Open Thread: Show 68
Listen here. Comment below. Baseball been beddy beddy good to me.

The Curse Is Over
The Boston Red Sox, going against eighty-six years of history and one of the most well-known curses in sports history, swept the St. Louis Cardinals in 4 games to win the World Series.

I don't have words for how remarkable they played, coming back from being down three games to none against their hated rivals, the Yankees, something that has never been done in over a hundred years of World Series history. And they defeated both the Yankees and the Cardinals, the two teams that have won more World Series than those two.

So congratulations Red Sox, champions of baseball for the first time since 1918.

Just Curious
If you or I, that is, people who get paid an hourly salary, did something at work that cost my company a lot of money and hurt its reputation, then tried to cover it up or blame it on former employees, how long would I last on the job?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Personal responsibility, my ass.

Rush To War
It's kinda last minute, but I just got wind of a documentary called "Rush To War" by Robert Taicher. He's planning on distributing, free of charge, 40,000 copies of the DVD in several of the swing states, including Florida and Ohio this coming weekend, in advance of the election. I saw the trailer on the site and it looked very good, I recommend you check it out. You can find more information about the film, watch the trailer and download an MP3 called "George Bush Blues" at the website.

Open Thread: Show 67
Listen here. Comment below. Puppies!

Maybes
We had a meeting the other day about layoffs. Since the business of the shop where I work is geared towards construction, layoffs are generally a seasonal matter, so the talk doesn't disturb me much. The company has been in the process of moving certain assembly lines to Mexico, and while that has been accomplished to a certain extent, there is continually talk about a massive group of layoffs. Last year, we were told to expect these layoffs this summer, but they never really materialized. Now they're talking about being at the end of January.

The main person present at the meeting we had was Rick, the plant manager. He told us, as we were told last year, not to wait until the last minute, and to start looking for work now. But that seems to me to be a pointless exercise; I mean, first of all, we're talking about three months from now, how can I possibly do a serious job search knowing I won't be really free to start work at the end of January? And that's even assuming the layoffs take place as scheduled. I've looked around, and there's absolutely nothing at my current skill level that is going to pay as well, or have the same kind of benefits, that my current job does, I see no point in quitting a job that may not be perfect, but has a certain amount of security and earns me pretty decent money compared to similar jobs. Mind you, if I do see something that ha the same pay and bennies (or better) and something that sounds a little more secure, you can bet I'll switch in a heartbeat. But the odds are pretty much against that. That's what I told Rick. I could have added that no employer in his/her right mind is going to wait for me: I mean, one of the other people at the meeting was the head of human resources, if I were an applicant for Siemens, and I told him I couldn't start until late January, and I might continue with my job past that time, what would he do? Hire someone else.

Now maybe these executive types do things differently, I see in the papers how CEO's and other execs "retire" but stay on until a replacement is found, or wait around for someone to fill in, but at this level that's just not going to happen. If, as I told Rick, these pronouncements were written on stone tablets and delivered from Mt. Sinai, that is, if we could be 100% sure of these dates, that would be a different story. For me, I'm showing up to work until they tell me to stop or until I find something better, period. I can't make decisions based on maybes. And when some of the new people ask those of us who have been around for awhile about how long they'll be working, that's exactly what I tell them. Keep showing up until they tell you to stop.

Oh, and another thing, the new people of course insist on busting their asses, which is all well and good, but, I keep telling them, how hard you work makes little or no difference in determining whether you stay on or not. Temps are temps, period, and the company has its own methods of determining who stays and who goes. On my assembly line we had a lot of very good, very hard workers, it did them no good at all. They got let go just as fast as the slackers.

Finally, sorry there wasn't a new show on Thursday once again, with the wife sick weekdays are a little harder for me since in addition to work, I have to cook and clean up, which doesn't always give me time. I was going to say that I'll only be doing one show a week, but I think I'll just stick with doing a Thursday show when I can. Just so you all know.

Just A Reminder
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14-defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Open Thread: Show 66
Listen here. Comment below. Don't be a Republican cultist. Join us on Planet Earth.

