Dancing with Myself

Best Question to Date

This from Eric Alterman's blog.

Question: Mr. President, you have accused John Kerry of not supporting the troops because he did not vote in favor of the funding bill that contained funds for basic soldier gear such as body armor. My question is who sent them into battle without that equipment in the first place?

That question comes from Michael Olsen in Virginia.

Good Luck, Senator Kerry

So, if the polls are to be believed, which is a big "IF" in my opinion, the country is pretty evenly divided between the Anybody But Bush people (like me) and the We Hate John Kerry people, with the election being decided by a few million people who don't feel nearly as passionate as either extreme. This malleable middle doesn't think Bush has been doing too good a job, but they're afraid. They're afraid of terrorists. They're afraid of losing their jobs. They're afraid they won't have health care. They're afraid their kids won't have the same opportunities as they had. Because they're afraid, they're easy prey for those who monger in fear. Right now they're afraid of John Kerry. They don't know him. They only know the caricature painted by The Great Wurlitzer.

Tonight they're going to give John Kerry their attention. This is his opportunity to tell them why he wants to be President and what he'll do to make them less afraid. I wish him the best of luck. Go Big John.

This about sums it up.

This is a classic by Tom Meyer from today's SFGate

More Preaching to the Choir

Here's a good one for you. I picked it up over at John Avarosis's AMERICAblog. If you've never visited John's blog, do so.

I Want to Say This About That

You know, it's not that I fault anyone for not really liking Kerry. I never really paid much attention to him before he's suddenly the nominee of the Democrat Party. I can understand people having a different political agenda. What pisses me off righteously, however, is that the Republicans and the conservative, libertarian elements of American society, have accepted such a low standard for leadership of their cause.

I come to be a Kerry supporter as a result of my earnest and sincere feelings that Bush and his Republican allies are evil and are dedicated to bringing this country to ruin. They are successfully transferring the cost of running the government from wealth to labor. The saddest part of this is that Bush's most fervent supporters will pay an incredibly disproportionate cost in this transfer. My people call it a "stupid" tax.

I'm not going to allow myself to get depressed because John Kerry's campaign sucked all week. I'm going to trust that those people running Kerry's campaign have figured most of this out. If they haven't, God help us all. Right now, I'm going to trust their abilities.

Here's my gift to John Kerry's campaign. You don't need to acknowledge me. I want to hear John Kerry say this:

"The Republicans keep saying I flip-flop on my beliefs. Let me tell you this, I have never flip-flopped on my opinion that George W. Bush is incompetent to be President. There is not a vote I ever made when I thought this man was competent that I do not regret and would emphatically change if only I could!

"You want flip-flop? How many times was Osama Bin Laden mentioned at the Republican convention in New York?

"How successful has our occupation of Iraq been? How many of our sons and daughters have died because this fool is inarticulate and incapable of communication?

"We're the richest fucking country in the world. George W. Bush has squandered much of our wealth that could have gone to better schools, cheaper drugs for our seniors, health insurance for our young, real security measures to keep our ports and our nuclear reactors safe from sabotage. He is a waste as a man and a human being. His every attempt at anything has been met with failure."

OKAY, well you get my drift. That was too long, wasn't it? They have my permission to edit it as they see fit. I have invested a lot of worry into this campaign. As I've said previously, as a homosexual, I feel as though I'm a Jew in Vienna in 1934. Of course the Nazis make me nervous, but a lot of my friends are Nazis and surely they don't mean me when they talk about those Jews. It's those other Jews, you know the ones who stand out and draw attention to themselves with their wierd looks and behavior. Mary Cheney and I aren't those kind of Jews, I mean Gays, so we don't have to worry about the excess of rhetoric coming from the Republican Party. You think I speak with hyperbole? The Texas Republican Party called for the disallowance of the status of handicapped to those who suffer from HIV related illnesses. Hyperbole my ass. We know where they'd go if they could.

I gave another $25 to the Move-On Pac tonight in response to their request to register and vote young people who ordinarily would not vote. I've always thought the largest bloc of undecided voters were the ones who probably wouldn't vote. That's why I thought Gavin Newsom had more appeal than John Edwards. How do we get the attention of those who have already disengaged?

I got a big prize for whoever comes up with that solution.

