BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,smiler
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:24 PM

Clint

I've only offered you my arguments. You don't know anything about me, and it's physically impossible to put my money where my mouth is on an internet chat room.

Its not the point either.

When some people put their vote where there mouth is, it means a lot of families get murdered in places like Iraq.

Guest 3.51pm cheers for your comments.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:40 PM

Guest smiler---

Look, nobody's threatening to show up at your door with storm troopers.

It's real simple.

1) If you don't vote, you have no voice in government.
2) This time, if you don't vote for Kerry, you may get another 4 years of Bush. Do you really think Kerry would be worse than that?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Once Famous
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:41 PM

Yes, perhaps.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:45 PM

Martin--

Thanks so much for your well-reasoned contribution, supported with all the well-documented evidence we have come to expect from you.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 05:52 PM

I'm with Smiler. Voting does NOT give you a voice in government any more than not voting doesn't.

The only voices in government are the ruling elite, which ain't the majority of voters or non-voters. They are that less than 1% club Kerry keeps talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:00 PM

Oh joy, another conspiracy theory mental giant.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:00 PM

Ron.... Vote garbage in and you get more garbage. Register your dissent by spoiling your ballot is a vote; and if a decent independant or another party runs, they will get my vote! No i doubt if i will like who you voted for this election.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:04 PM

Too bad you won't like my choice this time.

Only one way to do something about it----vote yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:09 PM

The fundamental problem here is that both sides of the Dem/Rep partisan divide fall into the same trap of assigning elections much more importance than they are due. Yes, Bush stole the election last time, and yes, corporations have too much power over politics, and both are important issues. But the real problem with our electoral system is that it reduces political decision-making to choosing bureaucrats to make decisions for us. In the end, elections function as an ideological tool to delude us into thinking that we have any control over the political process. We don't. The money guys own and operate this system. Voters are their audience.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:20 PM

Guest/ October 24, 12:39, no one is deprived of voting for Ralph Nader. If anyone anywhere in the country thinks it important to go on record for Nader, one can write him in on OTHER. (Don't forget to check the box.) There. Feel better?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 06:23 PM

No I don't feel better, Ebbie. The story of the Democratic Party suing to keep Nader off the ballot is a David and Goliath story.

I guess that means you favor Goliath, in this instance.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 07:21 PM

Terribly sorry you don't feel better. Lie down til it goes away.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 08:25 PM

Guest & smiler:

I don't think you boys should stick to Hennacy's standards; I think you should stick to your own as well as he did to his.

You think voting is supporting the power structure? Well, paying taxes supports it a lot more. When you pay taxes, when you ask the police or fire department or the dog catcher for help, you are making a contract with the System.

And I fail to see how my vote for Gore got people in Iraq killed. Explain how they'd be alive if I hadn't voted, please.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 08:33 PM

GUEST,smiler, "There's a subtle difference between holding up a bank, and withholding your taxes."

Perhaps you'd like to explain why the 'subtle differences' matter to this discussion, in which you claimed you aren't subject to laws and taxes? Assuming you're a citizen of a country that requires everyone to abide by laws and pay taxes, you're still going to be in trouble if you don't do these things.

GUEST, it's not so much that I'm profoundly ignorant of the facts. I wasn't precise. Most people likely would have understood, but to you, I was dangling a nice, juicy opportunity for you to call someone stupid. Here's a reprhase: A person may believe in communism and hate capitalism, but if they live in a capitalist country, they still have to work for capitalists, buy products and services sold by capitalists, thereby supporting capitalism and functioning as a capitalist.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 08:57 PM

That's right Jeri, that's right, we all work for the capitalists and we all for the empire, and all I want to know Jeri, is where do we go to get our get of capitalist jail, get our get out of imperial jail cards? I know it won't be a free card, but just tell me, where do you think we should all begin to look for that card, that candidate, that party, that process, that is going to set us all free?

Where do we go? What do we do? Smiler says not to vote, not at all. Clint and his anarchist mentor say not to pay taxes, not at all. You say, you say we all work for the man, the capitalist man, the imperialist man. It seems like nearly everyone around me says don't you DARE vote for Ralph Nader, don't you DARE! How DARE you vote for Ralph Nader, do you not UNDERSTAND what four more years of George W. Bush will DO? What that will mean? Don't you DARE! You are FOR Bush. You are proving NOTHING by standing by your principles because this time, this time, this time you just CAN'T stand by your principles because standing by your principles at THIS TIME, is just WRONG.

