back from the Right and Correct coast Thanksgiving in Seattle was awesome, although the "Blizzard of 2006" messed with my schedule quite a bit and conspired to keep us in the house with our delicious vegan leftovers--which, don't get me wrong, was definitely not a bad thing. I am now back and ready to discover if I will survive the next three weeks and thus be permitted to continue my graduate education. It will be interesting. I am never taking a statistics class again in my life.

In other news, Cuba is insane. Fidel didn't show up to his own birthday party. Chávez is making noise about how a "second mandate" will be unveiled in Havana soon, and the party is currently holding what they're calling a "political event and military review" ending with a big march this Saturday that will result in an "irrefutable expression of the unity of the Communist Party, the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the people." I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I think some crazy shit is about to go down.

Also, Russia is insane. Apart from all the radiation they're finding on the BA jets and around London, now Moscow-based Yegor Gaidar has also fallen "mysteriously" ill. I happen to think he's a) too high-profile and b) not a significant enough threat to risk taking out in such a way, but who am I to assume any sort of political rationality on the part of Russia's current government?  ¶ 10:16 AM

  four weeks left If this evil, evil semester doesn't kill me first, I totally want these for x-mas, please! They are soooo pretty. Of course, there isn't any snow here yet, but I'm sure that won't be the case for long.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that Bush's comment in Hanoi about the chief lesson of the Vietnam war--ie, "We'll succeed unless we quit"--is just totally unbelievable? I mean, what?!! What???!!  ¶ 6:56 AM

  ahahaha Does anyone else think this little job announcement (note the small print at the bottom of the photo):



Is pretty much the funniest goddamn thing you have ever seen? Because I sure do.

Not getting it? Here's a hint...  ¶ 11:29 AM

  muy interesante The latest polling data for the Venezuelan election, which is of course still three weeks away:



This is based on phone data, so it almost certainly undercounts Chávez supporters. Still, that's quite a bump for Rosales. It's going to be one to watch, for sure...  ¶ 11:12 AM

  revolutionary rumblings in Bishkek Where the hell did this come from? All of a sudden, thousands are camping in the streets (again) to demand the resignation of Kyrgystan's president (again), a dude who has only been in power since the so-called "Tulip Revolution" in early 2005. Apparently he isn't pursuing reforms quickly enough for the restless masses. This is totally reminding me of Bolivia a couple of years ago, when Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was swept out of power and replaced by Carlos Mesa, whom Bolivian citizens gave almost exactly the same amount of time to prove himself--a year and a half--before extra-legally sacking him as well.

One of the many definitions of democratic "consolidation," which is an enduring concern for the pointy-headed political science types that I hang out with, is that political contestation and competition can occcur safely within the system without challenging the essential viability of that system. In other words, if you have some kind of political grievance, there's space to air that grievance and demand compensation for it without attacking the legitimacy of the entire state itself. Democratic consolidation is very, very hard. Authoritarian consolidation, on the other hand, is a total piece of cake.  ¶ 9:14 AM

  election spirit Here's a little reminder:



Via El Slog, as usual. And while we're on the subject of elections, it does indeed look like Ortega is winning.  ¶ 7:02 AM

  back from the future...again There's so much other crap going on at the moment--evangelical scandals, international death sentences, that pesky midterm election, etc--that no one seems to have noticed what's happening in Nicaragua. Today is election day there, and it looks like our old friend Daniel Ortega might just be voted back into office. He's tried to come back from the dead before--most recently in 2001--but he's never been this close. How the guy can continue to gain actual electoral support by trotting out pseudo-Marxist platitudes like "poverty is going to disappear in Nicaragua by us loving each other and practicing solidarity" is utterly beyond me, and yet it seems to work, at least in the short-term. I guess the other choices today aren't much better, but Ortega is a pretty known quantity. Very mysterious. He says he's reformed his authoritarian ways; no more midnight disappearances or reeducation camps. I'm not at all convinced that it's worth finding out whether or not that's true, but I suppose it isn't up to me.  ¶ 7:42 AM

  Happy Day of People's Unity What better way to celebrate than with a nice ultra-nationalist demonstration?

God. Poor, poor post-Soviet Russia.  ¶ 8:44 AM

  these people really are truly delusional The pastor of Mars Hill Church on the Haggard scandal:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Via Seattle's only newspaper.  ¶ 7:27 AM

  these people really are truly delusional The pastor of Mars Hill Church on the Haggard scandal:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Via Seattle's only newspaper.  ¶ 6:50 AM

  turnout I think it's sort of funny that I'm reading article after article this week for class about voting behavior, and my own ballot for Tuesday's election has not yet arrived in the mail.

In other news: a cheap ticket to Seattle has been found and secured! Wooooooo! Praise jebus!  ¶ 6:19 AM