Political Rants

Wednesday night I had the great fun of taking my friend Michael to see Mark Russell tape his latest political comedy show (not to be confused with the next night's debates, which are their own form of comedy). He performed live here in Des Moines, at the beautifully restored Hoyt Sherman Place Theater.

Russell was smart, witty and took no political prisoners, as it were. Dan Rather got a particularly hard beating, as that was the freshest news:

From now on, "60 minutes" will only broadcast thoroughly factual and completely researched stories. The program will be changed to "30 Minutes."

But all the political hopefuls (and their entourages) got some time:

If Kerry loses, the Democrats will have allowed the Republicans to keep sole possession of the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, the flag and Christianity.

Dick Cheney is taking his usual high road with the subtle implication: "Vote for Bush or we all die."

The debate between Edwards and Cheney will look like two of the seven dwarves - Happy and Grumpy.

How about a debate between the Bush daughters and the Kerry daughters. Jenna could bring the beer.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is two things I admire: tough and sophisticated. Which means she can tell you to 'Shove it!' in seven languages.

The show will be broadcast on Iowa Public Television (celebrating its 35th anniversary) this Sunday night and also next week. Check your local listings.

So Nader's off the ballot in Ohio (and Oregon, I believe). So...shouldn't every state that DOES have him on their ballot go back to his petitions and make sure there aren't any dirty tricks? Do you think they only used them in Ohio?!

Link is to my brother's blog. More info from there.

In this rather grim election season, a little voting fun. Click on Vote, then try to vote for Kerry-Edwards...

Thanks to Dan for the link.

I'm tired of hearing about Senator Kerry's war record in Vietnam. Not because I think it doesn't matter, but because I think it does. I also think the constant harping is simply a ploy to distract us from the real issues of the day. I have little doubt that John Kerry served with reasonable honor in a bloody, awful, pointless war 35 years ago. I've heard so directly, first-hand from Gene Thorson, an Iowan who served with him. The attacks by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans (started by another Iowan, to our shame) are ludicrous. And horribly effective during this dirty, vicious election season.

Now there seems to be something like an answer to the attacks (as if the recants by the original ad participants wasn't enough). A new film, Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry comes out this Friday in limited national release. It has been critically praised in Time magazine, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly:

If the big brains behind the Democratic presidential campaign are still in search of a strategy, they might want to consider getting every undecided voter in America to see Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry. This potent and eye-opening documentary, assembled by director George Butler (Pumping Iron) from a vast array of archival footage, shows us what the media has presented only in fragmentary glimpses: a compelling, blow-by-blow account of John Kerry's service in Vietnam -- and, more than that, the full revealing chronicle of how he ultimately came together with hundreds of his comrades to form Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

For show times and locations, go here. I'm disappointed that it is showing at three locations in the Des Moines metro area, but only one other location in the rest of the state. Time to make some phone calls.

Many times in the last year, I've thought about those women who fought so hard to achieve suffrage for women in this country. Last February, HBO premiered an astonishing film, Iron Jawed Angels, which dramatized the struggles of the 'second generation' of suffragists. This was a more outspoken, more militant group, determined to win the fight, and often clashing with their elders in the Cause.

I mention this because HBO is re-airing the film a number of times over the next month. For obvious reasons. Over 20 million young women who were eligible to vote in 2000 did not. That's shameful! A point that watching the film should drive home to you. Many historians question the tactics these women used, but no one questions that women's suffrage was long past due (well, no one with a soul, anyways).

I can't tell you how many women told me in 2000 that they just couldn't be 'bothered' to vote. That's insane. Even if you're conflicted about a presidential race, your local and legislative races have, if anything, MORE impact on your daily life.

So, for goodness' sake, VOTE already!

Food for thought: Are you registered to vote? ARE YOU SURE? Many people don't realize that they're not until they go to their polling place. It's generally too late at that point. Call your county elections office NOW and verify. It just takes a few minutes. Also, do you know where your polling place is? Many folks don't know, and end up not voting on the day. Find out!

