Category / Politics
Disagree With a Politician and You’re a “Security Threat” — Even When You’re a Minor
Common Dreams reports on a very disturbing incident that occurred at a Delaware Barnes & Noble (as more specifically reported here). Eighteen year-old Hannah Shaffer saw that Senator Rick Santorum had a book called It Takes a Family and that he would be reading at Barnes & Noble. Shaffer decided to go there with with some friends the idea of telling Santorum that he disagreed with his policies. Noting Santorum’s stance on gay rights, someone suggested that Santorum sign a book by Dan Savage.
Apparently, an advance team working for Santorum overheard this, concluded that Shaffer and her friends were “a security threat” and asked them to leave by a Delaware State Policeman named Mark DiJiacomo. The group was then told by DiJiacommo that anyone who didn’t leave would be sent to prison immediately on a trespassing charge. Most of the people left, with the exception of two brave kids named Stacey Galperin and Miriam Rocek, where more threats apparently ensued.
Even worse: DiJiacomo didn’t consult B&N’s store management and he was on Santorum’s employ.
No, Ari, It’s What Called Thinking Outside a Unilateral Political Paradigm
Ari Fleischer: “If you allow those who are the most vocal and most antagonistic to get a meeting with the president for fear that publicity will hurt you if you don’t, you’re creating incentives for your critics to become even more antagonistic and more vocal.”
This is the uncivilized and inflexible approach to diplomacy that these goons specialize in. The truth is that they won’t meet with Cindy Sheehan because they’re scared and they know of no other way to communicate other than silently nodding their heads with all the humanity of a gunmetal grade school bookshelf.
[UPDATE: And while we’re on the subject, only a real president would actually visit my beautiful city. Certainly not this bozo.]
Dalton Trumbo’s Deep Throat
FADE IN:
EXT. WASHINGTON D.C. — DAY
Several ENSLAVED EX-GOVERNMENT WORKERS, all of them in their nineties, are led by ROMAN CENTURIONS into the Washington Monument. The famed landmark is surrounded by crosses, where various elderly men are in the process of being crucified.
Each Centurion has an American flag burned into their bronzed armor and a torn up copy of the Constitution in their back pockets. All wear watches.
One Centurion, CRASSUS, looks suspiciously like a younger version of Laurence Olivier.
[NOTE TO PRODUCER: Talk to the boys behind Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow about doing the rendering for this.]
Crassus leans into ONE of the elderly men, who is named W. MARK FELT.
CLOSEUP
on W. Mark Felt. His face is in anguish, but manages a smile.
Felt spits in Crassus’ face.
LONG SHOT
The crosses continue down the length of Constitution Avenue.
Crassus cracks his whip. Felt cries out in pain. The other Enslaved Ex-Government Workers continue howling, until one speaks up.
Crassus looks with embarassment upon the scene.
Crassus digs into his face and tears off his Olivier mask, revealing the FRIGHTENING VISAGE OF RICHARD NIXON.
Equal Opportunity Mocking
We won’t comment on the blogger wars. We already defended the right to mock literary figures a few weeks ago and have nothing further to say. We plan to earn our black sheep stripes the right way (at least for today, largely because we’re feeling exceptionally immature), by moving onto mocking non-literary figures in the most tasteless manner possible, beginning with the Governator himself (as pictured below):
And Now For Something Completely Political…
John Cleese is the purported author of the Declaration of Revocation, a missive directed at the people of the United States. With Cleese harboring possible ambitions to run as mayor of Santa Barbara, it’s very possible that Cleese may have momentarily merged his comedy with his politics. However, at present, there’s no conclusive evidence that Cleese wrote this. (via Tom)
There’s Also This New Rap Thing That Causes Teenagers to Shoot Each Other Up in the Streets!
I don’t know who this Michelle Malkin person is. But her claim that emo is a soundboard for self-mutiliation is instantly deflated when she declares emo as “a new genre of music.” Jesus, I’m over 30 too. But even I’ve listened to Sunny Day Real Estate. It was the dirty white sheets that were cut into strips, not the flesh.
As for this “new genre of music,” I’ve got two words for you, Michelle: Ian MacKaye.
You know, in a court of law, you can’t file a complaint without stating a statute. Having a supporting argument is one of those nifty things that maintain due process and keep a good subject matter convincing. The ignorance with which these so-called “higher beings” dispense their wisdom amuses me. But I’m troubled by how many hangers on are duped by their faux punditry.
