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Election reflections

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

This has been, beyond doubt, the most extraordinary political day in my experience.

I had multiple opportunities to observe voters during the course of the day. People were willing to wait in line for hours, without complaint. Many came armed with documentation, to make sure that they couldn’t be turned away. Some waited an extraordinarily long time to vote, only to find that they had come to the wrong voting district (this was a particular problem with folks who lived on Meridian Street Extension, most of which is in the city, but a small portion of which is in the town, and therefore in a different voting district). So far as I can see, each one of them set off for the correct polling place, ready to go to the end of yet another long line. The turnout was amazing. I very much doubt that Groton has ever had such high turnout, and I’m sure we were not unusual. The percentage of young voters was high. People truly wanted change.

And from the merely local to the national, this election was almost all you could ask. All of our local Democratic candidates, from state Representative Lisa Wright to Congressman Joe Courtney (with State Senator Andy Maynard in between) piled up impressive margins of victory. The charter on which I, along with the other 8 members of our commission, worked for over a year actually passed- a minor miracle after a string of failed charter commissions extending back into the 80s. The people of Connecticut had the wisdom to turn down the idea of a constitutional convention, the right decision on the merits and also a well deserved rebuke to a Catholic Church that should learn to keep its nose out of politics. The people of Connecticut and New England got rid of the last remaining Republican Congressman, a feat marred only by the inexplicable re-election of Susan Collins in Maine. Finally, of course, the nation had the wisdom to convincingly reject the Republican party and all that it stands for, to listen to the better angels of our nature, and elect Barack Obama to the presidency. The whole world is celebrating our return to sanity. I still can’t believe that I’ve lived to see this day-to see this nation, black and white, elect an African-American president. It makes you believe that there really may be hope for us. The fact that he has the potential to be a really great president, perhaps the greatest since Roosevelt, makes the moment even sweeter.

Oddly enough, voter enthusiasm made our get out the vote effort almost superfluous. People got themselves out. Nonetheless, it was thousands of people like those who worked so hard in Groton who did the work necessary nationwide to make Obama president and make both the Senate and the House a deeper shade of blue.

As I write this there are a few unknowns. There are a couple of Senate seats up in the air. There are four states that are too close to call on the presidential level. It would be great if they would fall Obama’s way, so that the inevitable cries of vote fraud from Fox and the Republicans will have even less credence.

So, a satisfying day. There is another point I would like to make. To paraphrase Cato: Lieberman must be destroyed. He has all but announced that he will not be there to prevent filbusters in any event. He has nothing to offer the Democrats. Cut him loose.

Finally, a few pictures of folks celebrating the Obama pictures at Groton Headquarters. First, a picture of Jason Gross, Joe Courtney’s chief of staff, who made a sentimental journey back to Groton for a visit to his old stomping grounds, posing with his old partners in crime, Liz Duarte, and my wife, Mary von Dorster.

And just a few pictures of scene at headquarters when CNN announced Obama’s victory:

Much to my surprise, I am not drunk, nor have I been drunk in the course of this night, though I fully expected to celebrate much if Obama won. Much to my relief, I am not in the throes of a deep depression. At the moment, however, I am extremely tired, so this long, meandering and somewhat pointless post must be brought to a close.

Just one more thing:

President Obama.

It has a nice ring.

Filed in Local issues, Presidential Politics, Uncategorized | | Comments (1)

Dirty tricks, a Republican tradition since the 60s

Monday, November 3, 2008

Well, I am far too nervous and stressed to do any serious thinking, so I’m going to do a little serious ranting.

This morning the Day ran an AP article about the dirty tricks that are as inevitable at this point in the election cycle as sunrise in the morning. (The Inevitable Onslaught Of Dirty Tricks Begins As Election Day Draws Closer ):

In the hours before Election Day, as inevitable as winter, comes an onslaught of dirty tricks – confusing e-mails, disturbing phone calls and insinuating fliers left on doorsteps during the night.

The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.

The article goes on to give a bill of particulars, citing numerous examples of dirty tricks. Not one, not a single one, was directed at Republicans by Democrats. Yet this rather salient fact is never explicitly mentioned. It is a fact that vote suppressing dirty tricks are a fact of life in this country, but it is only the Republicans who engage in them on a systematic basis, because it is only the Republicans who have anything to gain by them.

The article in its extended version (the web article is longer than that which appeared in the paper), tries to back up the false equivalency:

And Republicans are not exempt. “Part of it is that election campaigns are more online than ever before,” said Goldman. “During the primaries, a lot of Web sites went up that seemed to be for (GOP candidate Rudy) Giuliani, but actually were attack sites.”

New York City’s former mayor and his high-profile colleagues Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney were also targeted in fake Internet sites that featured “quotes” from the candidates espousing support for extreme positions they never endorsed.

Problem: neither of these are examples of voter suppression, neither took place in the final days of an election cycle, and neither was likely to have been perpetrated by Democrats since they had a primary campaign of their own on which to concentrate. They smack of internecine Republican on Republican attacks. They are not material to the subject matter of the article.

Is it asking too much for the AP to simply state the obvious fact: that at this time of year it’s Republicans that pull out the stops and engage in dirty tricks to try to keep people from voting. It is not inherent in the system; it’s simply a natural tendency for any party that can’t win on the merits and must do all that it can to hide its true positions and, especially when it can’t do that, try to prevent people from voting. This has been going on for decades. The Chief Justice who helped put Bush in the White House got his start suppressing the vote in Arizona. It’s a rite of passage for all good young Republican goons in training.

Rant finished. Tomorrow morning, dark and early, I’ll be heading off to the polls to do poll checking. (For the uninitiated, poll checking is not voter suppression. Each party checks off voters as they vote, so they can contact those who haven’t voted later in the day. I like to be a poll checker because it’s useful work but I don’t have to use the phone.) If all goes well I’ll be blogging from Groton HQ tomorrow night, though I must say anyone wasting their time reading this blog tomorrow night should seriously consider consulting a psychiatrist. It’s 7:30 right now, and if all goes well in about 24 hours we’ll hear good news from Virginia and we’ll know if truth, justice and the American way will finally triumph.

Filed in Media, Republican Corruption | | Comments (0)

One Day More

Monday, November 3, 2008

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0[/youtube]

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A little lexicography

Sunday, November 2, 2008

The Supreme Court is about to rule on whether the word that begins with “F”; the word that should not be said, is always and everywhere obscene. Is it, in other words, obscene only when it refers to sexual activity, or is it obscene when used as an adjective, adverb or noun for the purposes of adding emphasis to a non-sexual expression. For instance, was it obscene for Chase Utley to refer to the Phillies as the “World Fucking Champions” or was he simply adding the word for emphasis, the term “world” before “champions” presumably not impressive enough. The particular speakers at issue in the Supreme Court case include Bono and Cher. Only an FCC controlled by the Bush Administration and the religious right would want to make an issue of this sort of thing. In a delicious irony the plaintiff in the case is Fox.

I don’t know how the court will rule, though I suspect at least two of the three remaining justices who fucking stole the 2000 election, an obscenity that fucking dwarfs anything Bono has ever said or done, will be offended at the use of the word in any and all contexts.

The lower court found against the FCC, pointing out that, for instance, Dick Cheney wasn’t thinking about sex when he suggested that Pat Leahy do something with himself. The dissent was having nothing of it:

A dissenting judge, Pierre N. Leval, agreed that many people who use the most adaptable curse word do not intend to refer to sex. (He gave examples: “a student who gets a disappointing grade on a test, a cook who burns the roast, or a driver who returns to his parked car to find a parking ticket on the windshield.”) But, whatever the speaker’s intentions, Judge Leval added, “a substantial part of the community, and of the television audience, will understand the word as freighted with an offensive sexual connotation.” (Emphasis added)

Here I beg the judge’s indulgence. Which “offensive sexual connotation” does he have in mind? I’m not talking about the “sexual connotation” part; I get that. What I wonder is this: is there something more offensive about the sex connoted by this particular term than that connoted by the terms “have sex with”, “make love”, “copulate”, or any of the other words or euphemisms we use in place of the sturdy Anglo Saxon word in question? As far as I know, they all refer to the same physical act. We don’t even outlaw the word “rape”, which certainly has a more offensive sexual connotation than anything the big bad word brings to mind. I did, by the way, solely in the interests of scholarship, consult my OED to see if the word had any particularly offensive sexual connotation. To stretch a point, it may have one when used as a noun, when characterizing a person as a good … you know what. Something tells me that’s not what the good judge had in mind, though it’s not clear what he did have in mind. If this word does, in fact, connote a particularly offensive sexual act, practice or attitude, isn’t it odd that there are no analogous obscenities for the act of killing? Any word one wants to use for that act is fair game and I simply can’t imagine Judge Scalia telling us there’s any we can’t say.

What’s truly a shame is that we can’t put Bush and his minions in jail for the multiple obscene acts (by my definition) in which they have engaged. One of them, a misdemeanor to be sure, in comparisons to the biggies, is wasting taxpayer money in order to brand a single word as obscene while engaging in the twin obscenities of waging unjustified war and engaging in, and attempting to justify, systematic torture.

Filed in Hypocrisy | | Comments (0)

Palin Pranked/NY Pictures

Sunday, November 2, 2008

My wife, brother-in-law, and I went to New York yesterday to see my sons, visit the new Museum of Modern Art, and spend inordinate amounts of money in New York restaurants. As we were driving home my wife received a text message from my younger son, to the effect that Sarah Palin had fallen for a prank call from someone pretending to be French President Sarkozy. We got a big kick out of the news, but by the time we got home we had talked ourselves into believing that the whole thing was probably a hoax, and that even Sarah Palin couldn’t be stupid enough to fall for something like that.

Nonetheless, despite arriving home late and bleary eyed, we rushed to our computers to find that the news was, in fact, true. For those of you who have not yet heard about it, here’s the youtube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcEiR01QK7o[/youtube]

The pranksters are a couple of Canadian disc jockeys, who have pranked others, including Sarkozy, in the past. One must wonder if they always drop such broad hints that they are a sham. Among other things, they identify a Canadian rock star as a Sarkozy adviser, and mis-identify the premier of Canada, not to mention the fact that it’s unlikely that Sarkozy would brag to Palin about how good his wife is in bed.

Palin is now saying, despite earlier statements from her campaign implying the opposite, that she knew it was a prank all along. I’d also read some commentary to the effect that at least toward the end, she realized it was a prank. I listened a couple of times and I can’t see any sign of that. Certainly, if she thought it was a prank, she should have known instinctively that it was being taped, and she should never have played along without revealing that she was in on the joke. The Obama campaign’s response:

“I’m glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama,”

This is what we’ve come to in the final days. I for one am overdosed on polls, though I keep going back for more. My wife is worse. Everyone, I think, is just holding their breath.

And now for something completely different. A few pictures from the MOMA, for those interested. Click on any one for a larger view.

Update: Apparently I mis-identified the Canadian rock star. He is a French rock star, which I think is an oxymoron.

Filed in Sarah Palin | | Comments (1)

Marching Song

Sunday, November 2, 2008

The Republicans are turning up the sleaze in the final days.

We can’t take anything for granted.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3CYEdr5fA[/youtube]

As Bruce sings, “Only thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight!”

Filed in Music, Presidential Politics, Video | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music-Steve Earle

Friday, October 31, 2008

Once again, thanks to JP for the suggestion.

This one seems timely.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG8ZUaLACZ8[/youtube]

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The CTBlue Presidential Endorsement

Friday, October 31, 2008

Yes, it’s that time of year again. All the newspapers endorse this time of year, and from what I’ve been reading on Editor and Publisher, Barack Obama is getting the lion’s share of endorsements. My readers have been literally (well, not literally…come to think of it, not even figuratively) swamping me with requests that I announce my endorsement for the highest office in the land. The suspense is killing them.

It’s true that I have said a lot of good things about Obama. But, other than the fact that I have hinted at times that I would sink into a clinical depression if he loses, I have not actually officially endorsed him.

The reason for this is that his opponent has qualities that must give one pause. He at least deserves some consideration. He has served his country long and, in the past, well. When he ran for president in 2000, I believed that a principled case could be made for voting for him, though I disagreed with those who made that case. He has been speaking out against the corporations, and has a long record of having opposed their interests and demanding stricter regulation of Wall Street. He is the original maverick, and has demonstrated in this election that he will stick to his positions even as his former supporters question his decisions and desert him in droves.

On the other hand, he supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. His decision making has been rather suspect. His running mate is a person of questionable competence and experience. Most of all, however, I still can’t forgive him for what he did to the country in 2000, and what he’s tried to do to it since then. At one time it appeared he genuinely cared about this nation, but lately it appears that he’d be more than willing to destroy the country in service of his own ego. When all is said and done, I simply can’t endorse Ralph Nader’s presidential run, so I am giving the CTBlue 2008 presidential endorsement to Barack Obama.

So, the suspense is over. Have a good weekend.

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Happy Halloween

Friday, October 31, 2008

Well, we broke all modern records at the homestead today. When we first moved here we would get literally 10s of trick or treaters on Halloween. In recent years traffic has been consistent, at zero. This year we had two, meaning we had an increase of an infinite percentage over last year. I briefly considered giving each one of them half our candy stock, but, hope springing eternal, and all that, held off. Bad idea, as the remaining stash is all going to end up in my stomach.

This year we had a bit of an Obama theme to our Halloween. My brother-in-law Eric is visiting us for a while, having just returned from an extended stay in France, and we put him to work carving a pumpkin. Here he is with his creation, an Obama-a-lantern, followed by said Obama-a-lantern itself.

He’s an English teacher, not a sculptor, and pumpkins can be tough to work with , so, all things considered, not a bad job.

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Despicable

Thursday, October 30, 2008

This speaks for itself:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCaOCWYpPk4[/youtube]

Filed in The Real McCain, Video | | Comments (2)