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Open Thread: Show 90
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The Fix Is On

More On Voting
I went to a town hall meeting tonight hosted by state Representative Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, who is, actually, my representative to Georgia's General Assembly. The guest speaker at this town hall meeting was Georgia Secretary Of State Cathy Cox, who is the person primarily responsible for Georgia using electronic Diebold machines for Georgia's elections. This is, undoubtably, a big reason why she is so unpopular with people who are working towards election reform. Ms. Cox will be running for Governor in 2006, and has placed a lot of political capital on these voting machines, which means that she has to do everything she can to snuff out (politically speaking) those who oppose her on this issue. I was at the meeting as a representative of the Dekalb County Democratic Party Communications Committee, though I am involved, as I wrote here, with a couple of election reform groups. I dressed in my best Sunday duds, suit and tie and everything, because I think it's important to look professional at these events. And also because I've recently enjoyed getting nice clothes, even if it is from the thrift store.

Anyway, the meeting started off unremarkably, as Rep. Benfield and another GA Representative made brief speeches touting one or two pieces of legislation they were sponsoring. Then Ms. Cox was introduced. I had been told, by the people on the election reform group, that she would frame the issue by saying how accurate the machines were, how current technology prevented them from adding on a printer to print out a ballot, and sure enough that' exactly what she did. She also was aware that we were there, and tried to pre-emptively take us out by saying there might be some "entertainment" at the meeting, meaning we might try to pull an activist-style prank. Which was kind of true, we had schooled one or two newcomers on how to ask questions and which questions to ask. We did this because we knew that she knew who we were, and wanted to be sure our group's questions got answered.

But it never came to pass.

Strange as it may seem, there are a lot of people who are not only interested in this issue, but who are dead set against having Diebold machines cast their ballot. A gentleman fom another group read off a question on his concerns, and was treated to some of the more typical talking points that Ms. Cox had herself been schooled in by the Diebold people. When she used the straw man argument that "optical scanners were inaccurate and disenfranchised minority voters", one person, a member of our group, screamed out "Is anyone here talking about optical scanners?" When she talked about how it would take three days to count the votes by hand, another member of our group, a German citizen no less, yelled out that in Europe they count by hand and it takes only about six hours. Through it all, Ms. Cox seemed unfazed, though she obviously did not like the criticism. But then we heard from Richard Searcy, who was there as an official representative of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. He challenged Ms. Cox and spoke with the voice of authority, and she was caught off-guard. Crazy activists she could handle, but not people speaking for a Congresswoman. The audience was less and less satisfied with Ms. Cox's answers, and Rep. Benfield tried, unsuccesfully, to steer things in other directions.

And then she was gone, vanished as if into thin air. I wasn't even aware that she had left, but there she was, or wasn't. It's possible she was pressed for time, but I think it's more likely that she was really feeling the heat on this issue and decided to ditch while she had the chance. But even after she left, others continued to bring up election reform. The people with my election reform group were ecstatic, because they didn't even have to do much. This is a big issue for a lot of Democrats, and we're just not going to stand for phoney-baloney answers. IMO, electronic voting is a threat to our nation and we ought to do everything we can to fight it. If that means challenging Democrats, then so be it. This is an issue that goes above and beyond politics, it's the kind of issue that turns a politician into a statesman.

I want to be clear on this: we are not against Ms. Cox personally. She is an experienced, intelligent and able public servant who has a good chance of being Georgia's first woman Governor. But as proud as we would be of having that distinction, it pales in comparison to our need for having a trustworthy voting system. And I would gladly sacrifice the political career of any politician if that's what it takes to accomplish it.

Out Of The Loop
Funny, I was just going to write one of my usual whiney columns about the continuing lack of traffic growth of this blog, when Atrios posts something on the very same subject. Of course he's not whining, he's one of the UberBlogs who gets several thousand times more hits than I do. And according to everything I've heard, the way to really get your blog going is to a) keep at it and b) write stuff that people find interesting. I wrote the following in the coments section dealing with the post:

All I know is that I've been doing my current blog since September 2003 (and the radio show for about a year), and still maybe get about 100 hits a day or so. They tend to go up when I post here or at Kos, but since I can't seem to get any regular readership going, I guess I'll just have to accept that what I have to say just doesn't seem to matter much to a lot of you.

