slowly losing faith in America

last night, we got chelacked. There is no two ways about it. Yeah, there are a lot of instances of possible fraud reported, many of which were reported at www.michaelmoore.com, but now seem to be down. Also, you can find more at http://www.americablog.org/, including a shady pickup with bush/cheney stickers transporting ballots in Ohio to the wrong place. Finally, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/53438/6175 explains how the exit polls in only florida and ohio were way off while the others were pretty correct, which means that either the polls sucked or the votes were tampered with (remember that the guy in charge of voting machine manufacturer Diebold promised to "deliver" Ohio to Bush).

Ok, that was a huge diversion from my initial accepting failure theme. I think that all of these things need to be looked into, but in the end, it is unlikely it will make a difference. Sure, we'll complain about it for four years like we did in 2000, but it doesnt erase the fact that Bush is our president for the next four years. And yeah, I hate to say it, but Bush probabaly won fair and square (well as fair and square as politics ever is at least).

So, where does that leave us? There are a lot of pissed people around whose illusions that we were a secret majority have been trashed. As I said in my last post, the gay marriage issue likely fucked everything up, and we may still have a majority against the war, but that doesnt really mean anything now does it.

For the next four years, we have to get off our asses and speak up. we have to let Bush know, that even if he has a mandate, he still has to answer to the American people. He cant get away with a blank check to execute his neo-con plans. Hopefully, his administration really will extend an olive branch to the democrats and try to bridge the rift that divides our country, but I doubt it.

We are divided, some of us believe in a very different philosophy than Bush does. We know we are right, and we will not shut up. Hopefully, if Bush continues in the way he has thus far, people will realize that democrats ideals are better for them, and will vote based on things that really affect them, and not silly "values" issues, and in 2006 will show the Bush administration that they wont take anymore in the midterm elections. We have four years of crap ahead of us, but that is four years to rebuild, regroup, and field a better candidate in 2008. Or maybe even try and start a viable third party, wouldnt that be nice?

screwed by basic human rights?

Ok, this started as a comment in Ben's blog, and then became too long, so I decided to put it as an entire post.

A thought occured to me last night as I was banging my head against the wall. All of us left-wing-democrat-nutjobs have been saying how great it is that finally we are addressing gay rights and making it a big political issue. I mean, I think its great, let em get married, Thank you Massachucetts judges for having the balls to shove the issue in our faces.

But the effect to the democratic party might have been extremely catstrophic. Think about it. A lot of republicans, moderate democrats, and undecideds are probabaly against the war, and on that issue would like to see bush out of office. The same group likely has misgivings about bush's economic policies as well. However, on social issues (read: gay rights) the majority of the country is still pretty conservative. Even Kerry is against gay marriage. But in order to keep its core and the left side of its base, the democrats have (rightly) opposed anti gay measures. Unfortunatly, this may have alienated many moderates who see the war and the economy as short term issues, but "ethical" issues such as gay marriage as more important long term issues. The media has been reporting that the biggest issue in this election turned out to be "values", which seems to back this argument up.

So, those judges and politicians who put gay rights in the face of the american voters may have seriosuly fucked themselves over. and the republicans played a clever hand by proposing a constitutional ammendment against gay marriage. no democrat could support it, lest he/she lose their support, and thus alienated their moderate support. Thus the issue became not the important things facing our country (war, education, economy), but instead became something that at least to me, shoudlnt even be an issue.

It is scary that the "slippery slope" of gay rights is more threatening to the majority of the country than a fucked up economy, thousands of wasted lives, national securit, and world respect.

Yeah, this is just me talking out of my ass, so take it or leave it.