Monday, November 4, 2002

Hold Your Nose If You Must; But Vote QUOTE OF THE DAY "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it" -- Abraham Lincoln, 1st Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 RHINO HERE: Tomorrow's the day. What for the Senate and Congress could turn out to be the historic vote that gave the power of all three branches of the U.S. Government to shrub (blood for oil) & company; or, it could be the first slowing of the current right bound swing of the pendulum we call the American political system. Molly Ivans argues in the commentary below that we have some power in deciding which way it will go; by voting. But apparently most eligible voters think it doesn't matter. I understand somewhat. The only thing more depressing than the fact that most of the people eligible to vote, don't, is that in so many of the races, like the California Governor's race for instance, the choices are so pathetic unto depressing. None the less, tomorrow I'm gonna vote Democratic, which includes holding my nose and voting for the barely lesser of the two evils; in my state, that's the totally compromised colorless; Gray Davis. So hold your nose if you must; but please do vote Tuesday. 8:34:07 AM    comment

Election 2002: Rally Time This Country, This System, This Election: All Fixable, and It's Up to You" WorkingforChange.com, by Molly Ivins, 10/29/02 SAN FRANCISCO -- He was the rarest of all rare breeds -- a mensch from Minnesota. But this is not a column about Paul Wellstone. No one has to wonder for a minute what he would have wanted, "What would Wellstone do?" The answer all but roars back, "Don't mourn, organize!" The contrast between Paul's passionate populism and this dreary mid-term election is as sad as his death. There's many a contest between political pygmies this year -- we're down to seeds and stems again --- but even in proud Texas we have to admit that this year's palm for nose-holding voting must go to California. Not to overstate, two of the most titanically unattractive candidates in the history of time -- Gray Davis and Bill Simon -- are vying for the governorship. A new nadir in modern politics. How we got from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to this -- or what we ever did to deserve it -- is unclear. The debate between Davis and Simon raised the always-timely question: Is God punishing us? Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother? One sorry excuse for a decent, fighting people's pol or the other; what difference does it make? Oh, just that your life is at stake. What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols. "I'm just not interested in politics." "They're all crooks." "Nothing I can do about it, I'm just one person. I can't buy influence." Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom you can decide you don't much care for. Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off? It's all politics, Bubba. You don't get to opt out for lack of interest. In this putrid election season, every television ad seems to announce that the other guy sucks eggs, runs on all fours, molests small children and has the brain of an adolescent pissant. It's tempting to join the "pox on both their houses" crowd. They're close to right, but they're still wrong. Here's the good news: All of this can actually be fixed. By me, you, us -- no kidding, no bull. Nothing you can do about it? Just one person? As an American at this time, you have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who have ever lived on earth. And should you round up four friends who don't usually vote, you'll have four times that much political power. Why throw that away?... TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, GO TO: Election 2002: Rally time Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All copyrights belong to original publisher. "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. Feedback is encouraged and can be emailed to him at: rhino@kifaru.com RHINO'S WEB SITES: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207 (RHINO'S WEBLOG - PRESENT & PAST) http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) 8:21:01 AM    comment

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