Dispatch from a Blue State with the blues...I’ve received a smattering of emails voicing our collective horror at the reelection of Shrub. In case you have missed any of these perspectives, I thought I’d include them in one handy-dandy place.
I’m still in a state of shock and denial and keep expecting to wake up from this nightmare that is the reality of our country. Much of the post-election analysis (below and in the news I’ve read) draws the fault-lines of division clearly between evangelical v. secular-humanist, urban v. rural, and ironically in many cases between the have-less and have-more classes. Karl Rove’s master plan of bringing out their base is identified as the winning stroke in the Republican campaign while the Democrat’s strategy of multi-tasking by begging for swing votes and getting the vote out to blacks, the youth demographic, and any other disenfranchised group is considered post factum wrong. Yet I don’t think that’s an entirely correct assessment. The Republican base is homegenously white and evangelical. Communication to that electorate is simpler than say the Democrat’s base that is hetergenously made up of bi-coastal, urban, so-called “elites” and the motley assemblage of the disenfranchised comprised of African-Americans, working poor, gays/lesbians, and the faceless others who were alienated from this Administration’s hyper-Christian, warhawkish, ultra-conservative rhetoric. The evangelicals and the “Values Voter” line up like loyal ducks in a row as willing Republican apparatchik. Meanwhile the Democrats have as much luck mobilizing their base as herding cats in a field. Part of it is the heterogeneity and part of it is that not all those who are Democrats realize they are Democrats! It’s also the failure of the Democratic Party to capture the morality vote, the rural vote, the Southern states vote, or the working class vote. Carter and Clinton did it and it was wishful thinking that Edwards could, too. The Democratic Party can no longer rely on a Clintonian JFK figure to rise up like a knight in shining armor to save the day anymore.
Having volunteered along with Susan for the Kerry California Grassroots organization, we saw firsthand how much hard work was put into energizing the California base and targeting efforts in swing states. MoveOn also did a lion’s share of mobilizing the legions of volunteers over the internet. If all those efforts were truly effectual, it’s startling to think that much work was required to bring Kerry even to within 10 points of Bush. What if none of that effort ever existed? Would Bush support then have avalanched by an overwhelming landslide over a docile majority?
In conclusion, I’d say it’s more than just a failure of the Democratic Party. It’s a failure of American people everywhere. We choose to believe our own PR over the realities of the republic. We’d rather believe our President is a devout Christian than question his un-Christian policies. We believe every vote counts when it doesn’t. I sent our absentee ballots via certified mail on October 28th and the online postal tracking service still had not confirmed delivery on November 2nd. This forced us, in a panic, to complete provisional ballots which we all now know (esp. from Ohio) may never ever be counted.
Being a poll observer on November 2, I witnessed the utter fragility of our voting system. There were two precincts serving in one location at the Seventh Day Adventist Church of Hollywood. One precinct was abundantly staffed by educated, economically high-tiered whites representing the Hollywood Hills. The other was comprised of a sullen and ineffectual county worker with a couple of ill-trained recruits to represent my hood of apartment dwelling, economically middle to lower tiered denizens. By 1:00PM that day, they were already short of ballots and were sure to run out by the inevitable after-work rush. Several calls to the precinct supervisor and my frantic calls to a voter problems hotline never resolved it. In fact, the same problem faced many precincts in L.A. I didn’t stay past 6PM to find out if they ever got their ballots or not. Another huge electoral faux pas was an inconsistency found in a sample ballot from Northridge which had Bush/Cheney designated as the same ballot number as Kerry/Edwards. All the sample ballots in the county of Los Angeles are supposed to be identical!
However, even if our voting systems were not so imperfect and Republican’s machiavellian tactics to block or challenge votes were eliminated, many Americans clearly lack enough critical or analytical intelligence to assume the awesome responsibility of voting. How can democracy truly work here where so many of us are either misinformed, under-informed, or alienated from the political process? There’s a great article in the August 30 New Yorker analyzing the vagaries of how people vote (e.g., that Gore lost 2.8 million votes based on the weather of a given state that year). I can’t agree more with one quote from it: "Democracies are really oligarchies with a populist face."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
By Robert Benedetti, an Emmy-winning TV writer & political activist.
