What? Someone else crashing polls?

I don’t know that I should be encouraging the troop at Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge to compete with me, but OK, it’s a poll, anyone can join in. This one asks, Do you agree with the gay marriage bans?. It does have an interesting twist, in that the poll also displays the states of respondents, so you can see where Redneckistan is. Or another way to look at it is that you can vote to defend the honor of your state.

I don’t know what it does with you non-Americans. Those bits of geography don’t seem to exist on this map.

A worse slander than being an atheist?

At least there seems to be one in Montana: candidate Roy Bown was accused of being…a vegetarian.

“I am not and have never been a vegetarian,” Brown said. “I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian and that my personal eating habits should somehow be construed as opposed to the economic interests of Montana’s livestock industry.”

So…would a compromising photo in Montana be one catching a politician eating peas and carrots? Are cholesterol levels and a history of heart attacks advantages in races there?

Context

Some people are getting a bit cranky about the fact that I pissed in their cornflakes this morning, so here’s a little more exposition.

A charismatic new face appeared on the political scene, somebody who was honest and sympathetic and intelligent. So he was a little more religious than I liked; he’s still a good man who promises to repair the damage of the former presidency. He’s running against a relic of that previous corrupt administration, his campaign slogan is all about change, and I am so relieved to have a promising choice. I campaigned for him, I stayed up all night with my friends on election night cheering him on, and I woke up the next morning optimistic for the future, glad that we finally had a progressive president.

Obviously, that wasn’t this year’s election. It was 1976, the very first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, and the candidate was Jimmy Carter, a man I still think was probably the most honorable and decent president of the 20th century. But optimism and good intentions were not, are not enough. What followed Carter’s election was well-meaning bumbling, a dismal and unaccomplished presidency, and Ronald Reagan, the catastrophe that paved the road to our current state.

This election was so much like that one, only even more so. And I dread the possibility that jubilation will lead to complacency, that moderation will produce stasis, and that what will follow an Obama presidency could be something far, far worse than we can imagine.

So no, no ebullience from me, no brief relaxation into celebration. I’m charging up my cattle prod, because I want to goose the Obama administration into actually getting something done in the coming years. I think Obama could be a great president, especially since greatness in that office is measured by the magnitude of the challenges faced (which are off the scale), and the ability of the leader to rise to them. There is reason to have hope, but hope doesn’t get the job done.

Ten years from now I don’t want to be praising Obama by commenting on his generosity and his carpentry skills.

And so it begins…

We didn’t have to wait long for right wing brains to explode into loopy, tangled strands of conspiracy theory nonsense. Creationist brains, already in a state of disarray, are already predisposed to this kind of inanity, so don’t be too shocked at what Cynthia Dunbar, creationist, Christian, and member of the Texas State Board of Education has to say:

So we can imagine the blatant disregard for our Constitution, but what other threats does an Obama administration pose? We have been clearly warned by his running mate, Joe Biden, that America will suffer some form of attack within the first 6 months of Obama’s administration. However, unlike Joe, I do not believe this “attack” will be a test of Obama’s mettle. Rather, I perceive it will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny.

Apparently, Obama is going to have the terrorists he loves so much carry out some awful action, which will excuse the use of martial law and the subsequent abridgment of our constitutional rights. Talk about projection — has she looked at the Bush record since 2001?

This sounds like one of those “militant atheists” I’ve been hearing so much about

On 13 November, at 7pm, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking at Blegen Hall 10 at the UMTC campus. This is part of a national college speaking tour that draws from and promotes Bob Avakian’s new book, “AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World”, and here’s what she’ll be talking about:

Freethinking activist Sunsara Taylor will explore the questions:

  • Is believing in gods actually harmful?
  • How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation?
  • Why is the “Bible Belt” in the U.S. also the “lynching belt”?
  • In the intensifying conflict between U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, is the only choice to take one side or the other?
  • Why is patriarchy and the oppression of women foundational to so many religions?
  • Can people be good without god?

Unfortunately, I’ll be in Nebraska, but you should go — it’ll be firebreathing fun!

The glass is half empty

The world is a somewhat more hopeful place today than it was yesterday, but let’s get real.

Obama is a conservative/centrist Democrat who will at best implement a small shift in American policies — he hasn’t promised any strong change in Iraq, and his health care plans are an incremental improvement over the existing situation. And the opposition is shrieking “socialist!” at every suggestion, so don’t expect an easy road to accomplishing even the centrist plans of President Obama…especially since he’s inheriting the wreckage of 8 years of Bush misrule.

He still has to work with a self-interested, triangulating congress made up of many of the same Democrats and Republicans who have collaborated with Bush in screwing over America for the last eight years.

We’re still afflicted with the curse of religiosity as a political prerequisite, and Obama has strengthened it. That is a poison that will harm us over the long term; we may have made the more rational choice in this one election, but reinforcing the potency of irrationality will come back to bite us over and over again.

The media isn’t helping. The news this morning was all a-babble over a “post-racial America”. Nonsense. A significant minority still hates people over the color of their skin, and you know the skinheads are cleaning their rifles right now. This self-congratulatory nonsense distracts us from the real problems that still exist.

We still have the rot of ignorance and hatred in the American electorate. Proposition 8 won. Saxby Chambliss won. Michele Bachmann won. Norm Coleman might yet win.

I’m not dancing in the street yet. I’m anticipating many years of struggle ahead.

Election Night Open Thread!

Whew. I just got off my long shift as an election judge — I was filling in for Horton Township, a small, very rural precinct south of Morris, with a registered voting population of 114 people. The good news: 110 votes! The bad news: these guys broke 103:7 for McCain. Ewww. Now that I’m home, though, I see the news is saying Minnesota’s electoral votes are going for Obama.

So what else is new? What excitement/dismay/horror are you experiencing as you watch the returns?

I am vastly relieved to see that Obama has won a landslide victory, but I’m not going to say that I’m overjoyed. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him, and I’m definitely not an uncritical supporter.

We’re still waiting on the Franken/Coleman senate race here — it’s horribly close.

Proposition 8 in California may pass. That is bad news to balance the good in the presidential race.

Crash the polls!

Once you’ve voted in the poll that matters, you can go play on this Online Presidential Poll. I’m pretty sure the results won’t be binding, so you can vote for me or Immanuel Kant (wait, what? He left off Nietzsche?)

John McCain 4% 8
Barack Obama 17% 35
Rev. Jeremiah Wright 2% 4
William Ayers 1% 2
Sarah Palin 0% 0
A Moose 4% 8
PZ Myers, aka, “Pharyngula” 2% 5
Glenn Reynolds, aka, “InstaIgnorance” 0% 0
Immanuel Kant 12% 26
Any member of the PGR Advisory Board 0% 1
Any member of the Texas Taliban 0% 1
Jason Stanley 4% 9
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate 9% 19
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate 3% 6
Saul Kripke, Schock Prize Winner 5% 11
The Anonymous Proprietor of the
Now Defunct “Dadahead” Blog		 0% 1
Stephen Colbert 10% 21
Ali G. 4% 9
A Philosopher Named Cohen
(G.A., Joshua, or Stewart)		 11% 22
Any Four-Dimensionalist 10% 21

I am troubled that I am being trounced by a moose, but at least I’m beating Palin.

Californians: vote no on hate

Are you guys up and voting yet? Remember to vote down the horrible little pro-bigotry ballot measure, proposition 8. If you don’t believe me, read Charlie Stross’s explanation. And if that’s still not good enough for you, look who is bankrolling 8: the Knights of Columbus, Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (he’s got some money left after keeping the Discovery Institute afloat, apparently), and John Templeton (not the Templeton Foundation, mind you…just the chairman and president contributing as a private individual). Isn’t that enough to tell you it must be wrong?