The wolves in the latest Bush-Cheney ad are a little pissed off at being used, so they've started their own website.
As anyone who's ever seen the great, beautiful movie Never Cry Wolf knows, the wolves's reputation for being mankillers is completely false and unjustified - which makes it kind of perfect that they're the primary image in a Bush-Cheney ad, doesn't it?
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Making the calls
I'd love to be able to write more in here but lately there's just too much good stuff to read - among them plenty of pieces by conservative writers stating very succinctly why Bush is the wrong choice to make for principled conservatives. (You can read a couple here (Pat Buchanan's mag) and here (just do the Salon day pass, it's free, and this article is great) and here.)
Also, I spent yesterday making calls to swing states to get people out to canvass for Kerry. I'd rather be there doing it myself, but if this helps at all, it's worth it. I suspect a lot of people are making these calls, because it was almost impossible to get a list of people to call who weren't in Washington state, which is not really in play as far as I can tell from the polls. I wanted to be calling Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania. (I did pull callers from Florida a couple of times, and Wisconsin once, but that was it.) In any case, I hope it helps. What I really wish I could is personally hand out the massive amount of sane, rational information I've got at the ready to every independent or undecided voter in this country. If anyone knows anyone who can be swayed, I'm willing to send this stuff out to them. I've got the goods, and a lot of it is written by conservatives. So just let me know.
I'm just a little disturbed that Minnesota is in play at all - whatever happened to the state of Hubert H. Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, and Mondale? Hopefully, Jesse Ventura's surprise endorsement of Kerry might shake this up a little bit. Granted Jesse the Body didn't exactly leave the office on a high note, but I figure this veteran and ex-WWF wrestler still has pull among the independents, undecideds and even, as they've become affectionately known during this election cycle, "the NASCAR crowd".
Also, I spent yesterday making calls to swing states to get people out to canvass for Kerry. I'd rather be there doing it myself, but if this helps at all, it's worth it. I suspect a lot of people are making these calls, because it was almost impossible to get a list of people to call who weren't in Washington state, which is not really in play as far as I can tell from the polls. I wanted to be calling Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania. (I did pull callers from Florida a couple of times, and Wisconsin once, but that was it.) In any case, I hope it helps. What I really wish I could is personally hand out the massive amount of sane, rational information I've got at the ready to every independent or undecided voter in this country. If anyone knows anyone who can be swayed, I'm willing to send this stuff out to them. I've got the goods, and a lot of it is written by conservatives. So just let me know.
I'm just a little disturbed that Minnesota is in play at all - whatever happened to the state of Hubert H. Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, and Mondale? Hopefully, Jesse Ventura's surprise endorsement of Kerry might shake this up a little bit. Granted Jesse the Body didn't exactly leave the office on a high note, but I figure this veteran and ex-WWF wrestler still has pull among the independents, undecideds and even, as they've become affectionately known during this election cycle, "the NASCAR crowd".
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
SUVs
Tonight sitting at a neighbor's while they waited for the new season of West Wing to start (we're three seasons behind because we're restricted to whatever is on DVD or video...) we were talking about the fact that, likely as not, with the polls as deadly close as they are, we may be looking at (take a deep breath, calm, focus, breathe) four more years of George W. Bush - a four years that will likely be far uglier than the first given the fact that he will have been given a "mandate" and that he will have nothing to lose. So I thought - you know what - something is starting now - clearly this election is mobilizing liberals and it's about damn time, and we're not going to let a little thing like a lost presidential election get in the way of continuing to stir things up. And one thing that people forget is that politics begins at a local level. As misguided as I've always believed my parents might be, they've always understood this one thing.
So this got me thinking about something I had mentioned to another friend a few weeks ago, that I really, REALLY REALLY wanted to make a bumpersticker that said "I SUPPORT TERRORISM" that could be slapped on random SUV's parked on the street. Well, she thought that was a bad idea for a number of very good and wise reasons and I guess I was forced to agree. But she mentioned that in fact there is a great site called www.runningonempty.org that has tickets that you can order or just print out that can be placed like a real ticket under someone's windshield wiper - they're civil, informative, well-made, and pointed, and best of all if you start papering SUVs with them you can't get arrested for vandalism (or beat up by pissed-off SUV owners).
