Voting Theatre

I love stuff like this. This is a great story. Can't you just picture this all in you mind's eye? Sweet!


Black Box Voting files Public Records lawsuit against Palm Beach County

NOV 30 2004: Today's lawsuit was filed naming Teresa LaPore as defendant, citing her for failure to comply with the Black Box Voting public records request of Nov. 2, 2004.

Black Box Voting filed the lawsuit this morning in Palm Beach County, served it per Florida law on LaPore's attorney. Black Box Voting then made a surprise visit to the podium at the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections meeting held today in Orlando, where LaPore was scheduled to make a speech on records retention.

We went in through the kitchen, using a reconassaince map provided by a colleague, led by Kathleen Wynne dressed as hired help. Black Box Voting investigator Kathleen Wynne, in black jeans and a white polo shirt had earlier traveled through the route to the back entrance to the supervisor's meeting, nodding to the waiters.

"Very nice, very nice," Wynne said authoritatively.

Wynne led Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson through the back way without raising so much as an eyebrow, since she looked like hotel staff.

Harris went onto the podium and introduced herself to the crowd. "I know I'm interrupting. This will only take a minute." She turned to LaPore, "Since we can't get your attention any other way, I'm serving you with a courtesy copy of the lawsuit we served on your office this morning."

LaPore glared, turned her back on Harris, and refused to take the lawsuit, so Harris set it on the table in front of LaPore.

Stephenson stood up in front of the crowd of perhaps 200 Florida elections officials.

"This was a courtesy call on Ms. LaPore for failing to produce public records," he said. "For any of you who have not complied, we have more of these coming."

Black Box Voting has identified 13 Florida counties who have earned litigation due to failure to comply with public records requests.

The elections officials erupted into deafening shouts, boos, gavel-pounding, and then Wynne stepped up smack dab in front of the crowd, took a sturdy stance and panned the crowd with her video camera.

"This is what democracy looks like," she said, as the officials scowled and shouted for the sergeant at arms.

Unfortunately, the sergeant at arms was nowhere to be found. (Perhaps imbibing in the Sequoia Voting Systems lounge, just down the hall? We may never know.)

Harris, Stephenson and Wynne made haste out the back door, but accidentally tripped a loud screeching alarm. The meeting broke up and people fanned out all over the place seeking to capture the rude individuals from Black Box Voting.

Just in time for Christmas!

Go to dumpbush2004.us for all your Anti-George W. Bush clothing needs!

This post dedicated to GradeSchoolTeach. One of the nicest people I know. Maybe the word Grand can be inserted in front of Parents by hand. That might make for a fun conversation starter at Christmas!

I'm thinking of getting some of these sweatshirts for my brother's kids. I wonder if they would wear them?

Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad.

© Evan Dorkin 2004, www.houseoffun.com. Milk & Cheese TM Evan Dorkin.


I had a nightmare last night. I woke up and it turns out I was just dreaming about the world as it is today.

I don't really want to live in the Bush Economy. Damn.

When the shit comes down hard, and it will, getting to say "I told you so." isn't really that satisfying.

"I give you permission to be racist"

That was today's theme on Rush Limbaugh. He didn't SAY that of course. He talked about how those cough *wetbacks* cough in the olden days assimilated. America was the melting pot. It's not that good white Americans who came here from Northern Europe don't like them; they just wanted them to be more like they were. And if they can't do that then they should be locked out.

I've listened to Rush and Hannity and they use a bunch of tricks and one of them is to sound REASONABLE. They rail against extremes. They make their appeals sound good and they provide plausible sounding arguments for people who don't want to say what is REALLY lurking in their mind. And you might even be able to hold BOTH arguments in your head. The plausible one and the dark one. We talk publicly about the REASONABLE one but it covers for the dark one we rarely share. Maybe you have a continuum of feelings about issues. Most people do.

Rush is the current biggest purveyor of politically correct arguments.

