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When I showed up 2 1/2 hours before the 9/29/08 rally in Columbus, Ohio in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin, I jumped right to the head of the line… because I was the line:

When I showed up 2 1/2 hours before the 10/4/08 rally in Columbus, Ohio in support of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden (a rally which the candidates would not attend), this is what I saw:

Can you say “enthusiasm gap”?

Whatever you do, for goodness’ sake, if you live in Ohio don’t vote on Election Day this November.

I know I won’t.

In 2004, voting line waits were as long as 11 hours in the state of Ohio, and on the radio this morning an elections analyst was predicting an average wait of an hour here in Franklin County on Election Day. For people with jobs or university schedules, that makes voting tough and makes it likely that voting numbers will be depressed.

I love the ritual of heading into the booth and voting on Election Day, but it’s more important to me that everybody the same chance. That’s why I got my ballot through the mail and will be sending it in sometime over the next week or two. If I don’t go, someone else gets to vote a few minutes earlier. If you don’t vote on Election Day, another person gets in to vote a little bit easier. Method One is to get yourself an absentee ballot, like I did. You don’t need a reason like illness or travel any more to do that. Method Two is to engage in early voting at your county board of elections. Heck, if you head in to do early voting by tomorrow, October 6, you can even register to vote and then cast your vote all at once.

Avoid turning Ohio into a repeated electoral mess in 2008: vote early.

[Uptight legal disclaimer: I am not by explaining my experience suggesting that you, yes you, little Timmy, smoke salvia. Surely, if you do it, then your head will explode. Besides, if you really are little, Timmy, it will make your ‘nads shrink. Seriously, people who behave recklessly with salvia around have gotten hurt. So you over there, yes, you, little Timmy’s mom, reading over his shoulder, don’t you even think of suing me when you find little Timmy exploring with his stash. Because I clearly said it would make little Timmy’s head fall off and his ‘nads shrink. It’s not my fault. It’s all that heavy metal music. And Dungeons and Dragons. And the existence of gay people somewhere in the next county. P.S. Ask Timmy what ‘nads are.]

In June of 2006 I decided, after much reading, consideration, consultation and chastisement, to inhale.

Specifically, I made it my business to inhale salvia divinorum, a plant of the mint family that has a hallucinogenic effect. My experiment with salvia (recorded in two podcasts) was motivated by curiosity upon the discovery that somehow a hallucinogen had made it into the 21st Century without being declared illegal. Indeed, shortly after my move to Columbus in that year I’d noticed signs advertising salvia in the head shops that line High Street in my neighborhood, in between the the x-rated novelty stores and the bondage shop, two doors down from the purveyor of ironic sculpture and across the street from the club with the best 80s night in Columbus.

I learned enough to know that there was a bad way and a better way to try salvia. The bad way: in a foul mood, unsupervised, in a unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, and using concentrated liquid extract that doesn’t leave room for error in dosing. The better way: in a leavened mood, with someone watching, in a familiar and comfortable place, and smoking leaf to obtain a slower, more controllable dosing. Home, not club. Yo Yo Ma playing Bach Cello suites in the background, not Rob Zombie channeling the torment of hellfire. With the right set and setting, and with the right equipment (a torch to burn the leaves at a sufficient heat, a water pipe to keep me from burning my lungs), I was ready to go.

My experience, as you can hear for yourself, was a mainly positive one. My mood was elevated, although I found it somewhat difficult to maintain rational concentration as much as I’d have liked. My perceptions were altered in a most interesting way. In vision, I found that lines of demarcation between light and dark colors in my vision were accentuated and glowing in rainbow colors of their own. Those glowing lines in my vision appeared to gain depth in some fourth dimension, and if I allowed myself to go with the flow I could feel my body moving along with those glowing lines through that fourth dimension while remaining still in the three dimensions I experience every day.

I use the words “appeared” and “feel” carefully, because it’s important to remember that’s what the experience was… all about appearance and feeling, an internal experience. I have no notion that I was unlocking a key to a bigger world, or anything mystically spirit-filled like that. After the effect wore off, I wasn’t really a changed man, except for the mundane sort of change we all manage through the accumulation of new experience. In the more than two years since, I haven’t had an urge to smoke salvia again. I haven’t gotten addicted to any illicit drugs, although I still drink more coffee than I’d like. Not once have I had a flashback. Neither have I developed a tendency to mousse my hair in weird directions, pick up an axe and go running naked through the neighborhood screaming about the nuthatches.

In fact, to tell you the truth, I’d mostly forgotten about salvia until I found out this week that here in the state of Ohio, the state House has passed and the state Senate is considering a bill, HB 215, that would make salvia divinorum an illegal drug. Specifically, it would classify the herb as a “schedule 1″ drug, putting it in the same category as heroin, hashish, cocaine, and some interestingly-spelled narcotic called “thebacon” (how about thesausage?). State analysts have determined that during the current economic crash outlawing salvia divinorum would cost the state of Ohio over $100,000 per year.

