On Election Night, I’m setting up an open chat board for anyone who wants to kibbitz, cry, rejoice, and in general get snarky.

If you’d like to jump in, I’ll open it up at 7pm EST in Boston. Go to irc.freenode.net and join #joho. (If you don’t have a chat client, I’ve been enjoying the Open Source HydraIRC, although the fact that its main site has been down for a few days concerns me.)

See you then.

NOTE: The mood on the board will be heavily pro-Kerry. And bad language is allowed, so please protect the innocent and naive. Thank you.

Liz has a chat planned also. Go to irc://irc.freenode.net/#ritparty. (This should work if you use Mozilla. Otherwise, manually start up your IRC client.)

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This Wednesay, I’m leading another session in the “Web of Ideas” series at the Harvard Berkman house (= Baker House). The topic is something like: Has the Net made a difference in politics? Will it? How can it? And possibly: Oh, crap! Crap! Crap! (But we hope: Yaaaaay!)

It starts at 6, goes to 7:15 and yes, pizza will be served. Everyone is welcome.

I start off with a 15 min discussion opener. I’m thinking of saying something like this:

It’s clear that the Net has been a great tool for organizing the troops and for fund-raising. And we get access to all the information we can eat. Beyond that, how has the Net helped democracy? How might it help? Or will it hurt democracy?

I think there are three main ways it’s helping:

First, it’s connecting us to one another. That helps overcome the alienation built into mass democracy, the same alienation built into mass marketing.

Second, it’s getting us used to the sound of our own human voice. There will come a time when spinning seems as off-putting as lying.

Third, it’s putting our democracy in a global context…not fast enough, but it’s happening.

What will a Web-soaked democracy look like in ten years? Twenty years? What can we do now with the Net to foster democracy?

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John Garfunkel flew from Boston to Florida (on his own dime) to help get out the vote. Here‘s his ground-level account. Snippet:

I ask three questions in succession: Do you know when you’re voting? Where you’re voting? And do you know you’re voting for? … Maybe a couple people out of a hundred we’ve encountered are new to their neighborhoods and need a refresher on this. And a little more than that tell me they’re still undecided. I ask if they’re leaning one way or another, and whether there’s any issues that can help them sort things out. I have “literature” in my hand, which is “literature” in the sense that the Fox News is “journalism”…

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I’ve not made any bones about it: This campaign has left me beaten down and depressed. Am I the only one?

So, here’s my tonic. It comes in two parts: Part 1: Get out the vote. Part 2: Get out and vote.

If we get out the vote, we win. We could even win big.

And while democracy does not consist merely of pulling a lever in a voting booth, pulling that lever is so important that people have died to give us that right. That’s what I remember every time I vote, and this will not be the first time I get choked up in a voting booth.

I’m depressed so I spend more time thinking about how bad it’s going to be if Bush wins. But occasionally I am granted a moment of thinking how good four – eight! – years of Kerry can be. I believe we will see a type of strong leadership – principled, realistic and unmarred by meanness – that this country has not seen in a generation.

I gotta go call some strangers…

You can, too. Kerry supporters can sign up here to call from their houses. Bush supporters can go google it on their own; I’m not that much of a liberal.

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1. When the network newscasters announce who won Florida, what little self-effacing phrase will they use to introduce it? “We’re ready to announce a winner in Florida, and believe me, this time we’ve checked our numbers and counted them twice…”? “We are calling Florida for Bush/Kerry, although with Florida the only thing you can expect is the unexpected…”? What’s it going to be?

2. If one were to serve a house drink on Election Night, what should it be?

a. Suggest existing appropriate drinks for Bush supporters and for Kerry supporters.

b. Create your own drink and describe what’s in it. E.g., for pessimistic Kerry supporters, you might suggest the Bush Oblivion (“take three a day for the next four years”) . Or, Kerry supporters might drink Iraq Invasions: Mix together wild turkey and WMDs; if no WMDs can be found, substitute zero-proof beer. Bush supporters might prefer the Shock and Awe.

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If you haven’t read Hunter S. Thompson’s surprisingly enthusiastic endorsement of Kerry, drop a tab and go on over to Rolling Stone…

Fittingly, I got to this through John Perry Barlow’s inspired rational madness: How to Overthrow the Government.

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The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war suggests that at least 100,000 civilians have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003.

More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, researchers say.

This is a newspaper’s summary of a study in the prestigious UK medical journal, The Lancet.

From the article itself:

The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8·1-419) than in the period before the war.

…Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths.

Is this proof that we should not have started this war? Of course not. But it should keep us from ever thinking that war is an easy answer to a hard question.

(You can read the whole article here. It requires a free registration.)

Fuck it. You know, I try to be reasonable. But it’s hard to maintain the cool stoniness of reason when you’re surrounded by a 100,000 corpses — women and children and men — even if your country is directly responsible “only” for most of them.

We have an administration that uses this war to win an election, yet it forbids us from seeing photographs of our honored dead. Then it crows that the Democrats will lose because we’re “reality-based.” A hundred thousand corpses around us is a lot of reality to ignore. Reality is going to catch up with us, and it iis going to hurt 100,000 times more when it does.

What have we become?

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Terry Heaton blogs an interview with Anniesj who got a friendly visit from the Secret Service after she blogged — irked by Bush’s talk of prayer — that she was praying that God would inspire Bush and his pals to commit mass suicide. Anniesj seems to think she’s actually done something worth being investigated for. Terry concludes:

…if you’re a blogger, for crying out loud be careful about what you post, even in the comments section of somebody else’s blog. The first amendment is not absolute, and it’s pretty easy to find you.

I conclude that when the Secret Service can tell you what you are and are not allowed to pray for — especially when you’re writing satire — this country has had it.

I personally pray the Rapture comes before Nov. 2 and that it takes Bush and his cronies to Hell to do some nation-building.

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Mithras at Kos proves that the Bush campaign’s latest ad doctors a small crowd into a large one.

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ProgressiveMajoritySpeaks has posted a mp3 mix of Martin Luther King, Robert LafFolette and Paul Wellstone. Loop it and listen for the next 4 years…

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