Once again, the Kiwis are ahead of the curve, allowing civil unions with the exact same legal benefits as a "marriage." This is pretty good news all around, in particular for some friends I have over there. Hopefully its the sort of thing that will catch on once people realize that it in fact has no negative social impacts whatsoever.

I'm healing. Interestingly, yesterday afternoon I developed a belated shiner, which has persisted today. This is kind of odd, but it's not painful and I figure it's a part of the normal healing process.

Otherwise I'm getting better. My wrist has about a 75% range of motion, and I'm walking in the apartment well enough that I'm going to try go walk downstairs and around the corner a little later. I think it will be one of those psychological markers to cross, like the first time you go out after having a cold.

UPDATE: Made it around the corner. My deli people were very concerned to see me limping, but they knew about "the bumps" already. I'll probably do something to help pressure the DOT about them once I've recovered, so it's good to know the word is spreading.

I'm starting to get a little cabin fever. As the evening set in I was able to I hobble around the apartment with relative ease, so tomorrow I think I'll try and go outside. My hand seems to be getting functional as well. Wrist and elbow are still severly limited, but I typing this now is easier than typing yesterday. Tomorrow I may try and do a little work. I have a lot of email to respond to, and maybe some changes to make to this site. I've been taking the feedback and gestating. Look for something new before my 26th b-day (5/10).

As promised, here's photographic evidence:

He ain't pretty no more...

These are my first stitches, and while they look pretty ugly in truth they're not really the problem. I can't really photograph my groin, and even so there's no real evidence that anything's wrong there, but my left leg is missing half its functionality. Ditto my left elbow, forarm and hand. These injuries are muscular and have been slowly improving over the past 48 hours, but I still can't really walk in the conventional sense, and I can barely lift my water bottle with my left arm. Typing is ok for a few minutes, but quickly I have to go to hunting and pecking with my right as my left fatigues incredibly quickly.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is having a good monday.

Coming down the W-burg bridge yesterday afternoon, the last of those pointless godforsaken bumps took me. There had been just a little rain and the pavement was a bit slick, the last bump put me off balance, there was a little fishtail, and then I went down, started donating blood to the asphalt. It was actually quite a bit worse than the last time I wrecked. Thus endeth the season of riding sans helmet.

Traffic cop at the foot of the bridge helped me up, called an Ambulence. EMTs were a good crew; high spirits. Dr. Miller at Beth Israel was great, giving me 8 or 10 stitches in my firehead, one in the bridge of my nose, and three or four staples in the back of my head. Pictures soon, of course.

Actually, the stitches are not that much of a pain. There were a few woozy moments in the ER, but the real damage is muscular. I righteously pulled out my groin and jammed by elbow, both on the left side. Heading in I could walk and move pretty well. Walking out of the hospital took me a full five minutes gimping along, coming close to out and out crying on the ramp leading to the street. It's a hell of a thing to be totally incapacitated.

Anyway I'm laid up at Wes and Jeremy's and they're being real great about getting me food from the deli. I'm still pretty gimpy, though improving. Will have updates. Thanks to everyone who's called with their well wishes.

Krugman's latest missive on the health care situation: Passing the Buck. It's another tight piece, hits all the important points, but one of the most important bits to me is this:

...private insurers generally don't compete by delivering care at lower cost. Instead, they "compete on the basis of risk selection" - that is, by turning away people who are likely to have high medical bills and by refusing or delaying any payment they can.

PK and I both know the biggest barrier to public health insurance is ideological subservance to "Market Forces." We have to change this equation to allow for a positive role for Public institutions. We also need to be clear about just how the Market does work for Heath Insurance.

Competition in the Health Insurance industry is not over providing the best medical care for the best cost, but rather over who can keep the largest amount of premiums unspent on care. That's what delivers shareholder value: not providing care. The market drives insurers to not insure people who are likely to get sick and to push back against doctors' attempts to provide treatment to patients who are covered. The net result is that billions are spent in a war of paperwork, and the most vulnerable citizens are the most likely to be left out in the cold. The net result is more money spent by everyone, which is also good news from a pure Market perspective.

