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03 september 2004
All Hat, No Cattle
Borrowing from Zell Miller's logic, President Bush is a liar. He's lying when it comes to health care. There is no other conclusion. He wants smaller government. He also supposedly wants to add clinics to every "poor county" in America, but that costs money, taxpayer money! So, using Zell Miller's "Kerry voted against <pork>military weaponry, vehicles and aircraft</pork>"-style logic, George W. Bush is clearly against healthcare. No wait, he's clearly against government spending. No wait, he has to pay just a little attention to us here on Planet Earth pay lip service to something other than that little bit o' war, right? We still have a flagging economy; we still have suck-ass health care; we still have children being left behind. We still have a stupid-ass war going on to distract us from the absence of WMD's, the absence of bin Laden. George W. Bush's War on Terra. Nice ring to it.
Our botoxed esteemed Governor Schwarzenegger, who was born two years after the last tank rolled through Austria, born in a region that wasn't ever occupied by Soviet anything, wasn't even—and is still not—a Socialist nation, nonetheless tugged on their [place where there should be a] heart strings with his fictive prowess.
Back to Zell, his stuff was just too good. He got steamed up by Kerry and us Evil Liberals calling the Iraq War an "occupation" instead of a liberation. Stupid-ass Democrat contradicting President Bush himself, who has called it an "occupation" over and over—to quote, "No, they're not happy being occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied, would you?" Those Democrats will stoop to anything, won't they?
I am, however, starting to realize the reason that the stupid crazy bitches of the Right call John Kerry "Hanoi John": he actually went there, unlike Cheney, who got two deferments, unlike Bush, who couldn't find a shred of self-sacrifice with both hands and a flashlight.
By now, I realize it just does no good to criticize Bush, because Republicans don't care who it is, as long as he's got a Big Red "R" on his chest. Better Dead than Red, I say.
These are the same sycophants people whose blind obsequiousness makes them feel OK in making jokes about Bill Clinton's health. How do you reason with that kind of mindset?
They say that in any organized religion, there are two types of clerics: those who use the dogma for personal gain and those who sacrifice themselves for the sake of the greater ethic. To see the RNC all this week, you'd think there was only one kind. Ahh, but this week wasn't about thinking.
Bush's speech may have been "All Hat, No Cattle", but with Zell's flip-flopping, Schwarzenegger's True Lies, Pataki's failed memory (ask Condi Rice), Giuliani's freakish presence-of-mind while WTC towers collapsed around him and McCain's largely ignored reasonableness, it's clear that there's more ecstasy on the RNC floor than you'll ever find in a gay disco.
"Asshats, ALL Cattle", more like it.
Need more corroboration? Time Magazine has Bush ahead by 11 points now. Asshats, indeed.
Posted by jeff at 10:17 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Where-y Was Mary?
So much for family values. The Cheney's were there, minus a lesbian.
Bush-Cheney just sucks.
Posted by jeff at 04:13 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack
01 september 2004
One Term Sperm!
I may be a latecomer to the game, but I'm enjoying the hell out of reading DeadBrain. I found it by way of searching for republican personalities who may have appeared on the genius show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I searched for Ann Coulter, that filthy Bush-bimbo, and found this.
Now, pardon my credulousness, but as I read the article, I found it quite easy to buy into, literally. Blaming Martha Stewart for trying to ruin Bush's campaign by staging the whole going-to-prison stunt, blaming Mother Nature for supporting the eco-friendly Demos, that kind of thing.
But if you follow that link, look at the tag line, especially. That's just pure genius.
So fire up your meme spreaders, folks...pass that one around!
One-term Sperm!
One-term Sperm!
One-term Sperm!
Make it stick! <groan>
Posted by jeff at 07:31 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack
31 augustus 2004
What Are They For?
I see what the Republicans don't like. They're happy to tell you what they don't like. They're happy when they're telling you what they don't like. They don't like John Kerry. They don't like Liberals (so much so, that they capitalize the word much of the time). They don't like anyone who enjoins. They don't like anyone who opposes. They don't like the world as it is. They don't like the world as it could be. They only like the past. And only a version of the past which never existed.
They don't accept that the past is changeable, even as they bend and warp it to support their own Rightness. They don't accept that contradiction, paradox, irony, inference and induction are valuable tools for expanding knowledge.
They can't tell you why they're right, because they only measure it by their perceived wrongness of others.
That's why Others are Always Bad. Always Wrong. Always Ridiculous. Always Credulous.
They believe in a government just small enough to fit inside your bedroom, just small enough to fit in what they insist is the empty headspace of the Others.
They imagine that there's nothing to imagine. They assume that their assumptions are rock solid. They insist that the borders they have mapped out map out all of existence. They don't allow for unprovable truths nor refutable falsehoods.
So when Others talk about a brighter future, or a nobler purpose, or a more companionable co-existence with other nations, they assign insanity to Us Others, because we're talking about things they Know to be impossible fancies. And they're Never Wrong.