Thank you Jeri, I know you are not profoundly ignorant, and that all of this is maddeningly ambiguous but can you please tell me, please just tell me Jeri, just where I have to go, and what I have to do to be RIGHT? Do I go stand over there in the Kerry line? Is that where I go to be right? To take a stand? To not take a stand? Should I take a stand? Should I stand down, stand up? What should I do to do THE RIGHT THING that we are being lectured to do by art thieme and clint keller and you and Ron Davies and all of you who are SO RIGHT and all of you who are SO CERTAIN and all of you who are doing the RIGHT thing, which of course means so many of us must be doing the WRONG thing by standing by our principles...because I know, I know, I know that you just used that word COMMUNISM so you could be oppositional to my use of the word CAPITALIST because, because, because well that means you could trick me, you could lure me, you could prove what a fool I am by making me call you profoundly ignorant.

You are so right, you are so right Jeri. You all are so, so right.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 09:02 PM

Maybe I'd ought to make it clear that I'm not holding myself up as an example. People who try to meet the system head-on need the courage and dedication to devote all aspects of their life to it. And the faith that it'll work. I don't have that in me.

And even at best, you can't live in the system and not be of it to some extent.

I quit voting myself after I helped get LBJ into office, and he went and did the very thing I was afraid Goldwater would do. But after a while I saw I wasn't accomplishing a whole lot.

The whole culture has to change to change the pieces you don't like, and it's going to be slow.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 11:25 AM

Guest, I think you are showing me how unblievably young and naive you are.

It must be nice to know that new information, no matter how impressive, ought not be taken into the Gestalt. You stick to your principles and watch as good possibilites go down the drain with the washwater. And, yes, that is the baby you just saw go down for the third time as, gasping, as it went into oblivion.

In '68 I was for Senator Eugene McCarthy. No matter how many told me that only Robert Kennedy could win, I stuck with E.M. because he was there for us early on as a rallying point against the war in Viet Nam and Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon did abdicate as a result of that good pressure. Then Bobby was killed---and Hubert Humphrey was the pale nominee of the Dems. He lost!!! It became a moot point tha Bbobby would've been the one that COULD win.

That is the bottom line. Hubert Humphrey lost!! This political system, as age has shown me, caters to the POSSIBLE---and little else. One vote can mean an insane regime might take over----or stay in power.

I now can see clearer. Once again, as in 2000 you GREENS will cause a 243rd trimester abortion to take place as not only the baby but your entire basket of fragile eggs goes breaking and cascading into the tumult and chaos of George Bush's sewer.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 05:49 PM

But I hope not.   ;-)

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Disgusted in Catville
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 08:48 PM

Once again, as in 2000 you GREENS will cause a 243rd trimester abortion to take place as not only the baby but your entire basket of fragile eggs goes breaking and cascading into the tumult and chaos of George Bush's sewer.

?????????

How dare YOU speak like that to someone, art thieme, just because you disagree with their politics?!?!?

An apology is in order, not to mention getting a grip on doing the right thing HERE IN MUDCAT as well as in the voting booth! This sort of thing is below the belt, and uncalled for, art. I'm surprised--nay shocked at you.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: frogprince
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 08:59 PM

1. Never forget your ideals
2. Never sacrifice other peoples lives to your ideals.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 09:02 PM

For some reason he's not enthusiastic about another 4 years of Bush. Are you?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 10:42 PM

My intent was to state---once again--my feelings that Nader being in the race could cause the same thing again that happened in 2000. It was not a personal attack on anyone---but it was stated way over the top in order to get their attention. Those who cannot see that their actions will cause more harm than good simply cannot see reality as I'm seeing it at all. My too strong verbage was, again, to get the mule's attention--and possibly change the animals mind this once--at least. ------- I heard Ralph Nader speak today. I agree with him on every position he takes. BUT he and those he leads cannot see that this is the wrong moment to stand for those ideals.