SUV's by the way are a perfect metaphor for people's belief in this current administration. People have a conception, because SUVs are BIG and threaten by the simple assertion of their mass to roll over everything in their path, that they are therefore safer on the road, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are in fact badly designed for the most part, are far more likely to rollover than smaller cars, and worst and most dangerous of all, because of their weight, are almost impossible to stop quickly when sudden unexpected obstacles place themselves in the drivers way. Accident statistics prove again and again that they are nothing but death traps let loose on the road compared to smaller vehicles. So people psychologically imagine that they are better off, when in reality - just like with the Bush administration - they are actually far more likely, driving an SUV, to end up in an accident, and far more likely, in case of an accident, to experience and/or induce worse injuries and/or fatalities. They just don't make sense, safety-wise, ecologically, economically, politically. It's time to stop supporting a bad habit... And in any case, whatever kind of vehicle we drive, we have to start remembering that oil is a gift, a gift with a time limit, it is not a birthright, and we have to start treating it as such. And we have to begin to remind others about this as well.
So this got me thinking about something I had mentioned to another friend a few weeks ago, that I really, REALLY REALLY wanted to make a bumpersticker that said "I SUPPORT TERRORISM" that could be slapped on random SUV's parked on the street. Well, she thought that was a bad idea for a number of very good and wise reasons and I guess I was forced to agree. But she mentioned that in fact there is a great site called www.runningonempty.org that has tickets that you can order or just print out that can be placed like a real ticket under someone's windshield wiper - they're civil, informative, well-made, and pointed, and best of all if you start papering SUVs with them you can't get arrested for vandalism (or beat up by pissed-off SUV owners).
SUV's by the way are a perfect metaphor for people's belief in this current administration. People have a conception, because SUVs are BIG and threaten by the simple assertion of their mass to roll over everything in their path, that they are therefore safer on the road, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are in fact badly designed for the most part, are far more likely to rollover than smaller cars, and worst and most dangerous of all, because of their weight, are almost impossible to stop quickly when sudden unexpected obstacles place themselves in the drivers way. Accident statistics prove again and again that they are nothing but death traps let loose on the road compared to smaller vehicles. So people psychologically imagine that they are better off, when in reality - just like with the Bush administration - they are actually far more likely, driving an SUV, to end up in an accident, and far more likely, in case of an accident, to experience and/or induce worse injuries and/or fatalities. They just don't make sense, safety-wise, ecologically, economically, politically. It's time to stop supporting a bad habit... And in any case, whatever kind of vehicle we drive, we have to start remembering that oil is a gift, a gift with a time limit, it is not a birthright, and we have to start treating it as such. And we have to begin to remind others about this as well.
The question of Bush's faith
This is a very clear response by Ayelish McGarvey to the Ron Suskind article from this past Sunday's New York Times Sunday Magazine. It pretty much hits my attitude about Bush's faith on the head. In a way, it's odd how much in regards to this administration rests on the question of Bush's faith, since it's almost always what he relies on for policy decisions - either his "gut" or his "faith". (God knows he doesn't rely on the rational testimony of his military or science advisors, unless of course they already agree with his bowels or his interior monologue with God (if this is in fact what it is)...) Journalists in general take Bush's testimonies of faith verbatim and don't question him on it; perhaps because a person's true heart is actually unknowable, questioning a person's word is essentially worthless from a journalistic perspective. But pieces like the Suskind piece, while shocking in themselves, are slightly meaningless to me because I've never really believed that his "faith" was any more than a shill to the social conservative right. No politician on the right is dumb enough to think they're going to get anywhere without reeling in their Evangelical base, and Bush saw what happened to his father with a base that was insufficiently convinced of Bush Sr.'s Christian conviction. So what better than a rebirth of the pagan prodigal son into Christianity through no lesser vehicle than Billy Graham? Certainly on a personal basis, Bush post-rebirth has done some mightily unChristian acts, or at least supported them, and on a political basis of course the mind reels at the moral relativism implicit in just about every aspect of both his campaigning and his policy-making. If what he represents is indeed Christianity, then I have to kind of wonder, what isn't?
