Ok, let's get serious about this

[If you are in email contact with me and you are a US citizen, you most likely received this message from me already, but I'm posting it on the blog too with slight changes to make it more blog-post-like.]

Kristen and I have been living outside the US for 5 years now. It has been interesting to view America from the outside. You don't realize it when you're living there, but the media that you're exposed to is very US-centric. It really is like being inside a bubble. You probably haven't been exposed much to how the rest of the world sees the US. America used to be the guiding light, the inspiration for other nations, the country where everyone wanted to emigrate to and start a new life. Well, that reputation has taken a hell of a beating over the last 8 years and especially the past 4-5 years -- mostly because of the Bush administration and the Republican party. The foreign policy. The war in Iraq. The environmental policy. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And Bush acting like a complete idiot everywhere he goes. That's to name just a few.

But you know what? You can't solely blame Bush and his cronies. And let me tell you, they aren't the only ones being targeted for criticism by the world outside the bubble. The comment we hear the most often over here is "How could you guys elect that idiot twice?" They have a point. We dropped the ball. We let the whole world down. And now we just look like a bunch of jerks with egg on our faces.

That is why this election is SO important. We need to prove to the world that we're not a bunch of apathetic assholes squandering the whole idea behind democracy. To bring the US back to its roots as an inspiration and as a good example, we need a president that is intelligent, articulate, open-minded, aware, and inspiring.

I can't vote because I'm not a citizen (yet), so I really want to encourage my family and friends to vote. By now, it is obvious how I would vote if I was able to, but of course, I am not going to be so crass as to try bullying you to vote the same way. I just really would like to ask that you vote, period. (Hopefully, most of you will vote for Obama, though!) Kristen and I are moving back to the US on November 19th. A McCain/Palin win is almost enough to make me change my mind about coming back at all and I really want to come back, so please help!

A further piece of very troubling news: the Cuban news media in Miami, FL (clearly led by the far Right) are cultivating the idea among their viewers that Obama is a Communist! Can you believe that!? This preys upon one of the worst fears of Cuban Americans: that the US will turn into a Communist nation. If the fact that people are ready to believe that doesn't send a chill down your spine, then have a look at this THREAD. Please help to dispel this RIDICULOUS notion!

Apathy is not an option anymore. Did you know that there are statistically more Democrats in the US than Republicans? There are 72 million registered Democrats, 55 million Republicans, and 42 million Independents (though this data is from 2004, the numbers couldn't have changed enough to make a noticeable difference). If all 72 million voted, the win would be by a healthy margin. So please make plans to vote. Set aside the time now. Plan ahead. And please encourage everyone you know to do the same.

If you haven't registered, you need to get on the ball because the deadlines are right around the corner: Registration Deadlines

Also see Voting Is Easy.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Moosing Sarah

Another good article. This time I'm pasting in the whole thing:

Moosing Sarah -- Time for the Dems to Leash the Pitbull

"It seems forever since the Democrats completed their triumphant Convention in Denver with its Obama/Biden/Clinton/Kennedy unity ticket and its intoxicating sense of take-it-to-the-finish line momentum. What happened? Not Sarah Palin. How could a small-time Alaska mayor and first term Governor derail the Obama freight train? No it was not Sarah Palin but the extraordinary reaction to McCain's wildly irresponsible decision to make her his running mate that seems to have paralyzed the Party.

Something about Palin scrambled the otherwise steady nerves of the Obama campaign. As if they were believing everything she was saying. Assuming that the Republican base was the country and hence thinking her success at her Convention there would be replicated nationally. (Did you see the face of that convention? Is that really the face of America?) Afraid to be accused of sexism (ironic after how it disposed of Hillary); or of unwarranted anger (Obama sometimes seems like Governor Dukakis, unwilling to rise to the bait even when it would be politically smart to do so).

Why is it so hard simply to tell the truth about Palin? Yes she is a successful and politically smart woman to be admired for that reason. But she is also a typical Republican values hypocrite preaching choice for women - except when it comes to pregnancy; preaching that family should be kept out of the political searchlight - except when it is useful to parade her own family on center stage; preaching against earmarks - except when it help her career to solicit them for Alaska; preaching about America first - except that she actually has made a career out of putting Palin first, Alaska second and America last (check out her Alaska secessionist husband).

She is a successful and politically smart woman, but she is also a right wing extremist who tried to delete books she didn't approve of from the town library where she was mayor and tried to fire the librarian when that didn't work; who is a creationist and, like the current occupant of the White House, who has little use for science, whether it is the science of evolution or the science of global warming; who never had a passport until last year when she visited her National Guard troops in Kuwait. Otherwise a stranger to the world in which America must make its way.

She is a successful and politically smart woman, but she is not merely pro-life, she is a no-exceptions-never-mind-rape-or-incest pro-lifer who thinks woman have no right to participate in decisions about what happens to their bodies if they become pregnant.

What the Democratic leadership has yet to figure out is that the real gender bias in the Palin appointment is the patronizing attitude that assumes what would and should be savaged and ridiculed in a man must be condoned or even welcomed in a woman.

Dukakis was skewered by twisted stories about rapists and released prisoners because he wanted to appear reasonable. War hero Kerry got swift-boated by men who never served in the military. Is Obama now going to let himself get moosed by a parochial Alaskan know-nothing because she's a woman?

Time to get mad. At Palin. At McCain. At the Bushes (yes both of them). Gender equality means women can't hide their biases and dogmatism behind gender.

Speaking of men, it is not really Palin but McCain who is the perpetrator we need to criticize. It is McCain who cynically chose a far right wing ideologue who shares the worst biases of the current administration in Washington and made her his running mate in a "campaign against Washington."