The Great Leap Backward
With two weeks left to go to the election (and, remarkably enough, still a considerable amount of people "undecided"), the country stands at a crossroads once again. I have said before that we have already lost the important battle (the 2000 election), but we have one more chance to turn the tide and avoid a disastrous new four years for the Bush administration. This page is, of course, supporting Senator John Kerry for President, and despite my former reservations about him ("too establishment" I thought), I now stand behind him all the way, with no qualifiers. More than just a vote against Mr. Bush, a vote for Sen. Kerry is a vote to affirm that the American Democratic Republic is still alive and kicking, that we have not abandoned the idea of self-rule in favor of a quasi-nobility of corporate CEOs and their toadies in politics. We have a long way to go to reverse the damage that has been done over the past four years, but I still believe, naive though it sounds, that we can accomplish much if we set our minds to it. Things were a lot worse for American workers a century ago, there's no reason to believe that we can't overcome the obstacles we face now.

Juan Cole describes the Bush administration as a right-wing version of Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward", in the sense of political ideology trumping reality. David Suskind's chilling article in today's NY Times Magazine gives examples of this that ought to frighten every American, especially those of us who live at or near the bottom of the economic ladder. From the article:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

How many of us at work experience that same kind of attitude from our employers? Goals are set without any concern as to how things really are in the workplace, in part because the people giving the orders have never had to do the actual work. Such is how things are with the Bush administration. Rumsfeld says we can secure Iraq with only 130,000 troops, and we will be greeted with flowers. How would Rumsfeld know about what soldiers have to do? He never was one himself, why should he be concerned? Their job is to make him look good, their sacrifices are made for his (and his boss's) glory, not for the defense of the country.

But where Mao's "Great Leap Forward" was in part about modernization, our Great Leap, should Bush regain office, is and will continue to be be a backwards one, back to the days of the Gilded Age where government was little more than the tool of powerful corporations, only now their reach is a global one. I agree with Professor Cole that our Great Leap will not be as disastrous for us as Mao's was for China, we have a social infrastructure that even the Bush administration will have trouble dismantling in four years. But for working people in the US it will be a total disaster. Despite the rhetoric you hear, our taxes will go up, and our ability to pay them will go down. The only ones who will prosper are those who are best at rigging the system for their benefit, and those of us who want nothing more than to work an honest job and support ourselves and our families will suffer. Suffer more, that is.

Suskind's article opens with a prediction that, should Bush be installed for another four years, there will be a revolt within the Republican Party. I don't believe this for a minute. I have come to believe that Republicans and their hardcore supporters are a cult, not a political party. Since Lincoln was shot, and moreso since Teddy Roosevelt abandoned the party over progressive issues, the GOP has had the same mantra: help the rich and the rest will follow. This unchanging attitude and blind faith in the unfettered free market system was a disaster for the country in the 1920's, so again in the 80's, and especially now. We have one last chance to reverse this course, or at least slow it down so that we can rebuild our political power. Let's do it.

Dang It
I was planning on having a show up today, but I'm having trouble with the program I use to mix the show. This is one of those times where, if I didn't have to go out and go to work, I could have had it taken care of by now. As it is, trying to fix the problem has also taken time away from writing new posts. Anyway, the long and short of it is that the show I was planning for Thursday will in fact be on Sunday. If and when I ever get the chance to do this professionally, I can keep a more regular schedule.

It's My Show, Dammit
Last Sunday, I was on Thomas Reynold's News Maverick radio show, which is a combined internet/broadcast show. Tom is a "social liberal" who, believe it or not, is voting for the Libertarian candidate this year, for which I rightfully chastised him on my show and his. Clips of the interview will be available on Thursday's show. Anyway, after I was on, he had on a "conservative" guy in order to be "fair and balanced". I listened for about five minutes and then turned it off, because I like to listen to these so-called "conservative" assholes about as much as a nerd likes to listen to jocks speak about sports.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was, sometimes people ask me why I don't have "conservatives" on my show to balance my viewpoint. Let me be very clear about this:
First and foremost, this is my fucking show, and I will have on who I want. Since there are so many venues for these so-called conservatives to rant and rave, I don't see any need to waste my time with them.