To those of you who see my polemic/diatribe as a personal insult, I must say that I am very sorry for that. It was aimed at the situation and not at individuals whose stands, idealistically if not practically, I agree with. In another week all rhetorical spewing here will be moot points. Then we can roll over, share a cigarette, get dressed and move on.

After watching the political machinations of the last four years, I feel obligated to be emphatic now. It seems that important to me. Lately, I tend to be too much a people pleaser. That must come from being on stage for a living of sorts and wanting approval from my audience. It seems my words have distressed some of my old friends. Well, O.K. then. I guess I'm the one who must live with clay feet.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Even More Disgusted in Catville
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 11:24 AM

Art, your provisional apology is accepted.

But just because you believe Nader is a threat to Kerry, doesn't justify you stooping to these levels and going over the top like that. This is politics Art. Even though this year's presidential race will be close, doesn't mean all decency and decorum should be thrown out the window. Nader and his supporters don't deserve this level of invective, no matter how deep your personal beliefs are about the 2000 election, and nor do the citizens of Mudcat.

Art, I have to take exception to something specific you said above, which was "In another week all rhetorical spewing here will be moot points. Then we can roll over, share a cigarette, get dressed and move on."

You know and I know that isn't necessarily going to be true. Like Jon Stewart said to the Crossfire boys recently, this sort of invective and combativeness is hurting the nation. I would second that, and add that your invective and combativeness towards Nader and his supporters here is also hurting Mudcat. People won't necessarily kiss and make up, Art. Sometimes the wounds are too deep, and the divide becomes impossible to close. Just keep that in mind, please, the next time you decide to start Nader raging at people.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Big Mick
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 12:23 PM

You are right on, Art, and don't back off a bit. This person gets her kicks out of this stuff, and as long as she is getting hers she could care less about the the result. There is a time for revolution, but this one should be about throwing out Bush.

And, not so young lady, you of all people have no business lecturing Art Thieme. You see, he actually has done something other than tell us what is wrong. You on the other hand only know how to point out what is wrong, but offer no solutions.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Disgusted in Catville
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 12:38 PM

I don't know who you think you are talking to Big Mick, but engaging in these internet road rage attacks against people whose political opinions are different than yours is never the right thing to do, regardless of whether you are both planning on voting for the same candidate or not.

Raging at people like this over an election, no matter how important YOU think the election will be, is wrong. So please, take it down a few notches, and calm down.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Big Mick
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 12:48 PM

That is your typical response. You seem to think that when someone disagrees with you, they are raging. The mental health care professionals can probably help you with the name for it. You should check into what it means when you attack constantly, but when someone attacks back you revert to namecalling and issue shifting.

The simple fact is that Art is right on in his premise. I agree with a great deal of Nader's positions also. But right now working families cannot deal with another four years of this man. But of course, you wouldn't be able to relate to that.

Stay the course Art.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Disgusted in Catville
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 12:57 PM

I don't have any idea what you are talking about Big Mick, except to say it is my opinion that the raging and political bloodletting at Mudcat has to stop. Not after the election, but now.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Big Mick
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:04 PM

Then it should start with you. You have attacked, you have chastised, you have spoken down to, anyone who disagrees with you. On any number of occasions I have offered to just debate the issues, free of the invective, and you have responded with filthy language and demeaning comments. It is you who attacks anyone who doesn't agree with you. It is you that is the cause of most of the bloodletting that occurs. If you would like it to stop, then I challenge you to say now, in this thread, that you won't participate in it any longer.

You should have noticed that when you are making decent arguments, even though they run counter to my philosophy, I haven't attacked you.

Nice of you to finally come to this.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: DougR
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:04 PM

Ron Davies: Yes, I believe the country would be better off with four more years of George W. Bush. Electing a anti-war candidate as your leader while at war makes no sense to me what-so-ever.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Mark Ross
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:06 PM

Much as I hate to say it, I'm going to have to bite the bullet this year and vote for Kerry. I would rather vote for someone like Nader, but this country is teetering on the edge of fascism(if we're not over it already). The worst part is it reminds me of '64, Johnson vs. Goldwater, and I'm afraid we're going to get the same result, BUT, we have to send that Neandarthal back to Texas. And I apologize to all you Neandarthals out there!