> > The breakdown of the voting patterns confirm that
> the real divide in this
> > country was between educated and secular people
> versus less-educated and
> > religious people. Bush lost the independent,
> college-educated vote -- the
> > first time a president has won while losing this
> segment -- and he did it
> > by mobilizing his religious base. This also
> explains his disturbing
> > increases among ethnic minorities.
> >
> > The historical record of governments dominated by
> religious dogma -- of
> > whatever kind -- is horrific. Look for continued
> ideological extremism in
> > Supreme Court and other key appointments, the
> conduct of foreign policy,
> > continued attacks on women's rights to choose and
> gay rights, and
> > continued or expanded influence of big
> business.The blue collar people who
> > supported Bush have screwed themselves.
> >
> > A major factor in Bush's appeal is the same as the
> appeal of religious
> > dogma: he offers a consistent, stable, and most of
> all simplicist view of
> > a world that otherwise seems changeable, unstable,
> and complicated. Like
> > frightened children, Americans want a strong
> daddy. The more threatening
> > the world becomes, the stronger Bush's position,
> and this fact will guide
> > a foreign policy that will guarantee continued
> conflict and isolation.
> >
> > The Democrats have a big job ahead: they must
> restore their populist base
> > and stop taking black, brown, and blue collar
> voters for granted. The best
> > hope is to build on the increased involvement of
> young voters, the one
> > really hopeful sign in this otherwise dismal election.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[This was part of an email thread responding to the above Robert Benedetti email. It reminds me of the complete absence of the mainstream Christian voice to the all the hyper-Christian, evangelicals that have kidnapped Republican politics and blemished mainstream Christianity’s name.]
Back in 1992, the Oregon Citizen Alliance's anti-gay ballot measure 9
was largely defeated because a coalition of churches rallied each other
and their congregations to do the right thing. Of course gay-rights
activist groups were also highly mobilized against it, but the churches
had the critical reach that urban leftist groups never could.
When California's Defense of Marriage Act got on the 2000 ballot it
seemed like no one had learned everything. In San Francisco, of all
places, all I saw were defiant preaches to the choir. The measure passed
easily.
Today we face as much of a fundamentalist threat here as in any Muslim
country, and as is easy to feel toward moderate Muslims, I'm getting
increasingly incensed toward non-fundamentalist Christians wondering
where they have been during all of this.
But I still hold onto the 1992 example because church congregations can
and will stand for social justice. One of my high school friends, a
devout Presbyterian whose letters refer freely to Jesus, went with her
husband and fellowship a few years ago on a conciliatory tour of Turkey
and the Middle East to apologize for the Crusades.
I guess it's time I called her and asked what the hell's going on.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[This is another thread from that same Robert Benedetti email from a friend who lives in Chicago. She’s a LA Times journalist who used to live in L.A.]
Just a random note, from out here in the fundamentalist Midwest...
It is very odd to live in Illinois, which has such a huge Catholic and religious community. People here should be voting Republican. Hell, every 'burb and 'ville outside of Chicago is radically red.
And yet...
The state went to Kerry. I've seen people crying in the streets because Bush won. Students at some of the local colleges would have rioted in the downtown streets of Chicago, but they were too drunk and depressed. I sat in O'Hare this morning, and listened to a businessman shriek profanities at his friend in Ohio (and yes, the friend voted for Bush).
And yet...
I spent the day with unemployed factory workers in Columbus. These are angry, angry people. Angry in the same way that people in California were angry with Mr. Davis. Angry and looking for someone to blame. Minorities. Gays. Democrats. Anyone different. Anyone different from them.
No matter what I said, no matter what questions I asked, the only thing that came back was anger--mostly about the war and the economy.
