The Runcible Blog

Even I was surprised to see that Barack Obama received 88% of the vote in Cambridge.  Cambridge had a more lopsided turnout than any other Massachusetts city. Although living in an ideologically homogenous zone can lead to the laziness of groupthink, the election results further reinforce my belief that I've come across no other place I'd rather live than Cambridge. If only the rent weren't so damn high......
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It's tiring to hear well-meaning people say that this election is so nasty because both campaigns have turned negative. Maybe it's a liberal desire for fairness or moral equivalence, but whatever the motivation, when asked for evidence to support the claim that both candidates dish similar negativity, the equivocators usually turn up empty. I think we need to face the fact that the GOP has, for many years running, turned toward the politics of division, xenophobia, fear, anti-intellectualism, and racism. ......
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In 2004, I held my nose and voted for John Kerry hoping for an end to the disastrous four years of Bush's reign. Kerry, an uninspiring and dusty, ineffectual senator, was the lesser of two evils. He didn't put up much of a fight and faded back into irrelevance. This election, no candidate excited me during the primaries — the Republicans ran a bunch of caricatures and empty suits, while the Democrats fielded a gaggle of dissembling senators. Although Barack ......
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It went pretty much like this:...
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Tomorrow morning I'll head out on my first solo road trip in five years. I'm heading to Minneapolis, eager to document the clash of ideologies outside the rich white dude convention. I learned a bit about underhanded police tactics four years ago and hope to avoid whatever tricks the St.Paul PD have ready to unleash. Good night, and huzzah....
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THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS ISN'T EVEN OVER YET, BUT I WANT TO SMASH MY TV.     This is the most divisive speech I've heard in a long time.  No wonder I usually tune this crap out.      ...
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This is a real message that was forwarded to me. From: xxxxxxx@xxxx.com Date: Aug 7, 2007 6:50 AM Subject: Fwd: Fw: Disturbing Information????????????? lets vote thm out they take starting jobs and are getting our ssi benefits if they want to benefit from citizen ship then let them become americans like u and every immagrant that came to america learned english my daughter volunteers her time to teach english to immagrants now this is america the offcial language should be ......
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What are the qualities of a successful progressive movement or leader? Last week I sent this video of a Henry Rollins rant to Albert, the resident conservative at work. He asked if Rollins was the "liberal Michael Savage," and I think that perhaps his style is similar. And yet, I don't think he's worth listening to, even if I do often agree with what he says. I started thinking about why Rollins doesn't resonate with me, which lead me to ......
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Your editorial from Sunday, June 17th ("Debate, votes are part of democracy") demonstrated a fundamental and dangerous misunderstanding of our Constitution. You wrote, "rights are codified in constitutions and their amendments, all of which are voted into existence by the people or their elected representatives". The Constitution does not codify any rights -- the rights we enjoy are inalienable and implied to exist unless explicitly denied by the government. Even though our system of government is a representative democracy, the ......
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Here's the story of our Troops Out Now protest experience:...
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The plan for Saturday is to wake up super early, board a bus in Roxbury at 5:00am, and head to the (hopefully large) protests in New York. It could be exciting. I just hope I don't lose my buddy somewhere. (At the RNC, it wasn't a big deal if I got lost or arrested because I was alone.) Coincidentally, I just got a message from my friendly lawyer in New York telling me that I have a hearing scheduled for ......
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A Lawrence DPW plow driver was arrested earlier this evening on Congress St. for possession of marijuana. While driving up the one-way road, he hit a car driving down the street. When asked if he had any marijuana or alcohol in the truck, the driver said, "I hope not!" An officer told me the worker had been with the city for 27 years. It's good to know that the snow removal budget is being wisely spent....
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My broham pointed me to an article about Dean's stumbling campaign. What I found more interesting was an article linked from it entitled, Exiting Deanspace by Clay Shirky. Although I disagree with some of his theses (read the comments on his entry), there are a couple observations that I think are worth looking at. Prior to MeetUp, getting 300 people to turn out would have meant a huge and latent population of Dean supporters, but because MeetUp makes it easier ......
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