Doing a blog takes a lot of time and constant work to keep up, and I don't always have that time, especially when I have to look for work and do the other things I do politically, like working with election reform groups or the local Democratic Party. Face it, there's a lot going on these days, and it's easy to suffer from brain overload.

Does it hurt? Yes, of course it does. I'm not writing just to myself, nor am I talking just to hear the sound of my own voice. I want people to read my site, and to listen to the show. And I'd like to spend more time posting here and at other sites to make more people aware of what I'm doing. But reality often intervenes, and I can't do as much as I'd like. It may be harsh for me, but that's the way it is.

You know, I'm very happy I get the readers I do. Really. Do I want more? Certainly. Like I said, I'm in this to be read, for my words to have an impact. But the truth is that, for the most part, I'm pretty much out of the loop as to what makes something popular and what doesn't. Yes, I'm a regular working guy, but I tend to have an elitist attitude about some things, and I happen to think that's a good thing. I think people need to open their minds a little more, and not everyone really wants that. They just want to hear what they want to hear, and I don't necessarily want to give them that.

This is not to say that I'm satisfied with what I have. If I didn't have an ego I wouldn't be doing this. For the record, I get most of my hits (that is, hits not from comments sections) from the White Rose Society. Ben Burch hosts the Cup O' Joe show archives there, along with many others. I also started this XML thing in the hopes that Ipodders will be able to listen to the show. And of course any of you out there who wants to link the site, that's great. If you do, let me know, and I'll reciprocate.

But no more whining for me. I am what I am and this is what I do. I post and do a show when I can. If I don't get more people, it's because I don't have the time to do the publicity. And if people don't think what I have to say means anything, well, sorry. I'm not gonna be a second-rate Atrios, I'm gonna be a first-rate Joe Vecchio.

I Get Stuff
My Democracy For America group sent me this:

APPLICATION FOR WHITE HOUSE PRESS CREDENTIALS
To assist members of the press, we provide this application for press credentials in a handy multiple-choice format. We know that some of the answers may not be completely accurate. Just choose the one that best describes you. Please fill out the form in full and return it to either press secretary Scott McClennan or assistant press secretary Dirk Diggler.

Your Name: __________________________

No, Your Real Name: __________________________

Seriously: __________________________

Your Pseudonym: __________________________

If you don’t have a pseudonym, choose one from the following list:

A. John Bigboote.
B. Chest Rockwell.
C. Clark Kent.
D. Jeff Gannon.

What do you prefer to be called?

A. John.
B. Chest.
C. Superman.
D. Stud-muffin.

Your Social Security number: __________________________

Social Security number you’ve made up for your pseudonym: __________________________

No, it’s supposed to be nine digits: __________________________

Select your occupation from the following list:

A. Reporter.
B. Columnist.
C. TV personality.
D. Prostitute/conservative commentator.

You are a member of:

A. The mainstream print media.
B. Television.
C. Fox News.
D. Any Web site that includes the words “hot” and “studs.”

Which word best describes your media organization:

A. Mainstream.
B. Conservative.
C. Fox News.
D. Not sure, but you can see naked pictures of me there.

Have you ever been convicted of a crime?

A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Convicted?
D. I plead whichever amendment it is that says I don’t have to say.

Security concerns require the White House to perform background checks on anyone who has access to the building. Do you have a problem with that?

A. No. My background is spotless.
B. Yes. I believe this is an invasion of my privacy.
C. You mean my background or Jeff Gannon’s background?
D. What are you talking about? It’s not like I can give you a list of customers or anything.

