Report From Florida

I just had to post this in its entirety. It's a letter to Talking Points Memo blogger Joshua Micah Marshall. The letter speaks for itself.

"Received yesterday from a reader down in the trenches ...

Still in Florida.

This was one of the most moving, meaningful days of my life.

My job is to get people to the polls and, more importantly, to keep them there. Because they’re crazily jammed. Crazily. No one expected this turnout. For me, it’s been a deeply humbling, deeply gratifying experience. At today’s early vote in the College Hill district of East Tampa -- a heavily democratic, 90% African American community — we had 879 voters wait an average of five hours to cast their vote. People were there until four hours after they closed (as long as they’re in line by 5, they can vote).

Here’s what was so moving:

We hardly lost anyone. People stood outside for an hour, in the blazing sun, then inside for another four hours as the line snaked around the library, slowly inching forward. It made Disneyland look like speed-walking. Some waited 6 hours. To cast one vote. And EVERYBODY felt that it was crucial, that their vote was important, and that they were important.

And there were tons of first time voters. Tons.

Aside from some hassles from the Republican election commissioner ( … [ed.note: Here the letter writer describes various shenanigans intended to exacerbate the difficulties of waiting hours in line to vote. I’ve censored this detail to preserve the anonymity of the writer.], I actually had an amazing experience. No, actually, in a way because of that I had an amazing experience. Because these people know that the system that’s in place doesn’t want them voting. And yet they are determined to vote.

The best of all was an 80 year old African American man who said to me: “When I first started I wasn’t even allowed to vote. Then, when I did, they was trying to intimidate me. But now I see all these folks here to make sure that my vote counts. This is the first time in my life that I feel like when I cast my vote it’s actually gonna be heard.”

To see people coming out — elderly, disabled, blind, poor; people who have to hitch rides, take buses, etc — and then staying in line for hours and hours and hours... Well, it’s humbling. And it’s awesome. And it’s kind of beautiful.

Sometimes you forget what America is.

I think there’s hope.

ES

Nothing to add ...

-- Josh Marshall"

Packers Beat Redskins!

A very good sign for Kerry.

Heard Something Really Great on Hardball Tonight

I've been really busy this week, gotta bunch of deadlines to meet, so I haven't been able to post a lot.

So when I get home I turn on Hardball, and there's one of those mini-reports by David Schuster before Chris Matthews speaks with his guest(s). Well, this was a report about the "missing" 288 tons of Iraqi weapons and how it's been playing in the final days of the campaign.

Cut to His Thugness Lord Dubya saying that Kerry was lying about the weapons (takes one to know one, eh?), and that the Senator was undermining our troops.

Cut to Schuster who flat-out said "This is not true," and said that it was Bush who blamed the troops, and that the IAEA had been notified by someone in the Iraqi government earlier this month about the missing weapons.

Again, Schuster said "This is not true"--none of the phony "balance" that passes for news these days.

Coveted Hunter S. Thomspon Endorsement Goes to Kerry

Hilarious!

Curse of the Bambino Lifted!

Red Sox sweep!

Memories of Chile in the Midst of an American Presidential Campaign

Though I have a fairly good feeling that Bush will be fired by the American poeple, we'll all still have work to do regardless of who wins the election. Here's a great, great piece posted on Common Dreams today.

My two favorite paragraphs:

Over the last year, everywhere I have turned in the United States, I have seen signs of an amazing spirit of resistance, another sort of better America mobilizing, citizens not moved by dread but by hope, a vast and plural and creative wave of activism that I had not witnessed since... well, since the year 1970 when my country elected Salvador Allende as our President, when gentle armies of my fellow countrymen and countrywomen took their destiny into their own hands and proclaimed to the winds of history that it was possible to build socialism using democratic means, that we did not have to terrorize or persecute our adversaries in order to free ourselves from oppression.

*****

The real test will therefore come on November 3rd, the day after George W. Bush crawls back to power or John Kerry rides this wave of social transformation into the White House. That is when millions of American men and women who have mobilized in unprecedented numbers over the last months will be faced with the real dilemma of their times: Are they to pack up and go home to the old apathy and submissiveness, or do they deeply understand that, no matter who wins or loses the election, it depends on them, one by one by one and all together, that their country never turn into even a semblance of the Chile of Pinochet?

Six More Days Until Regime Change!!

Apple Rocks!

Another reason why!

Seven More Days Until Regime Change!!

It Still Wasn't Just About the Oil, Right?

Antonius says it the way it has to be said.

Eight More Days Until Regime Change!

President Forever

No, that's not a plan the administration might have to concoct a crisis to appoint George Bush supreme ruler or anything like that, nor is it the nightmare that has been keeping us awake at night; it's a game that simulates the 2004 election. The version I played over the weekend with my friend Bill includes the 1960, 1980, and 1992 elections as well.

Bill and I ran the Kerry-Dean campaign (well, it IS a game), and lost 276-262 in electoral votes (Bush won by about a million in the popular vote; 48-47%). We lost Vermont and New Hampshire; Yes, yes, losing Vermont was inexcusable! As it turned out, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri were key states in our strategy. We had Teresa Heinz, Al Gore, and Bill Bradley stumping for us. Howard Dean got really tired in the last few weeks of the election...

Now is the only time I've ever been jealous of my PC-owning friends; President Forever is not available on the Mac.

Talk of the Town

The New Yorker endorses Kerry, breaking an eighty-year tradition of nonpartisanship.

The best paragraph:

September 11, 2001, brought with it one positive gift: a surge of solidarity, global and national—solidarity with and solidarity within the United States. This extraordinary outpouring provided Bush with a second opportunity to create something like a government of national unity. Again, he brushed the opportunity aside, choosing to use the political capital handed to him by Osama bin Laden to push through more elements of his unmandated domestic program. A year after 9/11, in the midterm elections, he increased his majority in the House and recaptured control of the Senate by portraying selected Democrats as friends of terrorism. Is it any wonder that the anger felt by many Democrats is even greater than can be explained by the profound differences in outlook between the two candidates and their parties?

The Nation Endorses Kerry

A lot of the debate among American progressives has been concerning whether or not to vote for Kerry. After all, he voted for the war, the first tax cut, and the Patriot Act. I myself find it very hard to forgive Kerry's support for the war. I know very well that his argument has been that all he voted for was "an authorization of force," which he says he hoped would strengthen the President's hand at the UN.

But I remember the Fall of 2002 very well. The war drums had been beating since the Summer, and the vote to authorize force was tantamount to voting for war. I'm sure Kerry (and Edwards too) thought the war would be over soon, and that they could move on and campaign on the normal Democratic issues. They were wrong. Full disclosure--I went door-to-door for Dean the weekend before the New Hampshire primary and I still think, especially now, he would be a better candidate then Kerry.

But democracy in America is in the most danger it's ever been in in my lifetime. I can only imagine what new horrors will shame us if Bush wins. I have been thinking that a vote for Kerry could be the best way to stop the bleeding, and if he wins the election, to still keep him honest and responsive to (what has become) a new Progressive Movement in this country. In any case, this week's The Nation has the best articulation of that argument I have seen.

Enjoy the Draft!!

Voting and Counting

From today's Krugman piece:

If the election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome.

A Politics of Love

I just wanted to pass along this wonderful article by James Carroll, which appeared in yesterday's Boston Globe, and is posted on Common Dreams.

It brought back a lot of memories. I live in Queens and work in Manhattan, and I have vivid memories of the day of the Attacks. I had taken the day off, to tend to my brother's illness. (He died later that year from complications of brain surgery. Rest in Peace, Christopher.) I remember I saw the TV on in my local stationery, after I had bought the day's paper. It looked as if a small plane had hit the WTC; I remember at that moment I thought it was footage from the first bombing. So I was not sure what was going on. I walked home and ran into a neighbor, who told me what had happened. The next few hours are NOT in a blur, but I have an incredibly vivid memory of three specific things: watching the buildings crumble on TV, walking a little later and seeing fighter jets really high up in the air, and a fire engine from a New Hyde Park (a New York suburb on Long Island) rushing to Manhattan on Northern Boulevard, the main street in my neighborhood.

When the night came, all of New York was raw, heartbroken, and angry. We remained so for at least the rest of that year (and still have not gotten over it). I don't think any other city in this country really can every have any idea how we felt then. No disrespect... It was with us every day; I went back to work two days after the Attacks, and I remember on my way out the door thinking there was an electrical fire in my apartment. I was about to call the super, when I realized that the smell was everywhere, as strong as it was in my apartment. Until as late as November, just when the wind was right, there was still a burning bitterness in the back of my mouth, as far away as Flushing (where my brother was in the hospital). I remember seeing the heartbreaking missing posters, at places of meeting throughout Manhattan--Penn Station, Columbus Circle, Union Square. Have you seen my sister? She worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the posters would say.