It's been all over the blogs, and last night Richard Clarke discussed it with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. (Clarke was great, btw.) It's the worst kept secret in the government, so why haven't we, the public, seen it? It's the NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate, and I gather it is NOT a rosy picture; but it's at least a measure of honesty. So where is it? Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), along with an astonishing number of Republican legislators, are calling for it to be released, so we can have an honest look at where we are.

MoveOn.org has a petition to sign calling for the report's release.

Last night Clarke mentioned that the administration has plans for the tough spots in Iraq, which have predictions of very high American casualties, but that they're holding on to them until mid-November. I suppose it makes sense from their perspective. If they win, they have impunity for 4 more years. If they lose, they can try to get what they went to Iraq for (whatever that is) before they leave.

Now, I'm not one of those who believes we should summarily pull out of Iraq. I'm a firm believer in cleaning up one's own messes. But neither do I think a gratuitous loss of life is the answer. What I know to be true is that we cannot make decisions without accurate information. So bring on the report and let us be an informed electorate.

From the Oregon Mail Tribune:

A local librarian checking on a company’s request to set up a voter registration booth in the library discovered the company was not affiliated with a non-partisan national group as it claimed.

Sproul & Associates, Inc. of Phoenix, Ariz., phoned and mailed the library in September, saying it had been hired by America Votes.

That came as news to America Votes.

"This organization (Sproul) absolutely has nothing to do with America Votes," said Kevin Looper, the state organizing director for America Votes.

America Votes is a non-partisan political organization formed in July 2003 to increase voter registration, education and participation in electoral politics.

Libraries in Oregon and other states have been contacted by Sproul. Looper said attorneys at America Votes’ Washington, D.C. headquarters have taken over.

"We are in the process of pursuing all of our legal options to pursue (an order to) cease and desist."

But the man behind the matter says it was an innocent mistake.

"We were not trying to copy their name," said Nathan Sproul, owner of the consulting and management company. "All we were trying to do is register people to vote."

In September, the Jackson County Library Services Central Library received a letter from Sproul & Associates, Inc. which began:

"Our firm has been contracted to help coordinate a national non-partisan voter registration drive, America Votes! in several states across the nation."

The letter went on to ask if the company could register people to vote in front of the library.

Meghan O’Flaherty, headquarters library manager, contacted Kevin Looper, who informed her America Votes did not hire the firm.

That’s when she learned that Sproul & Associates, Inc. is a political consulting firm headed up by former Arizona state Republican Party executive director Nathan Sproul.

"The only problem I have with it ... is that they’re misrepresenting themselves as someone they’re not," she said. [emphasis mine, dirty tricks theirs]

Via LISNews.

This is only a political rant in the most obscure sense. I got an email from my friend Angie; her son, Peter, is my 'fairy godson' and much beloved. He's also four, which is a great age for inadvertent wisdom. Here's Ang's email:

Peter quote, when we somehow got on the topic of the
alphabet:

"Mama, I don't do W any more."

HA!

That's my good liberal boy

Lately I've been working to get folks registered to vote, and also to get folks to request absentee ballots. We have a huge elderly population in Iowa and many of them don't vote at the polls due to physical limitations, including the Iowa weather in November. Iowa has one of the most progressive mail-in vote systems in the country. I've been very impressed.

In that vein, America Votes, a coalition that includes MoveOn.org, is sponsoring a National Women's Election Action Day tomorrow. In particular they're focusing on single women, who did NOT vote in droves in 2000. To our shame, I feel.

There was a great quote my mother mentioned to me when we were discussing this last summer, which I paraphrase here: most young women won't let a man order their dinner, but they give up their right to make major decisions about their lives by failing to vote.

The America Votes push tomorrow will focus as follows:

This Saturday, women (and men) everywhere will join in a National Women's Election Action Day. Thousands of volunteers will take to the streets to register, recruit, educate, and mobilize voters to ensure that women stand up and are counted in this election.

Sign up now to take part, at:

http://www.americavotes.org/action/index.cfm?mg=moveon

Volunteers will participate in voter contact activities such as phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, campus organizing, activist trainings, and registering voters. The National Women's Election Action Day is being organized by America Votes, an unprecedented coalition including virtually every major progressive advocacy organization in America.