Placing salvia divinorum in the same legal category as “thebacon” rouses my curiosity. Declaring a non-violent activity illegal raises my eyebrows, especially when research is beginning to uncover evidence that salvia divinorum may actually be psychologically therapeutic in some circumstances. Legislators are throwing around bullying arguments that colleagues who don’t vote to outlaw salvia divinorum are endorsing it while the Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy states outright that there is an “absence of good hard cold information” on any potential harmfulness of salvia. Without good hard cold evidence of harm, what is the government doing restricting the use of this plant?

When the government tells me that I can’t do something, and it doesn’t have solid evidence of the harm in doing so, then I feel somewhat inclined to do it in defiance. Freedom gets rusty when it isn’t exercised; undue restriction leaves me chafing and with a not-so-fresh feeling.

So in the spirit of liberty, with the window on this particular liberty closing, I’m doing the deed again.

Here’s a podcast of my thoughts on salvia and legislation to restrict it, recorded while smoking it tonight.

As you can tell by the fact that I’m posting this, I’m not dead. You’ll have to trust me when I tell you my hair isn’t wigged out and I’m not toting an axe.

Today, Illinois Congressman and DC power player Rahm Emanuel voted for the $700 Billion bailout bill. His Green Party challenger in the 5th District, Alan Augustson, has issued a statement this evening unconditionally condemning Emanuel’s vote:

I wish to state for the record my extreme displeasure with Congress, for its passage of the $700B so-called “Bailout Bill”.

When American working families go belly-up in this present, hostile economy, they are treated to endless lectures about “responsibility”, about “lifestyle choices” and “good judgment”. People who have no inkling of their individual circumstances will call them “deadbeats” to their very faces.

However, when major global investment firms suffer the natural consequences of their own greed, unscrupulousness and incompetence, apparently they can avoid all the above and simply get rescued by the American taxpayer.

While I am, as I said, angered, I am not at all surprised. The incumbent in my district, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-05), received over $800,000 in contributions in 2007-2008 from securities and investment firms, insurance companies and commercial banks. Rep. Emanuel has always been an entirely client-oriented politician; his latest outrage merely makes obvious who his real constituents are.

The people of my district will not keep their jobs one additional day for this measure — by and large, they have lost them already. Nor will it fix the root causes of the economic crisis — our failing infrastructure, the global devaluation of labor, and the depletion of the world’s resources due to overpopulation and overconsumption.

Our government continues to shed, bit by bit, its last pretenses of public service, and we are less free, less prosperous, less safe and less respected every day for it. If the people fail to effect real change in November, their opportunity to do so ever again may be lost. They will be too caught up in the struggle for survival to care any longer about freedom, justice or peace.

You know, the more I read the New York Times the more I realize those Manhattan financial district reporters may be awfully smart but still don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They keep telling the rest of us what we “need to understand.” Apparently we “need to understand” that if taxpayers don’t hand over more money to Wall Street investment financiers than has been spent on more than five years of war in Iraq, then “Main Street” in middle America will pay the price.

Let me tell you something. I live in Middle America. This is Main Street. Actually, its name is High Street, but it is the Main Street of Columbus, Ohio, the street on which most of the small commercial businesses can be found. This is a block of High Street in the Clintonville neighborhood, where university professors live, where the nice schools are. Two years ago this block was filled with active businesses and offices. As you can see, it’s empty now.

The people at the New York Times and the people they write for on Wall Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan are incredulous that people in flyover country, people in the towns and cities of Middle America don’t, as they say, “get it.” But we get it. We already got it. We got it earlier this summer when unemployment spiked to new highs. We got it a year ago when storefronts on our Main Streets started to close. We got it two years ago when houses up and down the streets we live on stopped selling and foreclosures began to creep up. We got it over the course of the last decade as CEOs got paid millions of dollars to wreck entire corporations while our pay actually went down.

We’ve been getting it for some time now, but while all this has been happening politicians like John McCain and lobbyists like Phil Gramm and nattily attired columnists like David Brooks have been telling us that the fundamentals of the economy are sound, that it’s all in our head, that we’re just a “nation of whiners” for noticing what’s been going on around us.

It’s the people on Wall Street and the people who write the news for them and the people who write the laws for them who haven’t been getting it. They still don’t get it. They don’t get why Americans have a problem with giving Wall Street financiers who’ve already screwed up some more money to screw up all over again. Well, get this, Wall Street. Get this, New York Times. Get this: we know America has economic trouble. We’ve been living it, and we’ve been watching you rich pricks stand still while things get worse. Now that you and your cufflinked friends are in trouble, NOW all of a sudden you’re in a rush? So big a rush that debate and deliberation have gone out the window and you have to pass your precious $700 Billion bailout NOW, before anyone has second thoughts?

