North Arlington All Stars

The "lesser of two evils" argument always bothers me, too. It's like saying that I am good, the things I believe in are good, and everyone else is evil. How arrogant can you be? You are not the ultimate standard of good and evil, dude. You are one person. We have 300,000,000 people in this country. You do the math. The other argument I hate is that voters "deserve" candidates who reflect their views. "No one speaks for me! Waah waah waah!" That's because no one agrees with you, guy. If you think you can get elected, then you run. But if 85% of the people disagree with you, you ain't gonna win. The fact that most people, if they participate in public life at all, only do it at election time, is sad enough. And now people want to use election campaigns to try to sell their ideas and pursuade people, to "build a movement." By campaign time, it's too late to start selling your ideas. You have to do other things to pursuade people, and run for office only when you already have broad support. Write letters to the editor, write a book, write song lyrics, make art, protest, sue the goverment, start a web site, stage a sit in, run TV ads, whatever. There are a million options in modern society. But build support first, then run for office. Radical ideas never prevail in this country, until they become widely accepted and are no longer seen as radical. I read some over the top lefty drivel today, at counterpunch, because it had some great stuff by West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, a minor deity on the left for opposing the Iraq war, even if he is a homophobe. They desperately insist, and I'm not eggaggerating at all, that life on earth will end if we don't elect Nader President. I guess we're all fucked then! I mean, I care about the environment too, but their alarmist ranting is the left-wing version of Bush lying about Iraq. The truth isn't scary enough, so they just make stuff up to try to scare people into supporting them.

I've been preoccupied by the horrific events in Iraq the past few days but I just don't have much to say about them. We should never have gone in there, and damned if I know how to get out. It's clear that the Bush team seriously underestimated the depth of Sadr's support, and it still hasn't sunk in. Raed in the Middle is a blog by an Iraqi leftist, his April 7 entry presents a starkly different assessment of the situation than we get from Rumsfeld and McClellan. Speaking of Rummy, his transformation plans will cripple the Army in order to funnel vast sums of money to defense contracters. Want to know why Boeing moved from Seattle to Chicago? They couldn't bear to be so far away form Dennis Hastert's district . . .

Props to my brother Steve (West Side is the Best Side!) for finding these links, I've been too busy gasping in shock for rational thought. Speaking of which, I love Randi Rhodes! Didn't she used to play guitar for Ozzy?