Tagged with politics RSS

Assuming you are demographically a Young Voter, it is again worth a moment of your valuable time to consider…If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying at home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

David Foster Wallace, “Up, Simba,” from Consider the Lobster: and Other Essays

This essay on John McCain’s run for presidency in 2000, more than twelve years old now, is still relevant for a number of reasons, including the fact that DFW manages to say something profound about voter apathy, and really, the apathy of my generation and the one after it. Combined with the fact that I just read Fast Food Nation, which explains that the 1980s were the first real decade in which children were marketed to, I am really starting to understand that entire generations of children/adults no longer trust anything they are being told, because it has always, always, always (to us) seemed like a marketing strategy. And it has been. And yet despite recognizing this, DFW makes a few good claims about why we should care.

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Jeff Stahler
Please be my First Lady for 2013-2016, too.

Please be my First Lady for 2013-2016, too.

(via annaetc)


“I don’t think it requires us to go negative in the sense of us  running a bunch of ads that are false, or character assassinations,”  Obama said, as reported by Univision.”It will be based on  facts.”
“We may just run clips of the Republican debates  verbatim,” he added.

Oh, President Obama. As I tell my freshmen English Composition students all the time, you can’t rely on your readers (or in this case, voters) to pick up on the flaws in someone else’s (or a group’s) arguments. You must not save the best arguments for your head. Don’t be ugly, but you might want to consider pointing out how much worse life would be with a Republican president.

“I don’t think it requires us to go negative in the sense of us running a bunch of ads that are false, or character assassinations,” Obama said, as reported by Univision.”It will be based on facts.”

“We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim,” he added.

Oh, President Obama. As I tell my freshmen English Composition students all the time, you can’t rely on your readers (or in this case, voters) to pick up on the flaws in someone else’s (or a group’s) arguments. You must not save the best arguments for your head. Don’t be ugly, but you might want to consider pointing out how much worse life would be with a Republican president.

(via liberalsarecool)

Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100 million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to turn the austerity screws on all of us. At some point the number of people occupying Wall Street – whether that’s five thousand, ten thousand or fifty thousand – will force the powers that be to offer concessions. No one can say how many people it will take or even how things will change exactly, but there is a real potential for bypassing a corrupt political process and to begin realizing a society based on human needs not hedge fund profits.

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Pat Bagley

The wealthy are paying less than they paid at ay time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century. I don’t know what we were paying in the roaring 20’s; it’s criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don’t mind paying more. I really don’t mind paying more taxes. I’d rather pay for taxes than cut ‘Reading is Fundamental’ or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American.

So little is asked of the upper class anyway. I mean, what percent of them or their kids are fighting in any of these wars? What percent of their day is occupied by the fact that there are men and women in positions over the world, risking their lives. If you walk down 5th Avenue, there’s no sense of shared sacrifice.

Matt Damon, Actor, Democrat, American, at the Save Our Schools March

I knew there was a reason why I liked Matt Damon (beyond the Bourne movies). So we’ve got Matt Damon and President Barack Obama willing to pay their share in taxes. Anyone else?

Policy Changes Under Two Presidents (Figures in Billions)

Policy Changes Under Two Presidents (Figures in Billions)

Mlle Hazelwood

Reader & Writer, Master of Fine Arts, Collaborator on Structure and Style, a new poetry blog.

 

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