The most recent mailing from the Kerry campaign was hard-hitting. JaBbA's already blogged on it. All I can say is, let's hope they mean it. Gloves off, folks. The other guys are just better at this nasty game--we can't let them play us out!

Today is the 125th anniversary of Margaret Sanger's birth.

“She taught us, first, to look at the world as if women mattered.�
- Gloria Steinem on Margaret Sanger in TIME Magazine, 13 April 1998.

I've been wondering all day...what would she think of the U.S. today? What would she do? Would she still be fighting the same battle?

A recent email from MoveOn.org included the following:

Though you'd never know it from the TV news, a close look at the polls shows that the Republican convention was actually a bust for the President. According to the Gallup polling agency, Bush's bounce was "one of the smallest registered in Gallup polling history, along with Hubert Humphrey's two-point bounce following the 1968 Democratic convention [and] George McGovern's zero-point bounce following the 1972 Democratic convention . . . Bush's bounce is the smallest an incumbent president has received."[1] Bush's speech received slightly worse ratings from voters than John Kerry's, and according to the same Gallup poll, a remarkable 38% of voters said the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush.[2]

Let's not get cocky, folks! This is going to be as close as 2000, possibly more. Then again, technically we won that one, too...

David Brooks had an amusing column in Saturday's NY Times, on the donations given to the respective campaigns, broken down by profession:

There are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people. Spreadsheet people work with numbers, wear loafers and support Republicans. Paragraph people work with prose, don't shine their shoes as often as they should and back Democrats.

C.E.O.'s are classic spreadsheet people. According to a sample gathered by PoliticalMoneyLine in July, the number of C.E.O.'s donating funds to Bush's campaign is five times the number donating to Kerry's.

Professors, on the other hand, are classic paragraph people and lean Democratic. Eleven academics gave to the Kerry campaign for every 1 who gave to Bush's. Actors like paragraphs, too, albeit short ones. Almost 18 actors gave to Kerry for every 1 who gave to Bush. For self-described authors, the ratio was about 36 to 1. Among journalists, there were 93 Kerry donors for every Bush donor. For librarians, who must like Faulknerian, sprawling paragraphs, the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was a whopping 223 to 1.

Laura Bush has a lot of work to do in shoring up her base. [emphasis mine]

This one takes the cake. Or the brownies. From the AP, via the Star-Telegram:

Posted on Fri, Sep. 10, 2004

Cheney: Economic stats miss eBay sales

Associated Press

Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. is an Internet auction site where anyone can sell just about anything, including clothing, cell phones, jewelry, memorabilia, trinkets and automobiles.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.

"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement. [emphasis mine]

Best comeback I've heard yet in this race.

For the record, Mr. VP, I made about $100 last year on eBay. Will that pay down the whopping deficit you and your boss have created? How about the money I made at my garage sale (about $40). Want that?

Thanks to Ang for the laugh.

Like many women, I'm feeling increasingly harassed by the current administration. Since their first months in office, they've systematically turned back decades of progress in women's reproductive health, while providing jaw-dropping rationales for their policies. And it's not limited to adults. The teens are getting the party line, too. Again, from a Planned Parenthood email, with links to articles:

Abstinence-only sexuality education doesn't work. There is little evidence that teens who participate in abstinence-only programs abstain from intercourse longer than others. Despite this, President Bush promised to double federal funding of abstinence-only sex education programs in his State of the Union address this year.

When the U.S. has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the developed world, and American adolescents are contracting HIV faster than almost any other demographic group, we owe it to our children to fight for comprehensive sexuality education starting with their school boards.

As Laura Berman wrote in her recent editorial in USA Today, “We can eliminate neither the choices nor the risks inherent in our kids’ sexual development. We can, however, tackle the ignorance.�

I'm glad to hear PP discussing this not only as a health issue, but a censorship issue, as well. Limiting people's access to information is not what a free society should be about. If you feel so strongly about abstinence, create powerful, persuasive educational programs about it, to go side-by-side with ALL of the information available. It won't work on all kids, but it might on some, and then you're at least giving the rest ways to protect themselves.

One wonders if our president remembers being a teenager? Perhaps he was too stoned at the time?