All of this is bad for people, though. It's time we joined the rest of civilization and started taking care of our sick and injured. Not only is this the right thing to do morally, but it's a boost to business, and will cost the country less overall than the current Insurance Regime.

Here's another email from Madeline, one of my three friends traveling in China. It's unedited. Enjoy.

we just got back to kunming where we will spend the day and tonight get on a 21 hour train to guilin, headed back eastward. we have just returned from the city lijiang, pretty far southwest near the border of tibet. we got there by overnight bus which was like no other travel. we were bunked into this bus with about 20 other people squeezed in going over rocky, precarious terrain, we broke down in the middle of nowhere, there was a man hacking up a lung in front of me, oh how it sucks to be a non smoker in china in situations like those, i think it's worse. but we managed to get there in one piece, and it was worth the trip.

we stayed in the old town of the city where there are cobbled streets, canals, and bridges,and the beautiful snow capped peak of yulong xueshan towering above. it was like a little paradise walking in there after our bus arrived. actually the ride in was stunning as well. i am constantly amazed at the beauty of this country.

we walked the dusty streets and found a little cafe. we ordered food. when it came it was a disaster. the fruit salad was coated in mayonnaise, the toast was more butter than bread, and the noodles were drowning in oil. luckily,the rest of our time was better than the food (later we also trid a tofu dish that had a sauce so gelatinous it was vile).we wiled the night away playing guitar and singing, while amanda talked polotics with a hungarian man we met who studied chinese at the u of o, and we drank bottle after bottle of wine.

the second day we rented bikes to go out to smaller villiages. we went to black dragon pool park and saw the "most obligatory photo shoot in sw china." amanda had many chinese tourists take photos with her. it was very odd. i found the trip to be too dusty going out of town and couldn't breathe. i think my body is still struggling from the cold i got and this lingering cough. so i returned to old town. later in the day i was alone and writing in my journal and a few times found myself suddenly with an arm around my shoulder, a smiling asian at my side and a camara in my face. again, very odd. the town was a lovely oasis from smog and city, and our return bus trip was much more posh (the ticket lady made sure we got the best one).

so now we are back in kunming in a cheap hotel room to shower and relax before getting on the train tonight. we are all well, getting tanner by the day, we have had fabulous meals the last two in lijiang (we ordered a whole fish in chili sauce which was delicious) and despite one very bad hangover (amanda) and a little peanut allergy (me) we are doing well and having fun together.

Sounds like great experience.

Kos points me to a timely reminder by Steve Gilliard as to what's been going on in Iraq. It's mostly out of the news as far as I can tell, but not really going well either.

If you want a strategic position, I think the big crunch comes when the insugency figures out how to take down our C-130s, meaning they get someone to sell and train them with portable SAM systems and start working in teams of two or three.

Hopefully we'll be able to get out before then, but with the neo-con plans for a permanent footprint, I'm not counting on it.

(Big Post; I Spell-Checked It And Everything)

Question. Is it a cop-out to believe in "the children," to think that a generation yet to be born has the answers to the world's problems? Yes and no.

In one sense, that this can be a transfer of power, a way of rationalizing away personal responsibility, it's clearly bogus. You can't wait on the kids to solve your problems; believing in them is no excuse for being inactive yourself.

On the other hand, the great ends of humanity are essentially multi-generational. Justice, shared prosperity, a totality of lives well-lived, these are things that span centuries in their scope, that are in some ways infinite. So on the level that you're willing to think big and take it seriously, it's quite a heavy thing to really believe in the potential children. It is an implicit call to action. Prepare the way!

I believe in our generation. My generation. What's that? Well, I believe that I and a minority of my peers in the 24 - 34 year old age range are on the leading edge of the post-gen-X birth wave that peaked in 1990, meaning it's crest is coming due to adulthood in 2008. We are chronologically closer to gen-x, but culturally closer to what is coming next. We are the forerunners.

