Had a game of Arkham Horror scheduled as our saturday gaming today, in honor of the holiday. We also played with the (newish) expansion, Innsmouth Horror.

After about 5.5 hours of failing to get sufficient gates closed down (in large part due to an inability to seal gates for a couple of hours), we finally had Rhan-Tegoth awaken, with us needing 17*6 = 102 combat successes to kill him. Much to our surprise, we did, primarily because he could only wound one investigator each turn. I think 3 of the 6 investigators got killed before he was taken down. I'm never quite sure whether a battle with an Ancient One is a climax or an anti-climax in a game of Arkham Horror.

Still, nice color and fun wanderings about the town, as always.

Though we had the Innsmouth Horror expansion out, we never went to Innsmouth, because not a single gate or monster appeared there the entire time. That's a problem I've had with the other city expansions in the past. Ah well. We still used new investigators, new Arkham encounters, a new GOO, and probably some other assorted stuff from the set.

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On my way home from EndGame, I swung into our neighborhood back at Ashby, and I was amazed how many kids there were trick or treating. We've had years where we kept the lights blazing and not a single trick-or-treater showed up. Today, while she was waiting for me to get home, Kimberly said she had two groups knock (but we had no candy, alas, due to those kidless years).

It made me wonder if there's a change in the atmosphere of the country generally. For years Bush and his corrupt cronies tried to bury us in FEAR, telling us that everything was bad and everyone wanted to kill us (no surprise, with that jackass as our leader). Now we instead have a new President pushing hope.

Could that be the change that has parents willing to escort their kids around the neighborhood again?

Or it could just be a fluke or the fact that it was a Saturday this year. I dunno.

Today the California Supreme Court stated that it was legal for the people of the state to put a proposition onto the ballot that discriminates against protected minorities and that the resulting law would be entirely valid.

It was generally an expected result (though, perhaps, we hoped otherwise). The California Supreme Court has, for years, supported the limitation of rights for prisoners and ex-convicts, and though they're surely not a protected minority in the same way, it offered considerable precedent for the majority being allowed to take away the rights of the minority in this state. Today's decision just codified and expanded the way things have been done since the Reagan years.

But if I was a minority in California I would now be very, very afraid*.

Edit: Here's a great analysis of the case:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/5/26/103947/856/17#c17

Including some discussion of the one justice who gets it:

In his concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Moreno concludes that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment to the California Constitution because it alters the equal protection clause to deny same-sex couples equal treatment, explaining that "requiring discrimination against a minority group on the basis of a suspect classification strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and thus ‘represents such a drastic and far-reaching change in the nature and operation of our governmental structure that it must be considered a "revision" of the state Constitution rather than a mere "amendment" thereof.’ " Justice Moreno points out that the equal protection clause is "inherently countermajoritarian" and observes that "there is no ‘underlying’ principle more basic to our Constitution than that the equal protection clause protects the fundamental rights of minorities from the will of the majority."

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* And, indeed, I am. Non-hispanic whites became a minority in California in 2001.

The recent debacle centering around the California State Budget has really shown off the inadequacies of our state's governmental system.

The biggest problem all around has been the requirement for two-thirds of the legislature to OK the budget. This is so high above majority that it was almost impossible for a bunch of asshole politicians to come to an agreement this year ... and this isn't the first year that's been the case. I vividly recall threats that my paychecks were going to stop coming in back when I worked for the University, for the exact same reason. That was 14-15 years ago, and this same broken system is still in place in California.

The end result was that a single politician, Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, got to hold the entire state hostage, like an amateur stickup artist grown much too big for his britches. I suspect some reporters might be lauding him for breaking the deadlock, but let's call a spade a spade: he only did so after getting the state to meet several of his demands, most of which had nothing to do with the budget, such as his requirement of open primaries in California. Anywhere else and we'd call that sort of thing blackmail.

