Category: politics

Predictions for Tomorrow

Waldo asked for predictions but apparently, my network is on some sort of blacklist and I can’t post a comment. So, here are my predictions for tomorrow, in no particular order:

  • Jim Webb will beat George Allen, but it’ll be close enough that there will be a recount.
  • Cardin will beat Steele easily, like 10-15 points easily up there in Maryland.
  • Frank Wolf will trounce Judy Feder, if only because no one knows who she is. I’ve asked, and even some left-leaning folks I know have no idea who she is.
  • I think ballot issue number one (the stupid “marriage defense” amendment) will pass because people didn’t take the time to read the damn thing. It’s just plain bad law. Gay marriage is already illegal in Virginia, people. You’re not making it any safer, because eventually, the Supreme Court (of the US, not VA) will rule on it, and you’ll have to live with it anyway. No vague threat of “liberal judges” will actually make a difference in the long run.
  • The Democrats will take the house with a 25 seat gain.
  • The Senate will end up 50-50 somehow. I’m not exactly sure which one of the races won’t go the Dems way, but something’s going to happent to make it 50-50. I hope for a 6 or 7 seat gain for our side, but I don’t think it’ll happen.\
    I’m sad about the last one, and I hope I’m wrong. I just don’t know if the Democrats have that much momentum, and after hearing about all the dirty tricks with robocalls and some really horrible flyers in the past couple days, I’m even less sure. We’ll see. Tomorrow’s the day, kids, so don’t forget to vote. Really.
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The Virginia “Marriage” Amendment

A good editorial from Slate about the “unintended” consequences of the Virginia marriage amendment. Baking bigotry and small-mindedness in our state’s Constitution is a bad idea. It will put undue pressure on families, more of which fall outside the traditional definition of the nuclear family than fall within it.\
Creating great new chasms for people to fall into is not a way to strengthen marriage. Paying attention to your own marriage and keeping your nose out of everyone else’s would be a fine way to start. Us heteros have no right “defending” marriage when our divorce rate is already over 50%. Like Jesus says (paraphrasing here), “work on the beam in your own eye before pointing out the speck in your neighbor’s.” Codifying this nonsense is ridiculous.\
Vote no, people, vote no! The only thing that can “defend” marriage is good marriages. You can’t force that on people, and discrimination isn’t going to help anyone.

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Hobbes Says, “Don’t Forget to Vote!”

brian dressed up as hobbes

Remember, election day is next Tuesday. No matter what party you’re in, this election is important. Get out there and send a message to whoever it is you’re trying to send a message to. For me, it comes down to a couple issues that are important to me:

  1. George Allen is President Bush’s lackey, voting with him 96% of the time.
  2. President Bush is incompetent and his party has no spine to stand up to him. They’ve proven over the last six years that they’re more interested in power than doing what’s right.
  3. The GOP is beholden to the Religious Right, and that’s wrong on so many levels. Most importantly, they’re standing in the way of stem cell research, which is unconscionable.
  4. They refuse to admit that Iraq was a mistake when the evidence is overwhelming that the President and his Administration lied, and continue to lie, about their incompetence, the reasons for going in, and their plan for success. Saying you’ve got a plan and declaring your loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld is not a plan. It’s willfully ignorant and stubborn. If I wanted a child as President, I think Max would do a better job than Mr. Bush and his playground bullies.
  5. What used to be the party of smaller government and less intrusion on our lives has become the party of Big Brother, and I don’t mean the TV show. They’ve wiped their asses on the Constitution, and it’s time they paid for it.\
    It’s pretty obvious who I’m voting for. Vote for whoever you think will do the best job of governing. See ya on Tuesday!
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Webb for Senate

Jim Webb is running against George Allen for the Senate. If you’ve ever read this blog before, you probably know who I’m voting for, but in case you haven’t, I’m voting for Mr. Webb. The only thing you need to know about George Allen is that he votes with the President and the Republican majority more than 96% of the time. He’s part of the problem, part of the same corrupt crew of suck ups that led us into Iraq, created record deficits and enabled the most corrupt Congress in our lifetimes.\
He doesn’t deserve to represent Virginia, and he doesn’t deserve our votes. He hasn’t introduced any meaningful legislation and actually stole legislation from another Senator and presented it as his own.\
So, George Allen: crappy senator. It really doesn’t matter who’s running against him, voting for Mr. Allen is a vote for more imcompetance, more graft, and more rubber stamping of the President’s lunacy.\
I think the choice is pretty easy.

