I've never had so much fun coloring in a circle before. This might be the best time I've ever had with a pen. I'm still smiling.
I just watched the Kerry documentary Going Upriver and I'm more excited than ever about electing John Kerry. His leadership during and after the Vietnam War was inspiring and impressive. I will be proud to have John Kerry as our President. Watch the movie for free on-line at www.thekerrymovie.com.
Only 8 more days until we take our country back!
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John Kerry was in Seattle yesterday. John, don't let the Republicans out market you. Take George Lakoff's advice:
"Reframing is telling the truth as we see it -- telling it forcefully, straightforwardly and articulately, with moral conviction and without hesitation."
Don't let Republicans use bogus phrases like tax relief. Remind the people that taxes are the price you pay to live in a civilized country. As George Lakoff says:
"The more wealth you accumulate using what the dues payers have provided, the greater the debt you owe to those who have made your wealth possible. That is the logic of progressive taxation."
All I can say about this great article is, "Yo, what he said."
]]>“We mean Kerry or Bush,” they answered.
I asked one of them what she thought about Bush. She said that our country needs steady leadership in times of change and that America would look weak if we switched leaders.
I asked her what she thought about Kerry. She said they didn’t really trust him because he flip flops on issues. Her friends agreed.
It seems like everyone is aware that both parties’ spin machines are operating in high gear. Fewer people are aware that Bush has raised a whopping $80 million more than John Kerry. On top of this, there’s the sad fact that Republicans seem to be better at marketing (but worse at running the country!) than Democrats.
Given the amount of money that goes into advertising Bush, it’s no coincidence that my friends’ concerns were identical to the top two marketing messages of the Bush campaign:
1. Steady leadership in times of change. This is the official slogan of the Bush campaign. See http://www.georgewbush.com.
2. Kerry flip flops on issues. The Bush Website has an entire section called “Kerry Flip Flops.”.
I asked my friend, “What does steady leadership mean?”
“It means we shouldn’t switch leaders when we’re at war.”
“Why shouldn’t we switch leaders?” I asked.
“Because we’d look weak.”
“Why do you think we would look weak? Isn’t our military the largest in the world?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
The Republican's marketing is really working! I just looked it up and here’s one good reason we shouldn’t worry too much about looking weak:
The United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next twenty biggest spenders combined, and six times larger than Russia's, which places second. Source: Wikipedia.
I asked my friend, “Why do you think Kerry flip flops.”
“Well, he voted for the war and then voted against it.”
I reminded her that Kerry voted for the war when the Bush administration said they had evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush ads forget to mention this or the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have ever been found—heck, they haven’t even found evidence that Iraq was trying to build weapons of mass destruction.
Here’s an excerpt from a good article that reminds us of the way Republicans were talking about WMDs. What they were saying scares the shit out of you so bad you can understand why Kerry might have voted for war.
Bush graphically warned, “we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” The month before, Bush claimed an International Atomic Energy Agency report stated that Iraq was “six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon.” The problem? No such report ever existed. In fact, in January 2003 the IAEA told the U.N. Security Council, “we have found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s.”
I asked her what else she’s heard about Bush she said, “It’s so hard to know what’s true. I don’t really trust either of them.” Her friend chimed in, “Both sides have so many facts.” All of us agreed.
I’ve heard people say similar things about not knowing who to trust when I’ve been out registering voters. Let me know if you have good ideas about what to say when people don’t trust either candidate.
Like my friends last night, lots of folks are internalizing the messages from the Bush ads. If you dig past the shouting and the noise of the TV commercials, there are some undisputable facts that show Bush favors the rich, is destroying our environment, and is tarnishing our reputation in the eyes of the world. There are so many facts that we have a whole section of our website dedicated to them. There are entire websites such as www.misleader.org with many, many more.
As for the war, the best thing I’ve heard lately was from Greg Palast who said, “Regardless of whether we originally went to war with Iraq for oil, we sure as hell ain’t leaving without it.”
I’m going to talk more with these friends to tell them the truth about Bush. There are lots of facts on both sides and it is hard to know who to trust. But you don’t need to be an expert to know that President Bush robs from the poor to give to the rich and none of us should want a President like that.
I’ve been writing so much content for the website and staying up so late that I can’t tell if what I’m writing is stupid or funny. I got some feedback from the Driving Votes team and the verdict is that the writing is stupid AND funny. Hopefully, the writing will keep people interested enough to read the facts, get angry, and register some voters.
A few days ago I stayed up late into the night typing in Bush facts for the website. I was so pissed by the end of my typing session that I couldn’t sleep. This guy is a crook, plain and simple. How can you argue with the truth? Look, Kerry can’t turn base metals into gold, but it will be like a dream come true if he can defeat Bush.