It's important to realize that while the push for civil rights and gender equality were resounding steps forward for our country, everything else in the 60s largely failed. Rock n' Roll was thoroughly co-opted, permanently loosing a great portion of its mojo by being associated with selling things to adolescents. None of the really radical political or cultural stuff actually took off, though some of it took root. The sexual revolution begat porn, but this is really nothing new in terms of civilization, or even American culture.

By contrast, the Right-Wing things that weathered the 60s have grown up to become Wal*Mart, Big Oil and the Modern Republican Party and $3B associated network. In real terms, this is largely why they've been winning: their boomers are by in large more powerful and connected compared to ours.

But our time will be different. We have a powerful economic and cultural token with our embracing of Open Source. We are not seeking to construct an underground fantasy world, but rather a public utopia. This is a stronger endeavor. It is more bold and yet more achievable. Lots more to say about that down the line.

Otherwise it's been tough. I'm worn out from work NYC lifestyle, kind of lonely, and there are ominous rumblings around the status of the road trip. On the plus side I've been making some Art with Frank, and my straight-up physical condition is improving week by week.

Another bright point is that I'm reading Hunter's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and loving it of course. I never read it before, if you can believe that. Another formative piece I was missing all along. Read on for my thoughts half-way through. Another 1,200 words.

Looking back, the parallels in terms of electoral dynamics between Dean and McGovern are clear, as are those between Kerry and Muskie. The anointed frontrunner was Big Ed Muskie, the Man from Maine. George McGovern was a dark horse from South Dakota -- a political nowhere -- who was running on a staunch anti-war platform and driven by a grassroots campaign of young professionals. On the far left was Gene McCarthy, a reasonable analogue for Kucinich. In the rest of the mishmash you can see faint parallels between Hube and Gephardt/Lieberman, Andrews and Edwards.

There are no real analogues for Clark. And such a political animal as George Wallace -- a right wing populist Democrat, former governor of Alabama and recent staunch opponent of de-segregation -- has no modern day equivalent, though you can see elements of his appeal in Bush/Cheney '04. The point though is that the lines between McGovern and Dean and Kerry and Muskie are strong, and the really interesting thing here is that in '72 the dark horse broke through, and was immediately stomped by Nixon. Comparatively, in '04 the Anointed Candidate (with most of the same problems as Muskie) prevailed thanks to a stupendously superior use of media.

This says something about the evolving relationship between the media and politics 1972 vs 20004.

It also totally destroys the common observation that a Dean nomination would have been just like a McGovern nomination when he went national; a prison-block stomping. In fact, a close examination begs speculation as to what Dean might really have done against Bush.

McGovern was stomped, yes, but not because he was a grassroots/outsider who was against the war. George went up against Nixon exhausted, broke and with no-one backing him. The AFL-CIO and many regional heavyweights essentially sat the election out. For a comparison as to what this would have meant in our modern times, imagine Kerry/Edwards '04 with no ACT or DFA of Internet Millions to draw on. That would have been a slaughter too.

There are two main things which I believe would have favored a national Dean candidacy which Kerry did not capitalize on:

1) The advent of Open Source and the internet, which would have really gone into a higher-order effect if he were actually the candidate. Kerry used what Dean's style of campaign created as a beachhead, but didn't extend the territory much. Joe Trippi would have had to have been replaced as campaign manager (a fact which even he acknowledges), but if his campaign were truly allowed to flourish, it would have been much more advanced than what we eventually ended up building.

2) The lack of an existing class of political burnouts. In effect, Dean would have been able to draw on the young professionals who drove McGovern, as well as the true radicals who got "Clean For Gene" (McGovern) in 1968 and forced Lyndon Johnson out of the race before getting stomped by the Hube/Daily Axis in Chicago, and thus pretty much lost as a source of energy for the square world.