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The Culture Warriors’ Inner Battle

This whole thing with Mark Foley is insane. Not only was he the head of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, but he sponsored more than one bill on child abuse. A 50 year old man was propositioning a page… it looks like more than one. Was it an intern? No. Was it someone of legal age? No. The worst part? The GOP leadership in the House knew about it for ten months and did basically nothing. The didn’t dig deep enough to find out what was going on so they could turn a blind eye and pretend that nothing happened.\
This seems to fit a pattern. Culture warrior rails against some big evil in the world, advocating draconian punishment for any criminal dastardly enough to perpetrate such a crime, only to be a secret practioner. There are plenty of examples:

  • Bill Bennett rails against gambling and all other forms of moral weakness only to turn out to be a huge gambler himself.
  • Rush Limbaugh advocates insane jail time for non-violent drug offenders only to turn out to be a huge illegal oxycontin user.
  • Henry Hyde, who helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton over what boils down to marital infidelity, turned out to have committed the same sin himself… no one threatened to impeach him.
  • Rick Santorum goes on a crusade for tort reform, yet his wife takes a huge settlement in a civil trial.\
    The rules only seem to apply to everyone else in the culture wars. They fight against what they themselves are most guilty about. Well, you know what? Not only is it hypocritical in the extreme, it’s just psychotic. Get counseling, talk to your clergy, pray, but keep your fetishes out of my laws, and your broken government out of my bedroom, e-mail and phone calls. Get your own life in order before you go preaching to me, you Pharisees.

Just A Thought

Just a thought for a Wednesday morning. For all the Christians out there who support President Bush’s secret torture “program”, think about this: Jesus Christ was a victim of torture and was considered a “terrorist” by the government of his time. Our country has tortured, and knowingly sent to be tortured, at least dozens and possibly hundreds of innocent people. This is not a theoretical question.\
Can you be a Christian and support torture? You can’t say, “I only support the torture of guilty people,” because we’ve already tortured innocents. We’ve already proven that the program is flawed: innocent people are being detained indefinitely and tortured by American citizens acting on behalf of our government with the approval of the President. It’s a binary thing. Either you support torture or you don’t.\
What would Jesus do?

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Bad Idea

Can we agree now that the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea? Nothing that the Administration said would happen has happened:

  • There were no WMD.
  • Saddam had no ties to Al Qaeda.
  • We weren’t greeted as liberators.
  • Fighting them there hasn’t made us safer here.
  • Democracy hasn’t “flourished” in Iraq or been a good example to anyone.
  • We could fight the war on the “cheap”.
  • We could do it without losses. If you think the war is worth it, worth the sacrifice, read this, and think about it again.\
    On top of the things that the Administration got completely wrong, they’ve turned this country upside down. The United States of America has now admitted to torturing suspects. We’ve admitted to hiding prisoners in secret and illegal prisons scattered throughout the world. We’ve sent innocent people to other countries to be tortured for knowledge they didn’t have. We’ve let Osama bin Laden escape for 5 years. That’s five years of tough talk and inexcusable mistakes at all levels of government.\
    Whatever the President’s intentions, or the intentions of those who support him, he’s a complete and utter failure. And that’s not a “partisan” statement. Really think about it. Look at what he said would happen in Iraq, or after Katrina, or how we would find bin Laden. Nothing he has promised has happened. Nothing he has claimed has turned out to be true. He told us we don’t torture. He told us we followed the Geneva Conventions. He told us New Orleans would be rebuilt. He’s either a liar, or the most imcompetant leader in modern history… I’d bet on both.\
    Our government is a disgrace, a disgrace to its citizens, its history and its ideals. It’s time to do something to change it.\
    How? Vote. Vote in November and do what you can to kick out of office anyone who supports our incompetant president and his cronies, no matter what party they belong to. Yes, most of them happen to be Republicans, but the Democrats are still responsible for not standing up stridently enough. They could have stopped the Patriot Act. They could have done more to hold those responsible accountable for their actions. Some Democrats, like Joe Lieberman, actually support this Administrations ridiculous policies.\
    Vote for people who will hold them accountable, who will find the truth, and do something about it. If we don’t, we’re just as guilty as those who approved the torture, who ordered the bombs to be dropped, who have failed so completely to do the right thing.

Not much has changed

Five years ago, I really thought my world was going to change drastically. I had flashes of a WW2-style life, with money being scarce for everyone, goods being rationed, and the economy in general being unstable. I remember wondering if my husband could still pay the mortgage if he lost his job and had to work for Best Buy instead. Some friends bought a brand new (expensive) minivan just days after 9/11 and I was incredulous. I thought they should have saved their money for when all hell broke loose. Did anyone else feel like this back then?\
But really? Not that much has changed for me personally. All of my military family members are out. My husband won’t ever be drafted for health reasons and my sons are too young. Gas prices are higher, but not prohibitively so. Security is higher at airports, but that is more annoying than actually life-changing.\
With all of the loss, and I am talking about more than the 3000 that died that day, I feel like there should be more of an impact here. We are destroying Iraq, and yet… I don’t know.\
I am not a Muslim, not an Arab, not a New Yorker, not involved with the military or airlines, and not suspected of any crime. I feel like the only lasting change for most of the country (and most of the country probably falls into the above category) is a general feeling of anxiety. Does anyone else feel like this?\
I am not saying things were peachy for me after 9/11. I remember the local scares, the tanks, the paranoia, the evacuations, and the talks Kevin and I had about what would we do if Max were at his mom’s if a report of a dirty-bomb went off (She had plans to immediately hit the road, but we did not). But those specific fears went away. And now I am left with what, besides an extreme distaste for Bush?

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