Your workspace requirements are:

A. A desk, phone and space for a laptop computer.
B. Room for a video editing bay.
C. Open bar.
D. A hot tub.

Which of the following questions would you be most likely to ask during a press conference:

A. Mr. President, do you believe you lied when you told the American public that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to the terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11?

B. Mr. President, can you assure the American public that you will not cut Social Security benefits?

C. Mr. President, your popularity is amazing and in person, you are much better-looking than on TV. How do you explain how wonderful you really are?

D. Mr. President, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

How much would it take for you to push the president’s policies in op-ed pieces in mainstream publications?

A. $240,000.
B. $22,000.
C. $10,000.
D. $200 an hour or $1,200 for the whole weekend.

Is there any reason why you should be denied credentials to cover the White House?

A. No.
B. I can’t think of anything.
C. Nothing comes to mind.
D. I’m sure the fact that I gave a fake name and a fake news organization and may have worked as a male prostitute who has posted naked pictures of himself on the Internet won’t have any bearing on your decision.

Voting
My friend Dave made a post about election reform. mainly he was referring to emails sent by organizations like MoveOn touting the new federal legislation aimed at improving the way we vote here in America. While any attempt at improvement of the current system seems, at first glance, to be a good thing, IMO the measures they are bringing up do not go nearly far enough. Of course, any federal bill mandating voting procedures is unconstitutional, because the states are the ones responsible for setting up these procedures. So until a constitutional amendment is passed that makes the federal government responsible for this, all this legislation is just pointless. Except for making Election Day a holiday. That one I'm definitely for.

I'm working with a couple of different election reform groups here in Georgia: one is trying to get legislation passsed that

• Establishes the paper ballot as the official ballot of record (the ballot that is actually counted, not used just for recounts or audits)


• Has these paper ballots counted by hand, in full public view, at each voting precinct when the polls close


• Establishes a clear and public chain of custody to ensure that no one but official poll workers handle the ballots

Of course, local politicians are doing everything they can to present the appearence of doing something without actually doing something. A bill was introduced that calls for paper ballots, but only to be counted for audits or recounts. What does this accomplish? Nothing, because conducting a recount or an audit is a time-consuming and expensive task. We ought to count every vote by hand, period. Other countries do this both accurately and efficiently, how is it that we don't seem to be able to? I think part of it is that we just don't have that sense of civic pride we once had, we want things fast and easy, never mind how lousy it is, and we also have too much of a "your on your own" mentality when it comes down to our lives.

I am also working with a group that is conducting a complete and total audit of the entire 2004 Georgia election looking for discrepencies in the official count (this is how I know that recounts and audits are time-consuming and expensive).

I don't think any of us here (including me) remembers a time when the votes were actually counted by hand; I don't think any state has done that for about forty years, so this type of bill may make us frightened of the "change" of going back to these "primitive" vote-counting methods. But if we believe in the idea of self-rule, then I think we have to have a set of procedures in place that ensures that the will of the people is clear and strong. Georgia uses only electronic voting machines, and the potential for outright fraud is enormous, because it centralizes the opportunities for fraud.

I'm not saying that these measures are going to eliminate fraud entirely, but what they do is make it far more difficult to do, because it forces the people trying to commit fraud to spread it out over a wide area. And of course this is only the first step: there are so many other issues: voter intimidation and disenfranchisement in many forms are still commonplace, but these are separate issues that can be dealt with one at a time. If we're serious about the entire idea of self-rule, we need to do this. Otherwise let's just make Bush King and take it from there.

Special Commentary! Click Here To Listen!

Open Thread: Show 89
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Hunter S. Thompson 1939-2005
I was still in my larval stage politically when Hunter burst onto the American landscape in the late 60's and early 70's with his wild brand of "gonzo journalism". He was the antithesis of me: a free-wheeling, smoking, drinking, drug user whose genius was only matched by his emotional instability. I read Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail only a few years ago, looking back at it, those days seemed relatively normal compared to now. I don't know exactly what led him to take his own life, but considering what's going on today in the USA I wouldn't be surprised if he did it out of pure despair. I also wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he'd been whacked at a convenient time by the powers that be. Such is the world we now live in.

