If you ask someone if they are voting for Obama or McCain, and they answer with a third party candidate, it's the equivalent of choosing "or."
I don't begrudge anyone their right to vote whatsoever, but thinking of it this way tickles my funny bone.
Here are the options in the Georgian-Russian war as I see them.
-The West keeps trying to find a diplomatic solution, Russia finally stops being stubborn and accepts the Georgian cease fire, and we assess the damage after the fact.
How far should we go to hold our leaders accountable? I'm willing to say as far as we f***ing have to, but I'm willing to be reasonable and not pursue people like the hound from hell. Yet there are times when leaders flout their position, deem themselves untouchable, and just in general piss people off. Karl Rove is one of those people.
Now people are calling for his arrest.
An intriguing proposition. What do you all think? Should they just leave it be or put him in jail? It's true - he should be held in contempt. But who is really at work here? Rove? Or the Administration? Who's to be held accountable?
If you are intrigued enough, you can go here and sign the petition.
Well, I'm sure he would have-
-if he had gotten the letter.
See, I had some important things to tell Mr. Clinton back in '94 or '95 (I'm not sure - I just know it has to be some time between the 29-cent stamp and my handwriting). I snuck a stamp out of someone's purse, put it on my envelope with my very important letter, went down the hill to the mailbox, stuck it in, and raised the flag. Thirteen or fourteen years later, my grandmother finds it while cleaning the house.
This was my very important message:
It's fascinating to me now to look back and see how my little mind grasped the world. I knew the president had money, and I knew, if he really wanted to and I could show him that we weren't completely without (the penny taped to the page), he could help us out, even a little.
Bill Clinton was a bad word in my house, and I never really understood why. I had an inkling it was because he was a Democrat (though Arkansas has elected all of seven Republican governors in its history, and four were during Reconstruction). The hatred of Bill mostly came from my grandfather, who could hold grudges for very small things. Maybe Bill made one too many jokes about watermelons, or perhaps he gave the cold shoulder to one of our cousins ten times removed. For the life of me, I don't know. But it was a cornerstone in the politics of our house that, whatever you did, you didn't say, "Well, I like Bill."
I believe I was in the second grade when we held mock elections for the next president. In a combination of peer pressure and rebellious determination, I voted for Bill Clinton. I remember my face growing hot and my heart racing as I marked his name. When I went home, I told my family that I had voted for Bob Dole. Lies. All lies. Even though I had enjoyed voting for Bill, I knew I couldn't hide my dark secret forever.
One day I went up to my grandfather, my head hung low. Papa asked me what was the matter, and I finally blurted it out.
"Papa, I didn't vote for Bob Dole!"
"Why, who'd you vote for?"
"Bill Clinton! I'm sorry!"
And I remember the look on Papa's face as he sighed so deeply that his chest rose and nearly touched his chin.
"It's alright, Honey. That's what we died for."
I felt my heart sink really low, but he patted his lap, and I dutifully crawled up and laid my head on his shoulder.
I don't know why my grandfather, war veteran and farmer, hated politicians so vehemently. But that day, I realized that he had put all of that aside for me, at least for a little while.
Looking back, I'm sure beyond a doubt that my grandfather took the letter out of the mailbox. I really don't know why, but I don't think it matters anymore. It's now an artifact and a conduit that makes the memories easier to recall. I'm almost positive that's not what he had in mind when he took out of the mailbox (and read it, no less). Whatever reason he had, I'm glad he did so.
Besides, it's not like Bill would have come down for supper anyway.
Still haven't decided on a presidential candidate? This may help.
From GOOD Magazine: Meet the Candidates.
This is in response to a post on a forum I frequent. Many people are calling a McCain/Huckabee ticket as the most perfect thing the Republicans can do right now. I strongly disagree, and most of the following is in that vein. However, as the title suggests, I don't plan to vote for the Republican nominee at this time, and can't really see a reason in the near future that I would want to do so. At any rate, here are my $0.02.
Time for another Firestarter!
Sorry for the hiatus, folks, but I'm back at school and fighting the hectic currents of school, work, friends, and family.
This last week I had to write a mini-essay over the definition of freedom and what I think it is. At first, I tried to be funny about it. It's the kind of essay prompt you give to elementary school kids, not college students. At least, traditionally. While I don't think that second graders should seriously be contemplating freedom instead of learning history and English (how will they really understand what freedom is if they don't learn about the past and where and what we came from?), that's how it usually goes. Despite how good of an exercise this could have been, I hated it.
So, like I said, I tried to have a sense of humor, but the assignment just seemed all wrong. Is "freedom" really only worth 1 1/2 pages? Dissertations have been written on it, and I was expected to sum up what freedom means in a page and a half? It seemed like a cheap assignment. Then again, I don't know what's more telling: that we were only to write 1 1/2 pages on something so fundamental to the American way of life, or the trouble I had writing it.
It's not that I can't define freedom. I can think of many ways to do so. The problem is that I can't really grasp how my definition of freedom can be anything but a regurgitation of Webster. In my sorry paper, I went ahead to say that I was a product of freedom (I fall into a combination of "minorities", "statistics", and "exploited" groups that have received some sort of freedom, limited or otherwise), but that's as personal as I could get. It's hard to define freedom in the U.S. What we perceive as injustice and unfairness is often nitpicking, and what the majority perceives as what is right and fair is often where the real infringements are. I relied on that majority vision of freedom. Otherwise, it would have been a moody, stupid paper.
But I did go so far as to say that a free country would not allow the beliefs and ideals of one social group dictate the laws and limits of the American people. Was that a shot at evangelicals? Yes. If I had to choose one social group in the United States that has an ultimate agenda with a planned tangible outcome, evangelicals - especially those who dabble in the political arena - would be it. In fact, Huckabee, the champion of those whom I have accused, said this on January 14 before the Michigan primaries:
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, to amend the Constitution so it's in God standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."
In a roundabout way, here is my point: I can't define what freedom is until I've pointed out all that I believe freedom isn't. What Huckabee describes, what many Americans feel is right and free, is exactly what I'm scared of and what I don't want and what I believe freedom not to be and what I wish people could see as no different than the unjust indoctrination of communism, fascism, or any other -ism. What Huckabee proposes is what I wanted to relate to my professor in my 1 1/2 pages as exactly what this country was meant to stand against, not for. But, instead, I took my shot at evangelicals and ran away from it like it was radioactive. For the most part, that's because I can't read my professor, and I don't know whose "side" she's on. But there is a small part of me that desires civility to cheap shots - that I've got to give everyone the elbow room they need to pray, punch, or "apathize" without my meddling. In other words, I don't want to make myself a target by being so openly critical of any and everyone around me.
In the end, the assignment made me learn something powerful about myself: I'm just as susceptible to the politics of fear as anyone else. I'm willing to go with "the other guy" as long as "the other guy" isn't directly threatening me. But what does that say about me? That I'd rather fly blind than knowingly get in a plane with a faulty engine? It just means I'm an ignorant sheep, and not as critical as I should be of what's going on around me.
I'm not free. Chances are, you aren't either.
