After close to a decade of disenfranchisement, I have the opportunity to vote in the 2012 US Presidential election and by my thinking my choices are severely limited.
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as of this writing there are less than five days left before what many people are touting as the most historic election of our lifetime. i feel strangely apathetic, i’ve documented my feelings about how the system works on more than one occasion. and i think any respect i had for either candidate went out the window with passage of the pork fest that was the bailout.
i’m a the point where i want this fiasco to be over so we can get back to business as usual. all the bitter acrimony and inability to have civilised discourse is for naught because once this election cycle is over, it’s back to business as usual. the rich will continue to get rich and find creative ways to not pay for shit, the poor will continue to be poor and all the while the middle class will continue pay for it and try to make sure they don’t end up poor.
the divisiveness fascinates me. what happens on november 5, when you candidate doesn’t win? are you going to leave the country? are you going to stop talking to your neighbours? co-workers? are you going to arrest or inter all the people that didn’t vote for your candidate? is your mortgage miraculously going to be paid? is your dollar all of a sudden going to go further?
november 5, although it’s really january 21, is going to be a day just like any other and you’re going to go to work and try to make ends meet just like you’re doing today and like you’re going to have to do next day and the next day. this is a system run by the people with money, ‘we the people’ is a pipe dream,
a bipartisan look at the major lies coming out of both camps this election cycle.
Politics is the Art of Controlling your Environment
That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that “it doesn’t matter who’s Presided” has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World? Or been beaten and gassed by the Police for trespassing on public property?or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons?or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.
Hunter S. Thompson
Posted below are ten quotes. read, digest, discuss, repost.
- “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
- “The Quran teaches that [all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews]. Yes, it teaches that very clearly.”
- “I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans…. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that…. There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades…. The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment.”
- “The military will have difficultly recruiting healthy and strong heterosexuals for combat purposes. Why? Fighting in combat with a man in your fox hole that has AIDS or is HIV positive is double jeopardy”
- “It [Gay marriage] will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
- “It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. There is no justification or acceptance of homosexuality…. Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they cannot reproduce.”
- “Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband’s lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man. …. Fallen women will try to dominate the marriage. The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home”
- “I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.”
- “Gay sexuality inevitably involves brutal physical abusiveness and the unnatural imposition of alien substances into internal organs, orally and anally, that inevitably suppress the immune system and heighten susceptibility to disease.”
- “Only 1 percent of the homosexual population in America will die of old age. The average life expectancy for a homosexual in the United States of America is 43 years of age. A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age. Homosexuals represent 2 percent of the population, yet today they’re carrying 60 percent of the known cases of syphilis.”
appalled? if not, then move on now. if you are, sit for a spell. quotes 1 – 7 are from pastor john hagee and rev. rod parsley. why do they matter is more important question. you see as the obama campaign continues to get flack for statements in or out of context by rev. wright, these fine gentlemen are apparently john mccain’s spiritual advisors and theoretically the same rules should apply. right?
ello my name is keifel and i`m a recovering Catholic.
ever since they prematurely announced that John Paul II had died, i`ve pondering who they`re going to select as the next pope. JP II was elected when i was eight and was sort of a defining moment in my career as a Catholic. i had just started preparing for my first communion and his ordination was my biggest religious experience at the time. of course, i got older and more cynical and disenchanted with the Catholic church, but the politics of it will never cease to fascinate me.
i firmly believe that he was dead on Friday and the extra day was just to give the cardinals enough time to figure out whole the candidates are going to be. there is an electoral college type vote for the next pope and somewhat like the electoral college the greatest populations are under represented. the old school and massively declining European Catholics have the largest block of votes, while the Central, South America and Africa with the largest populations of Catholics have the smallest number of votes.
i have no idea where i managed to pick up the information but i managed to pick the four front runners for the papacy, spot on. although in light of the long reign of the second non-Italian pope, i don`t think the hierarchy are quite ready for a black pope, but it may be in their best interest to go `brown`. if only to ensure they don`t ostracise the only growing Catholic populations. whoever they pick, there probably aren`t going to be any radical changes to church policy anytime in the near future.