Yes, I got the irony. (Or is it hypocrisy?) We are living in strange, strange times...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[Bob Silver was a volunteer Susan and I met at the Kerry California Grassroots org who is a Vietnam vet and an outspoken, impassioned fellow who headed up the swing-state trips volunteer efforts.]
From:
To: "ROBERT SILVER"
Subject: The Moral Majority
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 19:08:19 -0800
I've been hearing that the results of this election reflect a stance America is making on moral issues. Last Monday, after a full day responding to legal questions from early voters, most of whom waited about 3 to 5 hours in high humidity heat in Hollywood, FL, I went for a beer at a local Sports Bar to watch the Monday night game. There was an awfully nice guy sitting on the next stool, watching the game. He was an avowed Republican, and seeing my Kerry shirt, we agreed not to talk politics. Somewhere near the middle of the second quarter, he leaned over and told me that what he really hated was "littering".
As I expressed greater concern over Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton, stockbroker-shills, et. al. the floodgates opened and we went at it. I soon discovered that his hatred of littering stemmed in large part from these "people" who recently had made a little money, and had been moving into his condo complex. They had no respect for the property, and man, they just littered all over, 'cause that's the way they were brought up. That's what made Guliani great. He cleaned the City up...literally.
He pointed out, as his summation as to why he hated Democrats, the following things that he thought about when you thought about Democrats over the last 20 years: civil rights, women's lib, ADD (that one took me a moment. I'll let you figure it out too), Homosexuals and gay marriage, welfare. Mind you, these were the things he hated Democrats (did I mention Jews? and other minorities?). Interestingly, he didn't mention abortion.
I thought a bit about that and another incident at the 48V precinct polling place the next day, where a really irate Republican voter took pictures of the various Democratic and Kerry representatives around. For what reason, I'm not sure, but by God, he was going to do something about us being there!! And, by God, here he had the proof!!! What I couldn't understand was his fury. It was so completely inappropriate.
Now what I got from all this was that both these guys were terrified. These guys, and maybe millions like them are afraid for their lives, afraid that the enfranchisement of all those groups enumerated above were going to disenfranchise them, or at least devalue the tiny bit of entitlement that's been left them in this newly globalized world.
I don't think for a minute that they support huge tax breaks for the rich because they think that one day they'll be one of them. They know they won't. "Aah, the rich have always been rich, and no one's ever gonna touch 'em!"
No, the "morality" they protest is the last bulwark they have against the encroachment of those "others", an encroachment that will deprive them of the last privileges of a stable, understandable world, in which they have a place, perhaps not as privileged as the wealthy, but still better than queers, and yes, niggers, and all those beaners pouring over the borders.
This is not a profile of all Republicans, but the lower down the socio-economic order you go the closer this is to the surface. The higher up you go, the more they have to fight for and therefore the greater the fear and the more buried it is under the self-righteous banner of traditional Morality.
It will take a lot to move these people. But I think Bush can do it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[Mark was a VERY devoted volunteer who worked countless hours for the Kerry campaign and headed up the Silverlake Democratic HQ office. Susan and I performed various tasks under his auspices.]
Mark Brown
wrote:
From: "Mark Brown"
To:
Subject: My apology
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 01:19:40 -0800
I m directing this email of apology to all my friends outside the United States. I m also copying it to my family and my close friends here.
I spent much of September and every waking moment of October working on the campaign to defeat Bush. I was not successful, and so from you I ask your forgiveness. The reelection of Bush is a tragedy for the country and for the world. It makes me weep to see what he s done in four short years to the soul of America, to democracy, to the Constitution, to honor, to our standing in the world, and to other countries. There was still a chance we could recover our equilibrium if we got him out, but it s not to be. It will now take several decades, if ever, for the United States to regain what glory it had or deserves.
In the next four years Bush will make three, possibly four, appointments to the Supreme Court. We can expect the nominees to be from the religious right wing. The law they pass will be ideological and sweeping. There is no doubt in my mind that it alone will change America as we knew it in the 20th Century.
