Alissa's halloween party was hilarious! Julie dressed as a chain-smoking, beer-guzling pregnant woman with curlers? Classic! Plus, I met people who actually want to go dancing on weekends (instead of just heading to a bar and camping out) and a really nice guy with Peter Sellers glasses. I changed my mind at the last minute about being a hula girl and instead went as Fallon Carrington Cabot (aka Alexis' daughter on Dynasty). It was a little too obscure for most people to guess, but for some reason, a lot of people coveted my silver lamé heels. Is lamé back in?

A lot of my classmates were talking about their futures: how can we plan out our lives so that we have no regrets? Well, personally, I think "no regrets" is a state of mind. BUT, I am so happy that I jumped right into graduate school after college, because I'm one of the youngest in the class and therefore have a lot more time to plan for my future. I'll have a full-time teaching job (and a Masters) by next September! Isn't that crazy?

Happy Halloween, everyone! Feliz día de los muertos! I bought my first sugar skull. Besides which, Halloween officially marks the slide into Christmas. I can't remember who I've told, but my immediate family will only be together for one day this Christmas. My mom will be here until Christmas Day, when my dad will arrive. They're schedules are very tight. So, I told my mom that I want a trip to someplace warm for Christmas. I have half of January off and they will have more vacation days then, so I'm crossing my fingers that they'll buy me a round-trip ticket to Bermuda and a free scooter rental! I'll be a little burnt out by then, especially from the infamous Minnesota winter. But I've never ever been on a vacation where I'm just allowed to sit around and tan, read trashy novels, and watch tv. Our family vacations are always either educational or jam-packed with activities and reservations. And also, all you Wash U students who had the entire summer off (or graduates who've had even more)--- I've only had two weeks off from school since graduation!

Today I wore my snow white costume to school. I pinned my hair under and wore bright red lipstick.


This is what happened:
-My cooperating teacher said that if teaching fell through, I could always get a job on a cruise or at Disney World.
-When I went to the principal's office, he laughed.
-My students kept asking, "Are you Miss Nicole?"
-A boy in the hall asked me if I was the real Snow White. When I said "yes," he turned to his friend and said "I told you so."

I love being in kindergarten, where dressing-up is accepted!

However, I'm not going to wear this to my peer party. They're aiming towards Dolly Parton (why? I don't know) and I would be just a little out of place. I think I'll be a hula girl.

Here is a pulls-at-the-heartstrings story, but it reaffirms my decision to become a teacher.
Today, little Johnny came into class with a new shirt on- it had jack-o-lanterns all over it, which we have been talking about for the past month in books and in songs. He is a small, thin boy with a huge smile and he was beaming about his new shirt. I could tell that he was in a really good mood, even though he can't speak with verbs yet, so he couldn't say it himself. Anyway, he ran over to his table and finished his activity as quickly as anyone else. Johnny sits at the "special ed" table (the implied label which is never used), but when his aide his isn't there, he often works more productively. Anyway, everything was going smoothly. Then, after computers, the special ed aide came.

First, it was fine. However, he kept Johnny at the table after the other children had been sent to the carpet for storytime. The aide let him come over after five minutes, but when Johnny sat down, he was naturally distracted by his untied shoe lace. The aide said, "Johnny, you need to look" [at the teacher]. When he didn't look immediately, the aide physically picked him up and made him go back to his table to write his name over and over for the next 15 minutes. After Johnny did it successfully 10 times, he still kept him there. When we all lined up to go to lunch, Johnny was crying at his table. I'm sorry, but it breaks my heart!! He can't speak any English, so he can't stand up for himself with the teacher. He only wanted to be part of the class, to look at the book with his friends, and not to be kept so obviously apart.

This is who teachers need to fight for: the little children who can't stand up for themselves. If schools are underfunded, these are the little children who feel it first. When children are treated like test scores, these are the children who are needlessly held back. And if we don't create a caring environment in the classroom, these are the children who drop out before graduation. I bet he chose to buy that shirt just because he was excited about what he was learning in school. I'm such a tender heart, but that makes me cry. It gives me a goal and a definite purpose though, too.

Wowza, sorry this post is so long :>

All of my friends have been talking about how happy we'll be when the presidential election is over with. I've been trying to think of a way to explain how tired I am of partisan division and angry rhetoric, and I found it...in an article in Time magazine by Garrison Keillor:

"...and what will come of all this on Nov. 3? Some people will pick up the morning paper and save it for a souvenir, and the others will wrap up the garbage in it.

