It's been months since I've blogged, but I'm back just briefly to ask whoever is listening if anyone else immediately thought Terry Jones was actually The Onion's grizzled, third-party character, Joad Cressbeckler.
I'm just sayin'...
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, September 10, 2010
Cressbeckler v. Jones
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
I was there when we made history
I was lucky enough to receive tickets to go to Obama’s Election Night rally in Grant Park last night. The experience for me was surreal and overwhelmingly emotional. I felt lucky—not just to be at the front lines of this historic moment but also to be a part of a country like ours.
I spent the first part of the rally ecstatic, pumping my fist against my chest whenever Ohio’s results were pulled up on the Jumbotron and screaming, “THAT’S MY STATE!!” When CNN finally project Ohio for Obama, though, I felt quieter, calmer. It was as if I finally was allowing myself to believe that this could happen. I had made calls to my hometown in hopes to help Obama win, and while I got hung up on and sneered at a few times, I also talked with undecided voters who were truly concerned about our country and who seemed to lean Democratic by the time we finished talking, with Republicans who were voting for both a black man and a Democrat for the first time in their lives, and with other Democrats who were making calls themselves and who had voted in the early Ohio voting.
Here it was, Ohio’s electoral votes going to Obama, and I felt the pulse of the crowd against me and the rush of screams around me but I was floating outside of myself, completely peaceful.
By the time Obama’s rally was pumping celebratory music and playing a video montage that played on the emotions of a proud American, I was—like everybody else it seems—in tears. I replayed in my mind the last eight years of my life and all that has changed and imagined what changes will happen for me now—hopefully, for better this time.
But it was Obama’s speech, the full text of which is available here, which most resonated with me. In the last few months, I’ve been reading up a lot lately on Lincoln and feeling some strong emotions about our sixteenth president, so when Obama said the following, he truly touched me:
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House -- a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
Coming from such a conservative area, I know full well that there will be people who will never accept Barack Obama. That’s fine. But the important thing is that for those of us who believe in him, and those who might come to believe in him too, Obama represents a true shift away from that petty partisanship and negativity that has so sharply pitched liberal against conservative in the last eight years.
It would be disingenous of me if I didn’t mention that I wasn’t always such an Obama supporter, as evidenced even by this blog. But as the other candidates fell away and Obama’s policies took stronger form, I became one of his believers. Standing and cheering among his other supporters last night, I could begin to imagine a better America where our rights and freedoms are not stripped from us and we are given the freedom and benefits we deserve. I am so proud and just wanted to share.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Halloween Update
When the Pygmalion Sarah Palin was unveiled back in August, I was still back in Denver, glowing happily from the Democratic National Convention. I couldn’t help but notice Palin’s side-swept brunette bangs and rimless eyeglasses, both of which I wear or own, and felt the call to Halloween action.
Of course, the Dressing Up as Sarah Palin for Halloween Express was bound to be one big trainwreck with just about everybody from Tickety-Tack Trannies to Joe Six Packs donning their own Palin get-ups for the evening.
So I decided to try something different, and this is what I came up with: Sarah Palin’s Forbidden Romance / Mr. Moose Whisks Sarah Palin Away. It involved a whole crapload of brown fleece, several trips to Jo-Ann Fabrics and at least one tantrum that involved foam and PVC pipe which we will not get into now.
Not exactly easy to maneuver in, but I had a fun time throughout the evening hanging out with friends at a few parties, taking photos with other bar-goers, and defending myself from crazy, crazy people who hate Sarah Palin so much they were willing to attack her Halloween doppelganger while screaming “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.” To each is own, I guess.
Also see below for my #1 Halloween companion, Wall Street. :)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Scary Female Voldemort With Fluffy Bow in Hair For Ohio's 2nd Congressional District?
Okay, prepare yourself for a Harry Potter reference. Remember how Voldemort becomes less and less human in his evil attempts at immortality? This, I’m pretty sure, is why Jean Schmidt looks the way she does.