The Democratic Party has been effectively crushed with the loss of five Senatorial seats and one Congressional. There will no viable opposition to the behavior of the administration. In his first term, with no mandate from the public, Bush made huge changes in economic and foreign policy. In both great areas the results were disastrous. Now with a second term, and what he takes as a mandate, we must expect the policies to be even more extreme and the results even less predictable.
In its first term the administration demonstrated an abuse of power that seems unprecedented in the history of the country. Now it is fully entrenched at the highest levels; there is no rooting it out. The extreme right wing has control of the House and Senate, of the Executive Branch, of most of the Judiciary, and soon the Supreme Court will come totally under its sway. The essential checks and balances, which for two and a quarter centuries have been a hallmark of American government, have weakened or vanished all together. The linkages between government, churches, and corporations are bound tightly and are altogether frightening. I don t see how the country can get out from under these horrors.
The administration and the entire right wing have acted in ways that seem simply un-American to me, indeed, that seem associated with fascism, for example, the willingness to do anything to seize power, the easy ability to lie, manipulate, and deceive to gain their ends, the rush to war in order to achieve their political objectives, the disregard of any accountability to the public. The list is long and tragic.
The Iraq war has been an obscenity from the very start. It was conceived in lies, and it has been executed in lies. With another four years in office and with even greater power to do whatever it wants, we can expect the war and the lies to continue to the detriment of the world. There will be a reckoning. When it happens we can blame George Bush and this dangerous administration for it.
Thus, from the pride I felt for being an American I now feel profound shame. I m in disagreement with America philosophically, culturally, and certainly politically. Just about all the rest of the world believes the country has lost its way, and I do too. Seeing what s happened over the last four years leaves me in a chronic state of anger. I feel like I m in an alien, ugly country instead of my home, my birthplace, the United States of America, Land of the Free, of fair play, of justice.
So I ve made a decision. My cat Daphne is 17 years old. I love that precious, little spirit with all my heart and won t upset her life for anything. But when my sweet responsibilities are over I will leave this country and by my action renounce it.
Mark
We have lost interest in leading by example in favor of taking by force.
--James, 11/05/04
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[Given the complicated calculus of the electoral college numbers and the irregularities of precincts throughout the country, the belief that Bush has a “mandate” based on the popular vote is countered by the fact that 100,000+ votes to gain Ohio’s 20 electoral votes is hardly a mandate but a vagary of our voting system.]
Kerry Won
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the
United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are
voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because
the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s
investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded
ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state.
Today the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a
total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add
the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000
provisional ballots.
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine,
investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC
Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family
Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this
month on DVD .
Kerry won. Here's the facts.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one
more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a
journalist examining that messy sausage called
American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got
the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in
Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for
Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among
Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also
defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to
49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry
took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are
accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?"
Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question,
"Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most
voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards,
thousands of these votes were simply not recorded.
This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November
1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote
game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and
pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and
new.
The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but
by something called "spoilage." Typically in the
United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided,
just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head
boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won
by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ...
it has never happened in the United States, because
the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The
television totals simply subtract out the spoiled
vote.
And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes,
say every official report, come from African American
and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)
We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore
with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't
match the official count. That's because the official,
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855
spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these
votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole
wasn't punched through
completely—leaving a 'hanging chad,'—or was punched
extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert
statisticians investigating spoilage for the
government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots
thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To
read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission,
click here .)
And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The
majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2
million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have
been cast by African American and other minority
citizens.
So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again.
Because unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking
Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched
holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz).
Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use
the vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the
Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell,
wrote before the election, “the possibility of a close
election with punch cards as the state’s primary
voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.”
But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan
Republican, has warmed up to the result of sticking
with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic
votes. When asked if he feared being this year's
Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's
efforts landed her a seat in Congress.
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this
time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though
the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that
last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a
democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced
their typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly
Democratic.
The Impact Of Challenges
First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the
Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone.
There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word
for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku
Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of
voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and
Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush
citizens under arcane laws—almost never used—allowing
party-designated poll watchers to finger individual
voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio
courts were horrified and federal law prohibits
targeting of voters where race is a factor in the
challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let
Republicans stand in the voting booth door.