Well, hang on there, Manhattan. Cowtown America knows the smell of bullshit, and this is it. We think you “need to understand” that the answer to screwed up finances isn’t more screwed up finances. We think if you’re going to fix the economy, the last thing you want is a hasty plan drawn up by screwed-up financiers from Goldman Sachs and shoved down Congress’ throat with a time limit for deliberation. You take your time. You get it right. You make sure that Main Street America is going to get all that money back.

Then, when you’re done, how about you pick your heads up out of your navels and take a look down Main Street USA and notice what’s been going on since long before the first bank crashed. Where there used to be industry, where there used to be sales, now there’s just some faded plastic plants and piled up trash. This is what’s happening now. Do you get it?

Ohio Republican State Representative Jim McGregor of Gahanna, speaking at the September 29, 2008 rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin in Columbus, Ohio:

“You know, I believe Ohio is on the leading edge. We’re leaping into the greatest job growth since the era of World War II.”

What alternative reality does Jim McGregor reside in?

The actual, reality-based economic circumstances Ohio finds itself in:

Unemployment jumped from 5.7% in August 2007 to 7.4% in August 2008. 1.3% higher than for the US overall, and higher than it’s ever been since George W. Bush took office. Number of hours worked by those who still have jobs is down from last year. Average hourly and weekly earnings for those who still have jobs are down over the past year too. The Ohio civilian labor force has 79,000 more people in it than when George W. Bush took office, but the number of people employed in Ohio is 35,000 lower than when Bush took office.

The only sense in which Ohio could possibly be “leaping into the greatest job growth since the era of World War II” is the sense in which job loss might be so extensive that the only possible direction for employment statistics to go is back up. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of room left for Ohio to fall. Anyone driving down High Street and Main Street can see the boarded-up storefronts. The fundamentals of our local economy are not sound. Leap back to reality, Rep. McGregor.

“Catchy slogans aside, please Rock the Vote!”

- Capital University student body President Ryan Stiers

As Republicans inside the Capital Center rallied for John McCain and Sarah Palin today, Capital University students outside rallied in support of Barack Obama. A bit of what I saw:

An organizer with the Columbus, Ohio GOP just emerged from the Capital Center where John McCain and Sarah Palin will appear later today. She came bearing a plie of t-shirts for sale at $20 apiece and told the fifty or so of us in line (with less than an hour to go before doors open) that proceeds would go to “bringing young people to Ohio to canvass, because numbers in that are not great.”

Overheard in line for the McCain-Palin rally here in Columbus, Ohio (110 minutes until doors open and twelve people are in line… Quel enthusiasm):

“I don’t know who they have advising her, but whoever it is, they really need to give her some new advice. I’m sure if she becomes President she’ll be surrounded with some great aides.”

Postscript: The people staffing the merchandising booth I’m standing next to say they’re licensed with the McCain campaign. The shirts they’re selling are made by Gildan.

When I went to the Columbus Barack Obama rally in February 2008, people began lining up the night before. Showing up two hours and ten minutes before the McCain-Palin rally here in Columbus, I hopped right to the front of line. Right now, I am the line.

Oh, look. Here comes someone else.

This is a picture I took at 8 AM on the cold Columbus, Ohio morning of February 25, 2008, just moments after doors opened for people to pick up free “preferred viewing” tickets to an appearance by Barack Obama that Wednesday. “Preferred viewing” tickets meant that you got in to the section up front that was right next to Barack Obama himself in the St. John Basketball Arena of Ohio State University, an arena that holds 13,276 in the seats and has more room on the court. Keep in mind that anybody could come the day of the event without a ticket; these were just tickets for the floor. When Obama came to that arena two days later, he filled it.

This is a picture I took at 12 Noon on the balmy Columbus, Ohio afternoon of September 28, 2008, just moments after doors opened for people to pick up required tickets to enter a rally featuring both John McCain and Sarah Palin on Monday, September 29. The Republicans require tickets for entrance to this rally, and you have to go through the GOP to get one. But as you can see, there was no line at opening.

The Republican Party seems to have chosen its venue, the Capital Center, prudently. With a capacity of just 2,100, I’m sure they won’t have too much trouble filling the Center with an approving crowd from the capital city of this swing state. I mean, heck, our population ranks just below that of San Francisco, so surely they can eventually find 2100 people to fill the center up and make McCain and Palin look popular. But it is a sign of poor confidence in their candidates by the Ohio GOP that they’ve gone with this venue, a third-tier one even for the city of Columbus.

I got my golden ticket, by the way. I’ll be there tomorrow and will report on what I see.

The Hold Palin Accountable Rally in Anchorage, Alaska drew 2,000 participants yesterday. In Alaska terms, that’s huge. Click here and here for video.

Best sign: “Corruption is Not Patriotic.”

For every home game of football, over a hundred thousand gather in the Ohio Stadium of Ohio State University in Columbus. After the tailgates, they sit and wait for the game.

This morning’s smart advertising to reach those hundred-thousand-plus Ohioans: