i am out in california on a business trip and, because i’m staying in a hotel, i have access to a television, something that i will not have in my own home. though i have followed the election, and the debates, closely, this is the first one that i have seen as most americans see it: in real time, on TV. because of that, it was unclear to me whether this debate was really as ho-hum and, at times, downright boring as it seemed or whether this feeling came from watching the whole thing at one time on the much-despised (by me) boob tube, rather than watching clips and highlights as i read through the responses.
![](http://getangrywithme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/that_one.gif "\\"that one\\"")
it was somewhat heartening to discover that i was not alone and that this debate was considered by most to be pretty much plain vanilla. even so, there were a few moments that i enjoyed, especially obama’s come-back to mccain about his “bomb bomb bomb iran” nonsense. as dignified and reserved as that reply was, it is an example of barack finally taking the gloves off with mccain, and high time he did so, in his own rather removed, rather noble way.
a far cry indeed from the tone of the republican campaign, where stump speeches have now, courtesy of pitbull palin, come to resemble klan meetings or the revival of a wacked-out and bloodthirsty fringe religion, where participants characterize an elected, respected US senator as a “terrorist” and shouts of “kill him” are met only with a lipsticked grin. yes, this is what the mccain campaign aspires to inspire at this point, the very worst that is in human beings, a narrow brand of patriotism that seeks to destroy anything even remotely unlike itself.
well, come and get me then, john & sarah, because i am very much unlike either one of you, and pretty goddam proud of it.
in the meantime, while we were all too busy campaign-watching to pay much attention to the moron-in-chief who still sits in the white house, bush has been doing some maneuvering of his own, and i very much don’t like what i am seeing there. as reported by amy goodman, the first army brigade has now been deployed for active duty WITHIN THE UNITED STATES in order to “subdue unruly individuals”, and the fact of that deployment has already been used by the present administration in order to bully congress into passing the dreadful bailout bill.
don’t believe me? take half a minute to watch this clip from representative brad sherman:
when i heard about this deployment a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was “oh my god, they’re going to try and steal another election.” the first time it was done via backroom dealing with the supreme court, the second time it was done via voter blockades and miscounting, but in a landslide election neither of those tactics will work — and this election is shaping up to look like a landslide for obama, who remains honorable even while the pigsty that is the mccain campaign hurls its swill his way.
i would not put anything past george bush at this point. he has nothing to lose, and everything to gain by putting mcsame in the white house. and, thanks to laws that bush himself destroyed while in office, he can legally launch a military attack against the citizens of this country and the army is honor-bound to obey his command. whether they would, in fact, obey a command to — for example — mortar a polling place on election day, has yet to be seen.
other than getting to the polls in record numbers and voting democractic, i’m not sure what we can do about this, and i would love to hear some ideas about prevention. while i don’t think it’s likely that the army is going to be turned against us in order to support the republican ticket, i certainly don’t think it’s impossible, and that is enough to keep me scared and get me prepared. i live in NYC, so getting myself a gun is out of the question — it would take months, not weeks — and anyway i don’t know anything about gunplay and would likely not be very useful in that way. so how CAN i be useful? what can one impassioned american citizen do to prevent this country’s final descent into dictatorship?
while i retire to my basement bunker to best figure out how to protect myself from my own government (shades of the gulag archipelago there, no?), i leave you with this, which i consider to be the final word on sarah palin:
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I want to have Keith Olbermann’s babies.
We will never have true change in this country until people stop voting for the republicrats. We have only one party in this country. Oh sure they pretend to have two, but they’re both the same, and they don’t want citizens to have any say in what goes on. Until Americans begin voting for alternative candidates, we will continue to be controlled by big business interests. Where are the other parties’ candidates during these so-called “debates”? Republicrats have a monopoly on the political process, and things will never change until the voters reject them and look for truly different ideas. At least look at Ralph Nader’s web site, see what Libertarians and Green Party candidates and others are saying and maybe we can start become a democracy again.
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