I can't say that I'm too happy with the results either. The budget includes several tax increases just at the time when the federal government is trying to get more money to the people, a move that's going to be partially neutralized in California because the egomaniacs in Sacramento can't see the big picture. Worse, from what I understand they're regressive taxes: a flat increase on income taxes and a 1% sales tax increase.

That's right, at a time when they could have increased tax rates on the very rich and on corporations, who have gotten a free ride for 8 years, and who have helped contribute to the current meltdown, the politicians in Sacramento again decided to go after the middle class.

It's the sales tax increase that is perhaps the most frustrating, as we've already got outrageously high sales tax in California, and this will pull us up to right around 10%. I'm right on the verge of saying screw you to the state and, other than local businesses that I really care about (e.g., EndGame), ending as many of my local, taxable purchases as I can.

The fools in Sacramento also "balanced" this budget on the backs of the future: they're going to be asking Caliornians to support it by selling off future lottery revenues. No, I'm sure they don't know what they're going to do when they're missing that money in the future. I hope that when that measure comes up on the ballot, Californians are bright enough to refuse, sending the politicians back to the drawing board for that $5B of magic money.

This afternoon I finished Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken. It's a political book that dissects many of the lies that so many public Republicans tell (from Hannity to Bush). Like the movie Recount it was something I'd been interested in before but didn't feel able to deal with until after the election.

It was an OK book, funny at parts, but not spectacular.

What struck me the most was the longest chapter in the book, which was about the late, marvelously progressive Senator Paul Wellstone. Franken took real offense at the dishonest campaign waged by Wellstone's Republican opponent and the Republican party in general both before and after Wellstone's untimely death (which occurred just weeks before the election).

Of course the scummy Republican who waged that scummy campaign was ... Norm Coleman.

Who I think we can now pretty definitively say that Al Franken beat in one of the closest elections of our time. The rest of the Republicans may well try and sit on Franken's getting seated for a couple of months--but it turns out not to matter until a valid appointment is made in Illinois (short reason: because the filibuster-blocking number is at 59 votes for 98 senators, but 60 for 99 or 100 ... of course Harry Reid needs to find a backbone and make those Republicans actually read the phonebook if they want to try and block the legislation we Americans want rather than just continuing to allow them "painless" procedural filibusters).

In any case, it was nice to read about Franken's ties to and feelings about Wellstone, because it helps to tell the story of why he decided to run in 2008 for the Senate seat that used to belong to his friend (though it was written 5 years before he did so).

For several years now, people have loudly (and I think, largely incorrectly) whined and bitched about electronic voting. They've decried the lack of a paper trail (though it would be easy to legislate a doubly-redundant one) and they've got out the tin-foil hats to talk about voting machines changing the results.

At the same time, they continue to ignore a larger problem that electronic voting machines somewhat resolve: the unreliability of paper vote counting.

If there's anything that Florida in 2000 and Minnesota in 2008 should have taught us, it's that there's a margin of error in vote counting, just like there is in polling. It's a small area in which you can't accurately determine the will of the people due to any number of human errors introduced either by voters or poll workers.

The infamous butterfly ballot of Florida 2000 probably cost Gore the election as much as the Supreme Court overstepping their role, and stopping votes from being counted. As a result, I think it's pretty easy to say that the 2000 Presidential election fell into the voting margin of error. Even aside from that, all the counting and recounting and the changing numbers as that occurred should have pretty clearly showed the margin of error.

And I have no doubt that the same is true in Minnesota. They've been counting and challenging votes for almost a month there now, and it's pretty impossible to say who's winning. The Franken camp currently puts their lead at 10 or 20 votes, which appears to involve dismissing some or all of the challenges (some or all of which will doubtless be challenged, since the Coleman camp has challenged, for example, votes for Franken where the voter also voted for McCain, claiming that a McCain vote showed the "intent" to vote for Coleman).

But today appears to be the cherry on Minnesota's crap cake. A Minneapolis precinct has lost 133 votes. And, it was a heavily Democratic precinct, thus those 133 votes translated to 46 net for Franken.

You watch, the final Minnesota numbers will be within 46 votes.