Second, I'm not very good at the confrontational stuff. So many radio talk show hosts thrive on their ability to go after someone who disagrees with them, and even the best of them find themselves getting their asses whooped every now and again. And since their entire show is built around their personality, it takes a lot of spin to get that feeling of invincibility back. If the other hosts want to play that game, let them. Just don't expect me to.

Finally, I'm not going to have a discussion with anyone who doesn't live on Planet Earth. There are indeed very serious issues dealing with the ideological difference between rightist and leftist politics, but you can bet your ass you're not going to get that kind of discussion from the meatballs who call themselves "conservative" now. They live in a fantasy world all their own, and aren't interested in looking at any other point of view, mainly they're just looking to boost up their own ego by tearing down someone else, and spend far too much time and energy being full of themselves to really try to understand what the fuck is going on with this country. You don't have to believe me, just listen to any right wing talk show and hear it for yourself, or read what the right wingers say on their own sites or when they troll on leftist sites.

The day may come when I find someone on the right who can talk about the real issues that divide conservativism and liberalism, and the serious, important things that are happening all over the world, but you're not going to see anything like that for a while. The right wing of this country, the rabid fanatics who represent the leadership of the GOP, their paid shills in the so-called "professional" media, and their cultist followers are too busy living in Bizarro Earth for me to want to give them any of my precious time. I tolerate the trolls that post here, but remember, you do so at my discretion. Fair or not, that's how it is.

Anyway, that's it. Just letting you all know where I stand.

Good News
On a personal note. Since I had to take almost all of last week off to be with my wife, who was admitted to the hospital yet again, I was worried that it would lose me my job. It's a long story, but essentially it had to do with how much emergency family leave I was allowed to take, and the request for leave had to be approved at higher management levels. If it had been turned down, I would have far exceeded the amount of unexcused absences I am allowed, and I could easly have been let go. As crappy as my job is, and as much as I wish I could find a etter way to earn money, right now I need the money and the benefits that come with it. Losing almost a week's worth of pay is pretty devastating, but losing my income and benefits altogether would be disastrous, especially at this point.

Of course, I had plenty of evidence to support me, medical records that clearly showed that my wife was admitted on Monday and released on Thursday, and a note from my own doctor for my medical procedure on Friday. But they still could have been pricks about it if they wanted to, they're either far more compassionate than I thought they were or they figured it wouldn't be worth the hassle to fight me over it. If I got fired and had sued them I think my chances in court would have been pretty good. But really, the upper management where I work isn't so bad. I mean, they're not perfect, but a lot of other places would have dropped me like a hot potato.

So anyway I'm back at work, I hope I can hang on there for a while. Cathy is back home, but her condition won't change until she gets the surgery she needs, and we won't even know when that will be until next week. The wait is frustrating...

Christopher Reeve RIP
Christopher Reeve died tonight. He was 52. Another hero gone...

DUBYA

The Movie

Open Thread: Show 65
Listen here. Comment below. Bangitty Bangitty Bang...

No Hell For You!
Audio Hell was my Saturday music show, which personal circumstances have forced me to give up. I did, however, record one final show with my friends Matt Murray and CB Smith from Corn Pone Flicks about punk music. It was actually recorded a few weeks ago, but because of personal issues I just got around to mixing it yesterday and it is now available on the site. You can:

Click Here to stream it as an .m3u file.
Click Here to stream it as a .pls file.
Right-Click Here and select "Save Target As" to download the mp3 file directly into your system.

Keep in mind that this is a huge file, over 126M in size, so if you have dial-up it'll be a LONG download and may be difficult to stream. If anyone wants it on a CDROM, e-mail me and we can work something out.

As an aside, as much as I love doing the talk show, I really do like doing the DJ thing, and while I was forced to give up the Saturday show, I haven't given up on the idea of doing a music show. I'm still trying to figure out what to call it (Originally I had wanted to do a novelty/comedy show like Dr. Demento, but since the format I really like is a combination of different kinds of music and comedy, I was thinking along the lines of "Uncle Joe's Good Times Variety Show". If anyone has a better suggestion for a name, e-mail me or leave a post in the comments section below). The idea is for me to make a few shows based on particular topics (TV themes, Movie themes, Politics, Religion, etc.) and put them on a server for people to listen to, and to put on an audio CD and send it out hoping to get some sort of syndication deal.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the show...we now return to our regularly scheduled program...

