Because [Bush] is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil—its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries’ budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.
Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy.
Posted by Justin Sarma,
6:05 PM
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I Like Ike, or at Least His Son
I feel the growing urge to post a collection of dandy essays by relevant personalities (and by 'relevant', I don't mean Sean Penn) about why NOT to vote for W Bush. Perhaps someday in the next two weeks. But for now, here's John Eisenhower in the Manchester Union-Leader on why John Kerry is 'courageous, sober, and competent' -- while his opponent has none of those qualities.
Posted by Nick,
4:48 AM
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Thursday, October 21, 2004 Hanging and Impregnated Electrons
Just when we thought it was safe to vote... I went to the Alameda County (CA) Registrar of Voters office this afternoon to cast an early vote. When I arrived, the electronic voting machines decided to break down. So, after waiting a few minutes, and contemplating the possibility of a long wait or, worse, a lost vote, I decided on the safest alternative: I left the office with a good old paper absentee ballot in hand.
Posted by Richie Jay,
4:22 PM
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Wednesday, October 20, 2004 The Electoral College
This nifty little image displays the electoral vote tally, based on the most recent surveys published for each state. This methodology (trusting only the most recent polls, and counting as a win even those differences which fall within the margin of error) is highly imperfect (and the well-designed website admits as much), but the changing daily totals are nonetheless facinating. This graphic updates daily. It links to electoral-vote.com, which displays a national map that is updated whenever new state polls are released.
Posted by Richie Jay,
1:49 AM
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Sunday, October 17, 2004 Derrida may be dead, but the po-mo spirit lives on in the White House From a NY Times editorial by Ron Suskind:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