The major Dean liabilities were conventional media illiteracy and organizational issues at the HQ level. Had he weathered the primaries -- which might have come down to having CNN not replay a 30-second sound clip 600 times in a 24 hour span -- these are problems that could have been solved.

You have to realize is that if Dean had won, he would have had establishment backing just as much as Kerry. ACT was going to happen. MoveOn was going to happen. MFA was going to happen, and the Democratic Party was going to fight for its political life no matter what. Unlike McGovern, Dean was going to lead a united party.

Did you know they were planning to have 200,000 people come to the convention!? Really take over the whole city and make it a grassroots networking bazaar rather than a cold bunch of vip-list cocktail parties and meaningless pap for TV... that shit would have been tight! It's a bit of fantastic indulgence, yeah, but when I think back on what might have been, it still gets me high.

Bush is much worse than Nixon -- a fact which Hunter wryly brought up on numerous occasions -- but there are electoral parallels there as well. Both faced sagging popularity in the midst of a festering war. Both aligned with cultural conservatives and big business. Both were willing to fight dirty.

On this count, Nixon went beyond Bush/Rove to a great degree. For instance, in 1972, Nixon's hatchet men actually burglarized people to steal secret documents. First they stole private medical records which they used to reveal that McGovern's running mate had received electro-shock therapy for depression. Then they stole the Democratic strategy guide from their Watergate offices, the crime (as opposed to, say, the carpet-bombing of cambodia) for which the whole house of cards would eventually tumble.

This is the other thing to realize about '72 vs '04; not only was McGovern left out to dry by the Democratic establishment, he was hit right off the mark with leaked press reports that his VP was insane. While Bush's message guys are absolutely brutal, medical reports proving your Veep is nuts is a damn sight more damaging to a campaign than an ad campaign attacking your service in Vietnam (e.g. the Swift Boat Veterans For (un)Truth).

Bush is much worse than Nixon, and looking back I think with Dean we could have beaten him. I believe Howard was a better candidate, personal weaknesses and all. I think primary-voting Democrats (urged on by talking heads, no doubt) cared more about his willingness to commit gaffes than the voters eventually would have. Bush screws up his speeches all the time, but you know what he means. This is something that people who are honestly engaging in the political process -- a.k.a. "trying to decide who to vote for" -- respond to, often positively. Our side needs to take to hart that our malapropos-happy present hasn't suffered a whit for his lack of silver tongue. He has a strong gut-level message and (usually) appears confident and unafraid. Kerry had a wishy-washy message and often appeared rambling, desperate, or orange.

Which is not to deny Kerry his due. I pushed for the man, and I believe he did the best he could. We all did, under the circumstances. It was close, but just wasn't enough.

I don't know where the Poltix train is running. I'm keeping semi-warm with leftovers and good-guy civic engagement, waiting for the road trip to clear the decks. The future says New York in the fall. Luke will be here, and so will work and I'll be pretty near dead broke when all's said and done.

I don't know what's coming next. The kids are still coming. If we hold the previous pattern on turnout, there should be between 8 to 10 million new voters (out of just less than 20 million people turning 18 between 2004 and 2008), and if we hold the line on popularity (let alone increase our edge) they'll break our way 3 to 2. That means a 2 to 3 million vote advantage next time around. That will have an impact.

But that's only if we can get it up. All I've heard any really excited talk about lately is taking out Joe Lieberman in 2006. Still no real idea what the call to arms will be. Will keep searching and let you know.

(Big Post; I Spell-Checked It And Everything)

Question. Is it a cop-out to believe in "the children," to think that a generation yet to be born has the answers to the world's problems? Yes and no.

In one sense, that this can be a transfer of power, a way of rationalizing away personal responsibility, it's clearly bogus. You can't wait on the kids to solve your problems; believing in them is no excuse for being inactive yourself.

