The Escapist

Austin’s newpaper, the Statesman, has recently made a big push towards internet content. And that’s good with the state of the industry currently.

Here’s a story on one of their blogs that caught my eye today:

The City of Austin is looking at a $30 million budget gap next year, city budget staffers told the City Council at a work session this morning.

That gap in revenue assumes that the City Council will adopt the rollback property tax rate, which is the highest rate the city can charge without requiring voter permission. It also assumes that the hiring freezes and other cuts the city has already made will stay in place.

Isn’t that wonderful? $30 million in the hole for the year DESPITE raising taxes and freezing salaries and new hires. Awesome.

Austin has been doing comparatively well in this “downturn” so far, we had SXSW to help with March revenue, but even that wasn’t enough to dig the city out of it’s financial hole.

It’s probably just going to get worse, too. Isn’t that a cheerful thought? Read the comments on that link. The local nutjobs always make a good showing on these sorts of blog posts.

On the first Tuesday, after the first Monday, of the month of November, four years ago, I made a blog post.

The post contained one word. The word was “fuck.” And I repeated that word six hundred and sixty five times. Because, while Bush isn’t the Anti-Christ, he probably lives across the street from him.

And now tonight, after watching Barak Obama become our country’s President-Elect, I keep catching myself smiling slightly. We finally corrected our nation’s fuck-up from eight years ago.

I think I’ll just sit here quietly and polish off this bottle of Johnny Walker.

Goodnight, children.

I voted two weeks ago; I’m done.

But I’ve been compulsively checking news sites since midnight last night, terrified that I might miss some vital piece of information that I can then… do absolutely nothing with.

Fuck.

Every damn time. My brain meats begin swirling out of control some time on the first Monday of November every other year. It’s a sickness. But I’ve learned how to control it. I need enough caffiene to make me feel normal (“Normal” is a relative term given how horribly I abuse caffiene. I normally drink 2-3 pots of coffee a day. My kidneys will need to be replaced again in about a year at this rate. I suppose I should start checking around for cheap tickets to Tijuana again), and enough booze to keep me from climbing the walls with every announcement that a race can be called for a Republican.

This Saturday morning, Lisa and I went to the county’s Early Voting location and cast our ballots.

We took books to read and only had to wait about an hour before we got to vote. For a weekend morning, it seemed packed. I shudder to think about how it will be on Election Day. I foolishly didn’t vote early during Texas’ Primary and I was stuck waiting in line for close to three hours. For the primary, the lines were split up; right line for Republicans, left line for Democrats. Texas holds both party’s primary election on the same day in the same locations; just two roped of sections. If turn out is as high on Election Day as is was for that primary; those two lines will just be one huge line snaking its way out into the parking lot and end up being 4-5 hours of Suck.

So vote early, damn it! It’s easier than voting on the day. Early voting has a couple of locations per county instead of trying to remember where your precinct’s voting location is.

Find your Early Voting location in Texas

You can Early Vote through Oct. 31, from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.

Seriously, I think I’m getting sick and I’m blaming the Republican Party.

I’ve been paying an obsesive amount of attention to this year’s campaigns like a good little political-junkie, and lately the Republican town hall meetings have been giving me the heebie-jeebies.

McCain, apparently reacting drasticly to news that no one likes him, has switched his campaign to negative attacks against Obama. We have a financial crisis unlike anything seen in the country since the 30s as well as two on going wars, but McCain feels it’s more important to tell the American voters than they shouldn’t vote for Obama because he didn’t spit in a 60s-terrorist’s face upon meeting him.

But whatever. I can dig it. The Republicans have held the majority of power in the three branches of government for most of the last eight years. They don’t have a record of success to run on, and Bush has been quietly shoved in a corner for the last few months.

What I can’t stomach is how these town hall meetings that McCain and Palin are holding are looking more and more like the Nuremberg Rallies.

Here’s a bit from CNN’s Political Ticker today:

“When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them,” one man told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Even the Washington Post is starting to notice how vile it’s gotten:

“I can’t stand to look at him, I don’t trust him. I don’t like the circle of friends he keeps, I don’t like his policies,” Schmitz said of Obama. “I’m pissed off by it. I’m beyond mad. How is he climbing up in the polls?”

Moderate Republican Rep. Ray LaHood even spoke out against this bullshit:

When Barack Obama’s name has been mentioned by Sarah Palin, there are shouts of “terrorist,” and LaHood says Palin should put a stop to it.

“Look it,” LaHood said. ”This doesn’t befit the office that she’s running for. And frankly, people don’t like it.”

Watching video of these hate-mongers is giving me an ulcer.

The McCain-Palin Mob