HST: The River is Still Running
I haven’t read the obituaries. I haven’t read anything. Hunter S. Thompson is gone and his unexpected suicide hit me hard. I was reduced to a blank, morose expression while sitting in a passenger seat in a moving car heading south for some fun. What fun could be had when America’s foremost nihilist and partygoer had decided that enough was enough? It took me about twenty minutes of explaining why Hunter S. Thompson was important and why his work mattered before I could go about my day.
Friends have often noted that I have an older man’s concern with the notable folks who die. But my concerns rest not with mortality, which is inevitable, but the more troubling question of enduring legacy. Who will replace these voices? What other tangible creative things die in the process?
Because Thompson, like all the others, was needed and irreplaceable. The landscape of American letters can never equal the strange mix of chaos and wisdom that Thompson threw into his work with inebriated gusto. It should be noted that Thompson repeatedly read the works of H.L. Mencken and the Book of Revelations in Gideon Bibles when holed up in hotels. Thompson was a man committed to a subjective form of journalism that he believed in with religious fervor, but he never lost sight of the number of the beast painted around Washington.
His work was as shoot-from-the-hip and as inconsistent as any prolific hack. His writings varied from incoherent screeds to astute examinations of American hypocrisy. But at his best (whch was often), he mattered. Thompson stood alone as a courageous voice, and he got people to listen.
A few years ago, Hunter S. Thompson stated repeatedly in interviews, “No one is more astonished than I am that I’m still alive.” I always chalked this up to the Good Doctor defiantly drinking Wild Turkey, imbibing drugs, firing guns into the night, blaring televisions and banging out political diatribes (even howling like a banshee on the commentary track for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), maintaining the same life that he had built his career upon. Here was a man who had openly settled for Clinton in his collection, Better than Sex, hoping that some spark of true progressivism would endure. Yet two years later, he was the only writer with the balls to eviscerate Nixon upon his death.
In his autumn years, Thompson had settled into a comfortable routine of writing a sports column for ESPN. He had recently married and was keeping busy. But no one can keep a good political junkie down. And it was no surprise when Thompson came out with high hopes for Kerry in Rolling Stone. His essay concluded:
We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon — which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.
That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it’s still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.
Thompson must have taken the results in November hard. Harder than anyone. For as much as any of us stupored around for days, feeling as if our last hopes were defeated when four more years of Bush were upon us, Thompson had to feel the pendulum swinging to the right more viscerally than any Poe character.
There’s the famous passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in which Thompson describes the death of 1960s idealism:
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda….You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning….
And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave….
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
I always figured Thompson had found a way to go on and accept the hard realities of a nation thumping to a reactionary beat. And maybe he did for a while.
But make no mistake: despite Thompson’s ultimate answer to the predicament, that river is still very much running. And Thompson’s work will endure. The question now is this: Who has the courage to pick up the slack?
No Reading Statistic Left Behind
South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “Gov. Jeb Bush wants to increase spending on reading by $43 million this year and make reading money a permanent part of Florida’s public school budget.”
Hey, Jeb, give $43 million to me and I’ll give you all the reading you need. And then some.
I don’t know what bothers me more: the notion that $43 million given to “reading” without a specific spending plan sounds more like the cocaine tab hidden within blockbuster movie budgets under the heading “accessories” or the idea that money would somehow translate into a new generation of enthused readers through a osmosis involving dinero.
But then these are the kind of silly impressions one forms when an article fails to point at the specifics, which can be found here. And if you read the fine print, it isn’t about the reading at all, but the scores. No wonder some kids aren’t so crazy about books.
What We Do Now
I was very interested to see that Melville House has assembled a collection entitled What We Do Now. The book is a collection of essay from assorted people: Steve Almond on getting tough, Maud Newton on tax law, and Greg Palast on voting fraud are just some of the interesting people who turn up. But what impresses me about the collection is how it’s collated several disparate responses in reaction to the current political clime. More importantly, with only a few hours left in 2004, flipping through the book has provoked me into thinking about the same subject. Because What We Do Now‘s very unity and provocative smorgasbord structure has had me thinking about what currently ails the Left. Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians may be able boosters on the publishing front, but it’s a pity that this approach can’t extend to the Left’s everyday actions.
It may seem an obvious point, but unity has eluded progressives of radical and centrist stripes over the past decade. The Left is either unwilling or unable to cast off its idealistic dregs, all too eager to engage in useless in-fighting over petty details. Instead of campaigning and pulling together for the pragmatic choice (i.e., the candidate or the goals that will get us closer to the marvelous possibilities of representative government), the Left is all too willing to quibble.
