Politics

Mr. Bush raised 3 million Dollars today with a 2000 dollar a plate Dinner which most Americans can’t even think about being able to afford.

Gov. Howard Dean raised 756,000 dollars today (as of 10:30pm EST) with each contribution averaging 66.00 dollars.

Let’s do the math

3,000,000/2000 = 1,500 people

756,000/66.00 = 11,454.5 people

Don’t ever be discouraged by dollars. Dollars don’t equal votes.

We did make history. Politics will never be the same.

— Michael (not me) in the comments on Blog for America.

I have to admit, this is really amazing — the Howard Dean campaign is posting the results of their fundrasing in near-realtime, with updates every half hour, as this is the last day for fundrasing for this quarter.

Last week their goal was to hit six million in contributions.

This weekend, after passing six million, they raised the goal, hoping to hit six and a half million by the end of today.

Around 12:15pm EST today, they broke the six and a half million mark, and raised the goal line on the bat to seven million. As of their last update, at 1:30pm EST, they’d raised \$253,604 today.

Let’s help them out.

I almost missed this post from Doc Searls musing over some of the ties between sex and politics.

I just noticed something.

…Doctors, at least professionally, aren’t afraid of sex. Thanks to professional training, good doctors are fearless around the whole damn thing. It ain’t no big deal. Fucking is fine. Blowjobs are fine.

…seems to me there’s a connection between the Fear Thing and the Sex Thing.

Not fearing sex is great training for not fearing anything else. Including how you look and sound on TV.

The democrats need to be The Fuckit Party this year. They need to be straight and honest and remind Americans of what they’re giving up to the droning fearmongers who run the country right now.

There’s more there, including references to other articles that started his train of thought. Most of what caught my eye was the Doctor/sex, fear/comfort bit. Worth thinking about, at least.

There’s more good commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision regarding consensual same-sex acts here — Daily Kos: Sodomy decision opens path to gay marriage

Any use of consistency and logic would force the court sanction same-sex marriages, and invalidate any attempt to limit the definition of “marriage” to unions between man and woman.

This is huge. Our nation took a huge step today toward eliminating one of the last standing impediments to true equality under the law. Just wait until the press picks this up (they don’t seem to have noticed yet).

It’ll be very interesting to see the ramifications of this in time to come.

According to the San Francisco Gate, the Bush re-election campaign is gearing up to spend at least \$426,640 a day, seven days a week, between now and November 2004.

That’s \$17,776.67 an hour.

Or \$296.27 — 3/4 of my weekly income — every minute.

As 18 1/2 Minute Gap pointed out, more money every day than 99% of Americans earn in a year.

Might this be a good time to mention that this would be an excellent time to donate to your preferred Democratic candidate (like, oh, say, Howard Dean)? I thought so.

(via August Pollak)

The top ten reasons to vote against Bush in the 2004 elections:

1. Honesty\
   Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his sex life. George Bush is applauded for overthrowing two governments (and counting) based on lies. He lied about the threat, he lied about the cost, and he lied about the expected outcome. He lied about the purpose of his tax cuts, he lied about education, the environment, energy, and his own past. Everything he says is written and choreographed by people with brains to achieve political gain. In Bush’s administration, truth takes a back seat to power.
2. War\
   History will not be kind to George Bush. In two years he overthrew two governments, and has his eyes on several others. He has ignored the UN, the US public, and 90% of the rest of the world, including millions who protested in the streets. He has violated the US Constitution and international law. In his empire-building march across the Middle East, he has wasted the lives of thousands. History will wonder why no one stopped him.
3. Economy\
   As soon as people saw that Bush might get elected in 2000, the economy started to fall, helped by Bush’s talk of recession. He, of course, tried to blame Clinton. Since then, the economy has dipped in and out of recession, jobs are evaporating in huge numbers, deficits are soaring, and Bush’s only response is to cut taxes for the wealthy. We must get someone in the Whitehouse who is not bent on destroying the very institution he heads.
4. Liberties\
   Yes, we need to catch terrorists, but we don’t need a police state to do it. Ashcroft has no concern for personal liberties, only catching the bad guys. Is it really necessary for the government to know what books you read? Is it necessary to read your e-mail? Must librarians be gagged? This slide toward Fascism is as scary as anything else Bush does.
5. Taxes\
   No one likes taxes, but we all pay them in hopes that the government will provide the services we need and want: schools, highways, bridges, and security. Bush, like Reagan before him, intends to choke the government down to size. By cutting taxes, primarily for the wealthy, deficits soar and nothing is left for education, the environment, social programs (including Social Security) or necessary regulation of corporations. After spending \$400 billion a year on an obscenely bloated military, there is no money for books, no money for highways. There is no money. But schools must remain open, roads must be repaired, and the sick must find treatment; all this is left to the state and local governments, which are now raising taxes.
6. Environment\
   One of his first acts as president was to raise the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water. Since then, we have seen a continuous assault on the forests, the air, the water, and the land. This fits perfectly with the far-right groups that Bush answers to. They have no use for tree huggers. Why can’t we just put up with foul air and water? Aren’t we tough enough?
7. International Relations\
   When you’re the strongest nation by a factor of ten, you don’t need to play nice. You can be a bully, and if other countries don’t like it, too bad. Under Bush, we’ve seen this arrogant attitude regularly. He walked away from Kyoto, from the land mine treaty, from the international women’s rights treaty, and the international criminal court. He ignored the pleas of long-time allies, insulting them childishly. It will be decades before we can regain the respect of the world.
8. Secrecy\
   This is the most secret administration in memory. Decisions are clearly being made by corporations and far-right interest groups, but Bush refuses to admit it or to say who is behind such important policies as energy. Government can only be trusted in the sunlight, and this government hides at undisclosed locations.
9. Attitude\
   There’s nothing wrong with cowboys. They need to be tough and independent to be successful on the ranch. All those cows and snakes and such. Unfortunately, this attitude doesn’t work as well for the leader of a country. Mix in hubris, arrogance, and the control of a huge military, and watch out. You get George Bush.
10. Military\
    We spend far more than any other single country on our military, more even that the next ten countries. While most of us appreciate the sense of security a strong military brings, we also question the wisdom of such spending when we have no clear enemy. Iraq was overthrown for about \$100 billion. We spend four times that every year. And now Bush wants to build a magical missile shield that no one believes will actually work. Oh, it will cost many billions, and a few select corporations will get rich, but meanwhile we have other needs, desperate needs, that are not being met. We don’t even have health care for all our children. We can’t even provide breakfast for all our children, or books, or decent schools. But we can kill bad guys better than anyone. And if Bush has his way, we will soon be dropping tactical nuclear bombs on them.