In any case, you either have:
a)a man who wraps himself in the cloak of Christianity in order to put a lock on the Christian base of his party, and allows him to do whatever he wants policy-wise, Christian or unChristian as it might be.
or
b)a man who in fact does operate "on faith" with little concern for rational, expert-based discourse. And still engages in policy-making that bares little or no resemblance to any kind of Christianity I can recognize.
Either way. It's frightening.
In any case, you either have:
a)a man who wraps himself in the cloak of Christianity in order to put a lock on the Christian base of his party, and allows him to do whatever he wants policy-wise, Christian or unChristian as it might be.
or
b)a man who in fact does operate "on faith" with little concern for rational, expert-based discourse. And still engages in policy-making that bares little or no resemblance to any kind of Christianity I can recognize.
Either way. It's frightening.
Not to be cynical but...
apparently babykissing is alive and well in the 21st Century. Not for those with weak stomachs. Once again, a Bush expression meant to be profound and sincere (or God knows what) just frankly disturbs me. (I can't help it. It's beyond politics with him - that mug of his quite honestly (and literally) gives me nightmares.)
I read yesterday that this was the biggest political ad buy in history, $14.2 million.
The real killer is that giving a contribution to "get Ashley's story around" or whatever the pap they say, is actually a contribution to the far-right wing Progess for America voter fund. Not that it's a mystery which direction the ad comes from or anything...
I read yesterday that this was the biggest political ad buy in history, $14.2 million.
The real killer is that giving a contribution to "get Ashley's story around" or whatever the pap they say, is actually a contribution to the far-right wing Progess for America voter fund. Not that it's a mystery which direction the ad comes from or anything...
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Finally
This piece is excellent, extensive, and completely damning about the post-war planning done for the Iraq War. Send it to anyone you possibly can who thinks this administration actually knows what they are doing with this country's defense.
What particularly freaks me out is that somehow I, sitting in Los Angeles in late 2002, early 2003, knew from news sources that there was no post-war plan. It was getting to me all the way over here, through the news. And yet the people actually running the war - who HAD to have known this was the case, did nothing about it, and did their level best to silence voices that pointed this out. I was always arguing this with my conservative buddy that was all gung-ho to go in and take down Saddam, but he wouldn't listen, even though I was just reporting what I'd read in the news. To him, I was just against the war because I didn't like Bush. And the news, feh! "Liberal media," he said. "The New York Times is just a liberal shill."
Do you think anyone is going to learn anything from this?
Another great quote from this New Yorker article today is Mark Halperin's defeated sounding, "In American political life, what is always creams what ought to be."
What particularly freaks me out is that somehow I, sitting in Los Angeles in late 2002, early 2003, knew from news sources that there was no post-war plan. It was getting to me all the way over here, through the news. And yet the people actually running the war - who HAD to have known this was the case, did nothing about it, and did their level best to silence voices that pointed this out. I was always arguing this with my conservative buddy that was all gung-ho to go in and take down Saddam, but he wouldn't listen, even though I was just reporting what I'd read in the news. To him, I was just against the war because I didn't like Bush. And the news, feh! "Liberal media," he said. "The New York Times is just a liberal shill."
Do you think anyone is going to learn anything from this?
Another great quote from this New Yorker article today is Mark Halperin's defeated sounding, "In American political life, what is always creams what ought to be."
Gillespie and Rock the Vote
You can start here to read all about this little Gillespie snafu (and yes I think it was very dumb on his part with no discernible positive outcome for the Bushies) - Gillespie's cease and desist letter to Rock the Vote.
