Friday, November 05, 2004

Seen at "the American Street"

It's a good group blog and it's finding its way onto my links this weekend.

I've seen a lot of handwringing and whinging about the election and a lot of very bad advice. Here's some good advice courtesy of Emma:

"We need to motivate those who don’t want to live in a half-assed science-fiction dystopia."

We don't need to appease the troglodytes who think we should outlaw gay sex and start teaching creationism in Public Schools. We need to be who we are and better articulate why the Republicans are wrong, dangerous, incompetent, and sleazy. If we had won Ohio the situation would have been different. This president had every advantage in the world except for his record of failure. We got really close.

This is an opportunity to rethink strategy. This is an opportunity to strengthen liberal political infrastructure. This is not an opportunity to compromise ourselves.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

I just voted.

It was my first time voting in a National election. In 2000 I was one of those South Park morons.

"What's the difference. My vote doesn't count. It'll be, like, a rich white guy either way. Yada yada"

Well, let's just say a combination of growing a brain, living through nearly 4 years of the Orwell administration, and moving to a swing state took care of all that. You can guess how I voted.

I wasn't prepared for how powerful it would feel to do the deed. Awesome.

The whole experience was great and kind of heartening. It took me an hour to vote and the place was packed. Diverse crowd. MoveOn Pac was there. They seemed pretty organized and professional, even if one of them looked like Jeff Lynne from ELO.


I had been back in my apartment for a whole 10 minutes when the same Move On folks knocked on my door to check if I had voted.

The fact that I had only been contacted before the election by Move On and Dem-leaning groups, even including a robocall from Kirsten Dunst, was heartening. I live in THE swing state (FL) in THE swing region (I-4 corridor). If the Dem and Dem-leaning ground game is so dominant here, I feel very good about our chances.

ROCK ON!

Sunday, October 31, 2004

VOTE

I don't want to go all P. Diddy on everyone, but please understand that the stakes are too high to abstain.

I hear a lot of dreamers who seem to believe that Bush will tone his monstrousness down in a second term. Don't you believe it. A win for Bush will be seen as an endorsement of every opportunistic power grab, every saber-rattling act of macho stupidity, every careless use of our resources.

I also hear a lot of confused people nitpicking John Kerry. My high school gym teacher would be a better president than Bush, and he was no great shakes. I persist in hearing people, for example, ask how Kerry expects to pay for his health care plan. Is this a double standard or what? We go from our history's largest surpluses to our largest deficits, with non-military discretionary spending rising much higher than under Clinton and military spending simply exploding, and some of you folks sincerely worry how Kerry is going to pay for his health care plan?

Seriously. Imagine you're in a house that's on fire. The arsonist keeps explaining how he's going to fix everything. Meanwhile outside a fireman calls up and says he can save you and put out thee fire. The arsonist keeps saying the fireman will only make it worse. And you believe him, for even a second?!?!

You know what, things might be better if George Washington were the Democratic candidate, but he's not. John Kerry's only a war hero, one of the more courageous veterans to stand up against Nixon (and John O'Neill, his hired goon), a crusader against corruption and official dishonesty, a sober and thoughful man who sees the world through the lens of reality rather than neoconservative lunacy.

I'm tired of fashionably edgy morons like those South Park douches telling me that the choice is between a douche bag and a shit sandwich. It's not. It's between a weak, mediocre man and a good man. It's between a man who surrounds himself with yes-men and lunatics and one who thrives off of debate. It's between a man who can't communicate a complex idea without a script in front of him and an articulate statesman. It's between a cheerleader and a warrior.

As a nation, we need to tell the world that we don't accept the lies of Bush. That we don't accept his subordination of policy to politics. That we don't accept his studied callousness even when it masquerades as compassion. That we think torture is wrong. That we think bombing countries that don't threaten us is wrong. That treating the poor of this country as if they deserve their plight is wrong. That writing discrimination into the constitution is wrong.

In short, we have to vote Bush out, and vote Kerry in.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani is a deeply dishonest man. Dishonesty is inevitable when you carry water for George W. Bush, but he is just embarrassing.

I saw this unctuous little authoritarian on MTP where he felt totally at liberty to repeat every demonstrably false Republican talking point there is, including the myth that OBL might not have been at Tora Bora, that we certainly didn't outsource the job, and that Kerry voted to slash intelligence.

But the worst was his defense of his own indefensible statements that the troops are to blame for the disappearance of 380 tons of explosives. Rambling, politicianlike misdirection- that was all he had, as slimy as the sermon of most devious used car salesman. This is how you shall know the Republicans- they shall speak without fail of values and loyalty, and yet they shall defame the sanctity of marriage in their actions, in a fashion as public and disrespectful as is conceivable. So shall they exculpate the powerful from responsibility, as shall they find fault only with the lowest ranked and least culpable soldiers.

I'm tired of slimy little scumbags like Rudy Giuliani, whose entire reputation rests on the way he used one of this country's greatest tragedies as an occasion for self-aggrandizement, being treated as saints and heroes. Hypocrites and character assassins like Giuliani deserved to be seen as what they are- little men corrupted by power and love of 'team' (ie. Republicans) over country.

Our media discourse passes over deeply partisan liars like Giuliani as if they are beyond reproach. No one is beyond reproach, but least of all are those willing to soil themselves to put corrupt incompetents in office.