Tonight, I’m glued to the television watching the Democratic primary results. And for the record, I do care who wins. I’m no longer undecided.
On the other hand, I don’t care. A few years ago, I stood at a Kerry-Edwards rally and waved a sign that read “Women for Kerry.” But this year, for the first time ever, I stood at a campaign rally and waived a sign bearing the name of a woman. Tonight, a crowd of people interupt a presidential candidate to cheer “Yes, she will!” Earlier this year, at a rally in South Carolina, Americans chanted together, “Race doesn’t matter.” Indeed, some Americans have even gone so far as to declare that “bitch is the new black.”
Those are powerful statements. They are statements that many Americans worked long and hard to make happen, with some (too many, in fact) even given the last full measure of devotion.
And they aren’t anything that the Republican party is offering.
Obama says his campaign is about hope. But if you take a moment to appreciate the historic nature of this election, you’ll see that his is not the only one. Hope is not just about catchy slogans or inspirational speeches. It’s about taking action and paving the way for others to participate and make an impact. Both Obama and Clinton have done that for my generation, and for tonight, I don’t care who wins. I am just grateful.
“I was going to have a few words on the other presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot’. (Pauses due to applause from audience). So, I’m kind of at an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards, so I’ll think I’ll just conclude here and take your questions. Thank you. (More applause).”
-Ann Coulter, at the CPAC, at convention for conservative activists
This doesn’t really need any commentary from me. I’ll just say, I am not sure which is more disturbing, her comments or that they actually received a fair amount of laughter and applause.
“I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well.”
-Dick Cheney, on Blair’s announcement to withdraw Britain’s troops from Iraq
Uh, right…because the fact that our greatest ally in the war even wants to get the hell out is definitely a sign that things are going pretty well. And by going pretty well, I mean that there are parts that are so bad, we just don’t even want to have troops there anymore.
“Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life.”
-President Bush, comparing the “war on terror” to the American Revolutionary War
Liberty like free speech? Habeus corpus? Freedom from warrantless searches? Those kinds of liberties?
And secondly, weren’t the Revolutionaries the “terrorists” of the American Revolution? Sabotaging tea shipments? Denouncing the Empire? Use of harassment and grinding the enemy down rather than just fighting them outright? Use of surprise and guerilla tactics by the American South?
And if they weren’t, he is referring to Britain, our closest (practically only) ally in the war on terror, as the terrorists of the American Revolution. Lovely.
“Let me give you an analogy. Imagine your next door neighbor refuses to mow his lawn and the weeds are all the way up to his waist. You decide you’re going to mow his lawn for him every single week. The neighbor never says thank you. He hates you and sometimes he takes out a gun and shoots at you.
Under these circumstances, do you keep mowing his lawn forever? Do you send even more of your family members over to mow his lawn? Or do you say to that neighbor, ‘You better step it up and mow your own lawn or there’s going to be serious consequences for you’?”
-Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL), apparently supporting the Democratic withdrawl plan with a really bad analogy
Continuing on, you might say to your neighbor, “Hey I am calling the cops!” and then he might say “Hey, you and your freaking lawnmower are trespassing on my property.” Then you might say “I had the right to…I thought you were hiding weapons of mass destruction under all those weeds.” See all the fun directions we could go with this weird analogy?
Exxon, it seems, thinks we can just pay off global warming (via their thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute). You see, if we just pay people to say the report is wrong, it solves the problem. If you think the problem is global warming, you’d be wrong. The problem apparently is that people might not consume oil like water anymore.
In fairness to Exxon, if global warming continues, there will be less arctic ice, thus less chance that one of there tankers would have a Titanic-esque type crash resulting in an oil spill. Maybe they are just worried about the penguins.
Today, it is news that global warming is “very likely” due to man. This is something I was taught in high school, if not middle school. CFCs anyone? I clearly remember the days when many of my friends switched from their aerosol hairspray to non-aerosol to help prevent the Earth from melting to death. I, however, had the foresight to know that heavily hairsprayed heads would not always be the epitome of cool, and so chose to skip that trend all together.
Perhaps it is news now because President Bush has finally jumped on the bandwagon and realized the polar bears’ habitat is endangered and actually is acknowledging the fact that global warming exists. Kudos to him, I suppose.
I could spend my time here berating the Bush administration for their failure to act, but I think the real issue is the media’s failure to report. We’ve known global warming is happening and that we are “very likely causing it for years. Had the media done anything to make this fact more wildly known to the general public and also keep it at the forefront of their minds, we wouldn’t have been waiting around for Bush to acknowledge it, because we as individuals would have already been aware and informed of it. We might have even been doing something about it, instead of waiting around for someone else to tell us what to do.
Perhaps the media could stop waiting around for the President-esque people of the world to tell them what to report and do some journalism to find out what the hard-hitting issues of our times are and what options there are for solving them.
This past weekend, I did some campaigning. It felt good.
Until this week, when I have been pestered non-stop with phone calls and emails asking me to do more campaigning for more events. One particular organization contacted me 3 times by phone and twice by email in one bloody day.
I want to volunteer, but I don’t have THAT much time. I also want to feel like I am volunteering for an organization/campaign that is running efficiently and won’t be wasting my time. All those phone calls do not make me feel confident in their ability to be efficient and not wasteful.
And so, it’s “Cheerio” to Tony Blair within the year.
This saddens me. I never had any hope for George W. Bush, but there was a time when I had hope for Tony Blair. When I not only believed what he said, but also believed in it. Unfortunately, for too many, that time is gone.