I also remember how New York reacted as a community--there was a real sense of being in this together, of family; I would even say that people were friendly to each other. People were proud to be New Yorkers, but not in the jingoistic way we saw "patriotism" grow in the United States later. We were still raw, and there really was a sense that "we must love one another or die." But then it started to change, or, rather, this feeling was co-opted by the administration for its own ends. At first, Bush's reaction seemed to me reasonable. I must admit that I (agnostically) supported the bombing in Afghanistan. (As I thought, read, and prayed that fall, I became less and less sure of that support. Now I am a pacifist.) Soon after the Attacks, the Bush administration started propagandizing for war on Iraq. We know what happened. That is why support for the administration is so low in New York City; we find it hard to forgive a man who took our rawness, our pain, our sadness, and yes, our anger, and directed it to yet another war. We resent that our pain was stolen that way.

"We must love one another or die."

There is a real sense that that realization has eluded us as a nation once again. The atrocity of the attacks was followed by an opportunity that we wasted. We reacted the same old ways, by demonizing the Other, by Shock and Awe. By only counting "our" deaths. The 3,000+ people that WE killed in Afghanistan, paid for by my tax dollars, was an atrocity on the same level as 9/11, which was supposed to change everything. It changed nothing. We answered terrorism with even more terrorism.

"We must love one another or die."

As much as I am angry at what has been done in my name, I try every day to resist the urge (not always successfully!) to demonize the "other" side. As a Quaker, I have to answer "that of God" in everyone. It pains me that we are so bitterly divided in this country, and I hope that sometime soon we have leaders that can bridge the divide.

Just a few thoughts on a rainy Tuesday night...

Do You Feel a Draft?

Anyway, do we even have an all-volunteer Army at this point? Thousands of reservists and National Guard members are no longer serving voluntarily: they have been kept in the military past their agreed terms of enlistment by "stop loss" orders.

I wish Paul Krugman were running for president. Another great piece.

Kafkaesque

Every time I think the word is overused, something like this happens.

Can't post too much tonight--I got home late from work (deadline) and I gotta read some Kerouac before I go to bed.

Godzilla's Legacy

To commemorate the King of the Monsters' fiftieth birthday, the University of Kansas Center for East Asian Studies is hosting a conference in which scholars from around the world will consider the Godzilla films and their surprising impact on global culture.

Paul and Sheila Wellstone, R.I.P

Rest in Peace

Faith and/or Works

Just read the Suskind article in today's Times magazine.

Howbout this for a thought--the Bush/Kerry contest can be thought of as a conflict between Protestantism (Bush) and C(c)atholicism (Kerry). What I mean is this: As you might remember from the history of Christianity, probably THE key theological difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is the importance of faith as compared to works.

For Protestantism, at least as it is practiced in the United States, the key event is the acceptance of, and faith in, God (Jesus Christ). For many Protestants, that is what they mean when they say they have been born again. (My uncle, an evangelical, calls these "sign on the dotted line Christians".) By being born again, they KNOW that they are elect, and to think that their works have any bearing on their salvation is apostasy. Therefore, anything they DO is OK, because irrelevant.

In Catholicism (at least for me, since I grew up Catholic and still hold it dear), there is a more complex, I would say even mystical, relationship between faith and works. Kerry even alluded to it when he said that "Faith without works is dead." (Paraphrasing James 2:14ff.) Both are required, and can be seen as aspects of the same reality. What you BELIEVE informs what you DO, and what you DO creates who you are struggling to BECOME. This is why, I think, that the social gospel has been so important to Catholicism. There is no key event, just the recurring drama of life.

Obviously, the above thoughts are cast in the broadest way possible, and might have the whiff of caricature, but I think they provide an interesting way to look at the two people running for President for the two major parties.

Windblown World

I just picked up "Windblown World," a book of journals of Jack Kerouac from 1947-1954. It's edited by Douglas Brinkley.

Here are three sentences from a 1949 entry:

How shall I live on?

I shall keep in contact with all things that cross my path, and trust all things that do not cross my path, and exert more greatly for further and further visions of the other world, and preach (if I can) in my work, and love, and attempt to hold down my lonely vanities so as to contact more and more with all things (and kinds of people), and believe that my consciousness of life and eternity is not a mistake, or loneliness, or a foolishness,–but a warm dear love of our poor predicament which by the grace of Mysterious God will be solved and made clear to all of us in the end, maybe only.

Otherwise I cannot live.

Why Not?

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were, and ask 'Why not?'"

Robert F. Kennedy