I didn't major in rhetoric in college (I'm not even sure what that word means). I barely passed English. I envied the people with complex sentence structure who knew when to use a semicolon and when to use a dash. I know that there are people who are smarter than I am, who are more articulate. People who say what I wish I could say. They are powerful writers. Eloquent speakers. They have advanced degrees and they can explain their thoughts better than I can. But to find them takes work. They aren't out there every day giving me words and phrases to use to help me understand my world. Rush, Hannity and others of their ilk provide reasonable arguments to explain dark feelings. Like Wormword whispering in your ear, they don't challenge the listener to be better than they are. They give you reasons to be worse than your best self.

From the listeners point of view it is like this:

The priest is giving me permission to be selfish (it's good for the economy!), hate others (they are evil doers!), believe lies (Dick Cheney only wants the best for America, why would he lie?). This is SO GREAT! No guilt! Not only don't I have to feel guilt, often my lesser impulses are transformed from being selfish or hateful to good acts! Don't worry America, buy more stuff! That's helping!

As long as you have an internal narrative that is approving your selfish or hateful acts you have nothing to worry about.

I give you permission to examine your internal narrative. To look for your best self. To challenge easy answers that are selfish or dark. Here's to finding the powerful writers the eloquent speakers, and the deep thinkers exposing truth, compassion, love and justice. And a hope, that like a ray of sun, their ideas can cut through the dark arguments and show them for the hateful, fearful, selfish thoughts that they are.


© Evan Dorkin 2004, www.houseoffun.com. Milk & Cheese TM Evan Dorkin.

Spinning Killing in Fallujah

By now you have all seen the video or read about the Marine shooting a wounded insurgent. I'm not going to analyze why it happened, talk about rules of engagement or right or wrong.

But I want you to notice how they are trying to spin this at the Central Command (or CENTCOM) level. Expect to hear multiple stories like this one below. No proof will be given of course.
They are going to run any story that will give cover to this shooting. They can't just say, "He screwed up. It was wrong, he's been relieved of duty." They are going to help justify what happened with a new narrative. See below:


Today they put out a two line press release:
November 22, 2004
Release Number: 04-11-77

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


INSURGENTS FAKING DEAD FIRES ON MARINES

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent, who while faking dead, opened fire on the Marines that were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets here at approximately 3:45 p.m. on 21 November.

For more information, please contact Capt Bradley Gordon, public affairs officer, 1st Marine Division, gordonbv@1mardivdm.usmc.mil


-30-

New narrative:

"It happens all the time! He was right to kill that guy, insurgents are always pretending to be dead then shooting at us! We don't have proof or anything, but really they are sneaky bastards, these A-rabs. Don't trust 'em. Shoot first, ask questions later."

Expect Rush, Hannity, Savage, Fox and CNN to latch onto this idea. "It's official folks! The soldier was simply PROTECTING himself." Then they will go into ridicule at the left for even mentioning that gee, maybe this was wrong BY THE MARINES' VERY OWN STANDARDS!

The ridicule will include things like, "I suppose you want to fight a more gentle, SENSITIVE WAR? He was doing his job, blah, blah, blah. Don't you support our troops? Spin, spin, spin."

I'm not holding them to some new standards of war. Are they following their OWN standards? I don't know, but watch the spin on this one folks, it will be good.

Real emotion on the radio

Very rarely do you hear real emotion on the TV or radio. When you hear it, you stop. Listening almost feels voyeuristic. When real emotion is tied to an articulate argument it brings a depth to the argument that is palatable. It becomes more powerful and persuasive, not simply an exercise in logic. For an example, see the clip of Jon Stewart talking to Tucker Carlson on Crossfire. Yes, Jon had a clear point of view, but you could also see, hear and practically feel the strong emotion behind it, when he pleaded with them, “Please do your job. When you don’t do your job you are hurting the country.”

I think many liberals and progressives, by our very nature, are more empathic and thoughtful than many on the right. Empathy for the poor, the sick, and the disenfranchised makes sense to us. Call it a personal understanding of the golden rule, call it Christian compassion or call it secular humanism. Whatever you call it, it is at the heart of many liberal and progressive ideas.

Therefore it is mind boggling to us when people gleefully support and encourage acts that are anti-compassionate, anti-human and anti-environment. And to see those attitudes and emotions to become not only ACCEPTED, but LIONIZED makes it seem like that our fellow humans must have gone insane. What kind of person would make excuses for torture? Who would revel in hate and discrimination?

