Back to Politics

I am not good at altering photographs (e. g., “photoshoping”).

Someone who is ought to have fun with this photo:

Turn Governor Palin’s button upside down and you’ll have the 2008 election in a nutshell.

This photo was taken from this Daily Kos frontpage article, as was this one:

John Kerry: states what is going on

A funny line: Earlier in the interview Kerry also said Palin “is back with the Flat Earth Society, she “doesn’t believe climate change is man-made.”

He goes on to point out that McCain-Palin has made this race into one between Obama-Biden and Bush-Cheney.

My buddy Postsimian has had enough with non-virtual Republican pests.

That is really sad; after all, it was nearly 4 years ago that I had dinner with Dr. Andy in Chicago. It was the Saturday prior to the 2004 election disaster, and Dr. Andy is an outspoken Republican (who is for gay rights, the teaching of evolution, separation of church and state…….???).

Science Avenger: I like this blogger’s opinion pieces. Here is his latest:

One thing this election has really exposed, and to our national embarrassment, is our anti-intellectualism, and the nomination of Sarah Palin as VP is just the latest incarnation. Sadly, this has been going on for far longer.

Start off with the king of the anti-intellectuals, George W. Bush. He was elected because he was the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with. You know, I’ve drunk a lot of beers with a lot of guys, and there is no damned way I’d let most of them near the Oval Office. Yet that was the standard America used, and we got a president that didn’t know what the major religious factions of the country he invaded was, can’t say “nuclear”, and thinks “These people want to kill us” is a sophisticated argument. Everything that followed was inevitable. It was just a matter of time.

Now along comes an intelligent, Harvard-educated black man to run for president, and some of the major attacks on him concern his supposed elitism. He’s arrogant. He eats/drinks arugula (I confess to being insufficiently elitist to even know what that is). He’s not like us.

Let’s cut through the crap. What they really mean is that he’s not a dumb fuck like us, he’s not an idiot, he actually knows things. “Elitist” is just code language for “someone smarter than me”, and in America that’s bad, bad, bad. Only in America could a Harvard education work AGAINST you in an election. Only in America could the fact that you can draw far larger crowds than your opponent be used as a negative against you. It’s ignorance, and it’s envy, and it’s fucking absurd. Who needs to watch Idiocracy when we are living in it? [...]

Later he mentions Joe Biden and points out that, while Biden is intelligent, he has the charm of making off the cuff remarks, some of which are, well, stupid.

But I’ll tell you why I find that “charming”: it isn’t that I value stupidity (if I valued stupidity, I’d be supporting McCain-Palin). It is because I think “well, this is one politician who isn’t a slave to focus groups and polls; on occasion he’ll just blurt out what he feels”. And there is another factor: many of us think that John Kerry and John Edwards were just too nice in 2004; they allowed themselves to be used as punching bags. Biden fights back.

Yes, I know that Hillary Clinton fights back and that is why I wanted her to be VP; sadly my women friends told me that having a black and a woman on the same ticket would be “too much” for the country to take.

This was after the Chicago Ultra were he ran a very impressive 50 miler (8:2X, if I remember correctly), whereas I walked the 50K in 6:20 (and this started 2 hours later…perfect timing!) I wore my Kerry-Edwards long sleeved t-shirt, and yes, he and I discussed the election over some good Chinese food.

Neither of us backed down from our views and yet we parted still liking each other (I think )