Digby had this to say:

I was just re-reading his collection of essays "Generation of Swine" about the political scene in the 1980's a couple of months ago. He saw it all then--- the bizarre up-is-downism, the hallucinatory nature of the modern media, the craziness of America in its days of dominance. I was struck, however, at how deeply uncynical he really was, how strangely hopeful and secure that the American people were simply too solid to be completely taken in by these people.

Hunter has been played in the movies at least twice that I am aware of: Bill Murray played him in Where The Buffalo Roam in 1980, and Johnny Depp played him in Terry Gilliam's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas in 1998, and the character Duke from the comic strip Doonesbury is based on him. He was an American icon in his own weird, freaked out way; he represented all the things it meant to be against the status quo, even though it meant his own self-destruction in the end.

Barbarians

Bullshit Michelangelos
From the New York Times:

What is bullshit, after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."

The bullshit artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to bullshit "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."

We call the Bush administration liars, but I think this is a much more fitting description. These people are the Michelangelos of bullshit, and the so-called professional media are their willing shovelers, because bullshit, especially good bullshit, sells. Digby reminds us, every day, of what anchorman Howard Beale, in the movie Network said:

We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You even think like the tube. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

I think that's why there are so many of us bloggers out here, we're just mad as hell and not gonna take this bullshit anymore. We know it's an uphill fight, because so many people like the bullshit. It always sounds better than real life. But listening too much to bullshit artists, and especially these bullshit Michelangelos, is a dangerous thing. Just ask anyone involved in the bullshit war in Iraq.

Special Commentary! Click Here To Listen!

Open Thread: Show 88
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Complete And Utter Idiocy
I swear to God, just when you think things can't possibly get any more ridiculous than they are now, along comes not one, but two moronic pieces by the well-paid professional media. The first, from Nicholas Kristov, claims that we humans are "genetically predisposed" towards religion (which of course is bad for the "secular left"). The second is the whiniest diatribe you ever heard from David Brooks about how he couldn't get good seats for the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) baseball team.

Jesus Fucking Christ, why do these people have jobs? Never mind religion, are humans "genetically predisposed" towards this kind of idiocy?

At this rate, I won't have any hair left to pull out...

The Mother Of All Holes
Digby lashes out at the right:

Sadly, being plagued with some incurable need for intellectual honesty, I can't find it in me to claim with a straight face that [Republican Congressman] Dana Rohrabacher and [Heritage Foundation founder and right wing financier] Grover Norquist are really in cahoots with terrorists. But if one were to rely on actual evidence rather than the wild, unsupported halluciations we see breaking out in the right blogsphere as they routinely accuse the Left of supporting terrorism, it's clear that one could quite seriously make a case that one of the most powerful Republican members of congress and the single most powerful Republican activist are literally working with terrorists.

Have you ever done something in your life that you were totally and completely obsessed with, to the point where you found yourself unable to admit you were wrong because you invested so much of yourself believing you were right that to admit fault would mean you would have to re-think everything you've ever known? I've come close to that, once or twice in my life. I was brought up, for example, to believe in America and to be a good citizen, but as I grew, the more I saw of what was going on, and the more I learned about American history, the more I understood how rarely we've lived up to the high-sounding words we were taught. The hard truth is that slavery and racism are as much a part of the American landscape as freedom and equality, and always have been. But knowing that evil things have happened in America, and continue to happen, doesn't lessen my love for the freedoms we embrace, rather it makes me cherish those freedoms even more.