What will reconcile us is what has always restored our sanity, and that is the plain pleasures of the physical world, our commonlove of coffee, the world of apples, the movements of birds, the lives of dogs, the touch of skin. Music. Dancing to music. Shooting baskets. Shooting conservatively, scoring liberally. Lacing up our skates, gliding through the dusk. Having worked ourselves into a fever over the future of Western civilization, we will now begin enjoying our oatmeal again, with raisins, chopped apricots and honey from bees that grazed in meadows of clover."

My karma has an ironic sense of humor.

Last night, Jenny came over to chit-chat and gripe about our program/professors. I said, "I know I'm going to get sick, since I'm around 11 kindergarteners every day, and I honestly don't have time for that." Well, last night when I was falling asleep, I was freezing cold; I assumed it was because I have no control over the heat in my room. Then I woke up at 2am and I was burning up! So, I took my temperature and it was 100.3, plus my body ached, my eyes hurt, and I had the chills. Those are the exact symptoms that WebMD gives for influenza.

I went to bed at 1am this morning and woke up at 12pm...I guess the week wore me out more than I thought. Last night at 10:30pm, I had a sudden craving for junk food, so I drove to the 24hr grocery store, which is a three minute drive, and bought three bags of "light" chips and then ate 1/2 the bag of low-fat cape cod chips. I think I can write it off as a meal since they were light and made of potatoes. So it's kind of like I ate a baked potato with butter last night at 11pm. Which is reasonable.

Yesterday, I went with people in my graduate school class to a hugemongous Kerry rally. Because we live in Minnesota, it was held next to the stadium, instead of inside it, which would have been much less chilly. It was kind of fun, but I was so far away and so short that I spent most of the time staring at the winter jacket of a really tall guy in front of me and jumping up and down to warm up my toes. Anyway, I never actually saw Kerry, because of those reasons and because I lost my glasses two days ago, but it was fun to see thousands of Kerry supporters together! The news said that there were 20,000 people there. I can't believe the election is so soon. I'm honestly starting to get scared.

I have one issue that's bothering me. I have read polls and articles that suggest that Democrats are inherently more easily scared than Republicans. During the Democratic National Convention, Tucker Carlson said that most Democrats have conveyed to him a fear of our current government and their propensity to make very big mistakes. Yes, I'm scared of that! And then, last week, I told my grandpa that I was scared of President Bush being reelected, because I thought that without the need to campaign again, he would start creating more right-wing propositions. My grandpa told me not to be scared and my grandma said that I needed to remember that the world would not end if Bush were reelected. The media also keeps mentioning that both candidates are using the politics of fear to play with voters' minds. How can President Bush simultaneously say that he'll protect us and that we'll be attacked again, and think that people won't see that incongruency and be scared? Well, I read this in the New York Times this morning:

"In a disturbing article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the writer Ron Suskind told of a meeting he'd had with a senior adviser to the president. The White House at the time was unhappy about an article Mr. Suskind had written.

According to Mr. Suskind, "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' " The aide told Mr. Suskind, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality." "

That scares me!

I'm a girl who's afraid of spiders, calories, and physics, but I think it's time for America to stop being afraid to hold our President accountable for his actions and skewed view of reality. There are only 11 days left and I'm sick and tired of being scared!

So today at school we went apple-picking. It was adorable. Since only one of the children is verbal (i.e. uses verbs), the entire bus trip involved "Look- apple tree! Look- barn!" ...they pick up new words quickly. It's amazing to watch them improve because it's so rare to see a learning process from the very beginning. For example, Bee suddenly started speaking English today! It was as though she had been sitting on the carpet listening for the past month and just decided that today was her day. Anyway, it turns out that she knows the numbers 1-10. Isn't that just a little bit miraculous? A month ago she was living in a refugee camp in Laos.

I'm having some problems with the two native-Spanish-speaking students. I speak Spanish to them for clarification purposes, but I'm so rusty, so I avoid complex verb conjugation. Anyway, because they hear me speaking it, they assume I'm one of the adults who knows how and start rattling off sentences to me! Most of the time I pretend to understand what they're saying ("Sí, Stephanie!") and then take a minute to work it out. I think Yahayra caught on today because I kept pushing her higher on the swings when she was saying that she wanted to stop (in my defense, I think she was using a subjunctive command form). I felt like such a bilingual fraud! Oh well. For most of the kids, I have no idea what they're saying to each other so they don't even try to speak to me (Have you tried Hmong? It's tricky). Anyway, our bilingual Hmong aid is going to pick up his fiancee in Laos tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if he acts differently next week. It will be interesting for her too, I'm sure, since apparently she's only 21 and speaks no English, and he looks like he's about 50.

I'm going to go carve the pumpkin I got at the orchard. Tomorrow my friends and I are all rallying for Kerry (he's visiting again) and then John's coming to stay for the weekend.

PS- Has anyone seen the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire? Well, if you know me, you know that he's my favorite, and his message -that debate shows have become simply partisan stereotyping- is so true. I'm tired of politics...even if GWB wins, at least that means he'll have only four more years to screw up the world. If John Kerry wins, it will be one huge party on Nov. 3rd!

I woke up to an empty apartment this morning...it's a widdle bit sad :(

My brother went back to school yesterday and my grandparents left early this morning. We had so much fun this weekend, though!

On Friday morning, my cousins gave us a tour of their elementary school. Then G&G and I drove down to Northfield...and we got stuck in traffic for an hour on the highway. Traffic jam has new meaning when the other people in the car can't stop talking about how elitist John Kerry is! Grr.

On Saturday morning, our whole group -the aunts, the twins, the five Hartnetts, my grandparents, John and I- went apple picking. It was absolutely freezing though! We just filled our bags really quickly, while the babies screamed, and then jumped back on the hay wagon. It was worth it to eat donuts and cider in the tent with the fiddle players and watch my cousin Eli dance (he's 1 1/2). Then John and I went to a Kerry rally in Minneapolis...there is so much momentum here! I got a "Christians for Kerry" pin. It's been starting to offend me that Bush supporters take a moral and religious highground, as though Kerry supporters are sacreligious. We had to drive to the Kerry headquarters to buy John a huge sign for his dorm's hallway. Later, John and I went to IKEA and got his missing chair part (so the seat isn't on the floor of his room anymore), and went to dinner at a sports bar in the Mall of America. The Red Sox were winning the entire time we were there- it was creating completely false hope. Anyway, we then went to see Jerry Seinfeld, which was his birthday present. I couldn't stop laughing, but it was mostly because Jerry was on the stage and it's kind of surreal. My favorite joke was about weather forecasters. He said "if 5-day forecasts were really for 5-days, you would only need them every 5 days." I honestly never thought of that.

Sunday morning my little party went to St. James on the Parkway. And my uncle Chris showed up! Living here is like constant Christmas because before moving to the Twin Cities, I only saw these relatives during the holidays. Then I dropped John off at the commuter bus with his huge sign...the bus driver almost refused him service (for partisan reasons)! Then I went to the Lessin-Burris's for dinner. My little cousins all helped me make scenary for my lesson plan on prepositions. Then we ate dinner and compared the pies from the annual post-picking bake-off. The cream-cheese custard apple pie won.

Well, anyway, this morning I'm so tired and feeling like I'm behind already for this week. But I love going to see the kids every morning! My student teaching position is easy like a bake oven and the kids are cuteness personified. And I realized that I'm starting to dress like a kindergarten teacher. How you may ask? Today I'm wearing warm brown pants, socks, and suede clogs, and a pick toggle sweater. It's a slippery slope towards corderoy jumpsuits and gaudy holiday pins! Yikes.

What I've learned so far about public education:
There are huge inequalities between the best public schools and the worst. I was so lucky; I grew up in one of the best. In 5th grade, we put on a musical version of Beowulf and took a weeklong trip to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, where we took part in authentic whaling excursions! That is so unique, though. Two years ago I worked in downtown St. Louis in a preschool classroom. The school was failing and its funding was being cut. The children were fed only plastic-covered, processed food, and never any vegetables. Now, I work in an ESL kindergarten classroom in St. Paul. I am so hopeful for these children! They need money and support to learn English...and they're 5 years behind typical American children. These children are being tested and their scores affect the amount of funding which the school will receive. Our children are not test scores! Rewarding schools that are already ahead is taking away money from schools that actually need it. It's not about equality of funding, it's about equity. There are many more issues that need to be addressed in inner-city schools and rural communities. Right now, No Child Left Behind is grossly underfunded. That is neglect of children who need education the most.

It's time to start providing for the Anthonys and Bees (another one of my students!) of the world. I really didn't need to learn whaling songs (which I unfortunately still remember...although I've forgotten everything I learned in calculus:)) I wish I could have given some of my funding to them.

