Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Conservatives Against Bush QUOTE OF THE DAY "What we urgently need now, of course, is a presidential candidate who addresses the root causes of blue-collar anger and fear and who actually tackles the problems before us all, instead of pandering to the emotions bad times evoke." - - Arlie Hochschild (from today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE) KNOW YOUR HISTORY - OCTOBER 7th 1957 -- England: Fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor north of Liverpool, spread radioactive material throughout the countryside. In 1983 (a quarter century later), the British government revealed 39 people probably died of cancer as a result. 1989 -- Housing Now! march in Washington D.C. draws 200,000. RHINO HERE: Last Licks on The Recall - Thanks to all you non-Californians for your patience while watching the drama here in the Quail State. When a guy like Tom McClintock is looking, not so bad for Governor, to the Rhino, (he seems a good hearted, well-principled, if mis-guided gentleman), well, let's just say that things are pretty dern twisted. I'm praying for some magic on (what used to be known as) The Left Coast. You Californians, get out & vote today. Rhino recommends, NO on The Recall, NO on Prop 54, NO on Prop 53, and in case the Recall is successful, vote for Cruz Bustamonte. There are fewer than the normal polling places for this election. To be sure of where you vote, you can check out: http://moveon.org/pac/recall/materials.html Live election night results at the California Secretary of State's website: http://vote2003.ss.ca.gov Greg Palast & "The Girls" - While appreciating Greg Palast's 11th hour push to get the Enron-Arnold connection out to voters, in the opening sentence of his article "Arnold Unplugged", which read "It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow", Rhino thinks he rather flippantly dismissed the seriousness and legitimacy of Arnold's abuse of women in order to tell his story. Thought that should be mentioned. Conservatives Against Bush There's a new organization you may want to refer to your more conservative friends & relatives. On Saturday, September 20th, a front-page article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about conservative disenchantment with President Bush quoted Daniel J. Cragg, founder of Conservatives Against Bush, and from there, things began to take off. Popular blog Fark.com ran a link to the story, and the conservativesagainstbush.org website received over 50,000 hits that Sunday. Several other web sites picked up the link, and on Monday, they received almost 60,000 hits. Since then, Cragg has been a guest on a string of radio shows.   Following are a few excerpts from Conservatives Against Bush : About Us Conservatives Against Bush was founded to propound the conservative principles that this administration has forsaken. This President has expanded the welfare state, saddled future generations with debt, eroded some of our basic freedoms, and waged a spurious war in Iraq that in the end did not make the U.S. any safer. We seek to re-energize conservatives, so they will press for change in this administration. Statement of Principles I. Non-Imperialist Foreign Policy -- Conservatives Against Bush seeks an end to the Neoconservatives (read: imperialists) in the Defense Department and the Vice President's office control over U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives Against Bush hopes to return the foreign policy reigns back to the Secretary of State and his State Department. II. Fiscal Responsibility -- Conservatives Against Bush opposes the irresponsible 2003 Bush tax cut. Conservatives should be balancing the budget, not saddling future generations with debt. III. Limited Government -- Conservatives Against Bush propounds the idea that government should only do what it has to do, and, therefore, opposes the recent Bush expansion of Medicare or any other further expansion of the welfare state. IV. Civil Liberties -- Conservatives Against Bush is awfully rankled by the Ashcroftonian erosion of our civil liberties. We oppose the designation of U.S. citizens as "unlawful combatants," and the indefinite detention of any person arrested within the United States. We are also troubled by a Justice Department engaged in the War on Terrorism that still finds time to foist its morality on the public by pressuring Hollywood. Conservatives Against Bush on the issues: IT'S ALL AT: http://conservativesagainstbush.org RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE is by Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her article "Let Them Eat War" is an in depth look at why so many blue collar voters are pro-bush in spite of everything he's done against their interests. Rhino thinks she's also heralding a call to progressives to find ways to inform them before things get way 2004 worse. Letting them know about the web site above is one way, that it's okay to be a republican and vote against the shrub. Hochschild is author of "The Second Shift," "The Time Bind," and a collection of essays, "The Commercialization of Intimate Life." MORE: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/hochschild/ She is also the Co-Director of The Center For Working Families MORE: http://workingfamilies.berkeley.edu 9:33:55 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Let Them Eat War Let Them Eat War By Arlie Hochschild, tomdispatch.com, October 2, 2003 George W. Bush is sinking in the polls, but a few beats on the war drum could reverse that trend and re-elect him in 2004. Ironically, the sector of American society now poised to keep him in the White House is the one which stands to lose the most from virtually all of his policies - blue-collar men. A full 49 percent of them and 38 percent percent of blue-collar women told a January 2003 Roper poll they would vote for Bush in 2004. In fact, blue-collar workers were more pro-Bush than professionals and managers among whom only 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women, when polled, favor him; that is, people who reported to Roper such occupations as painter, furniture mover, waitress, and sewer repairman were more likely to be for our pro-big business president than people with occupations like doctor, attorney, CPA or property manager. High-school graduates and dropouts were more pro-Bush (41 percent) than people with graduate degrees (36 percent). And people with family incomes of $30,000 or less were no more opposed to Bush than those with incomes of $75,000 or more. We should think about this. The blue-collar vote is huge. Skilled and semi-skilled manual jobs are on the decline, of course, but if we count as blue-collar those workers without a college degree, as Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers do in their book Why the White Working Class Still Matters , then blue-collar voters represent 55 percent of all voters. They are, the authors note, the real swing vote in America. "Their loyalties shift the most from election to election and in so doing determine the winners in American politics."  This fact has not been lost on Republican strategists, who are now targeting right-leaning blue-collar men, or as they call them, "Nascar Dads." IT'S ALL AT: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16885 "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:51:09 AM    comment

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