Just as I suspected. I've been tuned out of it for a couple of days, because it was too much to handle. But Democracy Now Confirmes my suspicions.

At Least 900 Arrested in Major RNC Protests In New York, nearly 1,000 people were arrested yesterday in widespread protests against the Republican National Convention. The protests were organized by the A31 Action Coalition, a decentralized umbrella group made up of scores of activist organizations and affinity groups. Yesterday's arrests brought the number of arrests over the past five days to over 1500.

The groups participating in yesterday's coordinated actions ranged from the War Resisters League to the Ruckus Society to Code Pink to Direct Action to the San Francisco-based Stop the War.

Near Ground Zero, police preemptively arrested about 200 as they attempted to begin an unpermited peaceful procession to Madison Square Garden.

Yesterday afternoon protesters gathered outside Fox News to conduct a Shut-up-a-thon. Others rallied at the Soethby's auction house to defend the legacy of Johnny Cash. Many more demonstrators conducted unpermited but non-violent direct action protests that crippled the area around Madison Square Garden and delayed some delegates from attending the convention.

And protests continue today. A symbolic unemployment line is being formed to stretch from Wall Street to Madison Square Garden.

None of this is being covered in the mainstream media. Despite the magnitude of it, I don't see a single mention on Google News right now. Instead, the headline from NPR: "Republicans Highlight Compassion, Moderation."

Right. Even as they now have police out, vigorously fighting AGAINST the BASIC first amendment right to FREE SPPECH of the PEACEFUL, NON-VIOLENT protesters.

Is the DOW still sliding steadily downward like it was yesterday? finance.yahoo.com confirms that it is. Since the protesters, as of Sunday night and Monday morning, were right outside their windows on Wall Street (physically) shouting their anger, I would suggest that the financial markets know exactly what is going to happen in November.

Bush will get another term, and the country will have to trudge through "4 More Years" of the destruction, suffering, and mayhem that Bush's followers so desperately crave.

I also predict that he will win the election fairly, and by the rules. Nobody will be able to contest it. Why? Because he has enough states with enough electoral college votes locked up to seal it. The latest influx of republican-minded "tourists" into Colorado clinches it. They will make residence here. They will vote in November. They will overpower the rest of us.

Colorado, I suspect, has already been marked as a Red State, but they're moving a few more voters in just to seal it. That, I believe, is the real reason they are trying so hard to intimitade all the current residents over at my mom's apartment into moving out. The new people haven't moved in quite yet, but they've been looking. They've been getting free food from the apartment management. Meanwhile, for the rest of us who have been there a while, it's going to get harder and harder to live at all. Friction mounts.

They have been spending massive piles of money on promotions for apartments that are already mostly filled with residents. They believe that as things get more congested, the existing residents will probably move out, and I think they're right. Most of the people there now would rather leave that put up with all the inconveniences that are being loaded into place.

I'm tempted to just cut and run for the coast, holding my life with me while I still can. But I'll stick around until at least November, just so I can wrap things up, keep my credit rating good, and make sure my parents understand, and will be OK.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. But let's look at more of the evidence.

Ever since the convention started, the Republicans have put on an aire of ever more arrogant elitism. They completely ignore what the people of New York in the streets around their mostly empty halls are saying. They have no respect for those people -- they don't even think the New York natives are enough to mention as a footnote, except to imply that these people are nothing but a crazy bunch of fools, without genuinely addressing any of the concerns of the electorate.

Why have they now suddenly become so crass? Because they now know they have utterly no hope of winning in the state of New York, or any of its neighbors. So now, those people do not matter at all to them. The votes of lower income Coloradans such as myself do not matter to them either. It's easier for them to just move several independently wealthy republican voters from states they've already locked up, than try to convince me when my mind is made up. George W Bush is the worst President this country has ever had. He got where he is precisely because he is so callous and careless, but in a good-natured, friendly, nice talking sort of way. And that's the part that counts, isn't it?

John Kerry, on the other hand, is not without his own flaws. He went along with Bush a lot, hasn't done a whole lot to dispell many of the myths about himself, and even tries to obscure the most couragous moments of his youth. Those moments did not come when he fought in Vietnam -- indeed, he later admitted that he too had helped participate in the atrocities committed there. The most couragous moment of his life came when he told the country what was really being done with their tax dollars, and their sons. Now he doesn't want us to remember that part either. He has joined the deception squad.

So... where does this leave us? To make an idealistic stand, and vote for some third party candidate with no hope of winning? I have now made my choice.

I support John Kerry for President. This is based on the small chance that he might actually pull it off and beat Bush, Though I have complained a lot about its imperfections, and talked about "dropping out", and made preparations to do so, I've decided that I really like America, and would like to keep it for just a little while longer. The freedoms we have here aren't perfect, but they're something, and many of Gerogre Bush's followers (note that I'm not implicating George Bush himself here) are so hell bent on turning us into a Protestent Witch Hunt Police State that I don't think George Bush would even try to stop them if they tried to burn a fellow U.S. citizen at the stake.

If I wanted to accellerate the fall of civilization, I would go along with some of the arguments of some very persuasive people I met at ASR2004, and hope for a Bush win just so it would be obvious to everybody how oppressive his regime has become. But those arguments no longer hold weight, because to anybody who is paying even the smallest shred of attention to the political process, Bush has been acting like a madman when it comes to policy decisions, and what's worse, he is becoming even more confident in the righteousness of his schemes. If protesters filling every major street in New York haven't driven't driven home the reality, nothing ever will.

Even if John Kerry wins, and he does his best to mend the damage, he's going to have to take the blame for the fallout from many of Bush's policies of long term destruction.

So if anybody asks: Yes, I support John Kerry. This is not simply because of my strong dislike for Bush. It is also because I harbor the hope that somewhere inside, a piece of that John Kerry who came back from the war to campaign for peace still lives. The democrats have not succeeded in hiding him that well.

...

About my shopping spree. I wasn't even fully aware of it on a conscious level until it began to wind down, but as I shopped like a madman, I was doing more than simply try to fing great bargains. I was also trying to send a message to the corporations with whom I have done business over the years. My money was meant as a message of truce, given in exchange for fruits from the Goddess spirit.

It was also meant as a little thank you. thank you for keeping these things I like around for eccentric people like me, even if I can't always afford them. Though overall, they probably didn't make a huge profit on the items I selected, what they did get was another nice heap of marketing data to help them understand what my demographic wants.

Hopefully, they'll also figure out that my demographic is extremely alienated (and scared) by the words and policies of the Bush admin, and if they want to keep me around as a customer, they had better put at least a few resources into getting that cockroach-brained man out of power. Otherwise, their current customers are going to disappear into the underground until the Republican Death Storm subsides.

If and when Bush wins again, I want to find a friendly place to hide my forbidden treasures if I can. But it will have to be far away from the Red State mobs of Kansas and Oklahoma. Anybody who is so extreme that they would prefer to kill or imprison a woman rather than allow her to have an abortion is not a safe crowd to be around.

So yeah. John Kerry for President. Edwards for vice President. I make my stand. The logo will be appearing on this site soon.