I suppose that after you violate basic Congressional rules by calling Marine veteran and congressman John Murtha a “coward” on your first day in Congress, lie about gifts received from lobbyists, falsify your college education, tell voters you’ve been endorsed by politicians and organizations that haven’t endorsed you, plagiarize guest columns... TWICE, admit you weren’t aware of the financial crisis ‘until a few weeks ago’ and then air ridiculous commercials about the “success we’ve enjoyed” due to your leadership, and finally, wage a three-month assault on the fictitious Chinese drilling off the American coast that you've apparently imagined and then blame everyone (Republican John Boehner, democrats, then the media) for your lies, it becomes easier and easier to let yourself sour with age, baseless vitriolic attacks and senseless politics.
Of course, like the Cincinnati Enquirer reported back in 1984, this wonderful woman was calling young Republicans “young Hitlers” and booing Elizabeth Dole at the Republican National Convention, so I guess maybe she’s been this stupid all along.
Anyway, I proudly checked my ballot box for Victoria Wulsin. It’s hard to imagine that anyone continues to elect Schmidt into office, and I assume that those who do so just don’t realize how this woman is seriously embarrassing our district. I would beg Republicans and Independents who don’t know the issues at hand in the 2nd Congressional District of Ohio either do some research on the atrocious behavior of this woman or just skip voting for their representative altogether.
On a personal note, I might not be so angered were it not for the fact that I personally visited Schmidt’s office in Washington, D.C. back in 2006 to request her support in Congress to end genocide in Darfur. Upon arriving and waiting for quite a long time, I was handed off to an aide, not much older than me, who condescendingly suggested that it was so wonderful I was attempting to be so involved in politics, deflected my serious questions, questioned my own knowledge and then (!) tried to connect with me about my hometown by naming streets in it.
Totally insulting, but exactly what I would expect from Jean Schmidt’s office.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
In defense of elementary school children everywhere...
I'm sure by now you may have seen the video where Sarah Palin answers an eight-year-old boy's question about what a vice president does. Palin does her best concerned look with knit brow and maternal smile, explaining that the veep "runs" the Senate and can "really get in there" to affect policy. The McCain camp has defended Palin, pointing out that she was explaining complicated civic issues to an eight-year-old. For the video of Chris Matthews putting a McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer through the ringer on this issue and Nancy jumping and bending backwards to defend her veep candidate, see below.
So who should be angry here, other than Chris Matthews? John McCain--because his running mate has a tough time stringing sentences together and has gotten mixed up before about what the vice president does? The American people--because it's insulting that a national political party would choose a vice presidential candidate not for her qualifications but for her yoobetchya charm as a last-minute effort to revive a floundering campaign? Dan Quayle—because he sees his great legacy of vice presidential flubbery challenged by this Alaskan maverick?
Nope. In fact, those who should be most angered are probably busy right now, playing tag at recess or practicing long division. Or perhaps they are learning Civics, and their teacher is having to waste lesson time reteaching what Sarah Palin got wrong about the duties of the vice president. It's the children of America who should be angry.
As I listened to Nancy Pfotenhauer argue over and over again that Palin's response should be taken in the context as an answer for a schoolchild, I was furious and wanted Chris Matthews to point out the obvious—that a second-grader could handle simple civics and grasp that the vice president doesn't run the Senate but instead serves as a tie-breaker when the Senate can't make up its mind; or the fact that if we all followed Palin's example, we'd oversimplify things so much for schoolchildren that they'd never gain a basic understanding of how our country runs or much else for that matter.
There are enough fairy tales in public education already. When in some history lesson Christopher Columbus was outted as the rapist and pillager he was, it was a little bit like losing Santa Claus. I thought back to my first lessons in Kindergarten, where in the week leading up to Columbus Day we read picture books about this international hero who brought gifts to America and back to Europe, who befriended the Native Americans and who looked dashingly handsome in the watercolor version of the story. With the truth exposed years later in another school room, I sighed and filed Columbus away in my "Believed That Once, But Never Again" mental dossier. To join him later would be Thomas Jefferson's indiscretions, Abraham Lincoln's theories on colonization, Japanese internment camps and John Edwards's fidelity, just to name a few.