I think all of us are, at one time or another, forced to reconsider deeply held beliefs because events showed how wrong you were. There's nothing wrong with that, these epiphanies are good for you, they help you to grow as a person. I've changed over the years, and no doubt I'll change as I grow older. But, as we now know, there are some people who have yet to reach that level, who live in a state of perpetual arrested development because they refuse to accept this need to grow. They cling to their beliefs because they no longer have any choice, the belief has become inseperable from who they are. They are it, and it is them. They've dug for themselves The Mother Of All Holes, and the only thing they know how to do is keep digging. And one way for them to reassure themselves of the correctness of their beliefs is by attacking even the appearance of disagreement. Liberal targets are easy, but you know they're getting more desperate when they start slamming people like Clint Eastwood.

Digby reminds us of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

And so it is with the right wing now. How ironic that the Party of Lincoln, formed in opposition to slavery, changed after his assassination into the party of exploitation. That the party of Teddy Roosevelt, champion of the environment and progressive reform, morphed into the party of corporate hegemony and hedonism. If you're not with them, and with them with all your heart, you are against them.

But as with every movement, there are leaders and there are followers. I happen to believe that the real leaders of the right wing, both political leaders like Rove and Cheney and the family Bush, and financial backers like Norquist and Richard Mellon Scaife, have no beliefs, they say what they say to sucker people out of their money and to motivate others to follow them. Propagandists like Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg might be believers, but they might be willing shills for the movement because there's money to be had. And that's why they can feel free to accuse people like Juan Cole, Digby, and even myself of aiding terrorists, because in their winner-take-all world, nothing you do matters as long as you get what you want. Believers exist to be cannon fodder for their cause, which is mainly stuffing their own pockets.

When leaders of these cult movements are as true believers as their followers, they tend to go down with them. Jim Jones drank the same Kool-Aid as everyone else. But somehow I don't see the Scaifes and the Norquists of the world doing anything of the kind. Facing collapse of their power structure, they'll seek escape, and suicide is only the most extreme measure of this. And you can bet that, even as they're packing their bags, they'll be yelling out the door to their followers: "Keep digging!". And many surely will. But the only hole they're digging is their own grave, and the grave of their sophistry. And the only question is whether it will be one grave among the graves of the good things that they have taken with them, or if it will be the grave over which future generations will one day dance with glee. And that choice is up to us.

I Hate Money
I was going through Atlanta's craigslist job search when I came across an ad for people looking for writers and editors of a new anime website, kind of an anime version of imdb, but with a few more bells and whistles. Right up my alley. That ad stated that this position pays on a per project basis and is for a minimum of a three to six month commitment, and required a minimum of 15 hours a week of work. It was all work-at-home kind of stuff, researching anime shows and uploading info to the site. Not enough to make a real lving on, perhaps, but a good part-time job that would a) supplement my salary when I got a "real" job, and b) possibly lead to something bigger.

I wrote to them and gave them my credentials, which are impeccable, (not to blow my own horn, but how many people here can boast of having both the voice of Speed Racer and Space Ghost as references?) but I made it clear to them that I would not do any intern work (this was the 3 to 6 months they mentioned). Nothing against interns, but, I told them, there are some people who you need to look at and say, this person can really help us out a lot, we need to get him on the payroll ASAP. I even wrote a friend of mine about it (another anime fan, also a writer and artist), and he agreed: you should get paid for the work you do. Being an artist, he knows of what he speaks. People always bug him to do stuff for free, and he always refuses. You work, you get money, period.

I sent emails back and forth with the guy in charge of recruiting, trying to work something out. I was offered 10% of the gross of any advertising revenue I got for the site, but I declined that (I'm a writer, not a salesman, I said). I was offered important positions and discounts on products and services. I was offered, in short, anything except actual money, and I would accept nothing but. The final email sent to me stated it clearly: I was hoping that a large discount on all your anime needs as well as being a senior of the group would suffice, but clearly you are looking for money. This statement pissed me off, but I wrote an email thanking him for his time and wished him luck with his project (they'll need it: there are dozens of anime database sites out there, never mind newsgroups and bit-torrent sites: they needed something that none of these had, namely original articles and other things to keep bringing people in). The people running this site obviously want to make some kind of a living off of it, yet when someone asks to be compensated for the work they do, they get sneered at.