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:20 PM

Mark Ross:

Send the Neanderthal Back to Texas!~

Good phrase.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Disgusted in Catville
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 01:33 PM

Mick, I honestly don't know what you are going on about. I simply am trying to make peace here, and to help cool down the rhetoric a bit before people start the cyber equivalent of WWIII here.

All I'm trying to say here is let's follow the example of DougR, and speak our minds forcefully and confidently, as Mark and he have done above. That can easily be done without making abhorrent statements about other peoples' political beliefs being the equivalent of aborting a fetus.

All I am doing is making a plea to keep it clean here, and for people to stop hitting below the belt, regardless of their political beliefs.

Now, I realize that if some of you feel justified in your venom spewing, you are going to do spew venom regardless of what any of the rest of us says about it.

But let's be clear: no one but you yourselves have the power to regulate your behavior. Your political opposition can't make you behave badly, only you can make yourself behave badly.

How you behave is your choice.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Big Mick
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 03:41 PM

I should pull up the posts you have posted under various monikers to make the point, but I won't. Instead I will see if you can live up to what you have just stated. In fact, I applaud you for it.

Now, on with the debate.

The fact that folks like Bruce (Utah) Phillips can see what is happening should be a bellweather for those of you wishing to make a statement with your vote. Folks like him, who have much in common with Nader, know that this current President has very dangerous and destructive policies. I am not sure how much we can undo if we put him out now, let alone do anything that would insure him another 4 years. It just seems to me that Nader and company only exacerbate that. And nothing I have heard from your side indicates that you see a difference between the two major candidates. Quite frankly that puzzles me. I think the differences are profound. It seems to me that those that espouse your philosophy are willing to make a point at the expense of millions of working poor. Is that a price you are willing to pay?

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Peace
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 07:27 PM

"This is exactly the disconnect I, and other radical progressives, have with the liberal Democrat politics of capitulation and appeasement."

What, pray tell, is a radical progressive? (Sounds a bit like an adjective of not first, second or third, but rather fourth degree, and as such seems it would have more commerce with a grammar thread, if indeed such a thread existed.)

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Peace
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 07:28 PM

Or such an adjective.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 08:37 AM

Doug R-

"While at war"---what war?

Oh, I know--the war against terrorism.

So we must continue to elect dangerously short-sighted deluded self-appointed messiahs whose idea of foreign policy is an unending series of unilateral pre-emptive wars.   

And, don't kid yourself--thanks to Bush they will be unending---and Bush is now willing to sacrifice world nuclear safety to the interests of a few corporate buddies---see the Nuclear Non-Proliferation thread---and pay particular attention to the REPUBLICAN opposition to Bush's stupidity.

At any rate ,as I have pointed out earlier, the more "collateral damage"--your and Bush's wonderful term for people killed inadvertently, the more terrorists. And Bush's brilliant policies put us on track for a bottomless supply of terrorists.

Tell you what---here's my Modest Proposal (don't suppose you know Swift--except Swift
boats)--- for you.

Let's send YOUR sons to fight these unending wars.



There is a better way--to think and plan before going to war--and just maybe to not always do it.

No hope of that with Bush.


Kerry can and will think.

Pardon my effrontery for suggesting that even (especially) in wartime, thinking is useful.


Sorry it's a foreign concept to you.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 09:55 AM

I'm surprised and pleased with the number of long term Republicans I have encountered these past few months in my small Maine town who agree that Bush does not deserve another four years and plan to vote for Kerry. Our town has about 2500 registered voters, about evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans, and undisignated independents. There are also a few dozen Green Party and Libertarian registered voters.

The concerns the Republicans generally mention is the War on Iraq and how it has made the world and our country more vulnerable to terrorism; their other concern is the huge deficits the Bush Administration has run up in the last 4 years.

I am more concerned with talking with moderate Republicans at this point than trying to bring over the remaining Nader supporters. Our polling in Maine indicates that Nader's support has dropped from 6% in 2000 to about 2%. Officially the National Green Party has also encouraged its members to vote for Kerry in the battleground states instead of their national candidates; however, we'll still have people voting for Green Party legislative candidates in Maine, and one is actually running for re-election.

If the Bush Administration hadn't so grossly mismanaged the Iraq War and its occupation, I doubt that Kerry would have much likelihood of winning, even with his strength on the economic and social issues he's been concerned with.