I'm not advocating for a first grade lesson plan in smallbox blankets, but I also think that if we can tell children the truth and not insult their intelligence, we should do so. No vice presidential candidate who claims to be so dedicated to education should go in front of a nation and tell a child an oversimplified truth about American civics. So instead of condemning Palin for telling American children distortions, I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't understand the issue herself.
Monday, August 11, 2008
What does 10 pounds of guilt really look like?
I haven’t had a chance to watch the Nightline interview with John Edwards yet, but I did read his statement after penning a letter to him. (FWIW, I’m inclined to say that I found his statement to be relatively redeeming.) As Slate pointed out, this kind of story is only a story when hypocrisy is involved (Again, see: Larry Craig.), as it was with Jesse Jackson. But even Jackson was able to maintain a public image. (Kind of.) And sure, mainstream media’s reluctance to cover the story is worth mentioning as well.
But I found Alessandra Stanley's article, True or False: Everyone Looks 10 Pounds Guiltier on TV, to be just a wash of anti-Edwards rhetoric. Stanley writes: “Even if he acted to pre-empt another wave of reports, Mr. Edwards didn’t need to put himself in front of a camera. Silence, or a written statement followed by a tactical retreat from public life, would have sufficed. But apparently Mr. Edwards is not ready to leave the stage; he just wanted to have more control over the script.”
Really? Because if he hadn’t gone in front of the cameras, what would the media have said then? And honestly, what’s wrong with controlling the script? Stanley does no more than piss and moan about smart politicking. In her world, Edwards was damned because he did, but by someone else’s standards, he was damned if he didn’t.
If Alessandra Stanley was really looking for an example of someone looking 10 pounds guiltier on TV, maybe she should have watched the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies on Friday night instead. Because as Iraq’s four athletes entered the stadium, George W. Bush’s face contorted into an uncomfortable smirk that was worth several thousand lives worth of guilt. Or when Thailand entered the stadium, Bush exemplified all the enthusiasm for his country that one might expect from a president so disliked, as he disinterestedly slapped his thigh with the American flag and stared blankly into space.
At the very least Edwards apologizes for his behavior.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Move over Obama
As Elizabeth Edwards said, lots of us wanted to know more about Mike Gravel and his positions while determining the Democratic candidate. (At the very least, I wanted CNN's senior political analyst to pronounce his name correctly.) After this video, I definitely want to know as much about this man as possible... especially since he can dance better than Obama and David Gregory combined.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Bowling 1, Health Care 0
"News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve."
By Elizabeth Edwards, via NYT
FOR the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?
Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.
Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.
But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.
It is not a new phenomenon. In 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings — an important if painful part of our history — were televised, but by only one network, ABC. NBC and CBS covered a few minutes, snippets on the evening news, but continued to broadcast soap operas in order, I suspect, not to invite complaints from those whose days centered on the drama of “The Guiding Light.”
The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.
Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.
What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.
And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.
But it was not to be. Indeed, the Biden campaign was covered more for its missteps than anything else. Chris Dodd, also a serious candidate with a distinguished record, received much the same treatment. I suspect that there was more coverage of the burglary at his campaign office in Hartford than of any other single event during his run other than his entering and leaving the campaign.
Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?
The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.
I’m not the only one who noticed this shallow news coverage. A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.
Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.
News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.
And the future of news is not bright. Indeed, we’ve heard that CBS may cut its news division, and media consolidation is leading to one-size-fits-all journalism. The state of political campaigning is no better: without a press to push them, candidates whose proposals are not workable avoid the tough questions. All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter. (Look, the press doesn’t even think there is a difference!)
I was lucky enough for a time to have a front-row seat in this campaign — to see all this, to get my information firsthand. But most Americans are not so lucky. As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina, I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president.