Won't go into it much but I will say that the fact that he doesn't realize how laughable a sentence like this is: "no less than the President of the United States has thoroughly debunked" the idea that we will need a draft, and continues by using no less than Rumsfeld - that celebrated expert noted particularly for his ability to determine adequate troop levels - to further support his argument that *cough cough* a draft will not be necessary, makes me think that Bush is not the only one caught in the "Bush Bubble".
Also, just for stupid chuckles, is the fact that Gillespie brings up NASCAR and televised wrestling as examples of the Republican appeal to youth! (And then cc's NASCAR and the WWW with the letter).
Needless to say (because you can read it on their blog) Rock the Vote has not taken up Gillespie's offer, and in fact is hitting back twice as hard with evidence that is frankly a little frightening...
Won't go into it much but I will say that the fact that he doesn't realize how laughable a sentence like this is: "no less than the President of the United States has thoroughly debunked" the idea that we will need a draft, and continues by using no less than Rumsfeld - that celebrated expert noted particularly for his ability to determine adequate troop levels - to further support his argument that *cough cough* a draft will not be necessary, makes me think that Bush is not the only one caught in the "Bush Bubble".
Also, just for stupid chuckles, is the fact that Gillespie brings up NASCAR and televised wrestling as examples of the Republican appeal to youth! (And then cc's NASCAR and the WWW with the letter).
Needless to say (because you can read it on their blog) Rock the Vote has not taken up Gillespie's offer, and in fact is hitting back twice as hard with evidence that is frankly a little frightening...
The battle of the misleading ads.
Another article at MSNBC was yet another detailing the misleading ads that both Kerry and Bush are throwing up now. While the article does concede that Bush has spent this entire campaign focusing on mendacious and negative ads while Kerry started nice, it points out that both of them are now completely tossing veracity out the window.
Strangely enough, I find myself so very happy and pleased that Kerry is doing this. As the article points out, the average American just doesn't have time to check and verify what they hear during these ads - which means that they just assume that the ads are true! Which means that the only people getting upset by the complete crap in these negative Bush ads was liberal lefty obsessives like myself. Which means that a lot of energy was being wasted worrying about an impossibility, i.e. getting the record straight, and getting flustered by the audacity of that crazy poisonous bastard Rove (& Co). So really, thank God the Kerry campaign has decided to fight fire with fire. Sad to say, but when you're dealing with a fucker who will stop at nothing, you've got no choice but to best them at their own sick game. In fact, I have a sick fantasy of my own - a world where liberals run everything and constantly are presenting fiction as truth and vice versa and conservatives run around gnashing their teeth at the insanity and idiocy of the average American citizen, while liberal pundits nod their heads in agreement like trained monkeys at the most ridiculous liberal pap (and there's plenty of that to be found, God knows...)
In any case, Tony, you're right - nothing is quite as amusing as hearing Bush accuse Kerry of using "scare tactics to win the election". I just wish Kerry would start saying that Bush "can't run and hide" from his record over the past four years.
Strangely enough, I find myself so very happy and pleased that Kerry is doing this. As the article points out, the average American just doesn't have time to check and verify what they hear during these ads - which means that they just assume that the ads are true! Which means that the only people getting upset by the complete crap in these negative Bush ads was liberal lefty obsessives like myself. Which means that a lot of energy was being wasted worrying about an impossibility, i.e. getting the record straight, and getting flustered by the audacity of that crazy poisonous bastard Rove (& Co). So really, thank God the Kerry campaign has decided to fight fire with fire. Sad to say, but when you're dealing with a fucker who will stop at nothing, you've got no choice but to best them at their own sick game. In fact, I have a sick fantasy of my own - a world where liberals run everything and constantly are presenting fiction as truth and vice versa and conservatives run around gnashing their teeth at the insanity and idiocy of the average American citizen, while liberal pundits nod their heads in agreement like trained monkeys at the most ridiculous liberal pap (and there's plenty of that to be found, God knows...)
In any case, Tony, you're right - nothing is quite as amusing as hearing Bush accuse Kerry of using "scare tactics to win the election". I just wish Kerry would start saying that Bush "can't run and hide" from his record over the past four years.