Time for a bit of humor

"A Newsweek poll said if the election were held today, John Kerry would beat Bush 49 percent to 46 percent. And today, President Bush called Newsweek magazine a threat to world peace." -Jay Leno

"President Bush announced he has a five-point strategy for getting out of Iraq. Points six through 10 will be handled by the Kerry administration." -David Letterman

"The President and Mrs. Bush were on 'Larry King' last night and the president said, 'America is absolutely better off today than it was 4 years ago.' Then he said, 'Did I say America? I meant Chevron.'" -Bill Maher

"President Bush's campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out." -Jay Leno

"Campaigning in Iowa yesterday President Bush vowed he will not raise taxes in the next four years. He said I believe it is hard, very difficult to raise taxes when you are not president." -Craig Kilborn

"According to the recent polls, Bush has a slight lead over John Kerry. So today, Bush hung a banner over the White House saying, 'Mission Accomplished.'" -David Letterman

"President Bush says in the last month he has created 300,000 new jobs. Yeah, they're called Kerry campaign workers." -Craig Kilborn

"Is it me or is Bush going everywhere Kerry goes? So far in the past week, President Bush has followed John Kerry to Davenport, Iowa; New Mexico; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; and he follows him to Portland, Oregon. The only place he never followed John Kerry was Vietnam." -Jay Leno

"A new poll says that if the election were held today, both John Kerry and John Edwards would beat President Bush by double digit margins. The White House is so worried about this, they're now thinking of moving up the capture of Osama Bin Laden to next month." -Jay Leno

"President Bush filed again to run in 2004. I believe his exact words were 'The fix is in.'...Actually, this morning with zero percent of the vote in, Florida is declaring Bush the winner. It's just a formality now." -Jay Leno

"The Democrats had their first presidential debate over the weekend. Nine guys showed up for the big debate. What a dreary group. Did you see these guys? President Bush took one look at them and said, 'I might win this one fair-and-square.'" -David Letterman

"The Bush campaign for re-election has officially begun. They're actually running television commercials. Have you seen any of the television commercials? In one of the commercials, you see George Bush for thirty seconds. In another commercial, you get to see George Bush for sixty seconds - kind of like his stint in the National Guard." -David Letterman

"President Bush is going to establish elections there in Iraq. He's going to rebuild the infrastructure. He's going to create jobs. He said if it works there, he'll try it here." -David Letterman

"In response to the escalating violence in Iraq, President Bush is delaying the return home of 25,000 troops and will actually add reinforcements to the south. Then in a symbolic gesture he pulled down the mission accomplished banner, put on a flight suit, walked backwards to a jet fighter and flew it in reverse off an aircraft carrier." -Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update"

"President Bush is not fazed by other candidates' war records. He said, I may have not fought in Vietnam, but I created one." -Craig Kilborn

I Remember Mama

Minnie Ashworth was born on September 13, 1888. She was never afforded much of a childhood. Her mother, Mary Heard, was only about 14 years older than she, and it fell to her to help her mother take care of her brothers and sister.

Her life was not easy. Her father, Owen Ashworth, went to prison in 1898 and died the same year. Her mother married another man whom she subsequently divorced for deserting her and her children. Young Minnie and her mother worked very hard to keep the family fed and clothed.

She was a pious woman. My grandmother raised me to believe the word Christian was a verb, not a noun. Christian is the way you act, not what you call yourself. My grandmother walked the Christian path all of the 40 years I knew her. She never wavered.

She wouldn't have a television in her home until well into the 1960s. She said it was a tool of the devil. I sit here 50 years later and have come to the same conclusion. In 1952, she was newly widowed, living in a 4-room frame home with porches across the back and front, each room with a door to the rooms next to it and one out onto the porch. While it had electricity, it did not have indoor plumbing. That would come at the end of the 50s, just before sputnik.

I remember my grandmother's bed which was a metal frame with slats and about six or seven mattresses piled one on the other. When cousins stayed overnight (which was often), a mattress would be pulled down to the floor around the bed, sometimes as many as three. My brother and I shared a rollaway bed, but I more often than not slept with my grandmother. Usually I would be asleep by the time she came to bed, but if I was awake when she came to bed, I would ask her the kind of crazy things a five-year-old asks his grandmother. If I cried for my mother and father, which I'm sure I did, it was into this generous bosom I was hugged.

We were very poor in material wealth, but rich in family and tradition. My grandmother was genuinely loved by hundreds of people, all of them related in some way. Day in and day out, cousins, whose genealogy would be explained to me by my grandmother and her oldest daughter, Elsie, came calling on her, bringing her gifts of food and love. By the time I was ten I was convinced that I was related to everyone in the world. I believe that all of the good that I am comes from this time when I was being raised by her.

Minnie was married Joseph William "Bud" Droddy for 46 years. Minnie had told her cousins that she wasn't going to marry until someone came along and gave her a gold watch. Bud gave her a gold watch. They had eight children, my mother being their youngest.