I can’t support Kerry because he’s part of the Democratic machine.
I’m for the death penalty. And while I agree with everything else the Green Party stands for, I can’t abide by that point.
These sentiments aren’t the problems of the people who express them, but the mark of an ideology that is inflexible and non-inclusive. Because the truth of the matter is that we need those centrists, if only to call us on our shit from time to time and perpetuate a unifying yet inclusive dialectic. They’d respect us more if we actually stood proudly on our two feet.
The problem isn’t one of politics, but confidence. We need an image, a mentality and a demonstrated series of actions that is confidently and uncompromisingly progressive, but that is simultaneously open to many political stripes.
Here in San Francisco, we had a series of political rallies in 2003. Before they escalated into a war against the police and fulfilled the psuedo-Kent State fantasies of priapic reactionaries, everyday Americans and their families went to these rallies in droves. I know. Because I was there and I talked with more than a few. Some of them had attended these rallies for the first time. And oh how they were disappointed! Let us not forget that before the rallies were driven by mob mentality, despite the insufferable pamphlet-slinging of pro-Palestine supporters and enraged Wobblies, the rallies were places that appealed to a meaty faction of everyday people. They brought people together and had the potential to be a forum for mobilization and a long-term commitment that could extend well into November.
Politiical demonstrations might make twentysomething Free Mumia supporters feel better, but I would argue that, so long as they adhere to a general message without a realistic effort to change government (and most of them do), they are useless. For some, the endless dirge of insensible rhetoric and uninformed opinions might boost egos. But that mentality belongs elsewhere: say, an Elks Lodge meeting. Until rallies are purged of their splinter opportunism and they appeal to the people at large, they will not have much use to anyone outside of cranks and militant nihilists.
This may not be what the Left wants to hear, but the unity problem is so hopelessly embedded that even populist poster boys like Michael Moore are incapable of flexibility. In an interview with Playboy, Moore described an early meeting with Howard Dean:
My wife and I went to meet him with the idea of supporting him. We brought our checkbook. But we weren’t in the room with him five minutes when we thought, Geez, this guy is kind of a prick. We didn’t write the check. I was not surprised the night of the Iowa caucus. He had spent the better part of two years in Iowa, letting people meet him. To meet him is to be turned off by him, so I wasn’t surprised that he lost. The concept of Dean was incredible. The movement behind him was a revolution. It was exciting to see, but Dean imploding was no surprise.
Well, if you ask me, Michael Moore’s kind of a prick for failing to identify politics as a business that involves the occasional tango with snakes for a long-term solution. Moore failed to use his base or his films to pull for John Kerry early in the year. While he quite wisely hit upon a winning formula to get a message out to the people (the mass medium of cinema), his inability to offer a game plan or even some scintilla of hope made his efforts useless.
Meanwhile, the Religious Right, having honed their organizational abilities through the so-called “Republican revolution” in ’94, have taken their battle directly to the American people. They have used a mobilized drive of bigotry and fear to convince the heartland that Bush is the man for the job. The unfortunate reality is that they wanted it more than we did.
The time has come for us to want it more than they do. We have two years of mobilization in store for the midterm elections in 2006. And we must never underestimate that our everyday actions, whether it involves a kind gesture, building up connections with political officials at the local and state levels, or our purchasing decisions, all contribute more effectively to winning than we can possibly measure.
We can be bold and accessible at the same time. The only thing stopping us is hopelessness, inaction, and giving up. And that’s silly. Because from where I’m sitting, we’re only just getting started.
In Defense of Fucking the South (And the Red States Too, For That Matter)
“In swearing, as a means of expressing anger, potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous. By affording the means of working off the surplus energy of the emotion induced by frustration, the tension between the emotion and the object of it is decreased and the final dissolution of the tension is expressed in a feeling of relief, which in its place is a sign of the return to a state of equilibrium.” — Ashley Montagu The Anatomy of Swearing
The new political correctness has arrived, and it cuts across a much broader swath than Berkeley. It all started with an election, unearthing a long fragmented nation of reds and blues, followed by purples that tried to underplay the division. Some folks, understandably, didn’t buy into this. Before too long, people were fucking the south, letting their frustrations simmer over the linguistic saucepan.