If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie “Network” but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Saving Private Hubbard
Unbelievable. I wish these stories about the way returning soldiers are treated by the government they served would get more coverage.
Sole-surviving son denied health benefits post-Iraq
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Forced to leave the combat zone after his two brothers died in the Iraq war, Army Spc. Jason Hubbard faced another battle once he returned home: The military cut off his family's health care, stopped his G.I. educational subsidies and wanted him to repay his sign-up bonus.
It wasn't until Hubbard petitioned his local congressman that he was able to restore some of his benefits.
Now that congressman, Rep. Devin Nunes, plans to join three other lawmakers in introducing a bill that would ensure basic benefits to all soldiers who are discharged under an Army policy governing sole surviving siblings and children of soldiers killed in combat. The rule is a holdover from World War II meant to protect the rights of service people who have lost a family member to war.
''I felt as if in some ways I was being punished for leaving even though it was under these difficult circumstances,'' Hubbard told The Associated Press. ''The situation that happened to me is not a one-time thing. It's going to happen to other people, and to have a law in place is going to ease their tragedy in some way.''
Hubbard, 33, and his youngest brother, Nathan, enlisted while they were still grieving for their brother, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard, who was 22 when he was killed in a 2004 bomb explosion in Ramadi.
At their request, the pair were assigned to the same unit, the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, and deployed to Iraq the next year.
In August, 21-year-old Cpl. Nathan died when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Kirkuk. Jason was part of the team assigned to remove his comrades' bodies from the wreckage.
Hubbard accompanied his little brother's body on a military aircraft to Kuwait, then on to California. He kept steady during Nathan's burial at Clovis Cemetery, standing in dress uniform between his younger brothers' graves as hundreds sobbed in the heat.
But Hubbard broke his silence when he found his wife, pregnant with their second child, had been cut off from the transitional health care the family needed to ease back to civilian life after he was discharged in October.
''This is a man who asked for nothing and gave a lot,'' said Nunes, R-Calif., who represents Hubbard's hometown of Clovis, a city of 90,000 next to Fresno. ''Jason is one person who obviously has suffered tremendously and has given the ultimate sacrifice. One person is too many to have this happen to.''
Hubbard went to Nunes, who began advocating for the former soldier in December, after hearing the Army was demanding that he repay $6,000 from his enlistment bonus and was denying him up to $40,000 in educational benefits under the GI bill.
After speaking with Army Secretary Pete Geren, Nunes got the repayment waived, and a military health policy restored for Hubbard's wife.
But the policy mandated that she be treated at a nearby base, and doctors at the Lemoore Naval Air Station warned that the 45-mile trip could put her and the fetus in danger. Hubbard said doctors offered alternative treatment at a hospital five hours away.
Meantime, Hubbard and his two-year-old son went without any coverage for a few months.
The Hubbard Act, scheduled to be introduced Wednesday, would for the first time detail the rights of sole survivors, and extend to them a number of benefits already offered to other soldiers honorably discharged from military service.
The bill -- co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. -- would waive payback of their enlistment bonuses, allow them to participate in G.I. educational programs, give them separation pay and access to transitional health care.
Meanwhile, Hubbard, his wife Linnea and his son Elijah, have permanent health coverage now that he is once again working as a Fresno County sheriff's deputy, the job he left in 2004 to serve in Iraq.
The Army will adopt to any changes in policy springing from the legislation, said Army spokesman Maj. Nathan Banks.
''Foremost the Army itself sympathizes with him for the loss of his brothers,'' Banks said. ''We will do everything within our means to rectify this issue. He is still one of ours.''
Hubbard's father, Jeff, said that resolving the family's bureaucratic difficulties would provide some comfort, but would not help lessen their pain.
