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Fun and serious election stuff.....
Don't miss the rebuttal---
http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/
To help out for Travis County for the election:
http://www.austinforchange.com/
Well, this might just say it all...
http://www.n3t.net/humor/Seriously.mpg
From the Des Moines Register--a comment about Kerry that Republicans should perhaps think about:
10/24/04
http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041024/OPINION03/410240317/1110
"Yes, Kerry is liberal. But what's to fear from a liberal president? That he would run big deficits? That he would increase federal spending? That he would expand the power of the federal government over individuals' lives? Nothing Kerry could do could top what President Bush has already done in those realms."
And finally...I'm still, for sentimental reasons, lurking on a Bablyon5 list out of Columbia University. When someone wrote in this week telling writer J. Michael Straczynski they were seeking ways to interject more "civility" into political campaigns, Joe had the following to say. I thought it was an interesting nutshell commentary on why we need the balance of extremes to run this democracy. Joe permits his words to be reprinted (with one exception) with attribution. So--
It can be done, but it has to come with an overall change of attitude, especially from the Republicans.
Now let me preface this by saying that I've always felt strongly that the country needs both extremes...that's how we find our balance. I've always said that the American eagle needs both a right AND a left wing or it ain't ever getting off the ground.
To background further for a second...our founding fathers were pretty smart guys. They decided that the one trap they most needed to avoid was concentrating too much power in any one branch of the government, or in any one potential party.
So they created a series of checks and balances, divided the government between judicial, legislative and executive branches, for one very specific reason: to create a situation where people would have to compromise to get anything done...so that no one view would ever have a chance to hold sway.
Having set the stage, let me now proceed to the problem, and explain why so
much of this rests at the feet of the Republican party.
For the last twenty plus years, the Right has hammered away at one consistent theme: that liberals are bad people, that Democrats are just shy of being traitors to America. You've had people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter out there spewing bile into the American spirit of the most hateful, false, and demonizing sort.
What happens is this: those who would like to believe this, do...and thus view the other side with hatred and distrust and the sense that they are traitors. And you don't compromise or deal with traitors.
On the other side of the political spectrum, you have people who you've just called traitors who know that they're no such thing...and when you call people disloyal traitors, they have a tendency to get real angry about it. And you don't compromise or deal with people who impugn your honor like that.
So right off the top...you have a situation where people are yelling at each other.
If you go back to the pre-Reagan years -- when a lot of this started to get going, not due to him per se but just timeline wise -- when you fielded
candidates for president, it was business as usual...they had their positions, debated their positions...and you voted accordingly. The race wasn't predicated on the notion that the other guy's party is filled with traitors. The premise was that honorable people can disagree honorably and, most important, respect the system that puts them into office.
Nobody disliked Nixon more than me, but at the same time, I recognize that he had respect not only for the office, but for the process. He understood that the nature of the government was predicated on compromise. Sometimes rough, sure, sometimes behind-the-scenes strong-arming, but the system was what it was.
Now we have a nearly monolithic system in which the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House and, to all intents and purposes, the Supreme Court.
And they have used this as a stick to try and further consolidate power to destroy the spirit of compromise. (One leading republican advisor, Grover
Norquist, went so far as to say that "Bipartisanship is another name for date-rape.") Democrats have been excluded from committee positions, actually booted out of meetings and told other meetings are off-limits...it has all become about destroying the very notion of compromise.
And here's the amazing thing about all this.
The government is *supposed* to be caught in bickering and argument, because that ensures that all sides are being heard.
When the government becomes monolithic -- on EITHER side of the aisle -- the corrolary is that the population ends up the one that falls into bickering and argument. Because too many people feel that they're not being heard, which leads to frustration.
This is not a left or a right issue, though at this moment it's the right that has pushed this situation through because they're objectively speaking the most organized and lock-stepped. It's an issue that goes to the very heart of the American system, and we are for the first time in living memory in actual jeopardy of seeing that system break down, for one fundamental and very simple reason:
Because Americans have been taught to hate and distrust one another.
The goal set down by the people who built this country was that we should constantly strive to "create a more perfect union." Not to tear each other apart, but to make a more perfect union of different beliefs and attitudes and policies.
And somewhere along the way, mainly in the last twenty years, we lost that.
Your mere civil discourse is at the other end of that dilemma.
jms
(J. Michael Straczynski)
And keeping Joe's warning in mind, I ask you to consider this as you go to vote tomorrow:
Who is trying to keep you in a constant state of fear, and who offers hope and suggestions for the future?
How do you want to live?