On the other hand, the great ends of humanity are essentially multi-generational. Justice, shared prosperity, a totality of lives well-lived, these are things that span centuries in their scope, that are in some ways infinite. So on the level that you're willing to think big and take it seriously, it's quite a heavy thing to really believe in the potential children. It is an implicit call to action. Prepare the way!

I believe in our generation. My generation. What's that? Well, I believe that I and a minority of my peers in the 24 - 34 year old age range are on the leading edge of the post-gen-X birth wave that peaked in 1990, meaning it's crest is coming due to adulthood in 2008. We are chronologically closer to gen-x, but culturally closer to what is coming next. We are the forerunners.

It's important to realize that while the push for civil rights and gender equality were resounding steps forward for our country, everything else in the 60s largely failed. Rock n' Roll was thoroughly co-opted, permanently loosing a great portion of its mojo by being associated with selling things to adolescents. None of the really radical political or cultural stuff actually took off, though some of it took root. The sexual revolution begat porn, but this is really nothing new in terms of civilization, or even American culture.

By contrast, the Right-Wing things that weathered the 60s have grown up to become Wal*Mart, Big Oil and the Modern Republican Party and $3B associated network. In real terms, this is largely why they've been winning: their boomers are by in large more powerful and connected compared to ours.

But our time will be different. We have a powerful economic and cultural token with our embracing of Open Source. We are not seeking to construct an underground fantasy world, but rather a public utopia. This is a stronger endeavor. It is more bold and yet more achievable. Lots more to say about that down the line.

Otherwise it's been tough. I'm worn out from work NYC lifestyle, kind of lonely, and there are ominous rumblings around the status of the road trip. On the plus side I've been making some Art with Frank, and my straight-up physical condition is improving week by week.

Another bright point is that I'm reading Hunter's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and loving it of course. I never read it before, if you can believe that. Another formative piece I was missing all along. Read on for my thoughts half-way through. Another 1,200 words.

Looking back, the parallels in terms of electoral dynamics between Dean and McGovern are clear, as are those between Kerry and Muskie. The anointed frontrunner was Big Ed Muskie, the Man from Maine. George McGovern was a dark horse from South Dakota -- a political nowhere -- who was running on a staunch anti-war platform and driven by a grassroots campaign of young professionals. On the far left was Gene McCarthy, a reasonable analogue for Kucinich. In the rest of the mishmash you can see faint parallels between Hube and Gephardt/Lieberman, Andrews and Edwards.

There are no real analogues for Clark. And such a political animal as George Wallace -- a right wing populist Democrat, former governor of Alabama and recent staunch opponent of de-segregation -- has no modern day equivalent, though you can see elements of his appeal in Bush/Cheney '04. The point though is that the lines between McGovern and Dean and Kerry and Muskie are strong, and the really interesting thing here is that in '72 the dark horse broke through, and was immediately stomped by Nixon. Comparatively, in '04 the Anointed Candidate (with most of the same problems as Muskie) prevailed thanks to a stupendously superior use of media.

This says something about the evolving relationship between the media and politics 1972 vs 20004.

It also totally destroys the common observation that a Dean nomination would have been just like a McGovern nomination when he went national; a prison-block stomping. In fact, a close examination begs speculation as to what Dean might really have done against Bush.

McGovern was stomped, yes, but not because he was a grassroots/outsider who was against the war. George went up against Nixon exhausted, broke and with no-one backing him. The AFL-CIO and many regional heavyweights essentially sat the election out. For a comparison as to what this would have meant in our modern times, imagine Kerry/Edwards '04 with no ACT or DFA of Internet Millions to draw on. That would have been a slaughter too.

There are two main things which I believe would have favored a national Dean candidacy which Kerry did not capitalize on:

1) The advent of Open Source and the internet, which would have really gone into a higher-order effect if he were actually the candidate. Kerry used what Dean's style of campaign created as a beachhead, but didn't extend the territory much. Joe Trippi would have had to have been replaced as campaign manager (a fact which even he acknowledges), but if his campaign were truly allowed to flourish, it would have been much more advanced than what we eventually ended up building.