''We're still very much deeply involved in a grieving process. We're pretty whacked,'' he said. ''This doesn't relate back to the loss of our boys, it can't, but we would consider it a positive accomplishment.'' [AP]
Monday, September 12, 2005
Four years later
I had a conversation tonight with a friend about the comparison between 9/11 and Katrina. He pointed out how Katrina has overshadowed significant rememberances for the victims of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I agreed with him that sometimes the freshest blood can be seen the best on media coverage, but doesn't, sometimes, holding up a flag stained with blood and tears become tiresome and cliche rather than a poignant statement? And, in many ways, Americans have become much more jaded as a country. Even George W.'s approval ratings have plummeted over the last two weeks.
What, he pointed out, should George W. have done to have "done more" in the south?
For me, this was W.'s one last-ditch opportunity to prove something positive about his pathetic two-term presidency. Here, he could have changed things--shown what a great addition the "Homeland Security" department was, used that second article power of his as president (not to mention those uninhibited powers granted to him following 9/11 by Congress). But instead, we sat horrified in front of our television sets for a week as bodies floated in water, as snipers shot at patients as they were evacuated from hurriance-torn hospitals, as family members turned to CNN and MSNBC and (even) FoxNews for help finding their loved ones and for information on where to go and what to do--information the government wasn't giving them.
W.'s presidency has been flanked by two disasters--9/11 and Katrina--completely different in nature, but telling of so much that has changed in the last four years. Not only do we recognize the date today and remember and mourn, but we also recognize that the world we live in today is different than that of early September of 2001. In the world we live in, planes flown into buildings and terrorist attacks are possibilities and--because of 9/11, London and several other attacks--realities.
In some ways, Katrina is not fresher blood for the media to scrounge from. Instead, it seems Katrina's flood waters washed away the contrived political jargon of neo-conservatism where patriotism and hostility are nearly one and the same. When the waters recede, somewhere in the wreckage, the ineffectiveness and ineptitude of this presidency will be left behind. And America will be reminded of how much we were promised after 9/11—-and how little we were delivered.
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Indecision 2004
I feel that it is my duty as
1.) A livejournal user
2.) An active member in American society
3.) A legal Ohio citizen
to update above mentioned livejournal in honor of the current election and its incoming results.
I know too many people who walk a fine line between religious morals and politics and confuse the two who voted conservatively today.
I know too many people who have been hurt in the last four years because of the Bush regime.
I know too many families who have lost jobs to a failing economy.
I know too many people who have been sent over to the Middle East, risked their lives, and then after they were told "Mission Accomplished," they were given orders to go over again.
If Ohio, which has been declared by CNN "a green state" aka: too hard to call, goes to Bush... I'm afraid the people who made the mistake today of voting for him will self-righteously postulate their position for the next four years, and come the next forty, they will learn the hard way.
Our generation is the generation that will clean up the mess of this president. Four years is enough. I can't take four more.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
By David Brooks
SCHIEFFER And our first question goes to
KERRY Bob, I'm glad you asked me that question, but before I dodge it I'd like to thank you for moderating this debate, I'd like to thank Arizona State University for being such wonderful hosts and I'd like to thank Dick Cheney's daughter for being a lesbian - in case anybody didn't know.
Bob, as you know, this nation is on the brink of an apocalyptic catastrophe. Civilization as we know it is hanging on by a thread. Our culture has collapsed, our economy is in tatters, the human spirit is extinguished, children never laugh, God is dead, and families like Dick Cheney's are ashamed of their daughters, one of whom is a lesbian. All of this is because of
Did you know that right here in Arizona the average share of the national debt on a per capita basis is rising faster than the inverse of the median lost wages ratio of the typical swing voter in Ohio, Missouri and Florida combined?
Bob, when I'm president, we're going to have a president as gloomy as this country should be. But the difference is that I have a plan to balance the budget. In fact I have seven plans. Seven and a half if you count the one I was working on in the limo, not even counting subclauses. When I'm president, our country is going to marry a really rich country, which will pay for everything. Thank you.
SCHIEFFER Mr. President?
BUSH You need a plan. I know that. I'm president. I wake up every day looking for a plan. In fact, I supported Mitch McConnell's plan. But my opponent voted to raise taxes 1,500 gazillion bazillion times. He even voted for some of my budgets, which have created deficits as far as the eye can see! He's a liberal!
