This election season is just hilarious. Both sides are constantly accusing the other side of being undemocratic. Both sides are doing childish things like stealing lawn signs. Both sides are constantly slandering the other side. Both sides are arming their lawyers to fight over the results. Both sides are trying to get their people to vote and stop the other side’s people from voting. Look, folks, if we really all agree that we want a democracy we should lose these constant double-standards. I really believe that most people would rather have their candidate win unfairly than have the other guy win fairly. That is undemocratic. Silencing people’s opinions is undemocratic. Constantly assuming that the other side is cheating is undemocratic. Treating the other side as if they are unpatriotic is undemocratic. In this way Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are equally guilty. Now let’s hear from one right-winger with balls that agrees with this! Let’s stop hating each other over this shit.

I am a Wellstone liberal. I think Paul Wellstone was the last guy with balls in Washington. His book, The Conscience of a Liberal is incredible and a must read for liberals and conservatives alike. I know without a doubt that Paul Wellstone would be supporting John Kerry in this election. While I think Ralph Nader is right on just about everything he says, the math is unforgiving: Ralph Nader is unelectable. I wish that were not the case, but it is. A vote for Nader is a vote for idealism that will give us four more years of the worst president we have ever seen in the history of the United States.

Now I liked John Kerry long before he was running for president. He is extremely smart and he is very good at policy. Some people don’t like that he is a politician and speaks like a politician but we have a government, by definition, made up of politicians. As refreshing as straight talkers like Jesse Ventura may seem at times, they are wildly ineffective in our political system. John Kerry is very good at public policy and will be very good as the American president.

While John Kerry is not half the man that Paul Wellstone was, he is twice the man that George W. Bush is. John Kerry runs from the word “liberal” even as Paul Wellstone embraced it. John Kerry makes decisions with intense political calculation — Paul Wellstone followed his heart and trusted that we would see the political truth behind it. John Kerry has a lot to learn from Paul Wellstone. I hope he does.

John Kerry is the best choice for president because he is a little bit like Paul Wellstone, a little bit like Ralph Nader and almost nothing like George W. Bush. A sincerely hope that the American people reject the politics of fear and embrace the politics of reason.

As much as the Republican/Rove machine wants to spin it otherwise, Bush looked like a fucking idiot in the first debate. He slurred his words, looked like a deer in the headlights, left long uncomfortable pauses, was repetitious and pissy, and in general looked like someone on the defense who was getting hit too hard too often to the point of blacking out. All hail the idiot king!

If these idiots keep saying that Kerry is a flip-flopper and hasn’t articulated his platform, I hope the undecided voters see through these shallow tactics. Over and over this administration seems to think if you say it is true it magically is true. It’s not true of the economy, it’s not true of the Iraq situation and it’s not true of Kerry’s positions. They wildly underestimate the intelligence of the American people and unless you are stubbornly anti-Kerry you can’t be oblivious to their constant spin machine.

Yahoo reports:

The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on whether the words “under God” should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Fox News reports:

Across America, many local government meetings begin with public prayers but a Tampa city council meeting recently started out with members leaving because of the invocation.

Atheist Michael Harvey was about to give the invocation at a Tampa City Council meeting when some members became angry. A debate continued for nearly 30 minutes until three members walked out.

One of the more irrational people at the Tampa City Council meeting said: “[I shouldn’t have to] listen to an atheist sit here and tell me what I should or should not believe in.”

What a frickin’ joke. In the former story, the House is trampling on the separation of powers and in the latter case we are showing that only certain religions are allowed to get the stage at meetings and football games and the like. Actually, there is exactly one religion allowed at these events and it is Christianity.

We non-believers have to listen to Christians telling us what to believe all day every day. It’s about time we got a chance to invoke some reason at the city council meeting rather than listen to the shallow mythology of a simplistic book that has been twisted to support the most oppressive ideologies of our time. I have nothing against Jesus, it’s radical Christians that I have a problem with. Keep your fucking religion out of my government.

Thank you Michael Moore for writing this. One of the best points:

The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead — and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling “likely voters.” “Likely” means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people…You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

You may be a freak and a commercialist, not unlike the nutso, professional idiot Ann Coulter, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, but you are often right nonetheless. Bush is losing. He may get trounced.

This is almost humorous to watch. The Republicans viciously attack John Kerry throughout their convention but whenever John Kerry criticizes Bush they act like “poor John Kerry needs to resort to negative attacks”. Further, they act like the Bush agenda is nothing but success after success and that John Kerry has not articulated his platform. None of this is true! Even if I try as hard as I can to pretend I am a Republican, I could not (yet) call the war in Iraq a success. There is still way too much volatility and the place is not secure. I think Saddam Hussein fooled us by telling his army to basically disappear into the citizenry. We could have violence for years in terms of civil war, an extremist Islamic state or a military government like we had under Hussein. In terms of protecting our interests in the Middle East, the current situation may or may not be to our long term advantage.

What else? Oh yeah, the economy. Well, not exactly the economy I’d want to hook my election wagon up to. There is no proof that tax cuts are helping the economy. Job creation is negative. The market is tepid. The national debt is soaring again. Where is the good news here — it could have been worse? Is Bush running under a “it could have been worse” slogan?

Now throw in the social issues. The Republican platform wants to deny all rights to same-sex couples. No hospital visitation, no estate planning, no shared insurance, nothing. They want to make abortion illegal. They want to prevent stem cell research. They want to teach creation in the schools. The want to abandon the UN. They want to have an international policy of preemption — attack first and ask questions later, just like we did in Iraq. (Oops, it turns out Iraq posed no threat to the United States.)

Bush has nothing great to run on. As John Stewart of the Daily Show says, it’s like the Republicans are saying “Give us 4 more years so we can continue the work we never started.” Bush uses the past tense to describe his accomplishments, like it is all completely solved: we left no child behind! we got prescription drugs taken care of! we made the world safer! None of this is true.

So Bush lashes out with the tried and true Republican tactics: he’s gonna raise taxes! he’s wobbly! he has no message. None of this is true. John Kerry is experienced, intelligent, capable, proven and twice the man Bush will ever be. He is not the most charismatic person in the world. He doesn’t speak to the heart as well as Clinton or Reagan. On issues, though, he is almost always right on. He is right about this stuff and given the chance his ideas will work.

This election is still very close and I still stand behind my prediction that Kerry will win.

Remember: if you don’t vote you are voting for 4 more years of Bush.

In his remarkable essay, We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore, Garrison Keillor says:

“Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this.”

He speaks to a point I mentioned briefly and have been thinking a lot about: the very different concepts of democracy and capitalism. Ralph Nader, who is considered to be a radical leftist, is clearly and consistently a small-d democrat. He is unquestionably fighting for democratic ideas. Democratic ideas are now considered to be leftist tactics to redistribute wealth or some such nonsense. This is really important, especially to those people who vote Republican because of their agreement with a certain percentage of the Republican platform: The Republican party is a tool of the rich elite in this country to, probably somewhat unintentionally, destroy democracy in this country. We will be a country, and really are now a country, that is ruled by a military plutocracy. This is contrary to the most basic principles outlined by the founding father of the United States of America — that we are a democracy. Look up the word “democracy” folks. We ain’t it anymore.

The disappearing breed of conservatives that Garrison describes as “the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships” should abandon the Republican party.

What bothers me most about the political warfare raging between the right and the left these days is that is it undemocratic. A quick gander through the dictionary gives one definition of democratic that seems particularly apt: Befitting the common people; — opposed to aristocratic.

Opposed to aristocratic. This is important. What is aristocratic then? Essentially a ruling class of the nobility.

So when we all talk about how great democracy is what we are saying is that government should not be made of of aristocrats or nobles and that is should be for the benefit of the common person. Under democracy we find something similar but still important: The common people, considered as the primary source of political power. This is something our fore fathers considered very important: that rights were not granted to the people by the state, the rights are first and government is formed second to protect them.

Now I don’t like George W. Bush or the Republicans and chances are somewhere around 50% of you reading this don’t like John Kerry or the Democrats. Fine. No problem. We need that debate, we want that debate and we should all encourage that debate. What we should not do is:

1. Prevent people from speaking their opinion
2. Prevent people from voting for the person of their choice
3. Prevent people’s vote from being counted

These things are undemocratic. They deny the voice of the people to be heard.

But I’d like to go a bit further in two ways. First, tricking people by telling half-truths (i.e. 99% of political advertising) is also undemocratic because it prevents people from speaking their opinion and it prevents people from voting for the person of their choice. We should have very high standards for political ads and require that they not be misleading. We have people making sure that I don’t mislead you about your shampoo, I don’t see why we can’t have people making sure we don’t have blatantly misleading political advertising. I’d love to just let the market decide but the people in question own the market. Thus the role of government.

Which lead nicely into my second additional point: the United States of America, in order to be true to the Constitution of the United States of America, and in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and other writings by the architects of this great nation, cannot be and will not be ruled by an ultra-rich elite. It is the duty of our government and the duty of the American people to make sure that our democracy does not become a plutocracy, which is just the capitalist form of an aristocracy.

I’m not talking necessarily about the fact that most politicians are rich. I think it is the natural interest of people from certain professions, especially people who are not scrambling to keep food on the table. I’m talking about the direct influence of money on the political system. From elections to legislation to enforcement the influence of big money is enormous. We are starting to believe that’s just the way things are.

To attempt to conclude, I am a capitalist. I believe in markets. I believe taxes should be as low as possible and still buy us a quality government. But I do not believe for one minute that capitalism and democracy are the same thing. They are not. Democracy is a concept that has a small parcel of socialism in it. Socialism is not a bad word at all — our families are socialist, our military is socialist. The reason democracy has a small helping of socialism in it is because without it the plutocrats can eventually rewrite the rules to be exactly what they want. It takes a very strong state to be able to hold back the onslaught of the wealthy as they attempt to take full control of government.

Don’t be fooled — democracy is hard to achieve and we have not necessarily achieved it.

So I’m a Dad now. This is my first blog entry on dadhood. I have typically despised the gushing “new Dad” phenomena. All of a sudden otherwise normal men start driving the speed limit, talking in baby talk and losing all sense of spontaneity. I don’t expect non-Dads to understand this post just like I didn’t understand previous new Dads. But I can report that you don’t have to turn into a pussy just because you are a Dad. On the other hand, it is totally weird the emotions that come over you when you have your first child. First of all and most obvious is the immediate and intense love you feel for your child. When Myles was born he was born C-section so when they whisked him out of the operating room I followed him and was with him for his first few minutes out of the womb. He was small and purple and he was crying. Immediately I felt an intense feeling of responsibility for him. He was mine. He was helpless and delicate and he immediately needed love and care. He held on to my finger as they cleaned him and and I rubbed him and spoke to him and welcomed him to Earth. As time goes on (he is 4 months old now) the feeling of love and intimacy grows as you bond together. Right now I am on an airplane and he is hundreds of miles away. If this plane went down I would cry like a baby all the way down, not so much for Myles but for myself and for the love and joy that would be robbed of me when I died. I miss him right now and I know in some way he doesn’t quite understand he misses me. He is my buddy.

I am a busy person and having Myles hasn’t changed that. I travel and go to meetings or go to my observatory. I work a lot and enjoy getting out with the boys for a beer now and then. I’m not going to hover constantly over my son or avoid living my life to be with him. Yet he is undoubtedly the most important thing in my life now. It is funny because I was very much on the fence about having kids. I wasn’t against it but I could easily imagine a life without kids. I still can, and I know it would be a life very much worth living. But somehow this take-it-or-leave-it feeling was replaced by the most-important-thing-in-my-life feeling within minutes of him being born. I love my son deeply and I look forward to every minute that we’ll spend together in the decades to come. Now I am on the fence about another child. I could take it or leave it. I used to say that I don’t see the purpose of my life to raise children. I still don’t. I want to raise my children in the context of my life, but I will never give up the ambitions and adventures that I treasure. I feel sorry for parents who do. I may not make every baseball game as Myles grows up. I may be gone on trips now and then or busy at meetings and such. I think my son will benefit from having a father that is constantly interested in learning things and doing things. None of that changes this wonderful feeling of fatherhood. I am not the most responsible person in the world. I won’t enumerate my vices here, but I am not your stereotypical Dad. I play in a band. I study astrophysics and go SCUBA diving. I enjoy the hell out of life and rather than having my children being something that inhibits that, I intend to live a life where my children enhance it. For you non-parents out there, being a parent is absolutely nothing to fear. It is fun and satisfying and can be an ultra-enjoyable change in context for your life. Whether you have your own children or adopt children, I believe the feeling is really the same. These children need you and love you and without question you will find that you need and love them, too. Being a Dad is cool.

The FCC has changed its mind and ruled that when Bono said “fucking brilliant” on national TV at the Grammys he was using “the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language”. They said it was both indecent and profane. Interestingly, reports Fox news story above, “the decision also marked the first time that the FCC cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God’s divinity.”

Meanwhile, This American Life ran an interesting story as part of their “Propriety” show which discussed these issues. One of their guests has done study after study to try to determine if profanity harms children. He has never found any evidence that profanity in any way harms children. Furthermore, he found that children as young as 2 years old already know most swear words. Children old enough to comprehend Bono on the Grammys have heard and probable said the word “fucking” many, many times.

Well, what about the idea that if children hear Bono swear that they’ll think it is OK to swear. This researcher said that children learn these words from their parents. Who has more influence over a child, his or her parents or Bono? I’m very scared if the answer is Bono. It’s not the Bonos of the world teaching our kids to swear.

So if kids already know the words and perhaps even use the words, and if most adults know the words and perhaps even use the words, why are we so concerned about this stuff? I think our media can be mostly children-friendly but must it be entirely children-friendly? Can the adults in this world have media available to them that is not necessarily rated G?

First of all, I really believe that if your kids hear profanity or perhaps even use it themselves, it is not a big deal. Good parenting can make sure kids know what is appropriate and what is not. I will make sure my kids know that using language like that is for adults and is rarely appropriate. (And I’m a Dad now so I can say that). At the same time, I’m not going to freak out if me or my friends or some guy on TV swears in front of my kid. It’s not a big deal.

The bigger picture is this pseudo-moral bullshit that is going on. There are a bunch of church ladies (men included) who think they need to be the morality police. They don’t like gay people, they don’t like premarital sex, they don’t like swearing, etc. These people (mostly on the Christian Right) are using our government to evangelize their religious values. For good reason people in Europe and other places think we are a bunch of prudes.

Fucking relax, people. Republicans love to bitch that liberals want to legislate their lives. Here is their chance to put their money where their mouths are and drop these “morality police” issues. The world is not nor can it ever be G-rated. Don’t cheat your children by tricking them into thinking the world is G-rated. If you are a good parent Bono saying “fucking brilliant” is not a threat.