Yesterday was so powerful, pulling a lever for a politician who could save us from ourselves and from the possibility of an overtly powerful chain of events and companies from controlling our destinies in a semi-authoritarian sense of statehood. But today these Ununited States are divided and Rove and friends would like nothing more than for 49% of the country to fall upon itself in disgust and accusations and recriminations. My only hope is that the Spring of 2005 will bring about a more full acknowledgement of the utter failure of Bush policies and, like Nixons’ second term, Bush’s will garner an internal reaction unlike any other seen this side of the Atlantic. G-d Bless America.
Andy, why did you vote for Bush?
Shouldn’t it be ‘unUnited’ States?
And emptypockets, not funny. If Andy really wanted to m make a Bush difference, he would have gone back to Pennsylvania and voted *there*. False recriminations won’t work here.
Jon Stewart made me strangely skeptical of the election results, this evening. Tom Daschle’s defeat seems strangely *sentient* – as if someone were deliberately out to break the spirit of the Democratic Party. I mean that’s what the CIA would do in South America someplace, no?
from the nader website. (www.votenader.org). democracy now!
Nader: Bush Re-Election Signals Need for Renewed Effort
Immediate Need for Peace Movement to be Re-activated
Time for Progressive Populists to Stand Up For the Interests of the People
Washington, DC: Independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader, commenting on the results of the election, stated that, November 2 is not the end, it is a new beginning. The challenge to the two-party system that is choking political expression and response in the United States will continue and grow. If the parties want to continue losing significance in attending to the countrys necessities, they need only continue to place the interests of Big Business before the interests of the people.
The re-election of George Bush would not have occurred had the Democrats stood up for the needs of the American people. Tens of millions of Americans have been left out of the political process because their needs are being ignored. Many of these people did not even bother to vote because they feel unrepresented, others ended up voting against their own personal interests for George Bush because of the absence of clear attracting policies by the Democrats. As the votes are analyzed we will find that significant percentages of union members, low-income earners, seniors and women will have voted for the president. These people voted against their interest because the Democrats did not put their interests on the table and issues like gay marriage, abortion and guns swayed them, said Nader.
It is now urgent for the peace movement to be re-awakened. They have sidelined themselves in this election by their silent support for a candidate who has become aggressive on the war. The U.S. is on the verge of a major offensive in Fallujah that will result in mass civilian deaths and, likely, lead us further into a civil war behind a puppet government against the resistance to U.S. occupation. There is no time to delay in order to protest the intensification of the Iraq occupation. The time to act was yesterday, said Nader. Not only is the Iraq war an illegal, fabricated one, but it is draining the resources needed to deal with the necessities of the American people.
The straitjacket of the political duopoly needs to be broken. This campaign exposed the ballot access barriers that confront all third party and independent candidates as well as the potential for anti-democratic activities as a result of the complex costly web of ballot laws. The Presidential debates this year, with their 32 pages of rules, showed how the Commission on Presidential Debates is an extension of the two parties that is designed to not allow voters to hear diverse views. It is time to challenge the shared monopoly of the two parties at every level and to do so consistently, said Nader adding, There needs to be one federal standard for ballot access to federal ballots, not fifty difference state standards plus D.C.
The civil liberties movement in the United States needs to do some soul searching in reaction to this election. They remained silent while the rights of millions of voters to vote for their candidate of their choice were being trampled on. Civil liberties are for all voters, not just voters with whom civil liberties groups agree. If this is not faced up to, the civil liberties community will have reduced credibility.
p.s. as an aside, though not really all that tangential, given the goose-murdering kerry and the turkey-slaughtering cheney– (and people wonder why the idea of killing iraqis comes so easily to these guys)
http://www.adoptaturkey.org/
“I smoke because I’m hoping for an early death,
and I need to cling to something…”
Suddenly, I’m remembering all of the morbid music that I used to listen to in my early 20’s, and why I stopped listening to anything with words…
“I’ve seen this in other people’s lives,
and now it’s happening in mine…”
“On the day that your mentality
catches up with your biology
“I want the one I can’t have
and it’s driving me mad…
it’s written all over my face”
In order:
‘What She Said’
‘That Joke isn’t Funny Anymore’
‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’
All by Morrisey & Marr, from The Smith’s ‘Meat is Murder’ 1985.