there are two weeks left until this farce called election day and i have had enough. enough of the empty rhetoric, the empty promises and mostly peoples` blind willingness to accept what ever the party line is.
the cynic in me believes that the results of this election have already been decided in a board room somewhere, i would love to believe that the people that have registered and go out and conscientiously do their civic duty, do have a say in the process, but at the end of the day, politics is less about `we the people` and more about `the corporation knows what`s best.` i could be wrong, but i sincerely doubt it.
i can hope there is a change of leadership, if only for the singular reason that i don`t think religious beliefs and good governance don`t mix; if you can read this and tell me you don`t have a concern, i think you`ve had too much purple kool-aid. at the end of the day even if there is a change at the top i don`t think there is going to be much of a change in either foreign or domestic policy; the US is going to police the planet according to what serves the best interest of the corporations and people at home are going to continue to be marginalised and other people are going to take advantage of the system to the detriment of the majority of the tax payers.
is this worth not talking to your friends, neighbours or co-workers because their party affiliation is different from yours? i think not. in two week for good or ill this will all be over and no matter what the final decision, you`re going to have to live with it.
i have gotten slammed by Google bots today, it`s insane, i`ve had more of them thus far this morning that i had in actual visitors yesterday.
we missed the debates last night, because it was family night and we were watching a movie; well that is our excuse and we`re sticking to that; but we really didn`t want to see it.
i`m pretty much at the point when i want it to be over now. for me this is torture and cause for revolution; taxation without representation. i pay taxes but i have no voice, i can`t vote, my demographic has no lobbyists, but there are tax exempt organisations dictating national policy. there is no way in hell that can be right.
here`s an observation i`ve made; i`ve noticed that people with Bush/Cheney and W `04 stickers drive with more disregard for other drivers than people with Kerry stickers or no stickers at all. in my spin that indicates that Bush/Cheney supporters are reckless, arrogant and self-centred but that`s what spin is, one person`s interpretation of the presented facts.
people that are voting need to get off the spin cycle and start making factual decisions based on all the available information and no on someone else`s opinion. and you need to follow my advice because my opinion is right.
with careful deliberation i tried to avoid the empty rhetoric of both conventions. in a season of empty promises, political conventions are loudest and emptiest.
however this morning, i happened to catch a bit of a recap from the just concluded RNC on NPR and i heard quite possibly the most idiotic utterance in my entire life. comedian Lewis Black has a sketch about the sort of utterances that cause aneurysms, i think this is one of them:
A vote for Republicans is a vote for God
so my question is which God is this?
no this is a serious question. let`s take into account the diversity of the current US population, the basic possibilities are myriad. Jewish, Moslem; although with this administration that`s almost suicidal; Hindu, Buddhist and last but not least Christian, and even they get sub-divided, because i`m pretty sure the Southern Baptist don`t believe they share the same god with the Catholics. and what about the agnostics and pagans and the atheists that want to vote Republican, doesn`t that raise some sort of philosophical conundrum? or is there something i`m missing? and i`m not even getting into the separation of Church and state argument.
what continues to frighten me, is that people where cheering. no one went, hmmmm, something is wrong with this statement. i mean wrong at a fundamental level. this election campaign becomes more and more divisive with every passing day and idiotic statements like that don`t help.
American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call “alarming” intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, NEWSWEEK has learned.
read the rest
the line is bold is my highlight, if that doesn`t worry you, then you`re obviously not living in the real world.
joining the long line of groups that are determined to see the current administration out of office are the librarians against bush; who according to their website are; a group of politically active librarians who are concerned about the Bush administration`s policies and their effects on civil liberties, privacy, and intellectual freedom.
taking an approach that`s a little different but with the same objective is axis of eve. axis believes that effective political action can be irreverent and exciting, and have launched a campaign of flashing at specific events including the RNC involving their line of protest panties; which include:
and men`s boxers that feature:
