Just say no to flipping off the Bush/Cheney bumper stickers… lest the li’l red-headed girl call for you to go to “time-out.”
My Jeep is plastered with 2 Kerry stickers, 2 MoveOn stickers (“Nothing Accomplished – Defeat Bush” and “Defend America – Defeat Bush”), and a few other decidedly liberal stickers.
While driving home Friday, I was passed by a car with a Bush/Cheney sticker and the guy honked and gave me the finger.
The irony is that the car was a fifteen-year-old very-beat-up import. Nothing cracks me up more than a poor person who votes Republican. I can understand a Bush/Cheney sticker on a Hummer or a Lexus — that’s just voting in your own self-interest (misguided as it may be.)
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Switching gears: A hearty thumbs-up to Bill Maher’s premiere episode on Friday. Michael Moore and Bill Maher on their knees begging Nader to not run was priceless.
Some other highlights: Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell dressing-down (in that oh-so-polite Canadian manner) Ralph Nader. Campbell explains, “In Canada, if you garner enough third-party votes, that translates to seats in the House of Commons. In France, if one candidate does not get a majority, there is a run-off election. In America, November 2nd is a sudden-death playoff and if you help to elect the winner, you’ve guaranteed that you have no voice…”
Nader tried to interject that without Canada’s third-party NDP, they would never have gotten universal health care. Campbell immediately hit back with, “that’s because the NDP had gotten a share of seats in the House!”
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Moore battling the token Repug was the hit of the show for me. Moore caught him twice in rhetorical contradiction. One was when the Repug tried to criticize the truth of Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore asked if he’d seen the movie, and he admitted he hadn’t.
Another was when he kept trying to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper. “He voted for the war, before he voted against it,” the repug reminded us. He then tried to defend Bush by saying he’d gotten “flawed intelligence.” Could that be the same flawed intellgience that convinced Kerry to vote for the war? So once Kerry was presented with facts, he changed his mind? That’s not flip-flopping, that’s an understanding of cause-and-effect, something Bush clearly doesn’t have.
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During the end credits, Maher shows a clip of Barack Obama speaking with Andre 3000 (from OutKast, who’s never voted and is now part of an effort to bring out “virgin voters” to the polls.)
Obama: “See, it doesn’t matter if you’re a music star or you work at Mickey D’s, the government is taking some of your money out of your paycheck every month.
“Now, that money can go for building schools or it can go for building prisons. It can go to rebuilding roads, bridges and firehouses in America, or it can rebuild the ones that we’ve blown up in Iraq.
“And if you don’t vote, it’s like you’re just giving up, you’re just admitting defeat. ‘Go ahead, spend my money on anything you want.’ I don’t know about you, but I don’t like getting punked like that.”
Yes, Obama really said “punked.” I really like this guy. He can speak to the elites like a Harvard grad, or he can shift into ebonics when talking to a hip-hop star. As much as I like Sharpton, I can’t see his influence extending very far beyond the black community. Edwards/Obama 2012!
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“Real Time with Bill Maher” — see www.billmaher.tv — it’s worth the HBO subscription.
“Radical” Russ
from the liberal oasis of Portland, Oregon
where Air America is #1 in most time slots (though, sadly, not Morning Sedition…)
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