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Showing posts with label 2008 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 election. Show all posts
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Problem Voting? Call Here
Hope and the Clock
The clock is running out on the "permanent Republican majority" so sweepingly orchestrated over the last generation. This grandiose plan resembles the rise of every tyranny in history, combining public rhetoric that idealizes tribalism with backroom powergrabs that care nothing for anyone outside the inner cadre of rich and powerful influence peddlers. Whoever wins the presidency on Tuesday, this assault on republican (as opposed to Republican) freedoms will receive a grievous injury. The impulse behind it will not die, any more than the age-old battle between good and evil can ever be decisively ended. But at least my generation will not be the one surrender to the ignorant, hate-filled clannish straightjacket that keeps the masses enslaved by their own passions to the very rich and powerful.
This is the hope triggered by the Obama campaign and his steady, unruffled calm has been no small element in this uprising. Whether Obama can become a great president or not is almost irrelevant. His power is that he brings home the message of community power rather than injured helplessness. Lobbyists do not own Washington any more, not when individual donations can topple both the Bush and Clinton money machines. More importantly, our few dollars, like drops of water, can swell to oceans of cash for candidates we feel speaks to and for us, not special interests.
This empowerment of voice - for the courts have ruled that money is a form of "speech" and so giving it is a right under the Constitution - this takes us out of the dependent child role in the political family and puts us all on a more nearly equal footing. Corporations and PACs can no longer make my few dollars insignificant by comparison. And so I have hope that I will be heard in the same way an adult with her own income is listened to over the demands of children who want things but do not contribute to the family income.
We are becoming 'adults' in a system that has infantilized us to make us regress in our thinking about public life so that we look to the wise big 'fathers' to do what's best for us. Fear and scapegoating work on children and dependents, whose emotions are more volatile and exploitable. Adults are less afraid than children, in part because they have more personal power. Autonomy gives weight and weight is a key in keeping one's equilibrium. The public has grown up enough to see during the S&L crisis that Oz, far from watching over us, the "man behind the curtain" of deregulation didn't know any more than the rest of us about the forces of capitalism.
As Election Day nears, I think about the month-long recount in Florida eight years ago and the what-to-me-was-obvious machinations of the Republican operation to deliver the election by hook or by crook to George W. Bush. That they succeeded was an almost mortal blow to my sense of security and trust in our system. Until that moment, I had believed that truth would out and that, in the end, cheaters would not prosper.
Now, as I watch the arc of this election season, a bit of that faith is being restored. Not that people are any better, but that reality, as they say, bites. And once bitten by Republican methods, twice shy.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
RedState Cofounder Doesn't Vote for McCain
HuffPo reports that RedState co-founder Joshua Trevino wrote in his blog that he filled in his CA absentee ballot intending to vote a straight Republican ticket but in the end he couldn't vote for McCain. He wrote in Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
How about that for a kick in the teeth to McCain!
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Voter Insecurity
The New York Times today reports on how states are illegally purging voters from their rolls. There are purging voters too close to the election day in violation of federal law. And they are using the Social Security database, a database that Social Security says is unreliable and should only be a last resort, as a first resort, which is in violation of their agreement for permission to use that database. But behind all that is the huge hand of human error. Conspiracy? We'll see how this plays out.
For example:
In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show.Later in the same article:
Nevada officials said the large number of Social Security checks had resulted from county clerks entering Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers in the wrong fields before records were sent toNevada officials said the large number of Social Security checks had resulted from county clerks entering Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers in the wrong fields before records were sent to the state.What a surprise that there were over 95% nonmatches. They were looking for their driver's license numbers...
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Afraid to Hope, Yet Hoping
The Daily Kos has a set of graphics about the Presidential debates that brought home the results to me. The responses to the debate categories were broken down by Republican, Democrat, and Independent. In evaluating the candidates, you'd expect the partisan approvals by the party-affiliated responders. But the base hasn't decided a presidential election in years. The Independents must break your way if you want to win. And even with the Dems so far outpacing the Republicans in voter registration, the Independents will be decisive. What the graphics made clear to me, even though I have heard the info already many times, is how out-of-step the Republicans are with the direction of the country. It gives me hope I mostly dare not allow myself to contemplate.
See for yourself:
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Survey Says...
So many people are writing about how the poll numbers they are seeing cannot be correct. I, too, am weirded out by them and have been trying to figure out how these stats can be true. One of my friends suggests that poll answerers are a self-selecting group, and that folks like my friends or like me do not answer them. So today, I took my first poll in over 10 years.
