Friday, January 23, 2004
I already admitted I'm a cspan watching nerd, and you all know i'm a politi-nerd. so needless to say it rocks that cspan has been showing the concord 11 o'clock news every night. also, as an npr nerd i heard a good commentary today by time magazine contributor, James Poniewozik. It was about how more voters are focused on electability this time around and how that makes us as arrogant as the pundits. Point taken (i'll try to find a transcript) but he misses the "why". We're not being arrogant-we're scared shitless of four more years of this domestic policy terrorism and are desperately trying to do whatever we think will help us achieve regime change here at home. Short of a pre-election where we all get together on a secret website and promise to vote for anyone but bush....wait we have that. damn-if only we knew how many it would take to be a majority we could tally up and breathe a collective sigh of relief. But i understand where he was coming from-he doesn't want our democracy further undermined by people not voting for who they believe in rather who they think can win. all i can say is these are messed up times-bush was appointed to office and in the past three years we've had a record surplus turn into a record defifcit, the first major terrorist attack on American soil, a war, a mass exodus of countries that have been our allies since WW1, the first US case of mad cow disease, a curtailing of our basic civil liberties in a way only ever seen in science fiction, record job loss and the crappiest job creation record since the great depression and countless other, dare i say, horrible shit eating insane things unfathomable only 3 years ago all while living under a president who has taken more vacation time than any other president in recent history. So if we're a little jumpy on the "electability" issue i hope you'll understand-it's not arrogance-it's rabid commitment to change. And in a country full of people who's asses are as soft as mine any commitment to change anything is rather revolutionary.