Careful
I was thinking about some earlier comments to another posts, where Ross, one of our right wing posters, admitted he had never heard of Orwell's classic book Animal Farm. My old nemesis BChan rightly pointed out that he book was about leftist corruption and not fascism, though as usual he implied that it was liberalism Orwell was talking about and not Communism, as Animal Farm is based on events in Soviet Russia. In any event, my point is that while the causes of Communism and Fascism are different, they often use the same tactics politically. In this sense there's not a lot of difference between left and right. Of course, if you want to see another book that has inspired the political atmosphere we currently live in, click here.

Of course, the fanatical right in this country prefers being the underdog because it's the best way to rally their troops, which is why you still hear them sounding like the victims despite the fact that they control the Presidency, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and most importantly, a significant part of the media, either by owning it outright or by intimidating those who might otherwise be objective reporters of the truth. But one of the problems with this attitude is that all too often, when you achieve the goal you wanted, you don't have a plan for what happens afterwards. Be careful what you wish for, so the saying goes, you just might get it. All the GOP has done with its power is use it to get more power and to demonize anyone who doesn't go along with them. It's very much like how we're dealing with Iraq: We went in and took over very quickly but had no real plan for what would happen afterwards. One has to ask if this was intentional, or if they really believed that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators? It's so hard to tell with these delusional fanatics.

Let's Face It
You know, in the end, the whole left-right thing really doesn't matter so much as the idea that we have a bunch of fucking lunatics running the country, an even bigger bunch of fucking lunatics in the so-called "professional" media who insist on perpetuating the idea that the first bunch of lunatics in any way shape or form should be allowed anywhere near that kind of political power, and behind all of them is the 18% of the country* that voted the lunatics in to begin with, and will probably vote for them again come November.

Anyone outside of that 18% who saw either of the two debates has to be wondering how a raving lunatic like Bush ever got in in the first place. Did any of you see this guy, running around like Phil Donahue goofed up on hepballs, waving his arms around, making faces, and throwing temper tantrums? Jeebus...how could anyone outside of that 18% think that this is a good thing?

I was going to say I need a drink but then I remembered, I don't drink.

Maybe it's time I started.

Jeebus.

*US Population 2000: 281,421,906 . Voted for Bush: 50,456,002, which makes 17.93%

Bangitty Bangitty Bang
The joke goes like this:
A soldier loses his rifle during a battle, and goes to his sergeant to get a replacement. There were no more rifles, so the sergeant gives the soldier a broomstick and says "Point it at the enemy and go 'Bangitty Bangitty Bang'." The soldier gives the sergeant an "are you kiddin' me?" look, but the sergeant insists. Sarcastically, the soldier asks what to do if the enemy gets through this barrage of fire and he has to face him in hand-to-hand combat. The sergeant gets out a piece of string, ties it to one end of the stick and says "When they get close, hit them with the string and say 'Stabbitty stabbity stab'." The soldier is unconvinced, but the sergeant orders him into the battle anyway.

Not knowing what else to do, when he saw an enemy soldier he pointed his broomstick and yelled "Bangitty bangitty bang!". The enemy fell to the ground, dead. Hardly believing his eyes, he tries this again on a couple of other enemy soldiers with the same results. Then an enemy starts walking towards him, slowly. "Bangitty bangitty bang!" the soldiers shout, but the enemy keeps coming. Twice more he fires his broomstick and the enemy continues to move, slowly but surely, towards him. When the enemy gets close enough, the soldier jumps out of his foxhole and whips him with the string, yelling "Stabitty Stabitty Stab!", but it has no effect, and the enemy solder knocks him down and proceeds to walk right over him, crushing him and breaking his bones. As he fades into unconsciousness, the soldier hears the enemy say "Tankitty tankitty tank".