I have the same problems working with people on the left: we're expected to do everything for the cause, and do it purely for the "nobility" of it. No help finding work. No money paid to you directly. Nada. Frankly, I don't understand the "nobility" of letting someone who is intelligent, creative, and energetic wither away on the vine because they want to dirty their hands with something so petty as money. A fat lot of good I am going to do anybody if I'm homeless, that's for sure. And if it wasn't for the generosity of my landlord, that's what I would be. I'm way behind on the rent, and trying desperately to find work that would not only allow me to get caught up, but to actually put some money away for the future. I've never had a job like that, and the way things are going for me, I never will. And I absolutely do not understand why I am supposed to sacrifice my time and my skill and get nothing in return. It's frustrating and demoralizing, and at times makes me want to give up.

I hate money.

I hate never having enough of it, and I hate what having too much of it makes other people do. I hate looking at a debt and not being able to pay it off, I hate never getting paid enough for the work I do. And I hate the fact that everything we do in this country revolves around money. The love of it, the Bible says, is the root of all evil, and if what the right wing is doing isn't proof positive of that, then I don't know what is.

There's a big difference between what I'm asking and what the right wing does: people like Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher have clearly sold their souls to Satan for their thirty pieces of silver, and many others on the right are currently riding the biggest gravy train we've ever seen. I don't want to sell my soul, but I don't want to have to sell all my possessions, either. It's not like I have a taste for the expensive things in life: I shop at thrift stores. I eat a lot of ramen and 99-cent TV dinners. I don't require a lot, but it would be nice if the high-horses on the left with some cash would be noble enough to spread it around a little, or if the people who I am working with would help me to find a better-paying job. It's something I really am "bitter" about, because it's frustrating being forced to choose between something you want to do desperately and something you have to do to get by. When I worked at Siemens I couldn't get involved in some of the things I am doing now, because after an eight-hour shift I was too tired to do a lot of brain work, now I have the time, but I worry about where my next meal is coming from. My $190 a week unemployment is usually gone within a day or two of me getting it. I can only keep this stuff up for so long, you know.

And the fact that I'm always broke makes me wonder exactly what it is that's wrong with me, even as I am being told by people how talented they think I am and how I deserve better. I feel ashamed asking for money, but I feel more ashamed telling people I owe that I don't have it. Sooner or later something has to break, and I hope it won't be me.

By the way, this isn't a plea for donations. I put the button on the site, but I know most of you out there reading this are in the same boat I am. Some have written me saying they want to donate but are tight on cash themselves, and my response is always the same: don't send me anything you can't afford. I don't donate to any sites myself for that very reason.

I've said these things before, in other posts, and I'll probably say them again unless something drastic changes in my financial condition one way or another. Either way, you all out there will learn about it.

Open Thread: Shows 86 and 87
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Life Is A Team Sport
I'm one of those rare people who has an interest in a great many different things: for example, I am a big fan of both pro sports and anime (for those of you who aren't aware of it, and there are a few of you remaining, anime is Japanese cartoons). Usually, people who like sports do not like anime, and vice-versa. Not me. Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, which is about as close as you can get to an unofficial US holiday these days. Most of my friends from anime fandom couldn't care less about it and look on it, and all sports, with disdain. And most of my friends who like sports don't care about anime, either: "It's just cartoons, for Christ's sake!", they'll say. Me, I can discuss sports well enough to argue with any sports talk show host (except when it comes to college sports, which I care very little for). I can also discuss anime both as a serious topic and just as a fan who likes some aspects of it. The same with politics, music, religion, etc. That's why, by the way, I make a good radio show host, because I can speak intelligently about so many issues.