I was hoping to draw a nice map of my election day bike ride, but apparently Google has a limit on how many individual nodes you can enter.

In any case, the plan was a day off work and an all-day bike ride, to avoid obsessive election-day poll watching. I went from Berkeley, through Oakland, around Lake Merritt, out to Alameda, then on to Bay Farm Island, which I circled, then back to Alameda, which I circled, then back to Oakland, and finally home. It looks like the total was somewhere in the 30-35 mile range, and I was indeed tired afterward. It's surely the most biking I've ever done at once.

Lake Merritt. I haven't been out to Lake Merritt much, and I was surprised by how large it is. Also, that there's a garden, a kid's science place, and some other stuff near the center of the area. Quite nice. I had lunch out there, watching ducks and geese in a little wildlife preserve.

Looking at Wikipedia, I see that Merritt is indeed a real lake, or at least the remnant of a tidal estuary, which I'd wondered when I was out there. It apparently was the city's sewer in ye olden days. It also seems to have been the nation's first wildlife refuge, back in 1870.

The Bay Trail. The biggest goal of the day was to extend my Bay Trail ride southward, which I did. Theoretically, a lot of what I rode along the Oakland coast and all around both islands was Bay Trail, but there were only two parts which were of particular note.

Out on Bay Farm Island, there's a great section of Bay Trail which runs from its northeast corner (which looks inward at Oakland) out to somewhere along its western edge (which looks outward at the San Francisco peninsula). The northeastern portion is the coolest, because it's just a bike trail running through hilly wilderness. The western edge runs behind fancy-dancy affluent housing part of the whole time and along a seaside park (which is really just a place to fish) part of the time. They're both nice, but not as quiet and wild as the eastern part.

On Alameda, good Bay Trail runs along about two-thirds of the southwestern side of the island. Most of it runs alongside Crown Memorial Beach and/or Carlsbad State Beach. One of the signs in the area claims that Crown was the most popular beach in the Bay Area until WW2, which I find stunning if true; why would people go to a beach on the Bay rather than a beach on the ocean?

There was one teeny stretch of Bay Trail along the southwest side of the island which sucked. It was just dirt, and not even a good dirt trail. At places it there was just a foot or less of cleared space and you had to bump up and down some hills. Signage revealed that most or all of the good trail was thanks to regional park agencies. The sucky trail was thanks to the City of Alameda. Good going Alameda!

However, there is a great bike bridge in the area (near the sucky trail), which connects up the good bits of Bay Trail on both islands; more on that in a bit.

I've now ridden the Bay Trail from Richmond to Bay Farm Island, with the only notably missing area being a bit of Trail in Oakland proper, east of Alameda (on which, more momentarily).

Bay Farm Island. If you don't know what Bay Farm Island is, despite knowing the Bay Area, you're not alone. It's hidden behind Oakland Airport, and is apparently a part of Alameda. It's got piles of fancy houses and a golf course right in the middle. Yep, definitely a place for the little people. It's not actually an island.

Again, I turn to Wikipedia. Apparently it did used to be an island, but was connected to Oakland by landfill (which I find ironic given that the rest of Alameda used to be a part of Oakland before it was separated by digging a canal). Wikipedia doesn't say when the landfilling occurred. If I had to guess, I'd say in the 1920s, when the Oakland Airport was built.

Alameda. I've only been out to Alameda a few times, and this was the only time I've ever been out there alone, and thus had the opportunity to explore the island.

First, it's probably the most conservative place I've been in the East Bay. Though there's some middle class housing, it's of the upper middle class suburban type. There's also quite a bit of clear affluence, mainly on the Bay-facing side of the island. I saw the only McCain-Palin yard signs that I've ever seen while on Alameda; there was three that I passed, though they were great outnumbered by the (victorious!) Obama signs. I also saw one disgusting Yes On 8 sign, showing that bigots aren't afraid to show their faces in Alameda.

