politics

Today's the last day that a contribution to a candidate running for office will make any real difference. If you've been thinking about kicking down, now's the time, and even $20 can help.

Last night I went out with my partners for a Larrupin' dinner, and this morning I dropped the same amount on Jerry McNnerney who's down South, a PhD in Math, a Wind-Power expert and running against greasy-oilman Dick Pombo. That $200 contribution (ouch!) is enough to get me on the FEC's lists. Yeehaw.

Fly my pretties! Fly!

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconier
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Win or lose, there's going to be a brief window for political types to some formin', stormin' and normin' before they have to start performing again in the great dance of 2008.

On my side of things, there are lots of fights waiting to break out, some of which flare up already.

There's a huge brewing battle in the incoming wave -- not my people, but the 30 and 40-somethings -- over slices of the pie, positions of influence, credit and blame. I also think there's a reckoning coming with the men from the women, who have not been that well represented lately.

There's also an internet fight waiting to happen between the younger, smaller, more hungry and open companies (like mine, but also a lot of others) and the existing biggies of online campaigns, none of whom are really exemplary. That should be fun.

Over on the other side, with the prospect of power slipping away, it would appear that there's blood in the water. I don't have much insight, but since I know our fight is going to be real and hard and brutal for a bit, I certainly hope they clobber one-another too, and maybe even bust up some of their hellish coalitions for a while.

Will be intersting to watch and be a part of. I'm not really directly engaged in this national election -- although local issues are piquing my interest. In truth I'll probably get more engaged afterwards, when the course-charting for '08 begins.

This is brutal:

It's heart-wrenching, but he also nails the pronounciation of "Missouri." That's training, baby. That is motherfucking training. Hats off, Michael.

This is personal too. My g-moms has the Parkensens, though thanks to good medication she usually does a little better than Mr. Fox looks here.

Michael does the nice-guy thing, so I'll fill in the bad cop.

Seriously, fuck Jim Talent. Fuck him with a spiky sandpaper dildo, and deny him even that brokeback spit-lube. He's a corrupt, sold-out hack who probably doesn't even personally give a shit about Stem Cells, but he knows what his fundimentalist freak base wants to hear. I've had it with these faux-pious anti-science bastards shitting all over our country.

It's time to take it back.

Billmon has a soul-searching post up, provoked by the first post in months from Iraqi blogger Riverbend which is in itself a vital read. His post reflects on our moral responsibility for the depth of the carnage in Iraq, which is what I want to talk about for a second:

I opposed the invasion -- and the regime that launched it -- but I didn't do everything I could have done. Very few did. We may have put our words and our wallets on the line, but not our bodies. Not when it might have made a difference. In the end, we were all good little Germans.

I also opposed the invasion, but I want to point out the logical and moral trap that comes from "you can always do more." It's true. You can always do more, but you can't always win.

Let's take Billmon's point that we didn't "lay our bodies on the line" seriously. Let's assume that the 2.5M or so people who protested here in the US were all ready to throw down. Would lying down in traffic have stopped the war? Would a mass hunger strike? Would violent resistance?

I'm pessimistic about all those options. The only way to imagine Bush not being able to launch that war would be to re-imagine the last 12 years of political history, starting with how the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf war went down, and the lessons learned there. The truth is I have no doubt that at zero-hour, or even in the Summer of 2002, mass resistence from 2.5 million Americans wouldn't have stopped the war. In fact, it may have deeply worsened the situation.

At that time, it could have led to mass arrests, and those arrests would likely have been applauded by enough people. Political leaders would have been pressed to denounce the resistance. It would have made the vaguely fascist overtones of 2006 America look like the summer of love.

Nothing less than a full-scale civil war (or a functioning opposition party) could have ever presented a challenge to Bush's misadventure. I think Billmon more than most appreciates that; so enough with the self-loathing.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the only way to dodge this bullet would be for George W Bush not to have been President during 9/11. In that respect, we all failed, and our democracy failed, both in allowing him to assume power at an all-time low point for our electoral system, and in presenting the kind of social environment which allowed him to so blatently and groutesquely hump that tragedy into an unrelated exercise in mass death.

Furthermore, it's wrong to assume that dissenters who failed or even cheerleaders and button pushers bear full or direct responsibility for all this. That's a rather imperialist position, Billy, to deny the people living and dying in Iraq the responsibility for their choices. Come now.

It's all connected, but I didn't handcuff, torture, execute and behead 60 people last night, and neither did the 3rd Infantry Division or the Generals who put them there, or even the President who commands these Generals and launched the war. I don't sympathize with Bush's rhetoric or find it especially useful, but the truth is that these are the acts of evil men who are Iraqi, not us. Soon they and their ilk will once again run the country, and our little experiment will be over.

