Tag: Politics

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Yes, I did.

I got home from voting a short while ago. My polling place changed this year, from the community room in the main building of our own apartment complex to the gymnasium of the Catholic school down the street. I suppose this is because they needed more room to put tables, since we’re now no longer using the “flip the lever” gizmo and are instead filling in the ovals on paper ballots that we then stick into the scanner ourselves. I always enjoy voting as an exercise, even if they seemed a bit disorganized today — the only signage directing people where to go assumed you knew what Assembly district you live in, and to be honest, I have no idea. So I had to ask if I was in the right line. (I was.)

And since the polling place workers are all elderly volunteers, everybody had to shout their names to be heard. But still, it took me all of ten minutes to vote, and nine of that was standing in line. That’s the nice thing about being unwilling to vote Republican unless the Democrat is literally an axe murderer; takes a lot less time to just go across the top and fill in the circle next to every Democrat on the ballot.

Anyway, now to see what happens.

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Impeach! Impeach!

I’ve seen a bit of discussion around the few left-wing blogs I still read in which folks offer predictions as to if, and therefore when, a Republican Congress will impeach President Obama. So, my take is this: it won’t happen in 2011 or in 2012, simply because if the Republicans take Congress this year, they — and the media that crowns every political development in the United States as great news for Republicans and further evidence for the notion that the US is a “center-right nation” — will see President Obama as mortally wounded, and they will bank on being able to easily beat him in 2012.

Now, if they’re in control of Congress and President Obama wins a second term — the latter of which still seems fairly likely to me — then I think the probability of a Republican charge to impeachment on some kind of weird grounds is almost a certainty. Why? Because having a Democrat in the White House makes Republicans just insane.

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Dear Carl

You know what you are when you hold disgusting, bigoted beliefs because your religion tells you to?

You’re a disgusting bigot.

Thanks for the opportunity to clear that up.

BTW, I saw this comment on Facebook this morning:

People will vote for him because they don’t see the advantage in voting for a “good person,” if Cuomo even represents that. How does Carl being bigoted or homophobic affect them? How does having an open minded person affect them? If the open minded person raises their taxes, drives away business, and makes their children leave for NC, can you blame them for voting for the nut?

Yup, I can blame them. They could have chosen a candidate who wasn’t a nut, and who would channel their frustration into reasonable policy goals that would move things in a direction they like. Instead, they chose a lunatic whose approach is to say whatever leaps into his brain; who has advanced only a few policy ideas, each of which is a laughable non-starter; whose only appeal to his voters is anger that won’t go anywhere at all. Anger can be useful, but Paladino’s brand of anger won’t be. You can bank on it.

So yes, I can totally blame people for voting for the nut.

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Embracing the Crazy

(A Political Rant with a bit of rude language)

Here in New York, we have a gubernatorial election coming up in which the Republicans have, as they’ve done in races for various offices all across the country, nominated a complete lunatic. But for some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, Americans seem to every so often get themselves into this weird kind of mood where they get so angry that they decide to embrace lunatics as an expression of their anger. I’m hearing a lot of this from supporters of Carl Paladino: “Sure he’s crazy, but crazy is what we need!”

DougJ at Balloon Juice perfectly captures the inherent dangers of this habit:

This kind of reasoning is nearly always stupid, e.g. “at least with Bush, you know where he stands”. People don’t talk this way about things other than politics. No one says “better a quack than all this medical kabuki” or “better Barry Switzer than all that West Coast offense mumbo jumbo”.

If you want to have good government, you do it by voting for sane candidates whose positions you agree with, not by supporting nuts in order to make some ridiculous point about an imperfect system.

I couldn’t agree more. “Carl’s angry and so are we! He expresses our anger!” But what do you want to do with that anger? “Drop a bomb on Albany!” Yeah…but what do you want him to accomplish? What do you want NY’s state government to look like when he’s done? “I dunno…but we’re angry and so’s Carl!” Lather, rinse, repeat. Every time I’ve asked a Paladino supporter what policy ideas of his they find appealing, they can’t cite a single one. They just like that he acts angry.

Along similar lines, a blogger I read recently wrote that President Obama has brought all of his woes upon himself, and that the Tea Party only exists because of his excesses. “The Tea Party wouldn’t exist without him,” this fellow wrote.

But…of course the Tea Party would exist without him. The Tea Party would have happened to any Democrat elected President in 2008, because for all the grass-roots mythology the Tea Parties like to indulge, the fact is very simple: the Tea Party is nothing more than the same pissed-off Republicans who crawl out of the woodwork en masse every time a Democrat is in office. President Hillary Clinton would have faced a Tea Party. So would President Joseph Biden, President John Kerry, President…anyone at all from the Democratic Party.

And one last thought: Every single US Senator who voted against allowing gays to serve in the military (Harry Reid excepted, who only voted no for procedural reasons) can go to hell — especially those who hide behind the excuse that “It wasn’t fair! You didn’t let us offer amendments!” There’s right and there’s wrong, and the fact that you (a) stood up to be counted with ‘wrong’ and (b) claimed as your excuse that Senate procedure is just so much more important than doing right marks every single one of these people as moral midgets of the highest order. Especially John McCain. What a bastard that guy is.

OK, I’m done.

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National Read a Qur’an Day

In response to the right-wing lunatic (is there another kind?) in Florida who plans to celebrate the 9-11-01 anniversary by burning as many copies of the Qur’an as he can, I will on that day post a photo of myself reading a copy of the Qur’an.

I don’t have to go far to get one, either. I keep it right on my shelf, next to the Bible.

Shelfmates

Anybody want to join me for National READ a Qur’an Day?

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How dumb are we?

Here are two Google Maps shots of Lower Manhattan:

In the course of all the idiotic folderol regarding the “mosque” that’s proposed for Lower Manhattan — which the idiots refer to as the “Mosque at Ground Zero”, because well, it’s close enough to being that even though it’s not really a mosque and it’s not really at Ground Zero — I’ve been reminded by the saner voices out there that there are millions of Muslims who are actually American citizens, and that there are thousands of those very American Muslims who live and work in New York City, and that some of those folks were unlucky enough to die on 9-11-01 too, no matter how much the Sarah Palins of the world like to think that only white Christian blood was spilled that day.

It also occurred to me, therefore, that if there are Muslims working in lower Manhattan, those Muslims probably need places to pray. Maybe there’s something already there! So I checked Google, and sure enough, there is.

That first Google Maps image up there? That’s the proposed location of the Islamic Cultural Center on Park Place. Now, note the two blocks’ worth of giant buildings between that location and the World Trade Center site. It’s not on Ground Zero, is it? Nope. In fact, if you’re worshiping there and you duck out the front door for a cigarette, you won’t even be able to see the WTC site from there.

The second Maps image? That’s the location of Masjid Manhattan, an Islamic center that’s been located in Lower Manhattan since — wait for it! — 1970. And it’s just two blocks farther away from Ground Zero than the proposed Islamic Cultural Center! So, while we’re demonizing the people who want to build a new center, shouldn’t we be consistent and demand the immediate closure of the old one? Or is Murray Street, between Park Place and Warren Street, the boundary line below which every inch of Lower Manhattan is “hallowed ground” (which really means, “Only Christians need apply”)? (Although, according to the Masjid Manhattan website, they’re looking for a new location themselves, so maybe we’re just figuring that they’ll go away all on their own.)

Anyway, my point is this: there has been a place for Muslims to congregate in Lower Manhattan, within a thousand feet of the World Trade Center site, since the same year the WTC opened for business. “Hallowed ground”, my ass — what’s at work here is bigotry, pure and simple, whether it’s “No Muslims allowed!” or “Well, we’re used to the ones already here, but we don’t want no new Muslims hangin’ about raisin’ trouble.”

Here’s Jon Stewart on this topic:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover – Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

I especially like the parallels Stewart draws to the Charlton Heston NRA speech.

UPDATE: Oh, holy crap. I can’t believe this country sometimes, I really can’t. The anti-mosque folks had themselves a rally and harassed some black guy who wandered through the crowd because…well, I guess it’s because you can’t really tell blacks from Muslims. They all look alike, don’t they?

We keep pushing the Bar of Crazy down so far, I think it should be popping out of the ground in China by now.

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On that Mosque near Ground Zero

Setting aside the glorious way in which this subject prompted America’s Idiot-In-Chief, Sarah Palin, to live right up to her rep for being the single most empty-headed person in America’s public life, I have to note that I grow tire of a certain style of thinking regarding issues like this. The reasoning basically goes thusly: “Sure, 99.9 percent of the Muslims in the world are not actually terrorists waiting to suicide-bomb you, but for the good of America, we should certainly treat all of ’em as if they are.”

And for the “Build it, but somewhere else” crowd, what is the acceptable distance? Ten blocks? Twenty? A mile? If it’s meant to serve Muslims in Lower Manhattan, where should it go that it won’t be too darn close to the WTC site? Or should they just not build it in Manhattan at all?

Count me among those who think that letting this mosque get built and used without making any fuss whatsoever would put forth a much greater demonstration of America’s ideals than anything I’ve seen in quite some time.

UPDATE: Alan says what I said, but he uses a lot more words to do it. Ha!

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