Following a very close election, Democrats are casting around for lessons to learn and directions to take to get their ideas accepted and their leaders elected. For some people to suggest that “if you want to win you need to associate and become like these people who embrace the dark side of human nature” is simply repugnant to them. They hear the cleverly developed rationale supporting cruel policies and thieving programs and are disgusted with their fellow man. They wonder, “How can a human being turn off their sense of compassion and craft arguments to support so many barbaric acts?”

The day after Air America Radio’s broadcast of an interview with a rude and dismissive Sean Hannity on the Majority Report Radio show I heard the following response to a critical letter written to Janeane Garofalo from a listener named Kathy.

Listen here:
Real Media (For broadband -big file- 4 megs)
Windows Media (smaller file 560k)
Time 3:30

Janeane: Yeah right. So going back to the idea of the guy who pushed me through the turnstile and Sean Hannity pushing his way in here, and Sean Hannity is indicative of a certain mind set. My father sometimes has it, Ann Coulter has it. Many people who voted for George Bush have it; many of the economic hit men who work at the IMF have it.

Now there are letters I get and I got one again last night that almost makes me, I'm going to start crying. Where again someone has written me a letter saying, "I have to stop condescending to the red -I'm sorry I'm crying-stop condescending to the red staters. And they were saying, "That's the problem with the democratic party."

No it isn't the problem with the Democratic Party. The problem with the Democratic Party is we don't run the media. We don't have the finances. We have the DLC nerds who are trying to make us like Republicans. And we don't have authoritarian personalities per say although sometimes I do and sometimes you do but at least it is for the left.

But I would say this, it is NOT the problem of some Democrats quote unquote looking down on some red staters, and by the way, there is every reason to be contemptuous of bigots. There is every reason to be contemptuous of people that support the Bush administration that supports torture. They support the disenfranchisement of black voters. They support the shifting of the tax burden to the working poor and the middle class. They have restated the global gag rule. They have rolled back the freedom of information act. They do not believe in internationalism. They have lied to us to get us into a war.

So if you, Kathy who wrote me that letter, and everyone else who writes me these letters, if you want to make common cause with those people, you do that. I'm not going to do it. In the same way that I wouldn't expect anyone to try and make common cause pre-civil rights act when the Republican party and the Democrat Party split over allowing black people and white people to attend public school together. To have black people enter the front of hotels, things of that nature. And I will not make common cause with those people and I will not make common cause with gay bashers and with people who think that the end of the world is nigh. I won't do it.

And I'm sorry that I'm crying, but I'm sick of all the mail of people claiming that the reason that George W. Bush is in office is because Sam and I are sitting here and thinking that it is ridiculous that there are some people who think that the end of days is nigh, and that John Ashcroft is afraid of calico cats. Which he IS.

Later:
Janeane: No I know, and this letter from Kathy wasn't completely un-positive, but let's remember the Republican Party for the last 40 years has made it their stock and trade to condescend to Democrats. How do you think that the word liberal got used as a pejorative on par with pedophile? How do you think that news anchors with a straight face can say something as preposterous as, "Gee, do you think John Kerry's wife is too liberal?"

Without liberals and progressives there is no forward motion in this culture there would be child labor. There would still be slaves, women wouldn't vote. We would have no birth control. So if the right had not been condescending... the "Looney left", the conspiracy theorists, "tin foil hat time". So don't give me this crap about a) making common cause with these bigots and b) and that WE are the problem because we think that it is small minded to be bigots, because it is.

Janeane is one of the most big-hearted, smart, funny and passionate persons in the public progressive movement. We share similar backgrounds and even family dynamics. It would be presumptuous of me to say I know how she feels. But I think I do. If I ever got a chance to talk to her I would tell here how much I admire her courage and understand her frustration. The last time I transcribed a Majority Report segment I found that some of the wingnut blogs linked to it to support their view that the guest was already biased against George W. Bush and his opinion shouldn’t count. My thought was, “His opinion was based on observable data! He has a right to his opinion that George W. Bush was a terrible student!”. If some of Sean Hannity’s listeners find this page and want to use it to support some negative view of Janeane, I ask you to first examine your heart and ask yourself just how humane is your attack or how responsible is your support of cruel policies, programs and arguments. If you don’t feel that you need to do any of that, since self-examination is anathema to who you are and what you stand for, then I say to you, “Bite me!”