Anyway, on to my point. A lot of people, especially right-wingers, like to use sports (especially football) as an analogy for life. A team wins or loses based on the quality of its players and how well they work together as a team. Loyalty to your coach and your team is an important value, more important than almost anything else. And your performance in life, they believe, is rewarded in the same way your performance on the sports field is: if you play well, you win. If not, you lose. Period. That's a pretty simplistic line of thinking, and I can see why there's a lot of appeal to it. Even I feel that way to a certain extent. But life is more complicated than that. In sports, when you win, it's over until the next game, and there will always be another season, another chance to try again and redeem yourself. In life, the game is constantly going on, and some losses can destroy you. Lose your job, you risk losing your home and possessions. And in some extreme cases, you can lose your freedom, or even your life. Imagine being a Jew in Hitler's Germany, or a black man in the Confederate South. It didn't matter that they were just as intelligent and talented as their oppressors, the Nazis and the Confederates simply beat them into submission, because they could. In life, winning and losing take many forms, and the results don't always match your performance. It's how you deal with this that's important.

But the right-wingers don't understand this. All they care about is "winning", and they make their own definition of what that is. If you humiliate someone in a public debate, whether you made any sense at all, you've won. If you cold-cock a guy from behind with a baseball bat, you've won. If you kill off a powerful opponent, you've won. Fairness is for losers. Accepting defeat graciously is for losers. When you lose, you can never admit it, sometimes even to yourself. You just say that they cheated (or the refs did). And when you win, you gloat about it as loudly as you can. The Republicans are hardly the first to do this: you can say that the entire history of human civilization has been a struggle against this "might makes right" attitude.

In football terms, the Bush administration is like a coaching staff who in private (and sometimes even in public), openly advocates breaking the rules as a way of winning. They'll either buy or intimidate the refs. The owners buy newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and pay sportswriters to write columns praising them and denouncing the opposition as frauds and cheats. They will even go to the extremes of crippling or killing opposing players if they can get away with it. And their fans cheer them on at every opportunity. They don't care if the owners are raising the ticket prices on them, or demanding loyalty oaths before they can enter the stadium, their team wins games and that's all that matters.

We on the left need to understand this aspect of politics better. Winning isn't everything, but it's the only thing that matters, said Vince Lombardi, the great coach of the Green Bay Packers. He was talking about football, not life, but in the realm of politics he's absolutely correct. There's no second place in politics, you either have power or you don't. Period. And we can take an example from the Packers of his day: they didn't win through cheating, they won because they had great talent, great leadership and teamwork. They hit you as hard as anybody ever hit anyone in football, but they played clean. You didn't have to be a Packers fan to respect what they did. The Democrats need to listen to this message. It's all right to play hard, to give the opponent a good, clean hit. All too often we decry hard play because we desire a certain amount of humanity and fairness in life. But as noble as all that is, it's pointless if we continue to lose. If no one had been willing to risk their lives to fight the Confederates or the Nazis there would, perhaps, be no more Jews, and slavery would still be with us. And if we don't fight back for ourselves, perhaps no one will.

There are some things the right is doing that we ought to emulate. They have a terrific grassroots campaign geared at every level of politics, and they often win through entirely legitimate means. Instead of focusing primarily on the "major leagues", they build their team from the bottom up: establishing a "farm system" to generate talent and taking over local, county, and state organizations. We think we can just hire a few big name advisors like Shrum and everything will work out just fine. Some of us even go so far as to believe the fantasy that, eventually, our nobility and dignity by itself will win us games. Bullshit. It's talent. It's teamwork. It's leadership. And it's a willingness to do the real work in the trenches.

Yes, there are methods we should never employ. We don't have to torture people. We don't need to pay off the refs or pay the press to lie about us. We don't have to try and destroy our opponents as they want to destroy us. But if their receiver comes into the middle of the field, knock the shit out of him. Do it cleanly, but do it hard. That's a legitimate part of the game. We can build a farm system like theirs so that we can continue to bring new talent into the game. And when we do take power, we can make sure that the playing field is a level one, so that the winners and losers will be determined by how you play within the structure of the game and not by how you can get around it. And we can fix it so that no matter what happens on the political front, people still earn a decent wage and can retire with a minimum income for the rest of their lives.

The philosophy of liberalism, in part, boils down to the idea that life is a team sport, and that's why they were so successful. We need to re-learn that lesson, and fast. Trying to get liberals to work together these days is like herding cats. We praise teamwork, but rarely practice it. We have pet issues that overshadow everything else. We have leaders who don't bother scouting talent to see what they can do, they just take whoever walks in the door and make them start at the bottom, expect them to keep their mouths shut and just go along, and almost never give them a second thought. And worse, they expect them to do it all for free. Conversely, the right wing screams rugged individualism and hero-worship to generate excitement for what they do, but their strength is in their teamwork. How else could someone as incompetent as Bush get into office? They kick the other team in the nuts, give him the ball, and praise him as he walks over the goal line. Simple, but effective. But it takes a lot just to get them to that point.

Oh and we need to stop pretending that every little setback for them is finally going to turn the tide. They take a five-yard loss on a play and we celebrate like the game was already over, then on the next play they throw the ball eighty yards own the field and go into the end zone. How many times has this happened in the last twenty years or so? Please. Do grow up. Unlike football, life has no time limit. It never ends. What we need to do, we need to do for the long haul. That's why part of me was happy that Kerry lost. I'm not meaning any disrespect to him, because I have a great admiration for him and I thought he ran as good a campaign as you can run against this right wing machine. But a Kerry victory would have led far too many of us to think we've already won, and that we can give up. We can never give up. We have to ensure, election to election, generation to generation, that our team is up to the task. We failed in that mission, even though we had it all our way for half a century. If we build a winning team this time we have to be sure it stays that way. And that means taking the game seriously.

Incidentally, I don't really have a favorite football team. I root for the Falcons, but I'm really more of a Michael Vick fan than a Falcons fan (though they played very well this year, good team defense. A few more tweaks here and there and they can become one of the dominant teams in the league). I respect certain styles of play, like the Washington Redskins when they had John Riggins. I love drives that eat up eight or nine minutes of the clock. I also liked the Niners of the eighties and I like what the Patriots are doing now. And jus so everyone knows, I'm picking the Patriots to win it all...no shame to the Eagles, who are a great team, but man these Patriots can play. There are also teams I definitely do not like. I don't like teams (or players) that gloat. It's one thing to celebrate, but to insult the other team, well, that's just so goddamn Republican. Win, but win with class. I like that attitude in football (and all other sports), and I like it in politics, too. The Democrats are in a rebuilding stage right now, I want us all to build a team we can be proud of.

So WTF Is Going On?
Phil, a new listener, asked if I was taking a week off or something, and it's true that it's been one of those times when I haven't been able to post a lot. The truth is that there are several reasons I haven't been as active here and doing the radio show as I might like. One is that my new radio partner, Rick, hasn't been feeling well and has been unable to come down to put a show together. This will be remedied Sunday. I like having Rick on the show, it makes the time go by better and maes for a more conversational tone to the show, and more than a few have commented along those lines.

The other reason is that I have been dedicating more energy into actual politics. I've signed on to work with the Dekalb County Democratic Party, and will in fact be the format editor of their newsletter, a very important position indeed. The logo you see is my suggestion for the Dekalb Dems new logo, maybe they will accept it as the official one, we'll see. I'm also involved with a group called Voters Count Paper Ballots, or Voters Count for short, an organization dedicated to returning Georgia to paper ballot elections. These have been taking up a lot of my time lately, so I apologize to regular readers if there isn't a lot of content up on the site. That doesn't mean you shouldn't drop in, at least click on once a day to see if I have updated or if there's a new show.

I used to feel badly about not posting regularly, but anyone who writes a blog has to determine for his or her self just how much time and effort they can put into it. There are some days when you're better off shutting your mind off from politics and just doing a little carpe diem-ing. Sometimes you just have writer's block, or are busy with something else. Either way, not everyone can just sit at the computer posting articles day in and day out. And such is the case for me. Just so you all know.