What follows is a public service announcement from Bloggin' for Democracy, a coalition of musicbloggers that coalesced recently to attempt to turn some of the energy and readership we have here around into getting asses into voting booths. If you'd like to join in, just copy this post and toss it up on your own blog, website, messageboard, whatever. If you want the text all handily precoded for you, just email me.



Hey!! Stop what you're doing! You're not going to find that Arcade Fire live bootleg today, you're not going to stumble across the b-side to "Hand In Glove", and you're not going to find the unreleased Pixies album. What you need to do is get ready to vote in the most important election of our lives.

Find your polling place and prepare to vote. Tell your friends to vote, tell your enemies for that matter. But just vote. If you are not a U.S. citizen than please call or email all your American friends and make sure they plan on voting. Participation by all is crucial.

What follows are a bunch of links. Some are funny. Some are helpful. Some are to crappy official websites for really good people. Some are for crappy official websites fo really bad people. I'm not going to tell you not to vote if I disagree with you. I'm going to tell you to go and campaign for your own guy because thats what Democracy is about. So even he gets a link.

Internet Vets for Truth - Comprehensive site containing all those MP3's and Videos and Memes that have been spreading for months. A fantastic piece of work, with a staggering pipe of bandwidth.
MusicForAmerica.org
Moveon.com
RockTheVote.com
John Kerry
DeclareYourself
MyPollingPlace.com - find out where to go to vote!

A PSA from Chris Stamey w/Yo La Tengo
Get Out And Vote On Novemeber 2nd. Political Blogging Will continue through the weekend, with a bunch of shorter posts full of songs and videos and other things that people should be seeing and hearing before 11/2. On November 3rd, regular blogging will resume.

Thanks,

Bloggin' For Democracy, TTIKTDA, and everyone else whose involved.

(Via Teaching The Indie Kids to Dance Again.)

Cross-posted to the EchoDitto blog.

FYI - My old buddies at People For the American Way Foundation have launched a cool new website to help locate your polling place.

Bookmark mypollingplace.com now so you can use it on Election Day to know where to vote.

No more. We don't need any more. No more.

By us.

Lowe shuts 'em down for 6. Ortiz and Manny combine for 5 doubles and 4 RBI. Foulke ends it on a called third strike. 4-2 Sox.

Sounds about right. One more. Just one more. By us.

I realized today that there really is a Curse of the Bambino. Now this might come as a surprise to friends who know me as the guy who never gives up and always believes no matter what.

But think about it. What else can explain three straight losses to the Yankees? 8 errors in 2 World Series games? A season-ending injury to our best pitcher?

There's only one problem. The curse didn't count on our sheer force of will. Think about it. It didn't count on Big Papi clubbing two straight game-winning hits. It didn't count on Bill Mueller countering 3 errors with 3 web gems. It didn't count on Curt Schilling simply willing himself to compete.

Two more. Why not us?

One big inning was all it took for the Boston nine to defeat the Cardinals in Xbox Game Before the Game Prediction Game action today. Manny Ramirez's 3-run homer - the first of two - capped an 8-run third inning that proved to be more than enough for Pedro Martinez, who pitched six strong innings, giving up 3 runs.

We can obviously expect the outcome of this game to closely parallel Game 3 tomorrow.

Much has been written about Bill Meuller's three errors last night in Game 2 of the World Series. Much less has been written about the three equally brilliant plays he made to end innings last night:

• To end the first, Mueller snared a hard-hit line drive off the bat of Scott Rolen that otherwise would have plated Albert Pujols with the game's first run.

• To end the second, Mueller turned two on a Mike Matheny line drive, hanging on to the ball after tagging out Reggie Sanders in a monster collision.

• To end the sixth, Mueller made a solid play forcing Rolen at third on a ball hit hard by Sanders, atoning for an error earlier in the inning.

That's three great plays, all saving runs. Read all you want about how Mueller made three errors. Just don't forget that he's also the reason Schilling was able to pitch 6 innings and give up no earned runs. But that's a whole 'nuther blog post.

Mark Bellhorn had this to say after ripping a 2-run game-winning home run in the 8th inning:

I'm not here to be a hero. I'm just here to win four games.

After spending an hour meticulously recreating the complete rosters for both teams - including all the random rookies playing for the cardinals who I had to create from scratch - the Boston Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 5-4 tonight on my Xbox in Game Before The Game Prediction Game action.

David Ortiz's 3-run bomb in the third was the big blow. The Cardinals mounted a bit of a rally by scoring in both the 7th and 8th innings, but the bullpen trio of Mike Timlin, Alan Embree, and Keith Foulke combined for 2 scoreless innings to complete the victory.

EchoDitto's friends at No Iraq Draft have launched a great petition demanding Bush confront directly whether we will need a draft to support his empirical military escapades all over the globe.

