Is that a shrub in your pocket...
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Happy Anniversary
Today would have been my parents' 59th wedding anniversary, which means my oldest brother's birthday is nine months and nine days away (hey, it was right after the war, so everybody had to get busy in a hurry). My mother would have despised George W. Bush (my dad, too, who could never figure out why they called Reagan the "great communicator," since he sounded like a stammering idiot most of the time - Reagan, that is, not my dad). She (mom) always hated Nixon with a passion - I mean, to an Irish Catholic broad, it just didn't get any better than JFK, and this shifty, sweaty weasel needed to get the hell out of his way.
It must have been quite a time, really, back in the first few years of the sixties (if you were white, anyway), to have gotten past the war, and elected one of your own generation - one that not only didn't shirk military service, but actually served with distinction and heroism. Somebody with a young family, just like yours. A president that sounded intelligent when he spoke, and that the rest of the world (for the most part) didn't hate. Somebody (as it turned out) that you could at least count on not to get the goddamn world blown up.
And here, 46 years later, we find ourselves saddled with an ignorant, incurious, lunatic with an Oedipus complex and his finger on the button, who thinks God is telling him what to do. Enabling this dark farce of a president is every branch of the United States government - enabling and cowering before him, going along to get along, and to get a slice - even just a few crumbs - of the pie. Of course it's a pie made from the rotting flesh and severed limbs of men, women, and children - Iraqis and Americans, soldiers and civilians, whose lives have been destroyed, both in armed combat, and from the reprehensible policies this wretched, filthy, shameless government has foisted upon the citizens of this world.
That's what this election that's coming up is all about - taking at least one branch of this government away from these morally bankrupt demons (yes, I too smell the sulfur), and at least stop them from making things worse.
Those that pull the strings right now really are evil. Their enablers have no shame. I am under no illusion that a Democratic majority in one or both Houses of Congress means things suddenly will all be OK again (truth be told, things were never "all OK"), but if the Republicans remain in complete control of this government, then Bush and his masters will take it as a mandate to escalate the rape and pillage of our planet (and frankly, I have no desire to be subject to the whims of George Bush's "higher father"). They need to be stopped, and, all bravado, righteous indignation, and idle threats aside, that can only begin to happen if we take away their rubber stamp on November 7th.
Afterwards, well, I don't know. With any luck, we can start worrying about that on November 8th.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Lies, Damn Lies, and Polls
There was a rather disappointing poll released last night here in the NY-25, with the Bush rubber stamp, Jim Walsh, supposedly 9.5% ahead of Dan Maffei, his Democratic challenger. Shortly after its release, though, there was this:
The Post-Standard/NewsChannel 9 poll, completed by Zogby International of Utica, was released at 5 p.m., but quickly recalled after the pollster discovered an error that tainted the results. Zogby has agreed to do an entirely new poll.
The poll results were given to the Maffei campaign in the afternoon, but only the raw results (Walsh up by 9%). The crosstabs didn’t come through until 4:30, and when they started to look at them, they saw that the registration sample was totally off. Not just a little bit off, but so bad that the poll was worthless
Actual Republican registration in the NY-25th is about 36% and Democratic registration is about 32%, but Zogby weighted the poll at 44% Republican/31% Democrat (which happens to be the distribution in Zogby's home district, the 24th). In other words, they gave Walsh somewhere in the neighborhood of an 9-point bump (maybe more, depending on how you weight Democratic identification vs. registration).
Maffei passed that information along to Channel 9 and to the Post-Standard at about ten minutes to five and told them that the poll was crap. The TV station ran with the story at 5:00 (on their newscast, as well as on their website) anyway (surprisingly - not - they're owned by Clearchannel, which has actually donated money to the Walsh's campaign - how’s that for fair and balanced?), but then retracted the story by 5:30.
Supposedly, John Zogby personally called Channel 9 to apologize, and admitted that the poll is so flawed that they'll have to scrap it entirely, and redo it. In a story in today's Post-Standard, Zogby is quoted as saying:
"The numbers were wrong. We made a mistake, and I feel terrible about it. I am mortified."
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
GOP Candidates
Here's a list of some of the Republican candidates for office, with links to show you what they're really all about.
--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Evil of Two Lessers
I mostly agree with the point that if you vote for the lesser of two evils, you still get something evil, except that I think it kind of makes a difference just how evil the greater evil is, and also the aggregate evil (in isolation, these people are bad enough, but lump 'em together and give them power, and the next thing you know they're invading Poland and building concentration camps). This bunch running the show right now are truly evil, I think, and their enablers have no shame, and no sense of what's right. We need some Mugwumps. I have no illusions that if the Democrats control one or both Houses of Congress, then suddenly things will all be OK again, but I think John Conyers as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is more than enough to motivation to hope that the Democrats take the House. I sure hope our Bush rubber stamp has a rude awakening on November 7th.