So the next time your friendly neighborhood Republican starts telling you why John Kerry is either so weak-willed as to be dangerous, or so strong-willed as to be dangerous, ask him or her what their vision of the future is. And ask them directly what President George W. Bush offers to the world besides jingoism and plutocracy.
If they decide to honor your request, you'll be greeted with silence. It's the Right Answer.
Posted by jeff at 11:42 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I Want One
Posted by jeff at 03:58 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack
30 augustus 2004
How Low Can You Go?
The room darkens, text comes up on the exploding scoreboard, "September 11, 2001".
Three women, a wife and two sisters, talk about their families' connections to the events of that day.
A moment of silence falls, by request.
Amazing Grace is sung a cappella by a singer on a rising stage.
That, folks, is the RNC 2004 and not the 700 Club.
Sam feels punched in the stomach. I feel queasy.
I feel for the families, I respect their loss. So much so I'd never use it as a stunt in these pages, much less a national circus.
I'm only thankful that the Demos didn't do this. Not because it's cheap and skanky (though it is), but because if it were the Democrats making such a maudlin display, the Rightwingnuts out there would be calling all three of those women whores and find reasons to discredit their grief.
The Republicans are incredibly life-like, though. I'll give them that.
Posted by jeff at 08:43 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack
29 augustus 2004
I ♥ John Kerry
Have you noticed how slippery the slope of smear-campaigning is? Things so quickly descend into the dank, septic lands of "why the other guy sucks", far away from the nobler, more sublime heights of "why I like/admire/appreciate the guy I intend to vote for".
Now, I call that place septic and dank because I've been there. It's nothing but name-calling and subterfuge and low-effort (but high volume) attempts to frustrate any initiative the other guy might have. In that land, there's not enough space to, in turn, create enough time to stop and to listen. Not enough time to think, consider and perhaps respond on any level above appropriating insults that apply to both sides and selectively applying them only to the enemy.
And make no mistake: there is no opposition, only enemy. No opponent, only nemesis.
Inference is overrun by interference, discourse goes to disrespect, idea goes to dogma.
Things get all turned around. The practice of free (read: contrary) speech somehow turns into accusations of Soviet- and Viet-style communism where, ironically, opposing speech is not at all welcomed. Even irony doesn't get a chance to breathe, doesn't get a chance to do its usual work of exposing the not-so-universal aspects of Accepted Universals.
The moment at which old-school conservatism hitched its wagon to religious zeal is not exactly known, but its effects are. Bureaucratic Theocracy answered a long-standing philosophical question a long time ago: when the irresistible force of the human need for adolescent absolutes meets the immovable object of human diversity, bureaucracy swallows them both. Put another way, when 'god' and the system converge into the same entity, the system always wins. Belief gets shifted from the god to the government, because, let's face it...no matter how ill-equipped and feckless, the present mother beats the absent father any day. It's sad, really, because it's the offspring who suffer at the hands of she who bore them.
But sometimes the offspring create a new thing. Or remember an old alternative: positivity.
I can, with a sober and earnest and candid face say that, as far as I know him, know of him, I really like John Kerry. I like that when you see those bits of 'real' pop through (like I did when Kerry appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart), the difference between off-script and on-script is noticeable, but only extends to a change in tone, not demeanor. He's the same guy whether he's campaigning as he is when the political composure breaks and his person comes through. I like his wife a whole bunch; I admire her and her taste, her bearing, her words and so I like John Kerry because Teresa does. I cannot imagine her being with someone she does not respect. The Heinzes never worked that way.
I like that he respected the UCMJ while he was subject to it and I love that he honored the ideals of free speech in this country by exercising his own speech after the UCMJ no longer had its claws in him. He may have broken a promise to his former shipmates, but those kinds of promises are bad-faith anyway (where I'd define a bad-faith promise as one which seeks to hide truths rather than maintain them). Quite frankly, whether he served in the military or not, I don't care. I don't see how taking orders without question and having the opportunity to do your own thing only in limited, local contexts makes you better prepared to lead the "free world".
I like John Kerry because of his positivism. This is not to say he hasn't been critical of the opposition, but his criticism comes in the form of refutable fact. His criticism is aimed at the behavior of the person, not the person himself. And no one is free from criticism, not even John Kerry.
I wish John Kerry would risk more sound-bytes (e.g., "I support marriage for same-sex couples because...") that would nonetheless be lifted from their original context by the rabid mobs who will then see it splashed all over every "liberal media" outlet. Go for it, I say, it will just hasten their end. Let them foam at the mouth and let them continue on their path because their path is finite. It will end because it has ended every time, whether the rabid mob has been conservative or liberal. It will end because that is its nature, its fate.
I'm not voting for John Kerry solely or even primarily because I believe that President Bush is frightfully inept and intangibly corrupt, even though I believe those things to be true. No, I'm voting for John Kerry because I like the man and I have confidence in his abilities right now in 2004.
I'm also not saying you should vote for "Anybody But Bush", but I understand if you do.
Posted by jeff at 02:06 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack