rosenthal (who ran for Supervisor, but lost – I’m keepin’ the faith Alix!)
• writing the ‘Deep Slate – my own personal recommendations which I email out to hundreds of friends & local acquaintances (thanks to everyone who asked me for my opinions)
• giving money to McNerney, Daly, Rosenthal, Jane Kim (for School Board – congrats Jane!), and Emily Drennan (for BART Board – sorry Em!)

All the while working my ass off at work & coming up with a major Halloween costume. This is why I’m soooo spent. And why I’m sooo glad that it is finally November. I get to hang with my peeps. And watch basketball. And eat turkey.

Can I get a Hell Yes!

happydeepy

.ps

Adrian sent me this awesome quote from Thomas Jefferson today – sums it up nicely:

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long
oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us
at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an
opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game
where principles are at stake.”

* From a letter of 1798, after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Thanks Adrian!