The first thing we need to do is cut back. I'm not going to have a flu shot this year. I'm not even going to take a Tylenol. I'm going to have a root canal right here on this stage without Novocain. But we also need to declare an international war on deficits.
I'm excited about 19-year-old girls in Afghanistan who are voting in favor of the line-item veto for the first time ever. I'm excited about the millions of Iraqis who have been liberated from Saddam's Hussein's trial lawyers and their frivolous lawsuits.
SCHIEFFER According to the prearranged rules of this debate, each candidate will now have two minutes to spew forth sentimental blather in order to connect with the American people.
KERRY Thank you Bob. I'm a Catholic. I was an altar boy. In Nativity plays I was usually cast as one of the posts holding up the manger. I know that a lot of people are tired of politicians who just tell them what they want to hear. America, I want to look you in the eye and pledge I will never pander to you.
Spirituality is important to me. I've always felt that we humans are insignificant maggots scuttling across the muck of the universe, and that life itself is just a meaningless moment of agony between the suffocating stench of the womb and the foul decay of the grave.
SCHIEFFER Thanks for that uplifting message. Mr. President?
BUSH America, we've been through a lot together. Imagine how bad things would be if I'd made any mistakes. But we've come through it.
We haven't enforced the Dred Scott decision. And what about my timber company? Can you believe the networks? Oh, never mind. Do you want some wood? How late does this go, anyway? I'm losing it.
SCHIEFFER As I was driving in tonight one thing occurred to me: All three of us are surrounded by strong women. What the hell are we doing up here? Why aren't they running the country?
KERRY Bob, it's true that I am married. She's my second wife, to be precise. Can't recall her name at the moment, but she's fully funded. And I've got two beautiful daughters. Heterosexuals, both of them.
I want to tell you about my family unit and what it means to me. We're in the 79th percentile in most demographic categories. Our compatibility fitness score is within the standard deviation for median households worldwide. ...
Tuesday, February 3, 2004
Super Tuesday
From my mom on local politics: "You might call it the battle of the pointy, pencil-head, conservative Republicans vs. the somnambulate, overfed, conservative pachyderms. The entire election turned on how well the candidate appeared to belong to the best-of-all-possible-political worlds, the Bible-thumping, right-wing reactionary, anti-abortion-placard-carrying, pro-death-penalty, anti-gun-control Pharisees of southwest Ohio. Now I'm sure you've figured that this place couldn't get more conservative than it already was, but this race would have surprised you. These characters made Mussolini look like a leftist. Somehow the issues came down to just how much you were against abortion (as if it were a matter of degree), how pro-death penalty you were, etc. Someone even promoted himself as the MOST conservative candidate...
When he goes for his next haircut, Dad is considering asking Bill the barber for a nice, right-to-life cut...
There's so little room on the right that I can only predict that the next election will feature pistol-packing candidates exercising their right to put to death any person who has sex at all."
Man, I miss politics back home. I never thought I'd say that, but it's true. Nothing compares to the Republican cookouts and the high school in-class debates with people who say things like "Women on welfare should be sterilized."... Thank you, Johnson, I'll always remember you for that.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
The Doctor is OUT (in Iowa!)
Hooray for Iowa and not letting Dean take it. Hooray for John Kerry and his awesome campaign tactics. Uh oh, I'm shedding too many political views in this lj!
So, I'll just leave you with Dean's post-primary speech, you know, the one where he's in crazy denial and his voice is cracking? I predict bad things for the Deananator after this monster:
DEAN: "Well, you guys, you have already got the picture here. I was about to say, you know, I'm sure there are some disappointed people here. You know what? You know something? You know something?
If you had told us one year ago that we were going to come in third in Iowa, we would have given anything for that.
And you know something? You know something?
Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York. And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. To take back the White House. YEAAAH!"
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So good for Dean. He may not have won Iowa, but he can name lots of states in succession. Maybe he can spell them too, kids!
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