Not enough for you? There’s 990 more reasons at One Thousand Reasons to Dump Bush.

(via Len)

…of Bush’s Self-Destruction: The Superpower of Peace Has the Ultimate Force

The Bush assault is foundering on the shoals of Truth.

The Republicans have seized control of the American judicial, legislative and executive branches. Their immensely effective corporate mass media misinforms, misleads and manipulates. They control the world’s most powerful army, and are glad to use it without provocation.

Having stolen the election of 2000, Bush’s minions are rigging America’s voting machines and erasing countless suspected Democrats from voter rolls nationwide.

Their goal is to shock and awe the opposition into extinction.

If image is everything, Bush sits atop a dictatorial fortress, not likely to fall soon.

But history teaches that, ultimately, Truth is more powerful than image: All the people can’t be fooled all the time.

Globally, George W. Bush has become history’s most hated US president. After being gifted near-total support by Osama bin Laden, Bush has sunk to unprecedented scorn. In the global village, American’s unelected chief is under quarantine.

Why? Because outside the United States, the Truth is being told. The world media and the internet seethe with serious reporting and outrage against escalating deceit.

[…]

It’s been said a lie can circle the global before Truth gets its boots on.

But once shod, Truth and only Truth can crush tyrants, kick down prison doors and walk the world back into the sunshine of freedom.

Bush himself has handed an organized, focused and optimistic Superpower of Peace the tools it needs to get stomping.

So let’s roll.

(via Bob Harris)

The MoveOn primary that I posted about earlier today is apparently attracting all sorts of attention (as it should) — unfortunately, not all of it is good.

More than a million Internet users will be invited to vote in a virtual Democratic primary next week, but this most modern of elections is facing age-old allegations of vote-rigging.

Howard Dean, who has built an extensive network of Internet-savvy supporters, is expected to get the most votes in the MoveOn.org primary. Organizers of the site say any advantage for the former Vermont governor is due to his appeal among their members, and not any misdeeds in their process or because one of their employees worked on his campaign.

Officials in Dick Gephardt’s campaign said they were surprised when their supporters who registered got an e-mail encouraging them to vote for Dean. Gephardt’s team considered pulling out of the primary but decided to stay in.

“We are not going to change our participation at this point, but we are concerned that the process seems to be rigged,” said Erik Smith, a spokesman for the presidential campaign of the Missouri lawmaker. “We think there is a legitimate role for MoveOn to organize grass-roots support for candidates, but we are worried that it appears they are playing favorites.”

Of course, if the Gephardt people knew what they were talking about, they would have known that Dean’s e-mail was just one of three e-mails being sent out, one from each of the top three candidates in MoveOn’s polls.

Boyd said everyone registered on the site got the Dean e-mail Wednesday because he finished in the top three in a poll conducted by the campaign last month. The other top finishers also got to send a message — Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s was sent Thursday; Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich will send his Friday.

Dean, not being one to take an accusation like this laying down, posted the following rebuttal to his website:

\”MoveOn has done more to get people involved and to give them a voice in the political process than any other organization in recent memory. To question the integrity of MoveOn and its 1.4 million members is outrageous and only serves to further erode the American people’s belief that their voices matter.

\”People in Washington wonder why so many have been turning away from the political process. This type of baseless accusation only gives them one more reason to tune out.

“My campaign will continue to stand for one thing: citizen participation. We must not allow Washington cynicism to erode the fundamental belief that people at the grassroots can make a difference in their government. Join me, and let’s move on.”

(via Taegan Goddard)