why don't we want W for another 4 years? He has consistently mis-represented himself to the American people. Compassionate conservative? I don't think so. Not interested in nation building? How about Afghanistan and Iraq? Poor boy from Texas? Nope.
As this article points out, Bush is currently trying to paint himself as a guy of average means compared to Kerry and Edwards. And there are people out there who will believe this, especially if they make their political choices based primarily on the commericials and stump speeches they've seen on TV.
It's fascinating really. Not only is Bush misrepresenting himself by insinuating that he is not part of the upper class of this country, he is insulting the very people he is targetting with this ploy... the lower income families who are trying to support their families with low paying jobs. Bush is assuming that these folks won't have the time or energy to search out the truth in his claims, and that by fooling them into thinking he is not rich, they'll be more likely to vote for him.
¶ 9:22 PM 1 comments
Researcher have studied people's responses to fear and their choice of political candidates. Some research has shown that when people - no matter their political persuasion - are thinking about the fear of death, their choice for political candidate changes from when they are in their more "rational" mind.
¶ 2:08 PM 0 comments
As this Washington Post commentary points out, it seems rather curious that the Pakistani arrest of an HVT ("High Value Target") last Sunday was not announced until yesterday,a few hours before John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Could the Bush White House be playing politics with the capture of terrorists? (who would have thought it possible?)
¶ 1:18 PM 0 comments
The September issue of Esquire magazine has an essay by Ron Reagan about Bush and his administration's lack of credibility. Or actually, about the incredible tendancy toward mendacity that has characterized Bush's tenure in the White House.
¶ 11:38 AM 0 comments
Okay, so I'm still feeling optimistic about change in the White House (sorry if my previous post waxed a bit too schmoopy, but I've been a bit swept away this week by all the liberal love in the air.) However, there is an interesting article by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi in the New York Press this week, although if you want to stay on the cloud, wait a few days to read it.
It reminded me that although change is critical in November, we'll still need to think critically after November.
¶ 12:04 AM 0 comments
I'll be voting for Kerry/Edwards this November because they make me feel hopeful about the future. With them, I can believe that we'll have less poverty, better wages, and more jobs. With them, I can envision cars that run on something other than gasoline, on cities that control sprawl, and on national parks more treasured for their beauty than their financial worth. With them I can envision women gaining respect and better renumeration, homosexuals having the same rights as straight people, and dialogue rather than diatribes between people of all faiths and political persuasions. With them I can envision losing my irrational fears of my government and my government's enemies, losing my cynicism about the integrity of our elected officals, and losing my bitterness toward a political system that seems to be spiralling out of control.
With Kerry and Edwards leading our nation, I can imagine regaining my faith in the American way of thinking and acting, in the basic goodness of people, and in the endless possibilities for my own children. I can imagine a future in which I can again be proud to say that I'm an American.
Another reason to support Kerry and the Dems in the fall is that I believe they are the folks who truly respect voters rights and will work to make sure that everyone's vote gets counted. I'm very thankful to live in Oregon where we won't be mucking around with unreliable voting machines in November.
¶ 11:38 AM 0 comments
After reading Ann Coulter's column, I couldn't resist writing a letter to help her out, since it seems that although she is a writer by occupation, she has forgotten some basics.
Dear Ann Coulter,
Out of morbid curiosity, I read your column for USA Today. And in all honesty, I can see why the USA Today editors said it had "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability." In the interest of cooperation between Americans with differing viewpoints, I'd like to offer a few suggestions to help you.
1) Commas are good. It might be helpful if you picked up a junior high English grammar book and studied the section on punctuation. For example, if you had used commas instead of dashes in the third paragraph from the end in which you expressed your desire to remove teachers from the U.S. education system, the readability of your column would have been greatly enhanced.
2) Clarity about subject matter is also good. It's a rather common technique among writers to use your opening paragraph to enlighten the readers as to the topic of your column, maybe with an amusing story or description, and to build your case throughout the column.
After reading your column I was uncertain as to the point. Was it that Democrats belong in cages? And if so, why exactly? (Did some Bush-appointed lawyer-turned-judge issue an opinion stating that the president now has the power to imprison Democrats?) Was it that we don't need government workers to keep this country operating? (Perhaps we'll have a draft for road-repair crews - maybe SUV and Hummer drivers could be in the first round.) Was it that only Democrats use extreme analogies to make their points? Funny, seems like that's what you are doing in this very column.
In your final paragraph you make reference to a "French party." I am unaware of such a party. Is this the one Ralph Nader is running for this year? (Funded by Karl Rove Republicans, of course?)
In fact, the column does not seem to have a cohesive topic at all. Perhaps a good title would have been "Random Observations from the Conservative Fringe". This would enable the reader (if they were unfamiliar with the author's leanings) to know right off the bat that the column would be filled with hyperbole and mean-sprited comments.
3) Use metaphors and similes with care. Upon reading the opening paragraph, I first thought I had stumbled upon a critique of a horror movie ("Spawn of Satan: O'Reilly's Legacy"). Perhaps you should have started by letting readers know that you are at a convention for one of the two major American politcal parties, and then go on to draw an analogy of how Democrats are related to the devil. You never really adequately supported this point in your column. Do you actually have proof of the relationship betweem Satan and the Democrats or are we supposed to take this on faith?
Also, the comparison between conservatives and gay men was very confusing. I had previously thought that conservatives were very different from gay men, and that perhaps there are no gay conservative men. Does this comparison mean that you support gay marriage between conservative gay men? It's probably better not to mention homosexuality at all since it only confuses the issues at hand in your column, which are already very confusing.
4) Get the facts straight. In particular, your paragraph about women had some glaring errors. First of all, I guarantee you that there are many beautiful liberal women out there, so if you assumed that all the pretty "girls" (does this mean they were underage?) at the convention were winking at you because they were conservatives, you might have been very wrong. In fact, it's quite likely that they were in fact trying to tell you that you had lipstick smeared on your teeth, or they may have been hitting on you.
Secondly, "corn-fed" is not a correct descriptor for most truly liberal women, unless you modify it with "non-genetically engineered."
Thirdly, "no-bra needing" implies that liberal women all have small breasts. It is true that some conservative women may indeed be larger-breasted, especially since Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy have made it more likely that they can afford the breast implants necessary to confuse men into dating them. (Also, if your implication is correct, conservative "girls" are easier than liberal women since they have looser standards. Is that part of the "Bush" doctrine? Conservative girls pre-emptively open their legs to the good ol'boys? But I digress...)
But in fact, if the women present (or "girls" if you prefer pejoratives) needed no bra, why should they wear one? I think the description you may have been searching for is "no-bra wearing" which more accurately conveys your disgust at women who happen to choose not to wear such undergarments. Given that the health and sanctity of the undergarment business is so obviously threatened by women who brazenly go bra-less, I'm sure we can look forward to President Bush proposing a "Federal Brassiere Amendment" in the coming months in between vacations and fundraising.
I hope these suggestions might help you with your writing skills. However, I'm sure that if your writing difficulties limit your ability to be published in major newspapers, you can always put out more books. And look on the bright side. There's no need to stick to the facts in your books!
Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen from Oregon
¶ 11:18 AM 0 comments
USA Today editors changed their minds about having Ann Coulter do a column about the Democratic convention after a dispute over editing a column she submitted.
¶ 11:10 AM 0 comments
Women in America definitely have a ways to go before they get respect. From the clerks and admin people at Walmart who apparently don't deserve to get paid as much as their male counterparts, to strong-minded political wives like Hillary Clinton and Teresa Heinz-Kerry, women continue to be targets of discrimination and persecution.
The right wing is loving the story about Teresa's "shove-it" comment. But as the folks at Media Matters have pointed out, the part of the story that gets left out of most news items regarding her comment is that it was directed at Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, a conservative paper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. Remember him? He's the guy who funded the Arkansas Project, a controversial attempt to bring Clinton down. Colin McNickle has written columns that are derogatory toward the Kerry/Edwards ticket (He has referred to them as "two Johns pimping for a populism that can only perpetuate poverty.")
In the spirit of alliteration for political purposes, I'd like to say to Mr. McNickle, strong women everywhere scream salutations for spouses who stand up and say shove it to sour-spirited Scaife-toadies.
¶ 10:09 AM 0 comments
Do we really want this man to continue to be one heartbeat away from the presidency? His ties with Enron and Halliburton, and his refusal to understand the conflict of interest inherent in his relationship with these companies, make me distrust that he is capable of working for the American people instead of corporate interests.
¶ 10:00 AM 0 comments
Listed to TOTN again today - I can't help myself, although does anyone else find Neal Conan to be a less than ideal host? In fact, I think he's often downright rude, such as today when he brought up the Donna Rice thing to Gary Hart as a final question before he left the program. Come on, isn't it bad enough that a man who is extremely bright and capable (and probably would have made a great president) was brought down by a personal indiscretion? Why bring it up again, so many years later? As Mr. Hart pointed out, he has been married for 47 years. If his wife forgave him, what business does anybody have bringing up to him? Grrr....
Audio here. Click on "presidential ambition". The Gary Hart part of the interview is about 15 -20 minutes into it.
¶ 10:34 PM 0 comments
I was very impressed tonight by Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention, and I was especially pleased by his references to Bush and Co. as being dividers, which I believe is true, and is another reason to vote against him in the fall.
They (Bush and Co.) have divided the US from from rest of the world by their policy of "prevention" (that is, striking Iraq even though it wasn't clear that an attack on the US by Iraq was impending). They are widening the divide between the rich and the poor in this county - heck, even between the rich and the middle class. They are trying to divide the population into those who believe in the "right" things, and those who believe in the "wrong" things. They are trying to take certain ideas (patriotism, military strength, etc.) and make it seem as though they the monopoly on those ideas.
In reality, people and situations are nuanced, and dividing the world into two camps serves no purpose but to distract from real solutions. If the people are fighting in the trenches about which party is right or wrong, or who hates whom, they won't have time to think about how poor their health care is, how bad their children's education has gotten, or what long-term solutions to gasoline shortages might involve.
We need a president who can get through the diviseness of the current political scene and bring people together from all political viewpoints to share ideas and create a vision of the future, both within this country, and between the US and other countries. I'm hoping that Kerry will be that president.
¶ 10:17 PM 0 comments
quote of the day: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values." - Bill Clinton
¶ 10:12 PM 0 comments
reason #1 to dethrone Bush: we can't trust him
I've been having debates with my dad about the role of dissent during the time of war, and one of his fundamental arguments is that "Bush is our president and we need to trust him". I strongly disagree that we need to place blind trust in our leaders. Especially because Bush has proven himself unworthy of our trust for a large number of reasons, including the rampant appearance of conflicts of interest within his administration (exhibit a: Halliburton and Cheney), his faulty arguments for going to war against Iraq, his failure to hold administration officials responsible for their actions (such as for the Valerie Plame outing)... I could list more examples, but you get the point.
Many Americans have long had a mistrust of government, especially when they believe that the government does not have the citizens' best interests at heart - hell, it's what got this country started in the first place. What Bush and Co. have been especially adept at is fostering the increasingly common notion that government is run by and for large corporate interests. Bush has failed to prove to me that he really is concerned about the lives of average people. His actions speak louder than the rhetoric he espouses, and although he and his supporters like say that he is "for the little guy", I just don't believe it, and neither do a lot of Americans.
For informations about contributors to both the Bush and Kerry campaigns, check out this site. And take a moment to imagine how good our public schools and health care system might be if even a small percent of the money going into this campaign was going toward them instead.
¶ 8:26 PM 0 comments
Welcome. I'm starting this blog because I wanted a space to post my thoughts, gripes, ideas, frustrations, rants, hopes, etc about the frail state of our fair union. I'm planning to focus for the next 3 months on reasons why we need a change in administration of our government. So, pull up a comfy chair, send me your comments as you see fit, and indulge me in the use of blog technology to vent, and hopefully, maybe, be a tiny force for change.
¶ 8:16 PM 0 comments