The last poll I took was a push-poll in Seattle, a "poll" designed to promote a big pro-big-business renovation project. I was so angry at the sly, slanted questions that I wouldn't finish the poll and swore never to take one again. But I see how polls are used to drive the public opinion and news coverage, and so, like voting, I want to make sure my voice and the voices of people like me are included in the data.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
When Elephants Forget
The elephant and the donkey. Republican and Democrat. Elephants are supposed to remember. Remember when you opposed integration - of the military, of baseball, of schools? You were angry and resentful. Remember that? All the liberals you hated and now you have to admit, it was the right thing to do.
Remember when you said going after Osama bin Laden was a Clinton ploy to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal? How you spent our national will on an impeachment instead of stopping a terrorist? The terrorist who masterminded 9/11? Do you feel at all responsible? Clearly not, as you still insist your party keeps us safe where we Democrats would not.
Time and again, you sneer and gleefully block the liberal bogeyman, and end up harming this country while you moan about how much you love America. And time and again, when the liberals do get in power, yes, they bring about change that you only later admit was fair, but they also bring higher net paychecks to your bank account, lower taxes on working people, and general prosperity for the country. Always.
Maybe we should trade symbols. You take the donkey. You sure seem stubborn enough. You ignored the hated liberals and gave Bush a blank check and now you won't admit you prefer seeing American young men and women kill and die or come home broken by a criminal war than admit it was criminal, that you fell for his lies because because you wanted to. You probably still deny it. But I promise you, like an elephant, I will remember.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Obama Tagging
Obama’s opponents are trying to tag him like a gang in the ghetto of American political speech. I’d like to see the candidate boldly incorporate the tags, redefining them and making them part of his platform. If people see this divisive language being defused and de-clawed, they will begin to have hope again for the future of American politics, and isn’t that what his campaign is all about? Here is one tag I’d like to see him embrace.
He will raise taxes. Two-thirds of all corporations paid no taxes last year. Your darn right, we need to raise taxes. Make no mistake. Corporations use the benefits from taxes more than individuals. It is trucks that eat up roads, not cars, and taxes are needed to build heavy-duty highways and to keep them in repair. Corporations use a disproportionate amount of the national infrastructure. Their massive requirements for energy and water and waste management depend on massive public utilities networks. Schools educate their workers for them. They damage the environment and then the public needs to clean up. It’s time they started paying for what they use instead of getting a free ride on the back of the average American worker.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Vampire Republicans
Vampires - they suck your blood, infect you with their curse of bloodlust, and have no reflection that is the mark of soullessness. They might be creatures of fantasy in the literal sense, but metaphorically speaking, they are all around us making pronouncements on the television, strolling the halls of power, and debasing their enemies real and perceived in interrogation rooms around the world.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Republican Party is worried about losing big in the coming Senate races. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lists a host of problems facing candidates from his party. These are all problems of what teachers would call 'plot' and not 'character.' Bad things have happened to the party. Nowhere is there an examination of whether the party's mindset and values has any responsibility for the disastrous situation.
It is not schadenfreude that makes me want to see them grovel, wear hair shirts, and climb the steps of the Capitol on their knees. Unless they see that they committed the sin of pride, dismissing with contempt their opponents on legislation and political action simply because they held all the reins, they are going to continue to support policies harmful to the body politic. Now that they see their control over the reins slipping, they moan about bipartisanship. Without acknowledgement of their fundamental failure to do the right thing - share the power when they had it all - their bipartisanship is a sham.
Amends need to be made. I know it is an election year, but the Republicans must do for their nation what Hillary has done for her party. She still believes she is the better candidate, that Barack cannot win, and if he does, his policies will sometimes take us in the wrong direction. But she has put on a smile and is supporting him absolutely.
After 9/11 the Democrats did that for the President and his party. Sometimes they held their noses and voted with the majority trusting that the other side also had the nation's best interests at heart. Republicans now trying to blame the President for all the failings of his administration look in the mirror of history and do not see themselves at all. Like vampires, they sucked out much of the wealth and national standing in the world gained during the Clinton years and now are wringing their hands wondering what went wrong. They look in the mirror and do not see their own faces. Like the vampires, they have lost their soul.
If the Republican in the Senate want to salvage some of this next election, they have to make amends to redeem their souls. Not just apologize, but support the Democrats on issues important to them as a way of admitting that the elephant in the room is not always right. The reality of this country right now shows that their policies were often wrong-headed. How can we trust giving them the means to govern again unless they can demonstrate that they have eyes to take a good look at themselves in the mirror in the light of day?
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