Sleepiness...
I woke up this morning and got dressed and made-up (well that sounds stupid, but it's true) all before I ate breakfast. I swear I haven't done that since high school! Then I drove to my elementary school and spent all morning in the classroom. I love the kids! They are so sweet, even though I don't understand most of what they're talking about: they speak Lao, Vietnamese, and Cambodian, and I don't. I work with Anthony, who is so smart, although can't say "three" yet, so avoids it as much as he can which is so cute. But my cooperating teacher is so inclusive- she's like, "create your own lessons, do whatever you want." I bought my Snow White costume last week, which was outrageously expensive, but I wrote it off as a teaching expense. Besides which, I look like Snow White now -especially with bright red lipstick- and the kids are learning about witches. This is possibly the most fun I've ever had for class credit! I'm really excited for our apple-picking trip next week!

Then I went to class...my teacher is completely soporific (such a useful SAT word). She speaks like Mr. Rogers and her lessons are so simplistic. Today, after spending 45 minutes discussing our homework assignment in groups, she asked if we wanted to keep doing the activity. We all (30 of us) looked at each other to try to think of a nice way to say that we thought the class was pointless and we were bored out of our minds and couldn't believe we were paying thousands of dollars to attend the class. Finally, Audra said, "Um...well, honestly...um, not really." I feel bad for my teacher, but how can you teach us to be teachers when you can't teach us yourself? We started laughing because Audra had said exactly what we were all thinking. Oh well. Only 8 more months;)

My grandparents arrived this evening. They brought so many bags that it looks like they're moving in.
Anyway, I was just watching NewsNight on CNN and they showed a clip of George Bush saying that John Kerry wants to make terrorists into a "nuisance" but that he wants to kill them all. I swear that Bush said that the war couldn't be won just a month ago. So I made an angry sigh (like "grr...sigh") and my grandpa, who was in the kitchen, asked what was wrong.

Me: "George Bush is driving me crazy!"
Grandpa: 'She's making coffee."

It's going to be a long 11 days... :)

Here is further proof that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional:

The Promise of the First Amendment
By ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER JR., chairman and publisher, and RUSSELL T. LEWIS, chief executive, The New York Times

Published: October 10, 2004

Last Thursday, a federal district judge ordered a New York Times reporter, Judy Miller, sent to prison. Her crime was doing her job as the founders of this nation intended. Here's what happened and why it should concern you.

On July 6, 2003, Joseph C. Wilson IV - formerly a career foreign service officer, a chargé d'affaires in Baghdad and an ambassador - wrote an article published on this page under the headline, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." The article served to undercut the Bush administration's claims surrounding Saddam Hussein's nuclear capacity.
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Eight days later, Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist, wrote an article in which he identified Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an "operative on weapons of mass destruction" for the C.I.A. "Two senior administration officials told me," Mr. Novak wrote, that it was Ms. Plame who "suggested sending Wilson" to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. After Mr. Novak's report, several other journalists wrote stories in which they said they received similar information about Ms. Plame from confidential government sources, in what many have concluded was an effort to punish Mr. Wilson for speaking out against the administration by exposing his wife as a C.I.A. operative. The record is clear, however, that Judy Miller is not one of those journalists who reported this information.

Because the government officials who revealed Valerie Plame's status as a C.I.A. operative to the press might have committed a crime in doing so, the Justice Department opened a federal criminal investigation to find whoever was responsible.

During the course of this investigation, the details of which have been kept secret, several journalists have been subpoenaed to provide information about the source of the leak and threatened with jail if they failed to comply.

On Aug. 12, Ms. Miller received a subpoena in which she was required to provide information about conversations she might have had with a government official in which the identity and C.I.A. connection of Mr. Wilson's wife might have been mentioned. She received this subpoena even though she had never published anything concerning Mr. Wilson or his wife. This is not the only recent case in which the government has subpoenaed information concerning Ms. Miller's sources. On July 12, the same prosecutor sought to have Ms. Miller and another Times correspondent, Philip Shenon, identify another source. Curiously, this separate investigation concerns articles on Islamic charities and their possible financial support for terrorism that were published nearly three years ago. As part of this effort to uncover the reporters' confidential sources, the prosecutor has gone to the phone company to obtain records of their phone calls.

So, unless an appeals court reverses last week's contempt conviction, Judy Miller will soon be sent to prison. And, if the government succeeds in obtaining the phone records of Ms. Miller and Mr. Shenon, many of their sources - even those having nothing to do with these two government investigations - will become known.

Why does all of this matter? The possibility of being forced to leave one's family and sent to jail simply for doing your job is an appalling prospect for any journalist - indeed, any citizen. But as concerned as we are with our colleague's loss of liberty, there are even bigger issues at stake for us all.