Beyond that, I'm surprised by how much of the island is still abandoned and/or in an otherwise in-between state. The closed Naval Base is up in the northwest, and the closer you get in that direction, the more the island turns into confusing, turned-around streets and roads that go nowhere. I even wandered around what must have been troop houses at one time, and they were eerie. Totally abandoned, yet not scary like abandoned houses would be in Oakland.

(They run a tight ship in Alameda.)

Bridges & Tunnels. If I count right, there are four bridges and one tunnel connecting Alameda to the mainland; I went through four of those yesterday.

Park Street was my first bridge, and not the one I intended to use, but I'd gotten confused by my maps (and my lack of an iPhone, since I left it at home yesterday). It's not labeled as being part of the Bay Trail. There is a pedestrian walkway on either side of the bridge, but you're asked to walk your bike, which I did. At least half the times I've been on Alameda, this draw bridge has gone up, stalling traffic for five to ten minutes. Such was the case yesterday, though fortunately only after I made it across. It's neat to watch from up close. Strangely, no boat ever went through.

I skipped the Fruitvale Bridge.

The High Street Bridge is pretty much identical to the Park Street Bridge, except you are allowed to ride your bike and they don't seem to be constantly raising it. It leads to a particularly nasty, industrial part of Oakland. There was Bay Trail that I wanted to get to there (the missing part that I mentioned earlier), but the area was filled with detours, barbed-wire fences, huge trucks, and road construction. I was able to see the Trail at one point, but I couldn't get there. A jogger ran happily along the trail, unknowingly taunting me. When I tried to circle around, road construction threatened to push me onto the highway. I eventually gave up.

The Bay Farm Bridge is great, because there's a pedestrian/bicycle bridge running to its side, showing what they should do on the Bay Bridge. It's been constructed quite well, with easy paths to get there from every direction. There's even an underpass that goes beneath the main bridge so that you can get to the pedestrian bridge from either side of the (very busy) road that crosses beween Alameda and Bay Farm Island. This is the nicest example of a bicycling friendly bridge that I've seen. As I said, it also connects up the best parts of the Bay Trail in the area.

And that brings us to Posey Tube. The northernmost entrance to Alameda isn't a bridge, but rather an underground tube. My maps clearly marked it as good Bay Trail, so I planned to take it back to the mainland. My problems started when I discovered it was very hard to find. Bicycling signage is crap in Alameda, and the tube is surprisingly several blocks back from the shore, and thus not intuitive to find. I thought for a while that I was going to be stuck on Alameda forever.

And the tube ... it was the most terrifying bicycling that I've ever done. The "trail" is a raised walkway that's right next to (and about two or three feet above) the main roadway. It's also about as wide as my handlebars. So there you are, riding underground, cars blaring as they scream past you. Your right elbow is brushing across the tile wall while you constantly try and keep your left handlebar off the railing. Just coasting down to the middle of the tunnel was exhausting, and I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to peddle when I got to the other side. When I saw a bicyclist coming at me from the other direction, I figured there was no way to get past each other, but somehow we managed, each dismounting and carefully lifting out bicycles around each other.

I don't exactly regret the trip through the Tube, but it was truly scary, and I don't expect to do that again.

Politics. I can't finish a discussion of a bike ride on election day without a brief mention of politics. I already talked about the conservative signage that I saw on Alameda. Over the course of the day I also passed either 6 or 7 polling stations: 2 in Berkeley, 1 in Oakland, and either 3 or 4 in Alameda. Only one had a line coming out the door, the second one in Berkeley (though maybe it was in Oakland now that I think of it; definitely on the border in any case). The first four all had No on 8 people demonstrating. I also saw a couple of other No on 8 people out throughout the day; sadly, we now know they failed, which was my expectation. They might have been able to put down 8 if the No on 8 opposition hadn't been so scattered, late, and, frankly, arrogant through a lot of the election. But, I'm not convinced. California is right now on the tipping point of bigotry toward homosexuals. In another couple of years, I think the balance will have shifted, but in 2008 it clearly still has not.

But now we have a White House and a Congress which might just start moving toward equal protections in this new Civil Rights arena.

