He is laughing at my pain...
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This is a place where current and ex-students of my "We the People" program can touch base with each other on important current issues. Publish your comments by clicking on "comments" under a post, then "post a comment". You can register, or just post a comment anonymously. WARNING: I make less of an attempt to be "fair and balanced" in this blog than I do in class. Feel free to take me on though, I don't have all the answers and I love to hear your opinions regardless of your perspective.
9 comments:
He looks smug... smirking... gloating... AHHHHH!
-Crystal Krippaehne
Smug is the word to use...I prayed for four years that yesterday would be the last day to see that stupid smirk of his, but we've got four more years.
Which takes me to the next question of...who will be a candidate positioned to win the Democratic nominaton in 2008? Hillary Clinton? (Forget Obama...he's Black, he's young and inexperienced in foreign policy, he was born in Hawaii...)
Edwards has to perform a miracle to keep himself in the headlines for the next four years, the fickle American media will lose interest in him in the next three days.
For Republicans:
McCain has set himself up well for 2008 by kissing up to the Bushes.
Ah-nold Schwarznegger- if the constitution changes to allow him to run for office?
Tom Delay? Pataki? Guliani?
God help us all...
-Yosef
He's laughing at the pain of our entire family! Our youngest couldn't even sleep election night! At least 3/4 of us want to move to Canada. Mr. C. would want to go, but he's afraid he lose track of the "blogger."
Seriously, it's going to be a painful 4 years. My 80 year old mother cried all through Kerry's concession speech yesterday. Will she ever see another decent president elected?
Yosef, you've posed a good question, however one which has added a new layer of stress with the mention of Aaaaanold S. in CA. Maybe Bush will make it easy on us and just come up with a whole new constitution, one which reflect all of his outrageous views...then it can be just to h--- with everything!
I just don't know how to NOT watch the news so I don't have to see Bush when I have a high school social studies teacher as a husband! I want to be in denial!
When will it stop hurting?
All of you take care!
Mrs. C.
I just saw something on the internet...interesting quote:
"We're in the Red Zone. Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to guard" sound like "to rape and to pillage."
Any thoughts?
Mrs. C.
OH MAN
nothing political to say here,
but TIGHT, correspondence with MRS CORRAGIO.
your husband is the best teacher ever. keep it up, yo! and happy belated first-date anniversary. He was all cute about it the next day. come say hi to the class. i need to meet you.
Kelly
http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm
17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists...by Michael Moore
Dear Friends,
Ok, it sucks. Really sucks. But before you go and cash it all in, let's, in the words of Monty Python, “always look on the bright side of life!” There IS some good news from Tuesday's election.
Here are 17 reasons not to slit your wrists:
1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.
2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.
4. In spite of Bush's win, the majority of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn't worth fighting (51%), and don’t approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%). (Note to foreigners: Don't try to figure this one out. It's an American thing, like Pop Tarts.)
5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won't be able to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say "if the Democrats do their job?" Um, maybe better to scratch this one.
6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!
7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any old nut -- a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut. May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.
8. 88% of Bush's support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn't such a long time! If you're ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.
9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.
10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress, including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It's always good to have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates can't.
11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!
12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.
13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3 chambers in Tuesday's elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the 2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53 chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47 chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber (Montana House) is still undecided.
14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than the one he's having this week. It's all downhill for him from here on out -- and, more significantly, he's just not going to want to do all the hard work that will be expected of him. It'll be like everyone's last month in 12th grade -- you've already made it, so it's party time! Perhaps he'll treat the next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn't he? He's already proved his point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.
15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn't ever need to pander to the Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear that he should spend these last four years building "a legacy" so that history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and arrogant -- and thus, reckless -- that he will commit a blunder of such major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from office.
16. There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!
17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008.
Feeling better? I hope so. As my friend Mort wrote me yesterday, "My Romanian grandfather used to say to me, 'Remember, Morton, this is such a wonderful country -- it doesn't even need a president!'"
But it needs us. Rest up, I'll write you again tomorrow.
Yours,
Michael Moore
I hope the Michael Moore points I cut and pasted above help ease the pain a bit...It's not easy right now and it won't be an easy four years, but we have to try to look on the bright side.
In two years, we are going to have mid-term elections, and we have to make sure we keep all the advantages Democrats currently have in our state.
The day after the election, when I asked "Where do we go from here? It's not just JFK, but the whole progressive cause seems doomed." My theology professor replied that "Republicans thought exactly the same things ten or fifteen years ago, and now they have control of both the House and the Senate." It's not over..it'll never be over as long as a group of committed citizens stay active in the democratic process.
-Yosef
I'm generally not a fan of Michael Moore, mostly because he takes resonable complex academic arguments and turns them into emotional, hateful rhetoric. He is to conservatives what Ann Coulter is to liberals. (Grrrrr....) However, the man does bring up some interesting points. These are the thing's I'm happy about in spite of this national tragedy that we call an election.
First, Bush still has an approval rating of below 50%. What this means, of course, is that he still has very little political capital with which to accomplish his goals. Yes, he was elected by a mandate, but a weak one by a public that really didn't vote for him as much as it voted against Kerry. In his speech yesterday, he said that the elected has earned him some capital, and no he "intends to spend it." I don't think he "earned" anything, I think it was awarded to him, and even that was only a small amount of momentum to propel him 4 more years. In fact, I'd be willing to say that he is still in the red (pun not intended) in terms of capital due to the multiple political fiascos in his first term.
Second, as was evidenced in the debates, he has no cohesive domestic agenda. Bush bends the way his supporters want, and he doesn't need his supporters as much now. He also no political power to get anything done, even if he had a plan. Think of the first 9 months of his presidency; I'm expecting the next for years to be like that. So, little damage for social liberals, but little progress for conseravatives. Foreign policy, I think (and hope) will be the same thing. Bush can't get into another war for more than 90 days without congressional approval. Given his handling of this war, I think he'd be hard pressed to get enough votes to start one unless a major world event occurred. Even then, they wouldn't give him a blank check for a seperate operation like they did in 2002; Congress learns from its mistakes. That means no reason to hold a draft.
Third, the supreme court will not be packed with ultraconservative judges. Bush won't be able to appoint more than a moderate justice (or two :-/ ) because of the ability of moderates/liberals on both sides of the aisle to filibuster. Remember, not every Republican is conservative, and not a single Democratic senator is a conservate (bye bye, Zell Miller!). And lets hope that most of them can last another 4 years until a liberal (or at least a moderate) is in the White House.
Fourth, Bush's daughters may be attractive, but Kerry's daughter (the brunette) was pretty cute too.
My final comment is my view of John Kerry. He is a moderate, and I am liberal enough to have been an outspoken delegate for Howard Dean in the caucus (I didn't like Kucinich). To be truthful, I wasn't much of a fan of Sen. Kerry. I voted for him, and I did so because I thought he would turn the country toward the right direction. I voted for peace, prosperity and civil freedoms, something this president cannot give me. However, I don't think Kerry would have been able to accomplish much. He would have low support by the public (see point #1 for Bush) and his party holds a minority in both houses. Legislating anything would be a challenge, and Sen. Kerry does not have the muscle or charisma to overcome the difficulties. I'm afraid a Kerry Presidency would have been akin to Carter's. Undoubtedly better than the fool he was replacing, but not exactly the right guy either. Maybe he'll run again in 2008. He'll be 65 years old and at the end of his term as MA's senator...
Yosef, you speculated who may run in 2008... Here are my speculations: For the republicans: McCain, Guiliani, maybe Frist. For the Democrats: Edwards, Hillary, Sen. Dodd, maybe Kerry again (but I doubt it).
Four more years... let's hope the democrats look at this defeat and say, "hey, people don't like this president... and we STILL lost? Maybe it's time for a rebirth." Here's to hoping that this country's liberals organize themselves to move us in the right direction!
Wow, I'm maximally long-winded and excessively verbose on some occasions, am I not? ;-)
-Jason
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