2) The lack of an existing class of political burnouts. In effect, Dean would have been able to draw on the young professionals who drove McGovern, as well as the true radicals who got "Clean For Gene" (McGovern) in 1968 and forced Lyndon Johnson out of the race before getting stomped by the Hube/Daily Axis in Chicago, and thus pretty much lost as a source of energy for the square world.

The major Dean liabilities were conventional media illiteracy and organizational issues at the HQ level. Had he weathered the primaries -- which might have come down to having CNN not replay a 30-second sound clip 600 times in a 24 hour span -- these are problems that could have been solved.

You have to realize is that if Dean had won, he would have had establishment backing just as much as Kerry. ACT was going to happen. MoveOn was going to happen. MFA was going to happen, and the Democratic Party was going to fight for its political life no matter what. Unlike McGovern, Dean was going to lead a united party.

Did you know they were planning to have 200,000 people come to the convention!? Really take over the whole city and make it a grassroots networking bazaar rather than a cold bunch of vip-list cocktail parties and meaningless pap for TV... that shit would have been tight! It's a bit of fantastic indulgence, yeah, but when I think back on what might have been, it still gets me high.

Bush is much worse than Nixon -- a fact which Hunter wryly brought up on numerous occasions -- but there are electoral parallels there as well. Both faced sagging popularity in the midst of a festering war. Both aligned with cultural conservatives and big business. Both were willing to fight dirty.

On this count, Nixon went beyond Bush/Rove to a great degree. For instance, in 1972, Nixon's hatchet men actually burglarized people to steal secret documents. First they stole private medical records which they used to reveal that McGovern's running mate had received electro-shock therapy for depression. Then they stole the Democratic strategy guide from their Watergate offices, the crime (as opposed to, say, the carpet-bombing of cambodia) for which the whole house of cards would eventually tumble.

This is the other thing to realize about '72 vs '04; not only was McGovern left out to dry by the Democratic establishment, he was hit right off the mark with leaked press reports that his VP was insane. While Bush's message guys are absolutely brutal, medical reports proving your Veep is nuts is a damn sight more damaging to a campaign than an ad campaign attacking your service in Vietnam (e.g. the Swift Boat Veterans For (un)Truth).

Bush is much worse than Nixon, and looking back I think with Dean we could have beaten him. I believe Howard was a better candidate, personal weaknesses and all. I think primary-voting Democrats (urged on by talking heads, no doubt) cared more about his willingness to commit gaffes than the voters eventually would have. Bush screws up his speeches all the time, but you know what he means. This is something that people who are honestly engaging in the political process -- a.k.a. "trying to decide who to vote for" -- respond to, often positively. Our side needs to take to hart that our malapropos-happy present hasn't suffered a whit for his lack of silver tongue. He has a strong gut-level message and (usually) appears confident and unafraid. Kerry had a wishy-washy message and often appeared rambling, desperate, or orange.

Which is not to deny Kerry his due. I pushed for the man, and I believe he did the best he could. We all did, under the circumstances. It was close, but just wasn't enough.

I don't know where the Poltix train is running. I'm keeping semi-warm with leftovers and good-guy civic engagement, waiting for the road trip to clear the decks. The future says New York in the fall. Luke will be here, and so will work and I'll be pretty near dead broke when all's said and done.

I don't know what's coming next. The kids are still coming. If we hold the previous pattern on turnout, there should be between 8 to 10 million new voters (out of just less than 20 million people turning 18 between 2004 and 2008), and if we hold the line on popularity (let alone increase our edge) they'll break our way 3 to 2. That means a 2 to 3 million vote advantage next time around. That will have an impact.

But that's only if we can get it up. All I've heard any really excited talk about lately is taking out Joe Lieberman in 2006. Still no real idea what the call to arms will be. Will keep searching and let you know.