The press simply cannot perform its intended role if its sources of information - particularly information about the government - are cut off. Yes, the press is far from perfect. We are human and make mistakes. But, the authors of our Constitution and its First Amendment understood all of that and for good reason prescribed that journalists should function as a "fourth estate." As Justice Potter Stewart put it, the primary purpose of the constitutional guarantee of a free press was "to create a fourth institution outside the government as an additional check on the three official branches."
The founders of our democracy understood that our government was also a human institution that was capable of mistakes and misdeeds. That is why they constructed a First Amendment that would give the press the ability to investigate problems in the official branches of our government and make them known to the public. In this way, the press was sensibly put in a position to help hold government accountable to its citizens.

An essential tool that the press must have if it is to perform its job is the ability to gather and receive information in confidence from those who would face reprisals for bringing important information about our government into the light of day for all of us to examine. Without an enforceable promise of confidentiality, sources would quickly dry up and the press would be left largely with only official government pronouncements to report.

A quarter of a century ago, a New York Times reporter, Myron Farber, was ordered to jail, also for doing his job and refusing to give up confidential information. He served 40 days in a New Jersey prison cell. In response to this injustice, the New Jersey Legislature strengthened its "shield law," which recognizes and serves to protect a journalist's need to protect sources and information. Although the federal government has no shield law, the vast majority of states, as well as the District of Columbia, have by now put in place legal protections for reporters. While many of these laws are regarded as providing an "absolute privilege" for journalists, others set out a strict test that the government must meet before it can have a reporter thrown into jail. Perhaps it is a function of the age we live in or perhaps it is something more insidious, but the incidence of reporters being threatened with jail by the federal government is on the rise.

To reverse this trend, to give meaning to the guarantees of the First Amendment and to thereby strengthen our democracy, it is now time for Congress to follow the lead of the states and enact a federal shield law for journalists. Without one, reporters like Judy Miller may be imprisoned. More important, the public will be in the dark about the actions of its elected and appointed government officials. That is not what our nation's founders had in mind. *

I'm scared that Bush will be reelected. It's past just my conscience and my beliefs; I'm beginning to feel physical knots in my stomach at the thought of giving him the power to enact even more damaging rights, environment, and education bills.

I think there should be a word for the fear of continuing George W. Bush's immoral and uncompassionate decisions. Does anyone have a suggestion?
-nicole

It's been a busy weekend!
On Friday night I hosted a debate party for my class...we were so excited that Kerry finally mentioned No Child Left Behind, because we're a bunch of future teachers and could listem to the candidates talk about that for 90 minutes! I didn't see anyone I knew from Washington University, even on the CNN pre-debate shows, but my friends and I enjoyed the woman in the flag shirt and the cute guy with square glasses. Was it me or did John Kerry always refer back to Nikki? Jake thinks that that was the only name Kerry could remember. My question is: does Bush knowingly receive $84 a year for having stake in a Timber business?

On Saturday I went to meet my parents and my brother at St. Olaf for parents' weekend. First, we went to the Jesse James museum, where we learned so much about a bank robbery. During the tour by the elderly owner, my mom kept saying "I'll be darned," because there isn't much else to say when someone tells us that the actual clock from the bank was found only 100 miles south of the town, 30 years ago. Afterwards we went to the St. Olaf homecoming game and barbeque. The Ole (their team name) fight song is so sweet: it's really slow, like a drinking song, and the refrain is "um yah yah, um yah yah..." repeated over and over! My brother has a radio show called "The Donner Family, " and their slogan is "come eat with us" (because it's at lunch time). It's just a bit morbid, but I guess pretty creative too.

Last night I went to Jenny & Jakes to play games. It's so great to have nice neighbors. Jenny and I reminised about when Ricky Martin was still hot ("Vuelve") and Jake did physics parlor tricks. I didn't get any sleep, though, and I have to do all of my homework really quickly before my parents come up this afternoon.

Do you attend Washington University in St. Louis? Do you want to be on TV?

CNN will have an outdoor broadcast space there on Friday. All of the shows will be taped there and there will be opportunities for students to ask questions of reporters, political analysts, and campaign managers! (I'm such a freak for being excited about that). Anyway, if I were there, I would make signs, camp out there all day - it's a worthy enough reason for skipping class- and get on tv!

Possible questions: How is President Bush planning on reversing the huge deficit that is growing bigger every day? How will he safeguard social security for our generation? When will he begin funding education to the extent needed by No Child Left Behind?