I owe my soul to the company store

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, has an interesting article in The Nation.

Remember in the episode where Kirk and Spock go back in time and end up in Edith Keeler's mission? Some unemployed man makes a comment about having to listen to the sermon to get the food. Well in this article Barbara writes about how the influence of evangelical Christianity lies not only in what they tell people, but what they do for people.

What these churches have to offer, in addition to intangibles like eternal salvation, is concrete, material assistance. They have become an alternative welfare state, whose support rests not only on "faith" but also on the loyalty of the grateful recipients.

A woman I met in Minneapolis gave me her strategy for surviving bouts of destitution: "First, you find a church." A trailer park dweller in Grand Rapids told me that he often turned to his church for help with the rent. Got a drinking problem, a vicious spouse, a wayward child, a bill due? Find a church. The closest analogy to America's bureaucratized evangelical movement is Hamas, which draws in poverty-stricken Palestinians through its own miniature welfare state.

Sure the tycoons are happy to get government out of the helping people business, it costs them money! And to them it makes sense for the Churches to pick up the broken people screwed by the system. And this comes to the heart of the question, "What is government for?"

Interesting article, check it out.


White Poor People in Mississippi, From the book "American Pictures" by Jacob Holdt.

AOL admits 40 percent of subscribers don't even have computers.

Leading internet provider America Online (AOL) has confirmed a stunning statistic leaked by a dissatisfied employee last week, in documents sold to Fox News for an undisclosed sum.

"While we vigorously condemn the illegal theft of internal company documents, we must admit that they are in fact authentic," said a grim-looking Joe Redley, AOL's chief marketing officer. "Further, the facts as stated in the memos recently released to news organizations are in fact true; namely, that it does appear that a sizeable percentage of AOL subscribers do not, in fact, possess computers."

More here at the Watley Review. Amazing article. Check it out.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!

I wonder what the Republican vs. Democrat split is for AOL subscribers. (Just 'cause I'm compelled to be political)

Grandma Jo says...

"You can't count votes that were discouraged, thrown away, or intimidated away." - Grandma Jo

Notes on a voter suppression in Ohio. By Daily Kos diaryiest pronin2

This is just disgusting. A few lowlights:

Janeane Smith-White
Pushed Kerry button on her ballot and the light went on for Bush
Poll worker said it had been happening all day

Steven Hayman
Lost at least 75 voters in the 12.5 hours
There were about 150 people in line at nominal poll closing of 7:30; one machine-
"Ohio has a new poll tax: if you can't afford to wait inline for four hours, you don't vote."

Tom Pinatello
Observed that after he pushed the button for Kerry, went through the complicated ballot, and did a double check at the end before pressing the vote button, the vote for Kerry was gone

Jen Miller
low-income Appalachian area
4 hour line
2 pcts, 3 machines per precinct (there were 4 per pct in 2000)
1 machine was down
Lack of poll workers; no was was directing the precinct split in the line-
Handicapped voters were not directed to accessible entrance or helped in any way
handicapped voters given no preferential treatment in long lines
Observed numerous problems with people voting and cried for three hours when she got home

Jane Hubbard
Observed 2-3 hours wait saw people leaving line

Stacey Mitchell-King
- Columbus public school teacher, took day off for election protection-
delivered food to people in line
Observed people leaving line

John Mannity
6 machines for two pcts E and F
bought ponchos for people standing in rain; fashioned garbage bag ponchos

Moral Values my ASS!

God I'm I tired of hearing pundits use the short-hand term "moral values" to describe the hate vote.

And that is what it is.

Why do you want to ban Gay marriage? Is it because they love gay people so much they want to deny them the ability to have a life long partner?

