It at times like this when I read sarcastically funny editorials like these ones that I really miss Pittsburgh.
Tony Norman's editorial With God and Putin on his side, how can Bush lose? is Hilarious!
I'm sorry that I put up almost the entire article but it's absolutely delicious writing and I'm happy to note that there are sufficiently bright people in Western Pennsylvania to see through the right wing crap and know what's really going on. It's a nice big smackdown of President Bush, President Putin and Pat Robertson all in one artice. It doesn't get any better than that.
Then this OTHER Article by Reg Henry is just as sarcatic towards Bush and his ilk and is also a must read. It's link is here and completes the smackdown of this administration by Pittsburgh. They're as flat as a pancake by now. I'm a thinkin that Pennsylvania is Blue.
By Tony Norman
With Russian President Vladimir Putin's endorsement over the weekend, President Bush is the first candidate in history to have garnered thumbs up from both Almighty God and the godless communists of the former Soviet Union.
Why try to wheedle an endorsement out of The New York Times or The Boston Globe when the former director of the KGB has such swell things to say about you? "International terrorists have set as their goal inflicting the maximum damage to Bush, to prevent his election to a second term," Putin said during a break from suppressing civil liberties in his own country.
"If they succeed in doing that, they will celebrate a victory over America and over the entire anti-terror coalition."
Hmmm. I wonder if the anti-terror coalition Putin is referring to is the same coalition Russia refused to join when Bush was desperately looking for suckers to join the U.S. and Britain in the "catastrophic success" that is the Iraq war.
No less an authority on God's secret ballot than religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told viewers of the 700 Club earlier this year that the election was already in the bag and that Bush has a mandate from heaven.
"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said before girding his loins to sound like a Calvinist with too much predestination on his hands. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way."
It's interesting to note that Robertson got his revelation from God in January, months before the identity of the Democratic nominee was known. The race is far from the blowout the broadcaster predicted. Perhaps God slipped Robertson some dubious information to teach him a lesson about talking out of turn. The notion that God is a Republican is the kind of heresy that would've gotten the political snake oil salesmen and false prophets of an earlier era stoned outside the gates of Jerusalem.
I'm guessing that if God is anything like us, he could've simply changed his mind after catching Bush's performance in the debates. As the Old Testament amply testifies, God isn't above making course corrections in response to the vicissitudes of political fortune. After all, he's been licking his finger and sticking it to the wind since Eden, alternately rescuing and smiting those who dared to call themselves the people of God.
This will probably be the first election in American history in which believers and unbelievers alike will pray before and after they exit voting booths.
A buddy from Mt. Lebanon called me yesterday, breathless with excitement and relieved that his paper ballot will be on record even in the event something "unforeseen" happens on Nov. 2.
I'm content to wait until Election Day to stand in line with my fellow citizens and marvel at how stark the choices are. I want to pull a series of levers that will reflect my will in a concrete way. Most of all, I want to make a liar out of Putin and the puny partisan god of Pat Robertson.
Some thoughts by Reg Henry
Don't be afraid to be brave
Yes, it's still the land of the free -- the best efforts of John Ashcroft notwithstanding -- but home of the brave? Pull my other leg, it's got a bell on it. With some honorable exceptions, this has become the land of the wuss. We have become free to be afraid.
The war on terror has raised public fear-mongering to a high art, with the Bush administration and its propaganda arm, Fox News, quick to realize the political potential.
My favorite memory is of those people who duct-taped their houses on the theory that the evildoers would come to their community and release biochemical agents, which, of course, would be terribly disruptive to the Kiwanis Club pancake breakfast and the car wash run by the local high school cheerleaders.
Only duct tape stood between us and disaster.
All those luridly colored terror alerts, however well-intentioned, have the happy effect (for Republicans) of recruiting the wuss vote for Mr. Bush. Fearful folk know that never changing one's mind is what presidential leadership is all about, no matter how small the mind or how wrong the ideas contained therein. Apparently flopping is OK but flip-flopping is not.