Xopher, that explains the particular admiration I've had for your posts.
Anyway. You know that little "clap your hands" song that went around a couple years ago, based on Tom Tomorrow's "Bomb Iraq" strip? From the looks of this thread, and the Nader-shaped wet spot on the pavement where the dead horse of the 2000 Election used to be, I think it's time to dust off my plans to re-rewrite it.
If the right steals an election, bash the left
If the right steals an election, bash the left
If the right steals an election,
Lieberman will need protection
If the right steals an election, bash the left.
If Bush restricts abortion, bash the left
If Bush restricts abortion, bash the left
If Bush restricts abortion,
And Delay does reapportion
If Bush restricts abortion, bash the left
If you have no more agenda, bash the left
If you have no more agenda, bash the left
If you have no more agenda,
Civil rights are in a blender
If you have no more agenda, bash the left.
Neocons are way too scary: bash the left
Neocons are way too scary: bash the left
Neocons are way too scary,
Hold your nose and vote for Kerry
Neocons are way too scary: bash the left
(Improvise verses ad libitum, if not ad nauseam.)
I agree with Patrick as regards Nader's personality. Of course, if I was going to refuse to vote for sociopaths that would somewhat limit my choices each time I went to the polls.
That said, I'm curious why, as this discussion gets hashed out yet again, the (ahem) elephant in the room again gets a free pass.
To wit: How many Florida Democrats voted for Bush in 2000?
Nice post, j h.
I like what commenter David Byron said the other day over at Factesque:
"How's this for a strategy "progressives": imagine the GOP were the far left and just lay into them.
Not too many GOP'ers spent five years blaming Perot for the Bush loss in 1992. They organized and pushed Clinton into a rearguard conservative black hole. I'm a big fan of third parties, and I'm rarely going to castigate people for voting for them.
I just wish there was a second party to vote for.
And it's even snappier than "Thanks Again, Nader Voters."
Though "Thanks again, Bush voters" has a nice ring to it.
Remember, unfortunate people are nothing more than scenery against which, if we're lucky, we real people can enact our personal dramas of redemption.
Thank you, Patrick.
Oh, and Chris - I've already thrown a few bucks at the Red Cross. Now I'm considering if it would be better to throw more money at the immediate disaster, or to send money to what's left of America's opposition party.
I wish I had a good answer to that.
Bob O, thanks for the correction, which was far more gentle than it could reasonably have been. I'm sorry to have been so careless.
Keystrokes "Bob" "Oldendorf" has spent explaining that he knows how to survive in a major disaster better than other people: approximately 9000.
Keystrokes others have spent in an admittedly enjoyable effort to smack him down: approximately 24,000
Keystrokes necessary to send an email to the White House demanding immediate action be taken to address the continuing and in fact mounting deaths on the Gulf Coast: less than 5000.
Keystrokes necessary to go to the Red Cross website and make a credit card donation of $100: less than 500.
Keystrokes I've spent in this condescending snark: about 650.
Hell, just charge the Bush administration with the task of filling NOLA to the brim with water. It'll be bone-dry in hours.
That's more gently than I would have put it, Teresa. I admire you.
Not that I didn't before of course.
Allen Touissant is in New York. The linked page has a list of NOLA musicians known to be safe, and a few still unaccounted for.
I swear this happened to a friend of a friend. He's a writer, and he was driving at night in a bad neighborhood, and this beautiful but sort of strange-looking woman is hitchihiking. So he picks her up, and she gets in the back seat and says "I'm a book editor with a big publishing house, can you take me to my parent's place?" And he says "Sure," and it's a couple miles away and they start talking. She agrees to take a look at his book, says "Please. I could really use a good submission." He looks up into the rear-view, ready to ask her where she works, but she's gone. Vanished. He goes to the address she gave, rings the doorbell, and an older woman answers. He asks about the young woman, and an old man comes out to the living room and they invite him in and sit him down on the couch. He sees a framed photograph of the hitchhiker on the mantel. The old man says "Our daughter was a book editor. Twenty years ago this very night she was reading chapter five of a Jerry Pournelle manuscript, and she suddenly pulled out a gun and shot herself in the head."
In fact, quite a few US cities are disasters waiting to happen. Los Angeles and Tacoma, Washington are two that spring to mind. Many Midwestern cities are inevitably going to be exposed to tornadoes sooner or later. There really is no totally safe place.
Berkeley is toast within the next 30 years, most likely. Same goes for San Francisco and much of San Jose. But Berkeley is likely to be almost completely destroyed before I die, according to the relatively conservative ground shaking forecast maps that have been available on the web for a decade now. Which is why I kind of went off on someone today who just bought a house in Berkeley and was declaiming about how we ought not subsidize people who want to rebuild NOLA.
Teresa: They've already dismantled the core achievements of the Democratic Party, so now they've started on the Whigs.
Patrick: Thanks for posting this.
Taking a wide-screen tv, though, that's just fucking stupid. Anybody who does that should be shot on sight, not for looting but for the egregious counter-survival display.
It may well be long-term thinking. The waters will recede, the Red Cross will leave, and then people will be scratching out a living in a shattered city with few jobs for people not skilled in construction.
One of the very few useful things I learned from reading Heinlein: Trade goods are a survival tool.
(Click the link that says "slipping into disk jockey mode.")
It's been Lucinda Williams' Crescent City for me since Sunday, spurring tears, to the point where I had to link to the mp3 at my blog.
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 24 |
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