For the last thirty years or so, the right has been building an army of people shouting "Bangitty bangitty bang!" and just as it was for the soldier, it's been pretty effective, partly because there are people who really believe their broomsticks are working, and partly because they have been aided in their fiction by a so-called "professional" media that's either part of the illusion or has likewise been suckered into it. And lately we are beginning to see more and more people realizing that the broomstick crowd has, shall we say, a dubious hold on reality. As Digby points out, in an essay on the recent VP debate:

...I think Cheney may have set a record for how many times a candidate can outright, baldfacedly lie in an hour and a half on national television. And that's saying something. He and Junior really are living in some sort of dreamworld where they apparently don't have to worry that their every previous public statement is noted and available for the whole world to see. Here on planet earth we have google and lexis-nexis and we can dig up all the examples of when they said things they claim they didn't say.

When I read this, I started thinking about the televangelist, Peter Popoff I think is his name is. Anyway, this guy was the guy I talked about on my last show (#64), the guy who was supposedly performing miracles by calling out the names of people in the audience and saying what they were praying for, even though he had never met them. Of course what was really going on was that his wife, who had all the prayer cards these people filled out beforehand, was feeding him the info through an earpiece. When skeptic James Randi revealed this trick on the Tonight Show, those watching saw easily that Popoff was nothing more than a con artist. But the people in that audience, his followers, would never hear about it (or if they did, they wouldn't believe it) because one of the things they're told is not to listen to anyone who isn't a "Christian". They would never watch the Tonight Show, they would only watch "Christian" news and "Christian" channels because everything else, they're told, is run by Satan.

Since these very people are the most rabid base of the GOP, it should come as no surprise, then, that Bush and Cheney can feel free to tell such whoppers. These people would never believe anything contrary to what Bushco said, even on the rare occasion that they would even hear it. As I and others have said many times before, this isn't a presidential administration, it's a personality cult. It's impossible for some of these people to believe anything bad about Mr. Bush and his administration, no matter how trivial, because they have so much invested in the illusion that's been created. Likewise it's impossible for them to believe anything good about Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards, because they have so much invested in believing that they are evil incarnate. And they believe that we feel the same way about Kerry as they feel about Bush. Again, it's all part of the illusion that's been built up. But sooner or later reality comes into play, because no matter how hard you try, there are just some things you can't escape. You can yell "Bangitty bangitty bang" all you want, but that won't make the Iraqis stop the car bombs. You can scream "Stabitty stabitty stab!" till your voice gets hoarse, but that won't put and end to al-Qaeda and make the world a safer place. Do Bush and Cheney really believe what they are saying, or are they just saying what their base wants to hear? I don't know, my best guess will be that it's a little bit of both, but the reality is that there are over a thousand dead US soldiers and many more wounded, and tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of Iraqi dead, with no end in sight.

Seventy years ago, just before the stock market crash, the same kind of people were saying the same kinds of things about the economy that the Bush people are saying about Iraq and the War On Terror: Don't worry, everything will be just fine, just trust us. Bangitty bangitty bang. Stabitty stabitty stab. But, as Frank Rich says, Eventually you become a prisoner of your own fiction and lose touch with reality. So unless they actually do something in the real world, the world that exists outside of the propaganda bubble the right has built for itself, the last words they'll hear just before they get their asses handed to them will be the same words they heard in 1932:

Tankitty Tankitty Tank.

The Best Take On The Debate
Yeah I know, this was from last week, but man, does John Stewart rock...

You have to sit through a ten-second Wanda Sykes commercial. Just so you know.

Click Here

FYI
The wife is in the hospital again, she will probably be there all this week. She's in a semi-private room which means I won't be able to spend the night with her, but I plan on being with her as much as I can. It's possible that while she is in the hospital, she will be getting the surgery that she needs, and I'm taking emergency medical leave from work in order to be with her. Since I will be home in the evenings, I should be able to keep track of the comments and stuff, I might even be able to do a show, it depends on how tired I am. I'm just letting you all know in case you thought I died or got taken by the Secret Police or something.

PS: has the blog appeared funny in the last day or so? It's been loading strangely for me..

PPS: Use this as an open thread for the VP debate tonight...

Open Thread: Show 64
Listen here. Comment below. Wake Up!

