thisiswhatyoushalldo

Don’ t Go Here

Wild Stuff. I told you not to go there.

Thank You For Being A Friend

Because tests are fun, and because Bea Arthur is beyond explanation, we now present:
Which Golden Girl are you? For the record, I am Dorothy, although I was hoping for Betty White.

Anti Bush Comic Now Pro Bush Comic

Dennis Miller has joined the Bush Campaign and is intending to stump for the president. He must have moved into a new tax bracket. In an almost related news, a totally unscientific poll on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Report shows that 88% believe the president won’t be reelected.

Convince Five

I am endeavoring on a new campaign. A campaign to get a Democrat in the White House. A campaign to get Bush out of the White House. As a lower middle class, average white guy, there isn’t a lot I can do to effect huge national policy. I don’t have deep pockets and a limitless checkbook. But I do have friends. And my friends have friends. And their friends have friends. That’s all politics is, really, after all. Spreading the word among connected peoples.
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neil said that all politics is local. And I have to agree. Locally organized, the body politic can be a dangerous force that any incumbent or challenger has to deal with. The right wing conservative body has been actively organizing at the grassroots, local, precinct level since 1979, while the Democrats have maintained a devotion to old school courting of union support, elderly support and finger pointing. This has to change or the GOP will stay in power for a very, very, very long time.

So my challenge to anybody who reads this – or to anybody who I come across – is to convince five non-voters, or five Republican voters to vote against Bush. And get them commit to convince five of their friends to vote against Bush. And little by little, a movement might be born.
I tire of the name calling on both sides. As much as I enjoy reading the Democratic Underground’s weekly list of conservative SNAFUs, it doesn’t help the cause, because they are talking to the choir. Limbaugh, Savage and O’ Reilly are also talking to the choir and their name calling only solidifies their base and certainly doesn’t convert voters.
But former Clinton economic advisor Jeff Faux said it best recently at a speech the Association of Democratic Activists when he realized while listening to Rush one evening that while drunk right wingers call into the Limbaugh, the Democrats have no one calling in to push their case.
“Where are our drunks?” he posed, meaning that there is a more entrenched systematic attempt by the GOP and conservative element to make sure the conservative message is always heard and clogs the airwaves. The Democrats have no such effort and will always be the opposition if it doesn’t get awakened and organized.
I don’t want to wait until Antonin Scalia is named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court before we decide to get off the couch and do something.
James Carville put a book out a few years back entitled “We’re Right, They’re Wrong” an answer to Rush and the Republican message. In the book, Carville said the Democrats need to have their own talking points to have ready at barbeques and pta meetings when that blustering conservative in the crowd begins to blather about politics.
Get the book.
His arguments for education, taxation environmental, welfare and social security policies are as sound now as they were when he wrote them six years ago. Use it is a starting point to convince five conservatives to vote against Bush.
Faux takes it even farther. He said that every family has the grouchy right wing conservative uncle or brother in law. He challenges Democrats to convince that person to vote against Bush. He challenges Democrats to pick up the phone and challenge O’Reilly and Savage and Limbaugh. Take the beating they give and then, call back and prepare to fight again. If five callers call those shows every week, Faux said, Democrats can get elected because candidates can point to real support heard by their constituents.
We all know at least five conservative-minded voters who have no clue about what Bush is doing to this country. I know we all feel that making a larger federal government presence in everyone’s lives isn’t the path we support. Find these people and make an effort to convince them to vote against Bush in the next election.
It is more positive than name calling and hand wringing as we try to figure out what to do next.

To do my part I will do three things:

1. I will convince five voters to vote against Bush.

2. I will get a commitment from those five to find five more voters.

3. I will post some talking points here and links to other positive resources to help make your arguments. And provide resources to help sell this home.

Click my contact link above if you agree or disagree and let me hear about it. I have a mission to get someone else in the White House and in the words of President John Wayne, you are with me or against me.

Candy cigs and comic books

Remember these? Ah, those were the days. The cigarette industry and the candy industry working hand in hand.

I swiped this from a post on Metafilter but doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. How about the The New Yorker Book of Martini Cartoons? This is fun. You can enter in a subject and the New Yorker website will put together a group of cartoons with that theme. For more fun, try dot com and business. Hours of unproductive fun.

Break Time

In a never ending quest to always have some way to remain unproductive, I present for your enjoyment”
The coffeebreak arcade. A collection of shockwave games of all sorts.
Now remember, you have to do your chores first before you can boast your high scores. Or, as they say at The AOL 12-year-old translator:
IM VERY GOD AT PLAYNG COLAPSA1!!!! WTF LOL

Dude, Where’s My God?

According to belief.net’s Belief o matic I am more closely aligned with the Quakers and Unitarian church, but also in a three way tie with Buddhism, Liberal Protestantism and Neo Paganism.
What is your Theology IQ?

Bully!

I am about 300 pages into The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. I have always been fascinated by this guy and remember reading a young adult biography about him at the library as a boy.
But I must say, Morris has put this man’s life on paper in vivid prose and stirring narrative. This is an enjoyable read and Morris does a magnificent job in telling the story of Tweed. It won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1979 when it was originally published. And it was revised and expanded in 2001, just before the release of Theodore Rex, which is next on the reading list.
But you can’t help but feel how things have radically changed in the Republican party when you compare GOP loyalist Roosevelt – trust buster, environmentalist, determined to be independent of the party machine and reknowned for his brain, wit, energy and intelligence and compare that to the current state of the Republican party and its current leader.
Bush has said in the past that he greatly admires Roosevelt and hopes to emulate him (what modern President hasn’t said those things), but except for a short little sabre rattling war to start a new century, the comparisons cannot be made.
Not even close.