Exercise your right to an opinion November 2, if you haven't already.
http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/
To help out for Travis County for the election:
http://www.austinforchange.com/
Well, this might just say it all...
http://www.n3t.net/humor/Seriously.mpg
From the Des Moines Register--a comment about Kerry that Republicans should perhaps think about:
10/24/04
http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041024/OPINION03/410240317/1110
"Yes, Kerry is liberal. But what's to fear from a liberal president? That he would run big deficits? That he would increase federal spending? That he would expand the power of the federal government over individuals' lives? Nothing Kerry could do could top what President Bush has already done in those realms."
And finally...I'm still, for sentimental reasons, lurking on a Bablyon5 list out of Columbia University. When someone wrote in this week telling writer J. Michael Straczynski they were seeking ways to interject more "civility" into political campaigns, Joe had the following to say. I thought it was an interesting nutshell commentary on why we need the balance of extremes to run this democracy. Joe permits his words to be reprinted (with one exception) with attribution. So--
It can be done, but it has to come with an overall change of attitude, especially from the Republicans.
Now let me preface this by saying that I've always felt strongly that the country needs both extremes...that's how we find our balance. I've always said that the American eagle needs both a right AND a left wing or it ain't ever getting off the ground.
To background further for a second...our founding fathers were pretty smart guys. They decided that the one trap they most needed to avoid was concentrating too much power in any one branch of the government, or in any one potential party.
So they created a series of checks and balances, divided the government between judicial, legislative and executive branches, for one very specific reason: to create a situation where people would have to compromise to get anything done...so that no one view would ever have a chance to hold sway.
Having set the stage, let me now proceed to the problem, and explain why so
much of this rests at the feet of the Republican party.
For the last twenty plus years, the Right has hammered away at one consistent theme: that liberals are bad people, that Democrats are just shy of being traitors to America. You've had people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter out there spewing bile into the American spirit of the most hateful, false, and demonizing sort.
What happens is this: those who would like to believe this, do...and thus view the other side with hatred and distrust and the sense that they are traitors. And you don't compromise or deal with traitors.
On the other side of the political spectrum, you have people who you've just called traitors who know that they're no such thing...and when you call people disloyal traitors, they have a tendency to get real angry about it. And you don't compromise or deal with people who impugn your honor like that.
So right off the top...you have a situation where people are yelling at each other.
If you go back to the pre-Reagan years -- when a lot of this started to get going, not due to him per se but just timeline wise -- when you fielded
candidates for president, it was business as usual...they had their positions, debated their positions...and you voted accordingly. The race wasn't predicated on the notion that the other guy's party is filled with traitors. The premise was that honorable people can disagree honorably and, most important, respect the system that puts them into office.
Nobody disliked Nixon more than me, but at the same time, I recognize that he had respect not only for the office, but for the process. He understood that the nature of the government was predicated on compromise. Sometimes rough, sure, sometimes behind-the-scenes strong-arming, but the system was what it was.
Now we have a nearly monolithic system in which the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House and, to all intents and purposes, the Supreme Court.
And they have used this as a stick to try and further consolidate power to destroy the spirit of compromise. (One leading republican advisor, Grover
Norquist, went so far as to say that "Bipartisanship is another name for date-rape.") Democrats have been excluded from committee positions, actually booted out of meetings and told other meetings are off-limits...it has all become about destroying the very notion of compromise.
And here's the amazing thing about all this.
The government is *supposed* to be caught in bickering and argument, because that ensures that all sides are being heard.
When the government becomes monolithic -- on EITHER side of the aisle -- the corrolary is that the population ends up the one that falls into bickering and argument. Because too many people feel that they're not being heard, which leads to frustration.
This is not a left or a right issue, though at this moment it's the right that has pushed this situation through because they're objectively speaking the most organized and lock-stepped. It's an issue that goes to the very heart of the American system, and we are for the first time in living memory in actual jeopardy of seeing that system break down, for one fundamental and very simple reason:
Because Americans have been taught to hate and distrust one another.
The goal set down by the people who built this country was that we should constantly strive to "create a more perfect union." Not to tear each other apart, but to make a more perfect union of different beliefs and attitudes and policies.
And somewhere along the way, mainly in the last twenty years, we lost that.
Your mere civil discourse is at the other end of that dilemma.
jms
(J. Michael Straczynski)
And keeping Joe's warning in mind, I ask you to consider this as you go to vote tomorrow:
Who is trying to keep you in a constant state of fear, and who offers hope and suggestions for the future?
How do you want to live?
Exercise your right to an opinion November 2, if you haven't already.