I'm guessing the thinking process, (when they have one) goes like this, "Gays are different, I can't imagine feeling how they do, so ipso facto there must be something wrong with them. They make me feel uncomfortable and luckily some people over 2,000 years ago said, "They are bad." so I have permission to hate them.

I was talking to one of my favorite people who said that everyone should travel and get exposed to a lot of different people. If you do that you'll find out that gay people are not that different. Some are good, some are bad. What about judging people by the content of their character? Choosing to hate people because of their gayness is as bad as choosing to hate someone because of their skin color. And for those of you who say, "It's a choice. It's a lifestyle." When did you decide to be straight? Was there a day where you said, "I could do dudes or chicks. I think I choose dudes."

I just watched Values, Religion, Politics and the Media on C-Span. I missed almost the entire show, but got to see the questions. Good questions. One answer that I thought was great was about religion. She noted that they considered people who went to church regularly more religious and apt to vote their "moral values". Gee I guess so if for moral values you substitute, "seething hate for gays" then yes, maybe they do. But this equation of church going with morality doesn't address the depth and breath of spirituality that most people have.

Gay marriage: Good for marriage. Good for straight people. Good for gay people.

How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are simply liberal media lies. That light bulb has served honorably, and questioning it undermines the nation's lighting effort. God bless America's light bulbs. Why do you hate America?


Tip o' hat to Vertical Hold for the image. Another proud member of the reality based community.

Bobo Analysis: In which I defend the CIA

David “I sound rational, but I’m really a nut” Brooks’ column today is just astounding. You have to read it for yourself, but I was flabbergasted by his view of the CIA and his recommendations on what the president should do about them.

One of Brooks’ techniques is to sound reasonable and then drop the word bombs. For example, he will say: “The White House-C.I.A. relationship became dysfunctional, and while the blame was certainly not all on one side,” -- sounds reasonable enough, right? Then he finishes the sentence with this blast --“Langley was engaged in slow-motion, brazen insubordination, which violated all standards of honorable public service.”

Oh, so it is the CIA that is violating standards of honorable public service? Not the White House? That is rich.

For his readers he sets up the “correct” relationship between the two “At the height of the campaign, C.I.A. officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the president's Iraq policy.

So, does serving the president mean ginning up intelligence that confirms his desire for Saddamn to be connected to bin Laden, or for WMDs in Iraq? This is doing a DISservice to the American people AND the president. So maybe David doesn’t have a problem with the CIA giving the president what he wants since intelligence isn’t an exact science. Maybe other CIA analyst’s opinions, no matter how out of the mainstream, might be valid. It appears his real problem is they are supposed to stay out of politics and policy. Hmmm. Even when what you have told the president and vice president time and time again is ignored, distorted and mutated?

I put myself in the shoes of some CIA analyst. Grade level GS-14 or GS-13. He or she believes in what they are doing, and what they know. They have presented data that has been ignored again and again. They can keep trying to find the imaginary information that the president wants but it just doesn’t exist. What does the White House say to this analyst? “Well if you can’t find what we want we’ll create another agency to find it. We will keep creating agencies until we find one that tells us what we want to believe.” You’re pissed you weren’t listened to, that’s personal ego and maybe not a noble emotion, but also there has to be some part of you that wants to do what is right for America and America’s soldiers. You strongly feel that people need to know what you have found out. I suppose some could say ‘What gives them the right to decide policy? They don’t know about the overarching goals of the US.”

But what these CIA analysts are tying to tell the American Public is, “Whether or not you agree with the policy is not the point. This policy is based on BAD INFORMATION! It is based on the opposite of what we told them. That is not politics, that is about the integrity of information and they are lying about what they say they know and knew. Wake UP!”

For the analyst(s) this is/was an ethical crisis as well as a political crisis and with the election looming it was a career crisis too. A bunch of people within the agency felt the same so they leaked something as an act of civil disobedience. Yes it is political, is it insubordination? It depends on who you really serve. The CONSTITUTION? Or the man elected to uphold the Constitution? You aren’t Daniel Ginsberg, but if you’ve ever listed to Ginsberg you know that he wasn’t some sort of pacifist loony. He was a smart thoughtful guy who was finally led to do the right thing for America, even if it was against the will of the current President.