True, it would not have gone down that way if we didn't try to play God over there. And yeah, I feel war guilt. It's a fucking awful thing, but I don't think there's anything I could have done that would have stopped it, other than having the presence of mind in October 2000 to spend three weeks in Florida. Lord knows I could hustle up 600 votes in three weeks. But I was a long way away from that kind of consciousness at the time; I voted for Ralph Fucking Nader.

It's that consciousness -- that politics matters in a bloody-knuckles kind of way -- that drove me into this business in the first place, out of art and out of lax second-wave hipster bohemia and post-college fun. And I grew to dispise that lack of insight, that blindness. I once had a guy try to tell me in early 2004 that Gore would have done the same thing (invade Iraq after 9/11) and I just about slapped the shit out of him. That's ignorance, brothers and sisters, and it's a particularly dangerous breed.

So get wise. Vote early and vote often; emancipate yourselves from mental slavery and appreciate the full range of your agency. This isn't your war, but you can still help bring our part in it to and end. It won't stop the bloodshed, but then again, nothing will.

Vagabond Opera show was fffantastic. I now crave a friday-night booking at the 330 club so we can really do it up right. More on that later. For now, I give you a link. It's about politics, but I'm linking because it's a great piece of Gonzo Jounrnalism from a fellow traveller:

Matt Stoller rides "The Debate Train to Crazy-Town".

Truly, he must have been visited -- just for a minute -- by the ghost of HST, spiritual godfather to all bloggers.

If you're into or curious about Net Neutrality, Watch Bill Moyers tonight. His show will include a live (east coast) debate between Lying Telco Shill Mike McCurry and Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press.

McCurry was truly scurrelous the one time I saw him in a debate, back in May at the Personal Democracy Forum. Like, maddening. By the end I was heckling from the crowd. I don't know how Ben Scott is, but I've been pretty disappointed that none of the reps on our side can seem to make a convincing argument that doesn't get lost in legal or technical mumbo jumbo.

It's fucking simple: do you want the future of the internet in the US to be up to individual people, or up to huge, monopolistic, slothful corporations?

Sadly, this is an issue with very little public profile, so it will likely be decided internally by congress, which gives the edge to the corporations and their sweet sweet campaign contributions.

Anyway, the show's at 10, but I won't watch it. Just get my blood pressure up, and anyway I'll be at the Vagabond Opera show down at Humbrews.

An idea who's time has come:

And this is the brilliance -- it is a conversation starter, and the conversation that it begins will be a vital one that you might not otherwise have had about the importance of a Democratic majority. The conversation might begin, "Hey, so you decided to grow out your moustache, eh?" or "Couldn't help but notice you're lookin' like a slovenly idiot nowadays, what's that about?" But from there, the answer immediately turns the conversation to your explanation -- they will laugh, it will be a fun conversation, and yet by the time you're finished you will have had exactly the kind of person-to-person contact that is so valued by campaigns everywhere, and perhaps the person who so admired your 'stache will now be much more inclined to vote, to volunteer, or to support your local Dem candidate. And, as noted in #1, the whole process was hilarious.

In my continual hope that we don't end up with a stupid perpetual war, this polling is a bit unnerving. It is from FoxNews, and uses whatever stats-screen they have to zero in on "Likely Voters," but it is s a real poll. The major indications are likely correct.

30. Do you agree or disagree with the view that the military action being taken overseas in Iraq is necessary to protect Americans from having to fight radical Muslim terrorists on U.S. soil?

31. How likely do you think it is that within the next 20 years the United States will be involved in an all-out war with radical Muslim extremists that will affect our families and way of life?

But here's a ray of sunshine: about 3/4 of people (including a majority of Republicans) say it's time to start bringing our troops home from Iraq. I agree.

28. Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statement. The United States has sacrificed enough for the people of Iraq, and now it is time that they take on most of the burden of security in their country and let U.S. troops start to come home.

And a creepy cloud of darkness: A solid majority of Republicans see no difference between the behavior of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton, or actually think what Clinton did was worse.

36. Which do you think is worse? (ROTATE)
SCALE: 1. Mark Foley using instant messaging to talk about sex with teenage boys or 2. Bill Clinton having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky? 3. (No difference) 4. (Don’t know)

That's the party of moral values for ya.

Washington, Washington... 6-foot-20, fucking kiling for fun:

Here come's George, in control
Women love his snuff and his gallant stroll
Ate opponents brains
And invented cocaine
He's coming / He's coming
He's coming / He's coming

And as an extra bonus, something my old colleague Jeremy Rosen made which strikes me as an excelent little production. Seems like something I would do with Frank if the times were different.

Conversations with Fiona Apple:

Finally, one for real politics. This is possibly the best "go vote" ad I've ever seen. It's intelligent, it's sophisticated, and it's humorous without being self-depricating. It's Women's Voices Women's Vote:

If there's any one thing that could get the progressive bandwaggon (health care! health care!) going in this country, it would be if younger/single women started voting in greater numbers.