In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but
they were there. Many apparently resulted in voters
getting these funky "provisional" ballots—a kind of
voting placebo—which may or may not be counted.
Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say
250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were
aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again,
overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the
spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye
in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit
polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new
president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in
Ohio.
Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote
Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality—if all
votes are counted—is more obvious still. Before the
election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote, "John Kerry is
down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though
not one ballot has yet been counted."
How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and
the provisional ballots.
CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes.
Again, the network total added up to that miraculous,
and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.
New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate
of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in
Hispanic, Native American and poor
precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote,
assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to
see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.
Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico.
Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more
than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to
have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these
uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush
'plurality.'
Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are
popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd
expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by
Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the
"Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent
Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native
Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to
31 percent.
I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before
the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage
rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people
simply can't make up their minds on the choice of
candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people
drive across the desert to register their indecision
in a voting booth.
Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally
of provisional ballots.
"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque
journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional
ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?
Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship"
program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico,
told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he
identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the
iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given
provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind
"almost religiously," he said, at polling stations
when there was the least question about a voter's
identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were
simply turned away.
Your Kerry Victory Party
So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry—if
we count all the votes.
But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's
pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial
disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the
Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled
and provisional ballots will require the cooperation
of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will
ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional
ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into
Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit
anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic
leadership knows darn well the media would punish the
party for demanding a full count.
What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But
make sure the shades are down: it may be become
illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act
III.
I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in
London. Several friends have asked me if I will again
leave the country. In light of the failure—a second
time—to count all the votes, that won't be necessary.
My country has left me.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[Leave it to the U.K. press to state it so unabashedly, with gloves completely pulled off. This was a satisfying article because it turns red in the face and spews vitriol at the appropriate levels that I feel inside.]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14832124&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=god-help-america-name_page.html
GOD HELP AMERICA
Nov 5 2004
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN…
THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.
This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.
This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.
And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.
But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.
A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.
A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.
And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.
Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?
There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."
And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?
Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.
To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.
To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?
Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves?
--> How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him? <-- Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health coverage. He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world. Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation. A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons. A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers. A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions. America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths. A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement. Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq. You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity. Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong". You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out. He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up. These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers. Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive. Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man. Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know. VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism. The lines for hours to register a vote; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor. Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush. But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face. Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...? Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory. And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak. God Help America. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [That line about “W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq…” really articulates well the radical religiosity behind Bush’s domestic and foreign policy. The Iraq War is an American Jihad! I think that really helps frame it in a way we can understand Bush’s lunatic war.] > OP-ED COLUMNIST
> The Red Zone
> By MAUREEN DOWD
> Published: November 4, 2004
> WASHINGTON
>
> With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in
> little blue puddles,
> John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in
> Boston about his
> concession call to President Bush.
>
> "We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And
> we talked about the
> danger of division in our country and the need, the
> desperate need, for
> unity, for finding the common ground, coming
> together. Today I hope that we
> can begin the healing."
>
> Democrat: Heal thyself.
>
> W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a
> wingman.
>
> The president got re-elected by dividing the country
> along fault lines of
> fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He
> doesn't want to heal
> rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree
> to heel.
>
> W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in
> Iraq - drawing a devoted
> flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they
> call themselves, to the
> polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell
> research and supporting a
> constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
>
> Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake
> evidence to trick us into war
> with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral
> position with no exit strategy,
> won on "moral issues."
>
> The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach
> out to the whole
> country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious
> until they don't get
> their way. If W. didn't reach out after the last
> election, which he barely
> grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what
> Dick Cheney calls a
> "broad, nationwide victory"?
>
> While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about
> reaching out, Republicans
> said they had "the green light" to pursue their
> conservative agenda, like
> drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the
> tax code.
>
> "He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one
> Bush insider predicts.
> "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the
> election results
> endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that
> the more insurgents
> American troops kill, the more they create.
>
> Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock
> still vice president?)
> Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech:
> "This has been a
> consequential presidency which has revitalized our
> economy and reasserted a
> confident American role in the world." Well, it has
> revitalized the
> Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And
> "confident" is not the first
> word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a
> country that has
> alienated everyone except Fiji.
>
> Vice continued, "Now we move forward to serve and to
> guard the country we
> love." Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to
> guard" sound like "to rape
> and to pillage."
>
> He's creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One
> party controls all power
> in the country. One network serves as state TV. One
> nation dominates the
> world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts
> in Iraq.
>
> Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the
> G.O.P. convention that he
> made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new
> members of Congress will
> make W. seem moderate.
>
> Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has
> advocated the death penalty
> for doctors who perform abortions and warned that
> "the gay agenda" would
> undermine the country. He also characterized his
> race as a choice between
> "good and evil" and said he had heard there was
> "rampant lesbianism" in
> Oklahoma schools.
>
> Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina,
> said during his campaign
> that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank
> banning gays from teaching
> in public schools. He explained, "I would have given
> the same answer when
> asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living
> with her boyfriend
> should be hired to teach my third-grade children."
>
> John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an
> anti-abortion Christian
> conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed
> in a campaign ad - who
> supports constitutional amendments banning flag
> burning and gay marriage.
>
> Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately
> started talking about
> values and religion. Their sudden passion for wooing
> Southern white
> Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008
> campaign (nothing but a
> wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue
> puddle is comforting itself
> with the expectation that this loony bunch will
> fatally overreach, just as
> Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.
>
> But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would
> constitute
> overreaching.
>
Invading France?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jay McInerney is the author of "Bright Lights, Big City" and "How It Ended."
I'm going to apply for an Irish passport. And starting tonight, I'm
going to read "Civil Disobedience" to my kids
[There was plenty of blame to go around for the old-fashioned type of voting at precincts so I wouldn’t place the bulk of the problems with electronic voting, in spite of their security issues and lack of paper accounting.]
Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor of communications at New York University, and author, most recently, of "Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order."
First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt
about it. It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million
more votes than he got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes
from right-wing Christians, and there are approximately 19 million of
them in the country. They were eager to get the other 4 million. That
was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy to get Bush elected.
But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new
voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that
Bush got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do
with the electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely
untrustworthy, and that's why the Republicans use them. Then there's
the fact that the immediate claim of Ohio was not contested by the
news media -- when Andrew Card came out and claimed the state, not
only were the votes in Ohio not counted, they weren't even all cast.
I would have to hear a much stronger argument for the authenticity, or
I should say the veracity, of this popular vote for Bush before I'm
willing to believe it. If someone can prove to me that it happened,
that Bush somehow pulled 8 million magic votes out of a hat, OK, I'll
accept it. I'm an independent, not a Democrat, and I'm not living in
denial.
And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as
Democratic a state as Guatemala used to be. The news media is obliged
to make the Republicans account for all these votes, and account for
the way they were counted. Simply to embrace this result as definitive
is irrational. But there is every reason to question it ... I find it
beyond belief that the press in this formerly democratic country would
not have made the integrity of the electoral system a front page,
top-of-the-line story for the last three years. I worked and worked
and worked to get that story into the media, and no one touched it
until your guy did.
I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him
about it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa
was really indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down
at me -- he's about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't
register. It set off all his conspiracy-theory alarms and he just
wasn't listening.
Talk to anyone from a real democracy -- from Canada or any European
country or India. They are staggered to discover that 80 percent of
our touch-screen electronic voting machines have no paper trail and
are manufactured by companies owned by Bush Republicans. But there is
very little sense of outrage here. Americans for a host of reasons
have become alienated from the spirit of the Bill of Rights and that
should not be tolerated.