I heard a wild and alarming statistic on the radio. Someone was lecturing on a local radio station and said that 60% of all Americans believe one of the following three things:
1.There was a direct link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.
2.Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction AND used them against U.S. troops.
3.Most of the world supported our decision to invade Iraq.
I know, it’s hard to believe. Here’s where it gets interesting: the more you watch Fox news the more likely you are to believe one of those three things. It’s no surprise that people who believe these untruths are much more likely to vote for Bush.
To me, this election is about the truth. It is my sincere hope that Driving Votes will help to spread the truth to the people that need it most--anyone without health care, anyone who has lost a job or knows someone who has lost a job, anyone who knows someone in the armed forces, anyone who cares about the environment, anyone who is not in the wealthiest 1% of this country.
It’s been hard getting the Driving Votes website up. It’s been tough to coordinate a bunch of people who all have demanding day jobs. It’s been a challenge to include everyone while trying to move quickly to make this happen. But overall, I’m proud of the baby-step we’ve taken by launching the website and I can’t wait to get out there and register more voters!
I lived in Kansas for 18 years and there is no doubt that life there is getting worse and worse. Walmart has destroyed most of the local stores by undercutting their prices, big agribusiness has put all of the family farms out of business, the crime rates have skyrocketed, nobody seems to have health care-- the only people that have benefited from the fall of the Midwest are the people running the big businesses.
It’s no wonder that the folks I grew up with want to return to the past: a time when there were stronger family values and the opportunity to earn a decent living, a time when we weren’t scared of terrorists. People in Kansas don’t like the idea of big government because frankly they’ve been screwed in some sense by every administration. The irony is that it’s big business that’s ruining Kansas, not big government.
Thomas Frank, the author of the article in Harper’s who is also from Kansas, explains how the Republicans have convinced America that Democrats are pampered intellectual snobs from the coasts. He talks about how Republicans use cultural and moral issues such as banning gay marriage or fighting terrorism to rile people up while they quietly roll back taxes for the rich and give the corporations the freedom they need to continue pillaging the Midwest. The richest cities in Kansas and the poorest cities all vote Republican.
Why do the people I grew up with in Kansas, who get screwed over and over by the big business that George Bush supports, keep voting Republican? Why do all the people in Kansas without healthcare want a President that will never give them healthcare? How can people watch the cities around them crumble because of Walmart and agribusiness and then vote for the most corporate-loving President we’ve ever seen? Why do the citizens of Kansas move even further to the Right as things get worse and worse for them?
I think Thomas Frank is onto something. When the Republicans tie good old family values to the economic policies that are ruining this country, the Midwest loses. I’m not sure what good family values are when you don’t have a job and can’t take your kids to the doctor but the CEOs of big companies are flying around in their own airplanes. Let’s not blame single mothers when kids are out committing violent crimes, let’s blame the fact that those kids know they aren’t going to get a decent job where they're respected. I know folks in Kansas are angry about the decline in family values, but let’s not blame the gay couple getting married, let’s blame the corporations that are ruining our hometowns. ]]>
On Friday, my dear friend Jesse, an old buddy from Brown University who co-founded a start-up company with me in 1998, invited me to the senior banquet dinner at the Waldorf (alternative) school where he teaches a few blocks from my house. The seniors got to plan and run the banquet, and they had decided to allocate the food at the banquet the same way food is allocated in the world. So out of a group of 50 people, 5 people got to eat luxurious "first world" meals, about 15 people ate "second world" meals, and the remaining 30 people ate "third world" meals-- in other words, we got a bowl of rice and were malnourished or starving. This was a far cry from the senior year social events we put on at my high school in Topeka, Kansas.
In Topeka, Kansas the rest of the world seems very far away. Many of my friends came from Republican families, and they were good families with good people. I always wondered how these people, especially the farmers in Kansas that have been screwed over and over again by the Republicans and their agribusiness, would always vote Replublican. I have some ideas about why these good people still vote Republican, and I think these are the ideas that I'll explore in this blog as we prepare for our trip and then travel across the country.
Back to Jesse's alternative high school though, a father of one of the students stood up at the end of the dinner and quoted an astounding statistic. He said that Bush is proposing a $435 billion dollar budget for our military next year. Then he told us that it would only cost $20 billion dollars to feed every single person that was hungry in the world for one year. I'm not sure if these numbers are accurate, but even if it cost twenty times that much to feed the world, I was left with one question.
Would it make us safer to feed the rest of the planet or bomb the rest of the planet? I know which option George Bush would choose, and that's why we have to get him out.]]>