It was all good fun. Because how many of us either thought or expressed these words just after the election? We were able to view the rant, recognize the angry voice, and move on. Because for many of us, the election was really tantamount to crying “Shit!” when stubbing a toe, or “Fuck you, you fucking fuck” to an inanimate object that either failed to function or caused a lasting bruise. An immediate expression of relief (considered strangely profane in some circles), followed by relative equanamity and a determination to get through the day.
Unfortunately, where the reasonable person can comprehend how frustration funnels into curses and profanity (after all, they are just words), the oversensitive idealist can’t. The oversensitive idealist (represented these days by Neal Pollack, whose latest persona is a strangely sanctimonious theologist of expression) views a world where one must say “love the south” instead of “fuck the south,” never considering that in expressing a momentary curse, one might be, as the great Ashley Montagu suggests, converting short-term negative energy into a greater goal of long-term peace and cohabitation. In this sense, the Pollack view is very much like the JesusLand caricature: a place where human expression is unrealistically hindered, where anger isn’t allowed, and where the very idea of allowing one’s fleeting negative emotions to suffuse, whether in conversational or Web form, is verboeten.
As far as I can tell, nobody is painting black Xs on doors. Vigilantes aren’t heading to a red or a blue state to string up a few dissenters. While there are certainly a lot of silly stereotypes being promulgated on both sides, the silent ban on expression is perhaps even more damaging. Because how can anyone on either side “reach out” when they can’t purge themselves of their negative feelings?
If fucking the south, or fucking the red states, or transforming California or Texas a joke (both very easy to do) leads to national healing, then I say let loose. Theodore Roosevelt famously decried politically motivated journalists as “muckrakers” in 1906, but the term developed beyond its pejorative meaning to classify and understand a specific pursuit still quite active today. Sometimes disparagement helps people come to terms with a concept and create the very unity desired.
It wouldn’t be human to do otherwise.
Putting the Heart into Heartland
Janet Sullivanmakes a strong case for the real “heartland”: “To me, the heartland of this country is anywhere that people work their asses off to make their lives better for their families. They stay true to their better angels no matter how miserable things get or how much easier it would be to succumb to hate and irrational fear. They read, and listen, and look for the truth and stay informed about what’s really going on, no matter how grim the news. They don’t live in Fox News cocoons, they don’t blast Rush Limbaugh from their pickups, and they don’t vote blindly for the guys whose prejudices most neatly line up with their own. Their concerns are genuine, their values are consistent, their principles are rock-solid, and their hearts are true. ”
With all this talk of Jesusland, it’s worth considering that the Dems who are currently beating a steadfast retreat (you know who you are) instead of rebounding as their hearts are recovering from a bad relationship are no better off from the unilateralists who go out of their way to avoid an opposing viewpoint. It is our duty to fight and to march on, even when the chips are down. That’s what this nation is all about. The next four years are going to be tough, but we can begin putting a plan into play to get the two houses in our hands in 2006. If the Dems control the two houses (and, in particular, the Senate), this should at least bungle up the White House’s unilateralism (or at least slow it down) and open up some bipartisan solutions.
The questions that the Left must answer are:
(a) Does it have the courage to broaden its base and build up the antiwar and anti-Bush coalition?
(b) Can it find a hep way to bring in the 18-24 vote? Even if we can spike this up from 10% to 40% turnout, that’s 8.1 million extra voters who can make a difference (enough to handily give a Democratic candidate 52% of the popular vote in 2008).
(c) How do we mobilize a fearless “true heartland” bloc to stand against the fundie herd?
And with the idea of moving forward just to spite the bastards in mind, please allow me to apologize to my readers for the recent political fulminations. I pledge to get back to literary news and the like, but not without a vigilant eye on other topics.
[UPDATE: Dan Green rightly rallies lit bloggers against the gloom.]
Oh Fuck You, Gloomy Cloud
The despondency circulated through the streets. Street cleaners, students, secretaries, lawyers, businessmen, the unemployed, the overly employed, the overtaxed, the overstressed, the overworked, the over and out susurrating speculative horrors about the Night We Lost America. Those Ohio hicks, those motherfuckers. How could they vote for Bush? How could America betray itself? How could they give the two houses to the rampant Republican gastropods? How many Supreme Court justices would be lost on the slime trail? Fuck, fuck, doublefuck in a clusterbun. Can you super size that?
Options: 1. Roll into a ball and sob, damning the moronic masses. 2. Move to Canada, Mexico, Australia, wherever (if you could get the cash). 3. Contemplate crazed national scenarios such as splitting the States up into three separate nations: the West, Intolerance Central, and East Coast Schizophrenia.
And then there was the other side: Watch those liberals squirm! Funny shit. They’re so incensed. Merciless mirth, no chance of eclat. Viva la revolucion! Well, boys, we took away their hope. We darn near smashed it with a rubber mallet and banned them disgusting faggots from marryin’ to boot. Fire the rifles, boys, and pass the bourbon. Sheet. In no time, them uptight bitches will be controlled and we’ll all hold hands and SING to the Lord!
The immediate impulse was to give up and give into bile. And for several hours, I did. A scowl was permanently affixed to my face and several people thought I was upset with them. At one point, “God Save the Queen” was sung (in a corporate environment, no less) and restylized to fit in with the U.S. 2004 template. It killed me to see my faith in humanity destroyed by a torrent of misinformation and to become an elitist overnight. But there it was — the indisputable proof on the chalkboard. Nothing to understand about it. Joe Sixpack and I parted ways last night. Not that I had much to do with him.
I wish I could tell you that John Kerry’s concession speech was the proper panacea. It was a damn fine speech, but oh I’d be lying, dear readers. I hadn’t felt such a horrible feeling of powerlessness since September 11. I wanted to work. I wanted to keep going just to spite the bastards. But it was no good. I was ready to give up politics completely, say to hell with my long-term goals, and offer a tepid report here on the end of Great American Government.
But then I started to realize that it’s not over. And that’s the thing that got me out of the shell.
The problem in thinking about next year’s demolition crew is that we’re giving into our worst fears. Sure, it’s probable that the Patriot Act will be broadened, that more people will die and unjust folks will be thrown into the can, that the draft will be reinstated, and that several neocon horrors will jet out of the loom faster than anyone can say Oliver Wendell Holmes.
But none of it has happened yet. And that concerns me. Because aren’t these paranoid fantasies exactly the kind of black helicopter bile that drips out of Limbaugh’s maw and passes for fact? Isn’t this exactly the same tactic we’ve been condemning the GOP for?
They have turned 48% of us into malicious sons of bitches. And the Republicans are loving every damn minute of it.
The time has come to stop feeling helpless and start getting on the offense. And here are a few things to chew on:
1. You don’t have to be afraid. This is precisely what the Rove machine wanted. Live every day with courage.
2. If new laws go down, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. (It’s a little something called civil disobedience, folks.) We are not cattle and we need to stop being treated like such.
3. Write letters to your representatives. Block doorways. Stop the wheels from rolling.
4. Write letters to your newspapers. Get the word out to the media conduits. Let the money men who control the airwaves know that you are watching. And when they deliberately lie, send letters to the producers and their sponsors threatening to boycott.
5. Have the cojones to go to jail for a cause (that means you, you trendy parvenus!). Our grandmothers and grandfathers did. Where the fuck are your balls? Stop worrying about the black marks on your record and just do it.
6. Begin the fight today. Lobby everyone you know. Hold meetings in your neighborhood. Read Congressional Records, take notes, and communicate.
7. Be eloquent. We have no heroes. It’s time to start being one.
8. Above all, oh fuck you, gloomy cloud.
Fuck You, America
Right now, it looks like Bush has got it. There are no words to express my sorrow. There are no emotions left to expend. I have no faith in the commonweal. I watch as this nation crawls into an atavistic morass. And so the old Jefferson adage goes, we clearly deserve the government that we get. My heart aches for the future of this country. Not much there. Pass the bottle.
Fuck
Ohio. Jesus. This nation is on the road to hell.
Election Day AM Roundup
- Drudge has been thoroughly debunked. The Philly odometers tallied votes from previous elections. Will Drudge ever be disregarded for his continued failures as a “journalist?” DEVELOPING.
- There’s chaos in NYC (will any of our currently silent NYC bloggers report in?) and Santa Clara.
- The truth behind exit polls.
- Jeff’s staying home.
- Tom Hayden weighs in and he says it’s going to get rowdy. (via Moby)
- Porn director Seymore Butts is offering free porn to anyone who voted today. (via Wonkette)
- The Gray Lady offers a roundup of political bloggers tossing out thoughts about the election, but foolishly suggests that the blog has forever transformed politics.
Return of the Reluctant Endorsements
Well, since George is doing it, here then are Return of the Reluctant’s endorsements for the 2004 California election:
President: John Kerry
Senator: Barbara Boxer
Rep: Nancy Pelosi
1A: No
59: Fuck yeah.
60: Fuck yeah.
60A: Yes.
61: Yes.
