Yeah!

Brazen Hussy is back. Boy that was the longest week ever.

Sorry I haven't been posting the last couple of days. Been a bit blogged out and grumpy. But suddenly my mood is completely transformed. Funny that.

In the world of news & bloggery, there I are two things I want to point out. The first is this post by Lauren, in which she discusses how her kid was forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I have to say that I find this pretty appalling. I know that it's important to inculcate patriotism, but aren't there better ways to inculcate patriotism that coercion? We really shouldn't "force people to be free."

Oh, and by the way, the "under God" portion of the pledge was added in the 1950's as a sideways smack to Communism.

The second tidbit I want to talk about is the Republican's excellent voter mobilization capacity. I have to tell you, this is the major reason I am worried about the mid-term elections in November. Other than money itself, there is nothing more important than good voter lists. If you know who you're voters are, you can efficiently contact them and get them to the polls. If you don't, then you're going to waste a ton of effort with people who aren't going to vote for you anyway. The GOP has very good voter lists, and the Democrats have really really crappy ones. I speak from personal experience. When I was making phone calls for Kerry in 2004 to Ohio and Wisconsin, at least half of the numbers I called had either moved or weren't Democrats.

These bad lists mean that the Democrats, the party with fewer resources in the first place, also spends them inefficiently. It's just crazy. Until we fix the problem, all the narrative in the world isn't going to help us.