Wake The Hell Up
It was a short work week for me, as I had Monday and Tuesday off for medical reasons (it'll be a short week next week too, I'll have Thursday and Friday off for a different medical procedure). I seem to finally be fitting in a little better on the assembly line, but of course that could change very quickly. We currently have a lot of temps working with us, and business is good (mainly because of the Florida hurricanes, plus this is normally our busy time). But that doesn't seem to be helping the temps: they were told on Thursday that they would all be let go in two weeks, and none of them were particularly happy about it. I commented to one of my co-workers that it just goes to show how bad things are in this country that people are happy even to have our crappy job. And yes, it is a crappy job, it's just better than many of the alternatives.

Thirty years ago, these kinds of jobs were the staple of our economy, and someone who had a job like mine could afford to support a whole family. Nowadays, that's not really possible. I can barely support my wife and I. She's applied for disability, if she gets accepted it will help out a lot, but as it is, we're having difficulty just making ends meet.. And we're better off than a lot of other people, too.

I don't give a damn about employment statistics, which is why you almost never hear me talk about them on the show, or write about me. Statistics are important but they don't always tell the whole story. The official unemployment rate is still around 5.5%, but that doesn't include the millions of people who are still working, only for a fraction of what they were making five or ten years ago. It also doesn't include those who have completely given up looking for work, people who don't show up on the statistics because they either never applied for unemployment insurance or ran out. And I don't need any damn statistic to tell me how good or bad things are now. I talk to working people all the time, at the supermarket, at my workplace, every chance I get, and nobody is really happy. Even people I know who have a bit more money are worried about the future.

Which brings me to my point.

I've been getting into arguments with some of my friends on the left concerning the coming election, most notably those in the bartcop chat room, about who will win and what will happen in the aftermath. Naturally, the bartcoppers want Kerry to win (as do I), but some are just a little too enthusiastic for my tastes: some even say that Kerry is going to win "in a landslide".

I'll be frank: I don't think Kerry is going to win. This does not mean that I think he is a bad candidate, or is running a bad campaign. Far from it. But the playing field is tilted so far against him that it's going to take nothing short of a hand-of-God type miracle for him to be able to pull this off. Some of the bartcoppers don't like to hear this, they say I'm "quitting". This is, of course, pure bullshit. I am not "quitting". It's just a question of facing reality. Nothing happens fast in politics, even a Kerry victory would do little to change things. Will he have a Democratic House and Senate to work with? If he does, will they give him the same kind of loyalty the GOP gives Bush? I doubt it. Will the so-called "professional" media suddenly stop whoring for their corporate interests and begin to actually do their jobs as newspeople? Get real. The GOP lives in one fantasy world, where our soldiers are greeted with flowers in Iraq, some of us live in another, where changing Presidents means that suddenly things will turn around. It just doesn't happen that way, people. On Laura Flanders' show, I was asked about Kerry's play to raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour over five years, and I said "they ought to raise it to $15 and hour and do it immediately". Does anyone seriously think that's going to happen, even if the Democrats make a clean sweep in November? Apart from just getting back to where we were thirty years ago, what is the over-riding theme of the Democratic Party?

I have said it time and time again, we don't need a candidate, we need an entire movement. FDR didn't do anything by himself, he was at the forefront of the biggest political movement in this country's history, a movement so big that its basic policies are still intact even in the face of vicious opposition. Because of what happened in 1932, your parents (and in some cases your grandparents) were able to earn enough money to take real financial control of their lives, and still only put in a 40-hour work week. Can anyone today imagine that they can do the same thing? The jobs that pay the kind of money that give you the same kind of security regular working people got from the New Deal would also require you to work 60 or more hours a week. How can you enjoy what you have if you don't have the time to? If we want to get back to that point, and make things better, we'd better stop dreaming and start focusing on what we really need to do to accomplish that. Groups like Move On and ACT are only the beginning. And if history is any indicator, it will take us twenty to thirty years to bring everything into fruition.

In military terms, it's called "regrouping". Despite what I've been accused of, I am not advocating quitting. What I'm saying is that the real work is just beginning, and we have a lot more work ahead of us. We can't afford to focus on just one election, we need to think in much longer terms than that. The Scaifes, the DeLays, the Heritage Foundations et al are not going to wither and die if Kerry wins, they'll just fight harder. And we need to keep fighting to counter them. Which is why I am afraid that Kerry will win and everyone really will quit, because they think the fight has already been won. That's the reality we need to wake up to.