62: No fucking way.
63: Yes.
64: Absofuckinglutely no way.
65: No.
66: Fuck yeah.
67: No.
68: No.
69: No fucking way.
70: No.
71: Yes. (This was the hardest decision, given my fury over states being squeezed by an ineptly managed federal government. But my sister, who apparently is more of a pessimist than I am, made a compelling point about the lack of federal funds for stem cell research given a Bush victory.)
72: Fuck yeah.
Fear and Voting in San Francisco
I was officiailly Voter No. 1 in my precinct. Even at 7 AM, there was a queue heading out the door. Young ones, old ones, various persuasions. The people who got to the polls early had giant smiles on their face. They longed to communicate their ecstacy to their brethren. This Kerry vote, apparently, was the new zen. Forego your moring jog and cast thy ballot. Better than the morning newspaper and coffee routine, better even than morning sex.
The people I talked with were prepared to commit representative revolution. And they were all ten minutes early. One woman panicked when she discovered that her name wasn’t on the roster. Would her vote count? Would they take that away? She had recently moved and was prepared to go back to her old neighborhood to vote, if necessary. The needs of her job could wait.
I chatted with a poll worker and he said that this was the largest crowd he’d seen in eight years. I asked him if it was going to be a busy day. “Well, you get the morning crowd before work. But this is a big crowd.”
I came back later, and the line was longer at 7:30. Had these people gone through the Tolstoy-length voter information packet in toto? Well, yes and no. “I only vote for the props I feel passionate about. I’m really here for Kerry,” said one of my neighbors. A man told me that he had holed himself up over the weekend and was prepared to incinerate the expensive campaign literature that had been lodged under his doorstep. “Those fuckers don’t know when to quit,” he said. “There oughta be a law.” I knew what he meant. I’d received five automated voicemails the night before that I’d quickly erased.
A young lady of twenty was passing out pamphlets for a supervisor in front of my polling place. I told her that she was less than 100 feet away from the polling place and that current laws prohibited dissemination of campaign literature. She pointed to the door. I pointed to the clearly marked sign that laid down the limit. “Do you really want to be as bad as the bad guys?” I asked. Across the street, an unshaven foirtysomthing man popped his head out of his window and boomed a sterner warning. The young lady ambled down the street, but anyone could see that she’d be there all day.
When I fed my ballots into the machine, there was another young lady with a video camera who captured my efforts to simultaneously hold onto my morning cup of coffee and tear the receipts from the top of the sheets. I could have pointed out to her that she needed a release. But I kept silent. Like the others, this race had emboldened her to shoot a spontaneous documentary. Of what, who knew? Did she foresee another battle in Florida? Was this B-roll for a nonfictional narrative that no one could predict?
If there was any consolation about 2000’s Florida fiasco, it was this: the sham had reminded everyone how important it was to vote. It had awakened the dormant democratic pulse. And even if King George ascends to the throne again, I know that this time it won’t go down without a fight.
Vote Today
“Don’t Film Me” — the Last Cry of a Scoundrel
Joshuah Bearman: “Which is why we drove them away. The trick with Republican staffers running dirty tricks, we discovered, is to turn cameras on them. They wilt like shrinking violets. Stephen Elliott and I are out here with a documentary crew, and when the film started rolling, the GOP?s bogus Gay Pride parade came to a quick end. ‘Don?t film me,’ the ringleader said when we stuck to them. ‘I?m expressing my freedom of speech.'” (via Bondgirl)
Politics is a Sham
I’d express my malaise about tomorrow, but Jeff and Maud have ably covered this ground. I’ll only say that I’ve never felt so much disgust for politics. On the national, state and local level, we have been inundated with lies, ultimatums, and outright blackmail if we don’t abide by one party line or the other.
Tomorrow’s election is perhaps the most important election in the last sixty years. So I encourage all Return of the Reluctant readers to vote. However, to put my own personal partisanship aside, I also urge all voters to vote who they feel is right for the job. Contrary to the leaflets that clog the mailboxes, no one is holding a gun to your head to abide by some austere answer key. You can vote any combo you want. You can vote any candidate you want. Just don’t become a drone.
“Dagger of the Mind” — Allegory for 2004 America
[For the purposes of this experiment, replace DR. ADAMS with THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, KIRK with VOTER IN AMERICAN HEARTLAND, HELEN with AMERICAN INTEGRITY, and “Enterprise” with DETERMINATION TO TAKE BACK WASHINGTON.]
DR. ADAMS: “Now Captain Kirk is going to have a complete demonstration. I want there to be no doubts whatever in his mind.”
KIRK: “Mmmmm.”
DR. ADAMS: “You’re madly in love with Helen, Captain. You’d lie, cheat, steal for her, sacrifice your career, your reputation.”
HELEN: “No, Doctor! No!”
DR. ADAMS: “The pain — do you feel it, Captain? You must have her, or the pain grows worse, the pain, the longing for her.”
KIRK: “Helen.”
DR. ADAMS: “For years, you’ve loved her, Captain, for years.”
KIRK: “For years, I’ve loved you.”
DR. ADAMS: “You must continue to remember that, Captain. And now…she’s gone.”
[The mind machine is turned up to a dizzying level.]
KIRK: “Helen! Helen, don’t go! I need you, Helen!”
DR. ADAMS: “Now, Captain…you must take your phaser weapon and drop it to the floor. Captain, the pain increases unless you obey me.”
KIRK: “I…must…drop it.”
[KIRK drops phaser.]
DR. ADAMS: “Very good, Captain. Very good indeed. And now your communicator. Drop it to the floor.”
[KIRK desperately flips open communicator.]
KIRK: “Kirk to Enterprise.”
[The mind machine is amped up further.]
KIRK: “Uhhhhhhhhhh! Kirk…to…Enterprise. Ahhhhhhhh!”
HELEN: [shrieking] “No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
[KIRK laughs maniacally in pain/torture/confusion, as camera fades out to commercial break.]
I Don’t Care If It’s Godwin’s Law.
I’m pretty goddam appalled to be an American right now. See these yahoos for yourself.
Fourth Amendment Decimated in Three States
The Associated Press: “Acting on a Baton Rouge case, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police do not need an arrest or search warrant to conduct a swift sweep of private property to ensure their own safety. Any evidence discovered during that search now is admissible in court as long as the search is a ‘cursory inspection,’ and if police entered the site for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and believed it may be dangerous.”
The Latest Celebrity Blogger
Noam Chomsky has a blog.
Lone Star Antics
The Kos has the scoop on something very close to hitting the mainstream media. Texas Gov. Perry’s wife left Perry. Why? Perry was found in bed with another man. And that’s not all: the other man was Jeff Connor, Secretary of State. I can’t wait to see what effect this will have on the same-sex marriage debate. Particularly since this involves Big People in Texas who are on record against sodomy.
The More Things Stay the Same
“After the doctors and scientific experts testified in Congress that cigarettes cause or compound not only cancer but a number of other diseases and are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, the senior senator from Kentucky stood up just shaking with anger and moaned, ‘You’re trying to wreck our economy.’ And what did Henry Ford II say when the government began insisting on safety devices in cars? ‘The American people don’t want anything that’s going to upset the economy.’ And what’s more, Ford was right. Fifty thousand a year dead on the highways, but don’t rock the economy. Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There’s only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solution to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy über alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and driving an entire civilization insane. Don’t spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming.” — Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction
More 1992 v. 2004 Primary Comparisons
Delaware: February 3, 2004 Primary
1992
Tsongas 30.2%
Uncommitted: 29.6%
Clinton: 20.8%
Brown: 19.5%
Missouri: February 3, 2004 Primary
1992
Clinton: 45.1%
Tsongas: 10.2%
Brown: 5.7%
Uncommitted: 39%
South Carolina: February 3, 2004 Primary
1992
Clinton: 62.9%
Tsongas: 18.3%
Harkin: 6.6%
Brown: 6.0%
Arizona: February 3, 2004 Primary
1992
Tsongas: 34.4%
Clinton: 29.2%
Brown: 27.5%
Harkin: 7.6%
New Mexico: February 3, 2004 Caucus
1992
Clinton: 52.9%
Brown: 16.9%
Tsongas: 6.2%
Harkin: 1.8%
North Dakota: February 3, 2004 Caucus
1992
Clinton: 46.0%
Tsongas: 10.3%
Brown: 7.5%
Harkin: 6.8%
Oklahoma: February 3, 2004 Primary
1992
Clinton: 70.5%
Brown: 16.7%
Harkin: 3.4%
So, if Dean loses New Hampshire on Tuesday to Kerry (giving Kerry a double win and putting Dean behind in the game), the big question here is how, or if, Dean will carry these seven states.