Here’s the other thing about this article, it puts disagreement with the way the CIA information was used, abused and mutated into a military context of high crimes. I understand that there are rules in the Hatch act about supporting a candidate if you are a civil servant, but he fails to mention all the people who are on the president’s payroll who are publicly campaigning FOR the President. Also, suppressing the truth about the war in Iraq is an active benefit to the President.

Finally the punishment phase of the article which is astonishingly brutal in its suggested scope:

If we lived in a primitive age, the ground at Langley would be laid waste and salted, and there would be heads on spikes. (Gee, David don’t hold back, tell us what you really think they should do.)

Meanwhile, members of Congress and people around the executive branch are wondering what President Bush is going to do to punish the mutineers. (‘R matey. You’ll be swingin’ from the yard irons at dawn!)

It is time to reassert some harsh authority so C.I.A. employees know they must defer to the people who win elections, so they do not feel free at meetings to spout off about their contempt of the White House, so they do not go around to their counterparts from other nations and tell them to ignore American policy.

(David is pleading with the WH to show they have the phallus. “Come on Bushies, rub their noses in it! Make an example out of them! Obviously the CRIMINAL ACT of ratting out the identity of Valerie Plame and setting her up for possible murder wasn’t enough to punish these people for disagreeing with the President. Now is the time for the night of long knives. Better do it quick before some other uppity agency gets it in their head that they serve the American people first and have to answer to the constitution rather than who they really serve, King George the Liarhearted.)

P.S. In the event that some poor CIA analyst comes across this post doing a Google search, believe it or not I’m a sentimental patriot. The people in the CIA have been tasked to do some dreadful, horrific things in their history at the bequest of our Presidents. For those tasks you will still be held accountable to whatever moral authority exists in the universe, if not here on earth. But I do believe that there are people in your organization whose first choice is not to fight wars for the wrong reasons. That many believe that protecting your fellow Americans is a calling, not just a job. I appreciate you. I think that many of you sweat the means that might get you to the ends. It is a complex world out there and it is better when the greater good of the American people lines up with what you have to do. You have made a decision that the American people CAN handle the truth, since the President has shown that he can’t. I know who is keeping me safe. You folks are. But the President takes credit for it. You track down the connections; you spend the hours poring over the boring electronic traffic. You do it for me and the women and children who will never know you. You should be honored like the public warriors on Veterans Day.

This president has a streak of righteousness that will come crashing down on all who disagree in this term. He has even got his surrogates giving him permission to act, and suggesting he act harshly. Be prepared, good luck and here’s a tip from a media watcher as you go forward in your duty to the American public and the Constitution, “Live by the smear, die by the smear.”

It's all the rage! Christian rage

Here's part of my letter to Joshua Micah Marshell of Talking Points Memo regarding this post. He talks about the historical roots of this electorial split, the high murder rates in "red states" and offers this dark observation:

But in the Southern states, where murder rates are higher in small towns and rural areas, this isn’t the case. Rather than happening in the process of committing other crimes, these murders tend to be rooted in what are best described as violations of honor, personal slights that escalate into violence or in the simplest sense, rage.

Josh:

I found your post about murder in the south interesting. With all this talk about “moral values” when it comes right down to it the thing that got a lot of voters out was fear and hate. What no one really wants to talk about is just how much of the motivation for the evangelical Christians is based on hate. Think about the choices given to voters at the exit polls. There was no choice for “I hate gays.” Like so much of the Bush rhetoric this was about a false choice. “Good Christians” would not admit they really voted their hate. In a culture that kills over passion, yet wants to provide a façade of politeness, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they are politically correct enough not to talk about their hate while pretending to be about love and life.

Why does no one bust them on this? Because like today’s comedians, you can’t tell black jokes unless you are black. They should be busted from inside. But they won’t be. They are given easy hate targets in terrorists and gays and uppity women. They used to have blacks to kick around (with biblical permission!) but not anymore. The church should have come out strongly against the war. For them to say that getting out the vote against gay marriage is their priority is a failure of leadership. The leaders allowed their fears to drive them which also allowed their followers to bring out the hate vote with impunity.