Andrew Sullivan
I also want to mention that when I started this sporadic attempt at a blog, one of my fixations was Andrew Sullivan - namely because he is by far one of the sanest conservative voices I've ever read. And yet constantly I would read his blog and read him defending the worst outrages of this administration's handling of Iraq (among other things) He, like so many conservative pundits, was all too painfully willing to put on the rosy shades that the Administration wants everyone to wear, and to attack liberals not on substantive points but from a kind of self-righteous, smug, might-makes-right tone and perspective that represents the worst (and the overriding majority) of conservative punditry. And yet I kept reading him, and sending him "what are you talking about?" emails (that he never read), and kept reading him... maybe I was holding out hope for those glimmers of true lucidity, or maybe he just pissed me off in that particular way that people - who we mostly agree with except on matters most important to us - do. In any case, I did keep reading, and somewhere, and I think honestly the moment was Abu Ghraib, in fact yes Abu Ghraib was decidedly the pin in his triumphal balloon, when he suddenly couldn't drink the koolaid anymore. And then, as a gay man, the Federal Marriage Amendment threw him over the edge. Since then no one has been more vehemently and more eloquently on Bush's and the Bush Administration's case about the handling of the post-war and the hypocrisy and empty travesty of their domestic policies. He's still not entirely sold on Kerry. But it's safe to say this ex-Brit is not voting for Bush. For those two or three of you who actually read this, I strongly recommend checking him out if you don't already, among other reasons because he compiles a mean war chest of anti-Bushiania - and a lot of this is from his fellow conservatives. He also loves to slash away at the garbage flying on both sides - and man is it refreshing to read a bullshit free conservative pundit. Admittedly, he still gets emotional and self-righteous about things that I think are dumb, but, hey, an honest conservative pundit - I was being to think it wasn't possible.
Mary Cheney, a caveat
That said, Kerry's remark did feel... forced or unnatural or something. I definitely remember it was one of two moments in that last debate when I cringed... I had had no problem when Edwards brought it up - it felt right - but Kerry's use personally I have to say felt gratuitous. That said, the conservative response was as ridiculous as it was predictable - "quick, Bush sucked and said absolutely nothing to defend himself against the fact that he has nothing domestically to show for himself for the past four years... the Mary Cheney comment.... yeah! even if no one buys it, at least it will DISTRACT EVERYONE FOR AT LEAST FOUR OR FIVE DAYS UNTIL THEY'VE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT BUSH HAD NOTHING TO SAY!" So, it works, it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. People who would have normally been talking about how strong and presidential Kerry looked against Bush's failed attempt to paint an Alfred E. Neumann What Me Worry smile on his face the entire time, would suddenly be caught up in the flurry of whether Kerry technically was or was not a "bad man" (as Lynne Cheney described him).
Fortunately, the polls seem to indicate that this did not translate into votes for Bush.
Fortunately, the polls seem to indicate that this did not translate into votes for Bush.
Mary Cheney
The only thing I'm going to say about the whole ridiculous Mary Cheney issue is what I said last week - that it was a non-issue except among people who already knew where they stood anyway - and that it would disappear soon enough. I am so happy, so extremely pleased Kerry floated over it entirely and paid it little mind. Except for William Safire, who wrote a typically moronic editorial about five days after it mattered anymore, the issue is really essentially already swallowed up in the oceanic wave of sound bites flowing around the last two weeks in certainly the most heated Presidential election I've ever witnessed, and thank God for it. The only real tangible lasting effect is to cast conservative's hypocritical bullshit about homosexuality in stark, blindingly stark relief. They try to cast it as a respect issue for homosexuals, when in fact there isn't a homosexual I've spoken to or read who has had any problem with Kerry's remark AT ALL. The only problems gays have had with Kerry's comments was the fact that CONSERVATIVES had a problem with it. And the gay punditry has been having a field day tearing conservative rationales to shreds. Yes, kudos to Kerry - maybe he saw that exactly this would happen and that conservatives would get all flustered and get caught in the tortured labyrinth of their own hollow rhetoric (or maybe that's the tortured labyrinth of their own hollow minds). Whether he did or not, thank God for it.