In other words, it is not the pit-bull in lipstick but the man who unleashed her who bears the responsibility. Michael Vick went to prison for turning his pit-bulls loose on others. I'm not recommending putting McCain in jail, just keeping him and his snarling (or is that a smile?) running mate out of the White House. Your move, Senator Obama."

--Benjamin R. Barber, The Huffington Post

Sale! Sale! Everything must go!

We've started selling some of our stuff, in preparation for re-patriating (which is now 72 days away). The most important thing to sell is the BMW. It will hopefully pay for most of the cost of shipping the belongings we do want to keep back to the US because that won't be cheap! We're trying to sell the B'mer for £1000, the exact price it is valued at.

The things we're selling:

The BMW
Clothing Rack
File cabinet
Widescreen television
Xbox + games
Dining room table
Stereo
Vacuum cleaner
Stereo rack

The things we're shipping:

Books
CDs
DVDs
Files
Yoga mats
Beer glasses
Drinks glasses and mugs
Spanish pottery
Rug
Banjo
Bicycle
Waffle maker
Some utensils
Some plates and bowls
A couple of pots and pans
Mementos
Shoes
Clothing
Bed Linen
Bits and pieces
HDD/DVD player

(We've been getting lots of different quotes from shipping companies. Most of them are consolidators. That is, they pack your stuff in boxes and it gets lumped in with other people's boxes in a container. Then it will go by sea. Shipping will take about 8-12 weeks.)

Everything else will be donated to charities, friends, and students.

PS - By the way, we've decided to move to Portland, OR. More about that later!

Sarah Palin: lipstick pitbull

Is this who you want as a Vice President? Sure, the picture is a fake, unfortunately (the real one is HERE), but it might as well be true! [I poached this picture from HERE].

There was a very funny/scary/informative article by AA Gill in The Sunday Times today. I've attached the link in the post title above (click on it to read the whole thing). If you don't feel like it, I've pasted a few of the more interesting sections below:

"The Republicans chose St Paul for their convention because, like Colorado, Minnesota is a swing state. It doesn’t swing very far and it doesn’t swing very often and it doesn’t swing in a way that is exciting. This is where the Swedes and Norwegians came to try to whittle Scandinavia out of the hem of Canada. Back home they grew to be the most liberal nations in the world. Here they grew silent and maudlin. There’s a Minnesotan joke – only the one. It goes like this: there was an old Norwegian man who loved his wife so much he almost told her. That was so funny I almost laughed."

"At this convention the Republicans have just 36 black delegates. That is perhaps the most shocking statistic of the whole election. That’s less than 2% of all the delegates. Fewer than one per state and less than any other election for 40 years. THOSE are the interesting things that I found out on Monday and Tuesday. But on Wednesday everything changes. It all gets Technicolor with sprinkles on top and it comes back to the subject closest to Republican hearts: sex. Sex and the young. Hot, procreative sex."

" Depending on how fundamentally hard right you are, Palin is either a godsend who speaks to the experience of ordinary small-town large-breasted American women and sticks two fingers in the eyes of the coastal latte liberals. Or she’s a hideously embarrassing mistake that will swamp the election in underclass redneck sexual incontinence and that everything is about damage limitation and trying not to think about what would happen if President McCain died and this was the first family. Not so much from igloo to White House as igloo to White Trailer."

"She has been given a speech that is as well oiled and finely crafted as a synchronised beaver trap. It’s very aggressive. It goes for the throat of liberals and Obama. It mocks and it ridicules. And some of it hits home. It’s good for the room. They cheer to the echo. But outside, down the unforgiving prurient tube, I think she looks hard and calculating and a bit of a bitch. I can imagine people all over the country saying, I wouldn’t want her for my mom. The first poll seems to indicate that she loses a vote for every one she wins."

"Yet the most sustained excitement of the week isn’t for Trig or Sarah or even McCain, or sticking it to Barack. It’s for oil. For self-sufficiency. For cutting the umbilical pipeline with the eyeball-eating, terrorist-funding Middle East and the commie gangsters of Latin America and Russia. Let the world wallow in its own sump and turpitude. America needs to drill, drill for its dream. The marvellously priapic image of getting the bit between the loins had them chanting, then shouting, then roaring: 'Drill baby, drill baby, drill baby, drill.'"

Republican Hootenanny

Watched a bit of the Republican National Convention this morning and I must say it filled me with distaste, rage, frustration, and worry. How can there be so many ignorant, short-sighted assholes in the world? How can so many people think the status quo is A-OK? That the Bush Administration has been a good thing? The speakers spent most of the time attacking Obama on petty, exaggerated, and often hypocritical grounds. And the people in the audience were hooting and hollering in agreement! They all looked like a bunch of soul-less automatons. Perhaps a deep-seated guilt eating away at them on a subconscious level?

If McCain wins this election, I think I will have to become a serial killer of Republicans and greedy, ignorant people (usually they are one and the same). Even though I say we cannot move back if he wins, we still will. It's just going to be with SERIOUS misgivings, anger and fear.

Palin's speech was a snide, smarmy, fear-mongering, childish attack piece written by Bush's speech writer (who only met her once last week, apparently). The whole thing just makes me sick.

On the plus side, some people within the Republican party (hopefully a large percentage) aren't too confident about the whole thing:

TRANSCRIPT:

Mike Murphy, former McCain advisor: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it's not gonna work.

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter: It's over.

Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

NBC's Chuck Todd: Don't you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too (inaudible)

Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.

Murphy: They're all bummed out.

Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political [B.S.] about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.

Murphy: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.

Todd: And as you called it, gimmicky.