After that, well, I don't know. I've gone out and hooted and hollered at these weekend afternoon protests, and while it feels good to be around like-minded people (you start to wonder if you’re the one that's nuts after a while), and while I think it's important to try and show the rest of the world that, hey, we're not all on board with the master plan here, I can't help but wonder if it really does any good. The thugs running the show leave town for the weekend, and the media barely mentions any of it, and then it's back to work or school or whatever on Monday morning. The only way to really get their attention is to fill the streets and not leave. Disrupt their precious commerce. Of course, then you're also screwing over the little folks who are just trying to go to work and feed their families. It's very sad, and disheartening, and, well, tiring. And then the US - which at least used to pretend e to stand for something (even it never quite lived up to it) - makes it legal to haul you away in the middle of the night, and lock you up and torture you forever.
Being a dirty, godless heathen, I wonder how long it’ll be before they come and take me away. I started out as a Catholic, but it didn’t really take. In fact, I was even married by a "fallen" Catholic priest (who quit the church to marry a nun). I'm pretty sure it's eternal damnation for me (so maybe some time being tortured in the gulag at Gitmo will help prepare me for hell). Hey, I knew there was a bright side to all this.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
What's Up?
So, let's see, what's going on? Ten days until the end of daylight savings time (for those of us who observe it, that is). Whattya say this year we set the clock back 25 hours instead of just one? I need an extra day of sleep. Eleven days until the launch of Nova M radio (and the return of Mike Malloy). Will there be a Marc Maron show? And something else is coming up, too. Can't quite remember what it is. Something to do with a Tuesday in November....
Speaking of which, with all due respect to KStreetProjector and his or her "the sky is falling in Ohio" diary at Kos, if anybody's worried about the status of their voter registration, then contact your board of elections. Now. Here in Onondaga County, at least, you can just go online, enter your address and DOB, and it tells you whether or not you're registered, and where your polling place is. You can even print out a sample ballot, to help combat "shy voter" syndrome there in the booth. If you can't do that where you're at, then call or stop by in person and make sure you're eligible to vote. If your state has early voting, then do that as soon as you can.
We all know Ohio, Florida, and all those other dirty states are gonna do their best to screw people over (again), so don't show up on election day only to find out you're being fucked with. I mean, c'mon, we know the plan - we've seen it at least twice now. Fool me once, uh...shame, shame on, uh, shame on you crazy diamond. Or something.
In Ohio, the really interesting thing will be if Blackwell has the balls to toss Strickland out on a baseless technicality, and if Ohio voters will roll over for it. You wouldn't think so, but time will tell.
I'm frankly having a very difficult time doing anything but following the elections (I'm wearing out my F5 key over at MyDD, tyring to stay on top of the polls). I'm trying not to allow myself to get set up for a crushing letdown (ala 2002, not to mention 2004, and of course 2000), but goddamn it, here in NY (and Upstate, in particular), we have a chance to run these criminals out, and I really hope it happens.
One thing that a lot of people don't understand is just how depressed the economy in Upstate NY has become over the last 30 or so years. Companies like General Electric, Carrier, Kodak, and Xerox were huge employers in the region, and have all but dried up now. Things are so bad that we're (well, not me, but some poor suckers here are - including Republicans that are in bed with him) pinning our hopes on a scam artist who's trying to leverage a "promise" of building a "really big" mall here into not having to pay property taxes. Oh boy, jobs in retail, at the expense of taxes for the schools and the infrastructure. And people who can are fleeing the area - especially young people; anybody with brains and skills gets the hell out of here as soon as they can (which perhaps tells you where I'm at, in terms of brains and skills).
You can say a lot about Hillary (I know I have), but one reason she's done very well here is that she's taken the time to come up and learn about us and our problems. It's not something a lot of politicians on the state and national level tend to do (Chuck Schumer has been pretty good at it, too - both of them learned well from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in that respect). And she's tried to help.
She hasn't been able to bring the 200,000 jobs back here that she set as a goal, but there's a real sense that she actually cares, and has tried (in spite of laboring under a Republican stranglehold on the Federal government). I know that's something people from outside the region really don't give a shit about, and while I'll be casting my vote for Howie Hawkins in November (because it's safe to do so; I'm really not stupid enough to think we'd be better off with John Spencer), I certainly hope that the blue tide that appears ready to sweep NY State and (hopefully) the country will be the first step at making things better. Not the solution, but a first step. Hillary is far from perfect, but we could do a whole lot worse.
Hell, at least we won't be electing Arnold Schwarzenegger governor.