Neck and neck
As if this hasn't been a maddening enough presidential campaign, with two weeks to go, a number of polls - among them this one from MSNBC - have the race completely tied. On the one hand, people's approval of Bush's performance, and their belief that the country is headed in the right direction, is dropping - bad for Bush. On the other, people now apparently believe that we will win in Iraq - Lord only knows what news source gave birth to that particular belief system - and also just don't trust Kerry all that much - bad for Kerry. So - 48 and 48.... Looking back at polls from 2000, it seems that this is actually a good thing for Kerry, because leading into the election Gore was down in 39 of 43 polls that were run the week before the election, and as we all know he won the popular election. If this same logic held - and of course there is no reason to imagine that it should, but IF it held - Kerry would have a clear margin of victory. Add to this the common wisdom that I've been reading on both conservative and liberal blogs, namely that in an election involving an incumbent whose popularity is below 50% (Bush is at 44% in the MSNBC poll) undecideds always break for the challenger at the last minute, and it could be a runaway Kerry victory.
All that said, I'm basically saving my sanity pre-election by assuming that Karl Rove is going to pull some piece of major nastiness out of his bag of dirty tricks at the last minute and smear Kerry with something with no time for Kerry to regain his balance. (I read a great quote in the New Yorker today, from an article about Mark Halperin who puts together The Note on www.abcnews.com. His father was majorly slimed by conservative Republicans during confirmation hearings when Clinton attempted to make him Assistant Secretary of Defense saying that the CIA had a "secret dossier" on him. Even though the CIA adamantly denied such a thing, the allegations stuck. He complained that "It's very hard for the truth to catch up with a lie." And slime throwers understand this inherently (and yes they exist on both sides though don't they seem to be - Hello Joe McCarthy - by and large Republican and conservative? and why is this? and why does it only seem to get worse?) .) At any rate, I'm just assuming Rove has this little pet viper or copperhead that he's keeping at the ready, ready to pull out at the last second that will kill Kerry's campaign dead, so that I don't go stark raving mad at the moment that it happens. Or, let's say nothing happens, and Bush just wins (after they've shredded off a good few thousand Democratic ballots in Florida and hacked away a few touchscreen Democratic votes in Ohio). In any case, preemptive sanity-preserving tactics - I'm just assuming Kerry is already toast.
Perhaps I'm sending bad vibes into the air. But I don't believe in that so I don't care...
All that said, I'm basically saving my sanity pre-election by assuming that Karl Rove is going to pull some piece of major nastiness out of his bag of dirty tricks at the last minute and smear Kerry with something with no time for Kerry to regain his balance. (I read a great quote in the New Yorker today, from an article about Mark Halperin who puts together The Note on www.abcnews.com. His father was majorly slimed by conservative Republicans during confirmation hearings when Clinton attempted to make him Assistant Secretary of Defense saying that the CIA had a "secret dossier" on him. Even though the CIA adamantly denied such a thing, the allegations stuck. He complained that "It's very hard for the truth to catch up with a lie." And slime throwers understand this inherently (and yes they exist on both sides though don't they seem to be - Hello Joe McCarthy - by and large Republican and conservative? and why is this? and why does it only seem to get worse?) .) At any rate, I'm just assuming Rove has this little pet viper or copperhead that he's keeping at the ready, ready to pull out at the last second that will kill Kerry's campaign dead, so that I don't go stark raving mad at the moment that it happens. Or, let's say nothing happens, and Bush just wins (after they've shredded off a good few thousand Democratic ballots in Florida and hacked away a few touchscreen Democratic votes in Ohio). In any case, preemptive sanity-preserving tactics - I'm just assuming Kerry is already toast.
Perhaps I'm sending bad vibes into the air. But I don't believe in that so I don't care...
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