And here are some more Iowa-New Hampshire results:
1992 Iowa: Harkin (64.3%), Uncommitted (11.0%), Tsongas (10.7%)
1992 New Hampshire: Tsongas (33%), Clinton (24.8%), Kerrey (11.1%)
1992 Front-Runner: Clinton
1988 Iowa: Simon (34.3%), Jackson (21.9%), Dukakis (20.8%), Babbitt (15.5%)
1988 New Hampshire: Dukakis (36.4%), Gephardt (20.3%), Simon (17.4%), Jackson (8.0%)
1988 Front-Runner: Dukakis
1984 Iowa: Mondale (48.9%), Hart (16.5%), McGovern (10.3%)
1984 New Hampshire: Hart (37.3%), Mondale (27.9%), Glenn (12.0%)
1984 Front-Runner: Mondale
1976 Iowa: Uncommitted (37.2%), Carter (27.6%), Bayh (13.2%)
1976 New Hampshire: Carter (28.4%), Udall (22.7%), Bayh (15.2%)
1976 Front-Runner: Carter
1972 Iowa: Muskie (35.5%), McGovern (22.6%), Humphrey (1.6%)
1972 New Hampshire: Muskie (46.4%), McGovern (37.1%), Yorty (6.1%)
1972 Front-Runner: McGovern
So outside of Gore in 2000, who won both New Hampshire and Iowa, and incumbents, not a single Democratic presidential front-runner has won both New Hampshire and Iowa in the last thirty years. The only primary candidate to win both was Ed Muksie.
The interesting thing is that with Dean trying to emerge from the Iowa rant incident, we’re seeing something of a Muskie-McGovern reversal. In 1972, Muskie’s campiagn collapsed when he reacted to newspaper articles attacking him. He cried, lost his lead and was perceived as weak. But according to the latest polls, Dean doesn’t look as if he’ll win New Hampshire. And with the press nipping on his tails, Dean’s now trying to atone for the Iowa rant, which may very well go down in political history. Ironically, the Internet, the very medium that propelled him, may end up killing him.
The campaign isn’t over yet. The Dean campaign will have to do some serious work in the seven states. But barring a major Kerry revelation, it’s looking a bit grim.
It’s All in the Corn
On Kerry winning the Iowa Caucus, I have only this to say.
1992 RESULTS:
Harkin 76.4%
Tsongas 4.1%
Clinton 2.8%
Kerrey 2.4%
Brown 1.6%
1988 RESULTS:
Gephardt 31.3%
Simon 26.7%
Dukakis 22.2%
Jackson 8.8%
Babbitt 6.1%
Hart 0.3%
Gore 0.1%
Iowa means nothing. The eventual Democratic front-runners placed third in both caucuses. And so did Dean this year. Really, this could go anywhere.
Their Threat Fatigue and We Need To Do My Things On Your Alert
What Tom Ridge Said: “I don’t think we’ve got to worry about threat fatigue. We need to be on the alert and America needs to know that those who need to do things are doing them, that their government is working 24-7 to protect them against terrorist attack.”
What Tom Ridge Might Have Meant:
“threat fatigue” — A little known cousin to “chronic fatigue syndrome.” Either that or, as Wordspy notes, “ignoring or downplaying possible threats because one has been subjected to constant warnings about those threats.” So if Tom Ridge tells us that we don’t have to worry about threat fatigue, am I to infer that he’s telling us to be scared shitless? And it all sounded so benign!
“We need to be on the alert.” — In Homeland Security vernacular, one cannot be alerted, nor can one be prepared for alert. One is “on the alert,” which, for some strange reason, conjures up imagery of Donald Rumsfield on the rag. Nonetheless, this might mean that, collectively, the nation is close to the alert button, or about to be alerted, but not quite there yet.
“America needs to know that those who need to do things are doing them.” — As opposed to wanting to know? Do we citizens not have “to do things?” Can we sit in our La-Z-Boys and eat Cheetos? Can we really trust “those who need to do things” to do them?
And then there’s troubling shift in perspective. Ridge goes from “we” to “those who need to do things” to “their government” in one sentence! Which suggests to me that “we” (the citizens) are sorta involved in any potential alerts, ad hoc, but are not people “who need to do things.” Additionally, Homeland Security and the U.S. citizens are joined at the hip, but “their government” implies that “they” are either the U.S. government or some unidentified government we are at battle with. (Perhaps Canada unknowingly?)
All I know is that Tom Ridge is full of shit, couldn’t speak intelligibly to save his life, and really has me worried about the DHS’s ability to communicate. I haven’t seen government language like this since the Nixon Administration.