And regarding messed up priorities in the Churches, I'm looking at you Pastor Brian Lacroix, pastor at Aberdeen Wesleyan Church in South Dakota! I heard him on Talk of the Nation talking about his priorities: Against abortion, against gay marriage, for hate speech (although he said he was really for free speech so that he could talk about the hate in the bible without being busted.)

Oh and Pastor Brian, if you find this, and I'm sure you will (because you'll Goggle your name soon and find it.), isn't vanity a sin? And then ask yourself, "How do my political comments and activities match up with the NEW TESTAMENT, synoptic Gospels? Especially Mark 12:30-31 ("And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.") or are you a "Leviticus-trumps-Jesus-Christian?

Hey! What's this lying around Shit?

Bluto : Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Otter : Germans?

Boon : Forget it, he's rolling.

Bluto : And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard]
Bluto : the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]

Bluto : What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're going to let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this.
Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...

Otter : Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

Bluto : We're just the guys to do it.

D-Day : Let's do it.

Bluto : LET'S DO IT!

It's Not Over Speech from Animal House. Windows Audio about 30 seconds. Swear words.

I weep for America. I hope for America.

I wanted to believe that people could see through the President's false Christian act. That they would see the underlying vengeance and hate that is in no way Christian.

I wanted to believe that people would see through the lies that the War in Iraq was NOT a part of the war on terror no matter how many times Dick Cheney claimed it was.

I wanted to believe that people would understand that the big corporations and rich people didn't care about their welfare, their health or their future and that for all the talk about the economy getting better it was only getting better for the rich.

I wanted to believe that the media would finally stop simply repeating the Republican lies and deceptions and feel that "I did my job" when they simply ran the Democrats talking points, instead of searching for the truth and then challenging the lies.

But mostly I wanted to believe that people would stop living out of their fears. I know it is easy to do and it feels right and comfortable since the political parties have learned the mantra of fear and anxiety from marketing and advertising. A frightened populace doesn't think. A frightened population wants to be protected. A frightened populous will concede hard fought for liberties for an illusion of security.

I love science fiction and I love time travel stories. I think the reason is I love to think, “What if?”. I also like to think how can we change the future? How can we persuade people? In the movie Sliding Doors you got to see the two possible futures and clearly one was better than the other. If we could see the consequences of both futures the decision would be obvious. We can't do that with today's technology, but we can with our minds.

We need to visualize a better future for all, even for the ignorant; for they also are "the least of our brothers". They aren't very knowledgeable and they live in fear and hate. The project their own fear onto whomever is the target supplied by the fear mongers. I can get angry at them, but I also have to pity them.

If I didn't have to live in the America that their narrow-mindedness has wroth, I could laugh at them when it all comes crashing down. And when it comes crashing down, I don't want to say "I told you so." but I want them to know from whom and from whence it came. I want them to see who did this to them. I want them to see how they were fooled and lied to by the people who said they were protecting them. They need to know who is responsible for these economic problems. I don't want them to be deceived anymore. They got everything they wanted. They have their illusion of control, but it came at a bitter price, through a denial of reality and a hiding of the truth.

When the veil is pulled off, they need to know that it is not the “liberal elites” who are behind this. It is not the democrats that wanted these policies and programs. This all came from their failed president and his administration and all the things they stand for. And then we can say to our chastened awakened brothers and sisters, "Now, let us fix the problems and get American back on the track our forefathers and mothers set us on. One of truth, liberty and justice for all.

We Must Outlaw Free Speech in Order to Save It

From WEST PALM BEACH Florida comes "Today's Election Shenanigans". Don't like what you see in the lines of voters? Simply outlaw those pesky reporters and their new fangled cameras! I'm sure this is legal... In Jeb Bush's World.

Is this a move to make Mike Moore's video army actions illegal?

...new rules LePore implemented Friday, prohibiting reporters from talking to or photographing voters while they are in line outside the polls.

Note to Reporters: You can now officially put Florida’s motto, "The Sunshine State" in quotes when talking about this story.