Next Up. Not sure where my next major bike ride is going to be, but it's surely not going to be this coming weekend; I'm biked out.

There have been fireworks going off in Berkeley for an hour or two. I keep hearing yelling and screaming from nearby apartments too. I can't remember there ever being this much excitement following an election, even in Berkeley. Maybe 1992? I'm not sure; I wasn't living in a very residential area at the time.

I expected to see a black President in my lifetime. I mean, if I have my way, I have a lot of life yet, and segregation started to end almost a decade before I was born. But I surely didn't expect to see it this soon.

I think that Obama's mere election is going to do a lot to heal some racial rifts in this country, that it's going to start to end the healing from slavery, from segregation. It's not an end, but it's a wonderful, wonderful start.

Every year lately, people have said that it's the most important election of our lifetime. It may well be correct this year, given how far we have fallen under the brutal and misguided depredations of the Bush administration.

Yes, We Can.

1. Palin doesn't like how the Republican Alaska legislature's abuse of power investigation is going.

2. Palin creates a second panel, made up of people who serve at her pleasure, to investigate herself as a result.

(I'll leave out some steps where Palin tries to get the original panel shut down, as I don't want to look them up.)

3. The original panel finds Palin guilty of abuse of power.

4. Palin's pet panel releases their results on the eve of the election.

5. Palin's pet panel finds Palin innocent.

(OK, so up to here, it just looks like another pathetic Palin abuse of power, exactly like the ones that she's already been found guilty of ... but wait, there's more.)

6. Our sad national press reports on this like it's news, and like it casts doubt on the bipartisan panel that already found Palin guilty ... and did so without trying to step on the election by releasing it in the final hours.

Our national press is utterly corrupt, so beholden to constantly chasing the newest story for ratings, that they can no longer be trusted to report the news. They should be destroyed, and will be as the internet slowly takes the power out of their dirtied, bloodied hands.

So, tomorrow is the election. If I were a good activist I'd go help GOTV tomorrow, but it's been a tough and tiring and sickly year and I don't have any sort of energy for that, so I'm just going to try and get the hell away from it all.

The plan is: vote; get a sandwich; ride down to Lake Merritt; have lunch; stop by EndGame; purchase Witch's Brew; go out to Alameda; ride the Bay Trail around the island; come home when it starts getting dark; go out to dinner; and only then look at election coverage (though it'll still be too early for local stuff).

Here's what I'm worried about for tomorrow:

Barack Obama. Unless every polling institute in the United States is wrong, even the ones with a Republican lean, I don't think Obama will lose. Or, to put it more clearly, I don't think McCain can win under any honest scenario. So, I'm less concerned here, but I do think it's a crying shame that Obama's grandmother, who raised him during his teenage years, died the day before his election.

Proposition 8. That this filthy piece of bigotry would be written into our state constitution is an affront against everything that the United States stands for. I also believe it's going to pass for reasons that I'm too tired to count. The question ultimately is going to be how long until it's overturned and how much it'll set equality rights back in the process. I hope I'm wrong.

Measure KK. This is a piece-of-shit Berkeley measure authored by the NIMBYs that unfortunately fill too many Berkeley homes. Because these idiots don't want Telegraph Avenue turned into a bus thoroughfare that would allow for real public transit alternatives between here and Oakland, they've put up a law that would make it illegal for Berkeley to redraw street lanes without voter approval. Yeah, really. I suspect it'll fuck the hell out of bike lanes just as much as it'll screw up AC Transit improvements. And people say Berkeley is progressive.

The Senate. I'm actually not too worried here, because I don't think the Democrats have a great chance of picking up their 60-vote majority, nor do I think it's a catastrophe if they don't. I would guess they'll end up with 56-58 seats. I think that in order to hit 60, Franken has to get lucky in Minnesota and there has to be a major upset in the Senatorial race in Georgia due to amazingly high African American turnout. So, it could happen, but it'd be a stretch.

But I do believe, whatever else happens, that tomorrow the end of our long, national nightmare will, at last, be in sight.