On the night of December 7, 1952, on a foggy highway in East Texas, my father was killed along with several others in a terrible car wreck. Fate had delivered two young boys, one 5 and one 8, into her hands for raising.

When I speak about my grandmother raising my brother and me, I almost feel like I'm being disloyal to my mother for remembering my grandmother's sacrifices. My mother never abdicated her responsibility for my brother and me, fiercely protecting her rights and responsibilities as a mother. Sometimes that fierceness clouds from her vision the contributions made by others.

My grandmother grew weak and feeble the last ten years of her life, losing her eyesight, her ability to move around independently. She became so very frail. These are very painful images in my mind. That is not how I choose to remember her. This is how I choose to remember her, out in the garden working.

She died on May 15, 1986, just a few months before her 98th birthday.

TIMMY Rocks!

TIMMY, over at My Life is Better Than Yours has a post up today in a magazine format that is just great. Be sure to linger and read the articles. His life IS Better than most.

Remembering 9/11

From David who remembers 9/11 and who has these thoughts about all the victims of that day, but especially remembering those who jumped from the towers.

And aren't we all falling, all of the time, into the hands of a loving God?

The Deconstruction of the President

Probably just my wishful thinking. I'm a bit amused at the hype taking place right now, seemingly at the expense of the administration. Their cover story is unravelling. Barnes admits getting Bush into the champagne unit, a charge they leveled against Lloyd Bentson and his son who served at the same time as Bush. The Republicans trashed Dukakis for avoiding military service by use of deferments. Not only did Bush get moved to the head of the line, he flunked out of his guard service the same way he failed in several businesses prior to his getting into politics.

I had an email exchange with someone in Louisiana or Texas this week. She started it. She sent me this piece about how it was time for majority rule. Well, being one of those millions who felt that our democracy was ill-served by the shenanigans from the past presidential election, the headline got my attention. I was shocked to read it was about why we ought to have a Christian prayer in schools because, by god, this was a religious nation founded by Christians. I have no idea who this woman is. I noticed the email address of one of my more uptight, Redbone cousins who happens to be one of those real pharasee-type Christians in the full distribution list, so I assume this woman is one of my Redbone cousins. I answered her tersely with "Matthew 6: 5-6". That's the one where Jesus tells people to go into their closets to pray if it's God they're trying to reach. He suggests that people who pray in public do it to get credit for being pious more than they do it in order to talk to God. She writes back something like, "I'll drink to that," but she said it in Christian talk, so it was more "so true, so true." Whatever. She had no idea what Matthew 6: 5-6 said. She just assumed I was another one of those lite-Christians, you know, these new right-wing funadamentalists who claim to speak for Christians.

So just to have some fun with her, I sent her a copy of Graydon Carter's Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards. She immediately responded with "I'm for Bush. Kerry's a slimebucket, turncoat traitor, and I hate his pretty little mouth piece, too" (referring to Edwards). I answered back with, "I thought you were a Christian. Both of these men are Christians. Both have given much of their life to serve others. You can certainly be for Bush. Tell me why, specifically, but stop attacking these two good men. Is that how Christians talk?" We had over 4 exchanges. Everytime I would ask her to respond to a specific, or when I would point her to chapter and verse to disprove some vicious lie making the rounds of the internet, she would change the subject and go back to her bitter attacks on Kerry.

I asked her if she hated Democrats more than she loved America. She responded with more crap and the line, it's the Democrats who hate America. With each exchange, this person became more and more of a character. She was vicious and she was vile.

In my last email to her, I told her that it was obvious that she was feeling a lot of anger and alienation from contemporary American society and that she somehow blamed Democrats for that alienation. I objected to her saying that John Kerry said her father killed babies, telling her what he did say and why he said it, and also pointing her to where John Kerry apologized for his excessive rhetoric at the time. I could not accept her use of the term "turncoat" without absolute refutation. In the end, I questioned the bizaarness of her values by her rejection of Kerry who had volunteered for service in Vietnam and had served not just minimally, but exceptionally, coming home wounded and decorated. My last line was, you not only hate Democrats more than you love America, you hate Democracy more than you love America. Dramatic? I wanted to tell the bitch to go fuck herself.

Side note: The Republicans are engaged in a massive hate and slander campaign via email. The shit they're saying is vile. It is our affirmative duty to respond to each and every one of them. And respond to the entire distribution list. Not everyone on the list is in agreeement with the article being forwarded. Answer the piece and send it to everyone on the list. Try not to sound shrill. We're after the undecided.

Keep the faith, brothers and sisters, keep the faith.