Politics

Designs on the White House has been running a t-shirt design contest, and they’ve just announced the winners. Some good shirts in there, I’m hard pressed to find a favorite.

This just might be it, though:

iTunes: “New Jersey Turnpike” by Anderson, Laurie from the album United States Live (1984, 11:19).

In the midst of a Seattle P-I article about trying to convince more young women to vote comes this little tidbit of information:

This week, Cavendish said, the falling piece of sky was Bush’s reappointment of “Hagar the Horrible” — W. David Hagar — to the influential Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA.

…there were the 25,000 pro-choice activists who pleaded with Bush not to make this move.

Hagar, Time magazine reports, refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. And in his book, “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” (co-written with his wife, Linda) he recommends reading Scripture as treatment for premenstrual pain.

More urgent to young women is the fact that Hagar used his position on the reproductive health committee to oppose the otherwise overwhelmingly approved vote to recommend over-the-counter sale of the morning-after contraceptive Plan B. The vote to approve the sale of Plan B was then overruled by the Bush administration.

Old white men using religion to dictate what young women can and can’t do with their bodies. And people say that there’s no reason to vote?

I read something earlier this week — unfortunately, I don’t remember where — that gave me pause to think. One of the tactics that the right has used to counter the “Pro-Choice” designation of abortion rights activists has been to deem themselves “Pro-Life”, implying that Pro-Choice equates to “Anti-Life” or “Pro-Death”.

Given Bush’s track record of sending more people to their executions while he was Governor of Texas, plus his railroading America into sending almost 1000 soldiers to their deaths in an unjust war, can he really campaign on a “Pro-Life” platform?

iTunes: “Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, The from the album Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury (1992, 3:47).

To be entirely honest, I’m torn between being disgusted by this latest video from the Bush campaign, and outright laughing at how spectacularly it could — and should — backfire on them.

Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.

The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.

[…]

How does the Bush camp identify the Hitler footage? “Sponsored by Moveon.Org” says a label on the first Hitler clip, evidently put there by the miscreants who submitted the ad. “Images from Moveon.Org ad” says the Bush campaign’s label on the second Hitler clip. The only organization that doesn’t identify the clips as a “Moveon.org ad” is MoveOn.org, which denounced the ad and never “sponsored” it. But never mind. Instead of apologizing for this implicit misrepresentation of sponsorship, the Bush campaign has made the misrepresentation explicit. “The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters,” says a graphic appended to the beginning of the video.

The Bush campaign’s claim that the amateur Hitler ads represent “John Kerry’s Democratic Party” is laughable. Kerry didn’t control MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org didn’t make the ads. When the ads were submitted, the membership of MoveOn.org largely supported Dean, the candidate who had nearly wiped Kerry off the map. Kerry had just mortgaged his house to get the cash Democrats were refusing to give him. The suggestion that he controlled the party is preposterous—but only slightly more preposterous than the suggestion that Kerry is responsible what Dean and Gephardt said while running against him, or what Gore and Moore said while supporting candidates who were running against him. Not to mention that the question Gore poses in the ad—“How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?”—is well warranted.

I really can’t see this clip doing any good for Bush’s campaign — and hence, I think it should be broadcast round-the-clock, during every commercial break of every major news broadcast, television show, and sporting event.

But that’s just me.

(via Len)

iTunes: “Thoughts and Words” by Supersoul from the album Secret Broadcast – Pirate Radio USA (1998, 4:48).

There’s a very interesting interview with Ron P. Reagan (President Reagan’s son) in the Times today. I like the way this man thinks.

Now that the country is awash in Reagan nostalgia, some observers are predicting that you will enter politics. Would you like to be president of the United States?

I would be unelectable. I’m an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won’t accept.

[…]

Do you and your wife, Doria, have children?

No. We have three cats. It’s like having children, but there is no tuition involved.

[…]

How do you account for all the glowing obituaries of [your father]?

I think it was a relief for Americans to look at pictures of something besides men on leashes. If you are going to call yourself a Christian — and I don’t — then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog’s leash? How can Christians tolerate it?

It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight — it has put them in greater danger.

Did you vote for Bush in the last election?

No. I did not.

How did your mother feel about being ushered to her seat by President Bush?

Well, he did a better job than Dick Cheney did when he came to the rotunda. I felt so bad. Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80’s, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don’t think he’s a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it.

[…]

One thing that Buddhism teaches you is that every moment is an opportunity to change. And we will have a moment in November to make a big change.

Damn skippy.

iTunes: “Lazarus Raised” by Gabriel, Peter from the album Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ (1989, 1:25).