Twilight Zone Politics

I am tired of hearing George W. Bush talk about the threat of terrorism. Wouldn't you think he would want us to feel safe under his leadership? And, since he has misrepresented so much, wouldn't he even nudge the information to make us feel good about him? Why would he want to keep us afraid?

Someone else has been asking that question, and
and you can read the report here.

Apparently, keeping us terrified is good for Bush. According to this story, people who are thinking about either 9/11 or their own death say they would vote for Bush, and people thinking about common situations like college exams or watching television say they would vote for Kerry.

The CNN story quotes Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York who specializes in terrorism: "There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat."

Does the threat work?

According to the CNN report, the study showed that it did:

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are used.

Watching the Democratic Convention

Watching the Democratic Convention (which I watched on CSPAN, not one of the entertainment news networks) I saw a lot of people who both understand and mean what they say about patriotism and citizenship. We can use a little of that in Washington.

The vote this November will be about human dignity, inclusion, and civil rights. It will be about whether we want to live in a democracy that honors life, liberty, equality under the law, opportunity, and justice for everyone. This is what Kerry promises.

The alternative the Republican administration offers is a corporate despotism in which a few people with great wealth make decisions based on influence peddling and concerned only with raising their own profit margins. This fact is demonstrated in the rush to war in Iraq, enriching favored corporate interests at the cost of American lives, American security at home and abroad, and American self-respect as we watch our government behave like a spoiled brat in international relations. It is demonstrated in the Medicare drug benefit which, as predicted, has not encouraged competition among drug manufacturers and has not lowered drug prices. There are many more examples readily available, if you are not too glued to the entertainment news.

Let's face it, the most universal reason for voting for John Kerry is that we want American democracy back. On the floor of the Democratic Convention, there was, as the entertainment news said, a "dance party." That's what hope looks like when you haven't seen it for a while.

Was it backwards week and nobody told me?

So William Timmins at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas threw out his singer and kept the "few audience members" who were tearing up the place. Aren't you supposed to throw out the people who are tearing up the place?

And today my newspaper spends twelve column inches on a story from Washington complaining that military people with critical skills leave the service, taking their expensive training to private contractors for higher pay, better retirement, and education benefits. Excuse me, but the "explosion in outside contractor work" is a result of the military outsourcing everything from cooking to engineering. Remember, you are outsourcing to save money. If you want people to stay, hire them, pay them, and give them benefits.

Moving On Up

I will tell you what is wrong with pornography on the Internet. I just had to spend an hour cleaning up comments posted on my blog like "I love your site!" and "Thanks for creating this wonderful site!" with links to tripple-x locations. Apparently the people putting pornography on the net are not nice people.

Who would have thought.

Anyway, I guess now that I have been spammed I am officially a bolgger.

Tell Me Why

So, if the Republicans are the party of family values and restoring decency, tell me why it is that if we took the Bushes and the Cheneys out and put the Kerrys and the Edwardses in, the White House would look (and sound) more like Beaver Cleaver's house and less like Tony Soprano's.

Life belongs to God who made it?

So, let me get this right: The Catholic church plans to choose as leader of the free world George W. Bush, who supports the death penalty even for mentally incompetent people, who is on record as refusing to allow a stay of execution even for the hearing of new and exculpatory evidence, and who cost uncounted (or at least unreported) numbers of civilian and military lives in an invasion of Iraq that was actively opposed by the Church and was unsanctioned by the United Nations. The Church hopes to do this by denying communion to John Kerry because he supports a woman's right to choose.

The history of the Catholic church in choosing leaders for states is long and intriguing. (Someone should write a book about it.) The corruption and abuses associated with this history are the motivations for the whole idea of separation of church and state. Collusion between the church and the state has little to do with the holiness or godliness of kings and a great deal to do with power and influence traded over a negotiating table. So what do you suppose George W. Bush has that might interest a couple of Cardinals enough to make them endanger the tax exempt status of their property in the United States by an attempt to influence the outcome of a democratic election?