To: President Bush From: The Men and Women of America

I believe in fighting for democracy and freedom everywhere in the world. I am willing to sacrifice when the cause is just and the strategy is strong. But I don't want anyone to be forced to die for a terrible, unplanned war.

President Bush, you say there will be no draft. Why should I trust you?

The best part, when you sign the petition, the software tracks your "degree of separation" from the original signers and maps the viral growth of the petition across the country. It's one of the coolest activism tools I've ever seen.

From today's Boston Globe:

Last night, just 1 1/2 hours before game time, Schilling threw lightly in the outfield under the watchful eye of assistant trainer Chris Correnti. Schilling was not testing his ankle for potential future World Series endeavors; he was trying to make a case for himself as an available weapon last night, even if it was to pitch to only one or two batters. Schilling lobbied both manager Terry Francona and Epstein to consider him, but his entreaties fell on deaf ears.

"There's no game tomorrow," said Schilling. "It's all about right now. It can be done. I could do it."

I mean, seriously? Are you kidding? Did you forget that they've sutured your skin to the bone to keep a tendon in place? This man has rocks the size of supernovas. He is the alpha and the omega of all rocks. Unreal.

Sox 10. Yanks 3.

Take that, Jeter!

What an incredible accomplishment. That's about all I have left to say. I've been hoping against hope for a week. I've been forgoing sleep and regular exercise. My nerves are absolutely frayed and I've been on the verge of tears for two straight days.

Now, that we've done it, I can barely feel anything. I've left it all on the field. Tonight, I can only go to bed happy and have the sweetest dreams imaginable. Tomorrow, however, will be a blast.

But there's one very important thing to remember:

We just got four the hard way. We still need four more.

See you Saturday.

So apparently the blood visible on Schilling's sock last night wasn't from the shots he was receiving at all.

In fact, it was LEAKING FROM HIS SURGERY the day before. Yeah, get this. Apparently, in an effort to prevent Schilling's injured tendon from popping in and out during the game, they sutured it to a spare piece of skin that somehow held it in place. Oh, did I mention that they sutured it IN THE DISLOCATED POSITION.

Also - IT WAS LEAKING BLOOD 24 HOURS LATER!

And - apparently - if the Sox make the World Series, they plan on doing it again next week.

I mean, I had surgery a few weeks ago. You're lucky if you can walk afterwards. This guy went out and struck out 4 Yankees on his way to the biggest victory in baseball history. (I'm sticking with that, I think. Seriously - what was bigger?)

Unbelievable. Simply Unbelievable.

One in a row. By us.

I am absolutely astonished at what I just saw.

Curt Schilling went out there with an exploded ankle and pitched seven masterful innings. Francona says he was tiring after the fourth inning but I think you'll have a tough time convincing The Other Smug Asshole of that. This is an absolutely gigantic display of guts, courage, and gonads with their own gravitational pull.

A bend-but-don't-break inning by Arroyo (sporting a Dimitri-style doo-rag) was almost ruined by A-Rod cheating, but the umpires had a conference and got it right. Foulke was running on fumes in the ninth, but they were 90 mph fastball and 75 mph changeup fumes. A tense strikeout of Tiger castoff Tony Clark put it away.

Bellhorn's three-run dinger in the fourth was the difference, but this night belonged to Schilling. I am floored at the courage and the toughness he displayed. Floored.

Game 7. Wednesday. 8pm.

Yesterday doesn't matter. Today is all that counts.

We need one more. By us.

Everything was leading to Ortiz's game-winning homer in the 12th, which answered a 29-year question for me, "I wonder what it would have been like to see the Fisk home run in person?"

Bill Simmons tells us.

We need two in a row. By us.

Eric Neel absolutely nails it when he talks about why Red Sox Nation doesn't want anyone but Schilling out there tonight to get us started:

So you're Curt Schilling, and you've got all this swirling around inside your head tonight as you toe the rubber, work through your warmup pitches, and stare up into the thousands of screaming Yankee faces.

You're part indomitable spirit and part nerves that jingle, jangle, jingle; part seasoned champion, part new kid on the block.

And the beauty of it is, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else, and the Nation wouldn't rather have anyone else out there.

Imagine that.

Game on

1. Derek Jeter is now known as "The Other Smug Asshole."
2. Tim Wakefield has nuts the size of Manhattan.
3. David Ortiz actually needs to hire a 30-inch-tall Dominican midget to haul around his nuts they're so big.
4. Today doesn't matter. Tomorrow's all that counts. We need two more.

...he just keeps hitting home runs.

I've had a mantra going all day: "Four in a row." Tracy is quick to add "By us." Reminding me that the Baseball Gods are all too eager to bounce the Sox on a technicality.

After today's breathtaking homerun in the bottom of the twelfth, however, I have a new mantra:

Three in a row. By us.

In today's Post , Dana Milbank reports the same thing I said a week ago.

Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Bush had gone "over the top" in making Kerry seem ridiculous.

"It was a case of taking a caricature to such an extent and not realizing the caricature could be disassembled by the candidate himself in the debates," he said. "You would have expected a hybrid of Jane Fonda and Ted Kennedy would walk on stage. . . . People expected to see a left-wing, beaded radical."

Instead, viewers saw a Kerry who, if not dazzling and likable, was generally coherent and at times even forceful. And voters seemed pleasantly surprised. In the Washington Post tracking poll, the number of respondents viewing Kerry favorably jumped 12 percentage points between early September and this week; voters by 48 percent to 43 percent now view Kerry favorably, putting him in the same area as Bush, who is viewed favorably by 49 percent and unfavorably by 46 percent.

Ahem...told you so!

You know, sometimes, Mr. President, words have more than one meaning. I know that learning all those meanings is "hard work" but it might make you seem like less of a moron.

I'll defer to Saletan:

The test, as Kerry defined it, had two parts. First, it was a test of evidence, not moral opinion. Second, since evidence is a universal standard, Americans were among the people administering the test. In other words, the test was simply the measurement of the president's and vice president's assertions—about weapons of mass destruction, for example, or about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida—against reality.

Bush rejected this test. "The president's job is not to take an international poll," he said at the time. "Our national security decisions will be made in the Oval Office, not in foreign capitals." By reserving all decisions for the Oval Office—not for the American public—and by dismissing demands for evidence as an "international poll," Bush was refusing to measure his claims and decisions against the truth. Or so I argued.

I don't have to argue the point anymore, because last night, Bush confirmed it. Here's what he said at a rally in Oregon, according to a White House transcript:

Once again, last night, with a straight face, the senator said—well, shall we say, refined his answer on his proposed global test. That's the test he would administer before defending America. After trying to say it really wasn't a test at all, last night he once again defended his approach, saying, I think it makes sense. (Laughter.) The senator now says we'd have to pass some international truth standard. The truth is we should never turn America's national security decisions over to international bodies or leaders of other countries. (Applause.)

You heard that right. The president explicitly refuses "to pass some international truth standard." Because evidence is the fundamental test applied in France as well as in the United States, Bush thinks he shouldn't have to back up his claims or decisions with evidence.

He couldn't really be saying that, could he?

Why? Because he just got Bruce Springsteen to join REM on-stage for "Man on the Moon" and I got to watch. I mean, Jesus.

Also, James Taylor has an important message for undecided voters:

Look carefully at both candidates. Then pick the smart one.

Well said.

Easy. George Bush made a huge mistake in ignoring Osama bin Laden and the war on terror to take a field trip to Iraq. George Bush simply cannot fix his mistake. Now we need John Kerry to step in and clean up Bush's mess.

He just keeps hitting home runs. Kerry knocked it out of the park tonight. Total victory. I mean, the Democrat even had a good answer for abortion. That's how good we are tonight.

One original thought I think I can add to the spin cycle:

One reason Bush has been so miserable in the debates is that the bulk of his arguments boil down to "This Kerry guy is a total moron and in no way qualified to even talk to a President, let alone be one." It's hard to square this with the serious, smart guy we see on the debates. Even if you don't really like Kerry, it's hard to follow Bush when he attacks him for not having a plan for Iraq or the economy. Especially when the Bush says this immediately following Kerry laying out his plan for Iraq and the economy.

Not only is Kerry ready to be a great leader for our country, Bush looks more and more like he's in way over his head.

Cross-posted to my PurpleOcean.org Journal.

I'm lucky I got pegged with Small Business rather than some of the more unseemly corporations like Sodexho or Wackenhut. Still, I know plenty of small business owners struggling to keep afloat in this economy.

Take my friend Shawn, for example. He owns a small business that is doing quite well. He's planning a move to California in the coming weeks and is about as happy as a guy can be. There's only one problem — he's the sole employee of his company and has never been able to offer health insurance to himself. He's just one disaster away from definitely no longer being the happy guy I know.

Making sure there's a safety net there to catch people who stumble is one reason this election is so important.

I couldn't believe it last night when Edwards called Cheney a prick last night on national TV. What's that? You say you missed it? Let me fill you in.

Here's what Edwards said:

[L]et me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

Now, allow me to translate:

Can you believe this guy? Folks, he's got a gay daughter and he's over here spewing this kind of hate. I mean...man...what a prick!

That, my friends is called killing them with kindness and I loved it. Loved it.

Related: I also love today's BAGNews Cartoon. Check it out.

Today in the elevator, I realized that my Sox hat looks pretty silly with sneakers, khakis, polo shirt. But you know what? I'm still glad I'm wearing it.

Go Sox!

FOUR MORE YEARS?
WHAT ARE YOU, NUTS?

Classic.

terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist (via Josh via Tim.)

I can't tell if this is funny or just sad.