~~~~~Pop star Moby, from his blog:~~~~~
... some of us might long for a secession wherein certain parts of the
country declare their sovereign autonomy, but given our current state
of quasi-united states, well, bush won. tonight i realized that
although america is possessed of a lot of progressive people, america
is essentially a right-wing republican country. we might resist this
fact, but it is a fact. it's not a fact in manhattan. it's not a fact
in l.a or san francisco. but for 100+ million people it's a fact ...
and now we ask ... what now? with another 4 years of a republican
president/senate/house, well ... what do they want? the right-wing
have re-asserted their dominance. what do they want? i do hope that
the democrats in the house and senate do their best to impose sane
restrictions upon the more extreme tendencies of the newly empowered
right-wing ... the sun will rise tomorrow, and the people who voted
for bush will: a) send their sons/daughters off to war in iraq; b)
complain about unemployment; c) lament their lack of health care; d)
complain about the high price of prescription drugs; e) complain about
a low minimum wage; f) complain about high gas prices/heating oil
costs; g) and so on; h) and so on ... the people have made their
choice. and now, for better or worse, they have to live with their
choice ... can someone remind me why secession is not an option at
this point? i mean let's be realistic, we live in a divided country.
can't we have the breakaway republics of 'north-east-istan' and
'pacific-stan'? wouldn't the red states be happier without us?"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[Can’t say this hasn’t crossed my mind or friends that I know. Hmm…]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/04/canada/
So you want to move to Canada?
All you need to know about becoming a legal resident. Tip No. 1: Brush up on the prairie provinces.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Kevin Berger
Nov. 4, 2004 | David Cohen, partner of Cohen-Campbell, a leading Canadian immigration law firm, had barely settled into work Wednesday morning when his phone started ringing with Americans seeking legal guidance to taking up residence in the land of the maple leaf. The Bush victory did it, they told him: America's shift to the right had finally squeezed them out of their own country. Farewell Ten Commandment statues in public squares, hello single-payer healthcare.
So just how hard is it for an American to become a Canuck? A recent Harper's article suggested that bailing from Dick Cheneyville entailed a rather onerous legal dance. "It's not difficult at all," says Cohen. Basically all you need is a B.A. and a passing fluency in English and "Bingo, you're in."
Canada wants you. Turns out the populace, not too big on breeding, is not getting any younger. Our neighbors to the north need 1 percent of new immigrants every year just to keep their population of 31 million from shrinking. Bad for the economy and all that.
Interestingly, not many Americans decide to remake their lives in Canada. In 2002, only 5,288 Yankees immigrated there, compared to 14,164 folks from Pakistan. However, Cohen says his business among Americans has picked up considerably in the past year. He's received numerous calls from "parents who have lived through the Vietnam era and now have children soon to be draft age."
To put down roots in Canada, you need a permanent residence visa. First, you fill out a score card that awards you points for who you are -- you're shooting for 67. That B.A. in communications from Chico State will do the trick but so will two years as a tradesperson; Manitoba is always looking for good sheet-metal workers. If you only have a high school education but sold that software program you wrote in your bedroom one night to Oracle -- that is, you have a net worth of $200,000 -- start packing, you're Canada's kind of person. There is, however, a little bit of a Gattaca thing going. You get more points for being under 49 years old.
One warning: "Don't all of a sudden show up with a U-Haul trailer and all of your personal belongings in it," says Cohen. That's a legal offense called "centralizing your mode of living" and will quickly earn you official Canadian directions back to America. If the prospect of living one more day in Bush Land has you leaving tomorrow, better start looking for a job once you get to Canada. You can bop around for six months; after that, you need a work permit to stay longer.
Now, if you're really ambitious, and can't stand the thought of calling yourself an American while Donald Rumsfeld walks in the White House rose garden, you can apply for Canadian citizenship. Which requires passing a civics test and naming the three prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta). That will earn you the right to vote and discuss Wayne Gretzky's early years with the Oilers.
Keep in mind, red tape being what it is -- and provided you don't break any major Canadian laws like littering -- it will take one year to get a permanent visa and three more years to earn citizenship. By that time, the political scene back home could look a whole lot different.
Finally, you may want to think kind thoughts about American founding father George Washington before you recite Canada's Oath of Citizenship: " I swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