One possible sign to make (and if you're as big a marker-nerd as me, this will be the best part):
Side 1- The Economy, Education, Health Care, Social Security, the War in Iraq.
Who's gonna save us? (*from the song by The Living End...quite apropos ;) )
Side 2- Kerry, Edwards! Help is on the way!

I hope I get to see at least one familiar face on tv Friday night!:)

My grandparents and I finally agree on something political: the campaign season is too long!
Being the well-informed retirees that they are, my grandpa and grandma recently attended a conference in Ottawa about Canadian politics (isn't that one of the most random things?). Anyway, they learned that the campaigns there are only permitted (by law) to be about thirty days long! Wouldn't that be so nice? I am so sick of the rhetoric...that could be because I'm watching too much CNN, though. My dad sent me an email last night and said that I obviously need to stop;) Dad, a girl's gotta stay informed.

Anyway, I had heard about the Canadian system from Jean Chretien, the former Prime Minister of Canada, when he came to speak at the U of M. Another interesting tid-bit about politics up north: their bureaucracy is so much smaller than ours! When he was minister of the park system, he told his wife that he would create a state park for her (he told us this story with a really thick French accent, which made it a lot funnier). So he flew to the capital, and discussed with the Minister of the Northern Territories. Which was him. And he agreed. Then he talked to the Minister of Native Indian Affairs. Which was him. And he agreed too. Finally, he asked the Minister of the Cabinet, which was also him, and he agreed. So he created the park...and he never had to talk to anyone else!

I'm really excited to see my parents this weekend! It's funny: they called me this week just to chat...I don't remember them ever doing that before! ;) I think they're getting bored of being empty-nesters. But their new interest is hilarious: my parents have taken up frisbee golf! Haha. Honestly. They bought all of the equiptment last week and they told me that the salesman seemed stoned. My dad said they're going to try to raise the demographic of the frisbee gold course in Ann Arbor. They also enjoy hanging out at Starbucks in the evening. My parents are like teenagers again! It makes me so hopeful- it proves you don't have to become "middle-aged" if you don't want to. And they deserve it, since they only spent 9 months married before they had kids and they've worked so hard for the past 22 years; it's about time they got to do all of the fun stuff they missed out on in their 20's!

Typical disc golf players. My mom and dad might stand out a bit.

Oh, for cute photo-op's sake!

I just saw a commercial for George Bush in which they showed pictures of terrorists and their victims and then said "These people want to kill us." I can't believe that the party has resorted to that! It is the politics of cynicism and fear. They might as well say "You should be very scared. Vote for Bush or you'll probably die." I think it's true: during an election year, the electorate is treated like we're stupid and swayed by our emotions.

What do people have against the French all of the sudden?

It started with the Freedom Fries, but now there seem to be a common belief that the French are elite and weak, which is apparently the opposite of what Americans should be.

Has President Bush been to France? Does he have any French friends? Why does he keep laughing at them and making them the punch line for every campaign joke?

They were so sweet to me when I was broke in Tours, when I offered to wash dishes to pay for a hostel room, when I got on the wrong train twice (twice!) in one day, and when I got on a bus with no money. (I'm sorry, everyone. I probably enforced the French sterotype that Americans are stupid. Oh well). Additionally, have the people who vilify the French as elitist foodies ever had a crepe with ham and gruyere? Well, it's practically a pancake with meat and cheese in it, which sounds like a fatty idea that Americans would have and enjoy at sports games.

So... I support you, Frenchies! Vous etes super!

This morning I did my first door-to-door knocking for Kerry. It was super fun! I got to pass out yard signs and stickers too. The former Governor of New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen, spoke at the instructional meeting about the dirty tactics that the GOP is using to disenfranchize minority voters:

-In Florida, they are mailing Hispanic voters letters saying that they must apply for absentee ballots, but then never sending them those in the mail.
-In southern Ohio, they are sending people letters saying that if John Kerry is elected, their Bibles will be taken away.
-At Universities around the country, they are trying to spread the idea that students will lose scholarship money if they vote.

Since there is so much emphasis on the swing-voters, I didn't feel like there would be very much for us to do in Minnesota, since Kerry still has a lead here. However, the practice of turning African Americans away at polling centers is occuring here too. I met a family today who said that they weren't allowed to vote in the primaries because their middle names apparently didn't match the registration records. That makes me so mad! So everyone, make sure you are registered and that you bring two forms of ID, plus proof of current address to your polling station on November 2nd!! We can't let Bush win by surpressing votes for Kerry!