Welcome to Margaret Thatcher’s America.
Oh, and by the way – where the f@ck did my country go?
The one that I grew up in?
‘Cause this blue and red map bears no resemblance…
this is pretty awful, but really funny:
http://attenuation.net/files/iq.htm
O.k. – enough of the elitist baiting already. I read an article in the NYTimes yesterday that made me just a little ill, that talked about the percetion of ‘Blue Staters’ as elitist jerkweeds; when I see Bell Curve crap rolled out as an explication for Bush’s win, I only see a validation of that Right-Wing opinion.
I think that all of those homophobic people are just scared. Scared for themselves, their families and full of doubt about their capacity to raise their kids with any strong values. So it’s just another instance of weak and/or lazy Americans asking the Government to step in and legislate what they are too weak to instill, in the context of their own homes.
Sure, none of us have provenance over sociobiological destiny and the ultimate gender of any of our kids, but to make a ‘Moral Values’ issue the lynchpin of a Presidential election really points to the disquiet and impotence of all those people in those ‘Red’ States – they don’t feel as though they made the right choices raising their own kids, so now they want the Government to enforce their social/ethical/ideological parameters as law.
Many religoius fanatics use religion as a substitute for their own super-egos – if they can channel all of their ethical decision making through a ‘good book’ then they’re ‘off the hook’, when it comes to making their own personal ethical and moral decisions. I think we’ve just witnessed the surrender of an entire generation (or two) of people who just can’t bear the responsibility of allowing either themselves or their children to make these kinds of decisions for themselves.
One has to wonder – instead of looking at specious IQ charts – what the education-level and the QUALITY of public education is for each of these states. It’s just like the 3rd world – if you can equip people with a good education, it’ll lift all boats and they’ll be less susceptible to the politics of fear.
5{ to face up to the facts that half of the country would rather that their children die in a pointless, endless war rather than have Susan Sarandon pay a higher tax rate.
It’s an easy enough decision if you believe that death is not the end.
this is cut/paste from a personal reply to victor, after he’d accused me of elitist baiting (for whatever it’s worth)…
victor,
re the iq thing:
well, it was an attempt at comic relief. actually a friend had sent me the link yesterday morning, i opened it, smirked, and decided to pass it along. i shouldn’t have though, because it’s not something i stand firmly behind as:
1. i don’t believe in the validity of so-called intelligence tests. completely meaningless.
and
2. i, personally, wasn’t even included in the list, being a nader voter. not like i was considering myself part of the ny elite– or anything else.
it was a mild ha-ha (as i know there are many who do trust in the validity of those tests), but the key word there for me is mild. and it was in poor taste, as you point out. i agree with you that access to education is crucial, but it’s crucial for everything -except- doing well on a so-called intelligence test. the intellegence tests are like rorschac tests: they reveal zero. what i respect most in people i meet at this point in my life is degrees of sensitivity and capacities for empathy. cleary you’re not going to find that measured on a test. nor most anything else….
this is cut/paste from a personal reply to victor, after he’d accused me of elitist baiting (for whatever it’s worth)…
victor,
re the iq thing:
well, it was an attempt at comic relief. actually a friend had sent me the link yesterday morning, i opened it, smirked, and decided to pass it along. i shouldn’t have though, because it’s not something i stand firmly behind as:
1. i don’t believe in the validity of so-called intelligence tests. completely meaningless.
and
2. i, personally, wasn’t even included in the list, being a nader voter. not like i was considering myself part of the ny elite– or anything else.
it was a mild ha-ha (as i know there are many who do trust in the validity of those tests), but the key word there for me is mild. and it was in poor taste, as you point out. i agree with you that access to education is crucial, but it’s crucial for everything -except- doing well on a so-called intelligence test. the intellegence tests are like rorschac tests: they reveal zero. what i respect most in people i meet at this point in my life is degrees of sensitivity and capacities for empathy. cleary you’re not going to find that measured on a test. nor most anything else….