One more week and then we'll probably have a month or two of end game to contend with. What joy!

Charley Noble

P.S.

Doug R- you've still got time to come over from the dark side, unless you've already voted absentee...

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 11:20 AM

Disgusted in Catville,

I back off nothing I said. My pronouncements are where I am, how I see it, how I want it to be --- and calling it simply "politics", as you have in order to denegrate it is way off the mark. Politics, as we have come to know it and love it (or leave it), is our modern version of BUGHOUSE SQUARE in my home town of Chicago. It was FREE SPEECH. People up on the soapbox trying to change opinions. It was no more truthful than what we see today. It was in your face and deceptively manipulating in order to obtain the desired result. It was TACTICS. And it was beautiful in that it made a final decision of sorts that let our dumbnesses function in some kind of an orderly but not a perfect fashion.

It is happening here in this forum too. And your feeling that my polemic isn't correct and polite enough says that you would not be very much good on a picket line when the goons and the ginks and the company finks came around to didcommode your niceness.

What I said is basically what I feel. I do not say what I BELIEVE because I don't feel that belief is enough to go on---ever. It isn't truth. It is based, as I've said in the past, on wishful thinking.

And changing one's mind when new facts are presented ought not be called flip-flopping or wishy-washy fom my point of view. This is, truly, the only way to go and be true to ones so-called ideals.

Ideals ought to be the starting point from which wisdom MIGHT be gleaned. ----- Ideals are not usually ideal!!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 11:36 AM

"Electing a anti-war candidate as your leader while at war makes no sense to me what-so-ever."

Are you saying that Bush is "Pro-War"????   What kind of moral person believes in war?   Sounds like the biggest flip-flop of all.

What you probably meant to infer is that war is sometimes a necessary option. I would actually agree to that. Unfortunaly, most people realize that Iraq is not a just war.   Kerry has a strategy, Bush does not.

What is the difference between Vietnam and Iraq?

Bush had a plan to get out of Vietman.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 02:13 PM

"Success is the ability to rise above principle."

                            Gerald Barzan

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 02:46 PM

"The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue."
                           Henry Bolingbroke

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 02:47 PM

In the original post on top of this thread Utah Phillips is quoted as saying, "...An anarchist is something you're always becoming..." Among the odd pieces of info I have amassed over my life is the following:

The Hebrew letter string that becomes YHWH, or JHVH -- and translates as Yahweh, or Jehovah -- is a form of the verb TO BE. It is ONLY used as a name of God, and its closest translation is "always in a state of becoming".

I am grateful for the learning I've done because of the someones like Woody, Pete, Utah P., etc. who've written/sung songs and taught me what's right and good. If I choose to take that education to the polls, I hope Mr. Phillips understands I'm working toward some of the same goals he is. Jehovah bless Utah Phillips.    Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 04:18 PM

Is "GUEST,Disgusted in Catville" the same as the GUEST who has been posting so enthusiastically about Nader and very so dismissively about the idea of Kerry, and "anyone-but-Bush"?

If so, thanks for taking on a handle, however temporary, because you aren't the only (nameless) GUEST on this thread, I think, and it gets confusing.

Anyway, two points - one is that you seem hung up on the notion that the people who are advocating voting for Kerry all think that this is going to make everything all right. Pretty clearly that would be a nonsensical view. If elected, Kerry is going to do all kinds of things that Bush would do. But even if the difference between Bush and Kerry is marginal, that's an important margin. It's a margin which you can stand and fight, and you won't have that if Bush gets in.

And the other point is that elections indeed are not that important - or rather, they are not in themselves the levers by which the world is changed for the better. Treating them as an occasion to get into bitter and irreconcilable fights with the kind of people you would need alongside in the kind of movement you might hope to build is just bad thinking. It's playing games.

As I said earlier, I think in this thread, if Gore had got in last time, "progressives" would be a lot stronger now, and they'd be reinforced by a lot of people who had hoped for more from him than they would actually have got; and if Bush gets in again, then four years down the line, "progressives" will be far less effective than you are even now. (Incidentally, I stick "progressive" in commas there, because it's a label that's very likely to get adopted by our own Conservative Party at some point. All kinds of people can call themselves "progressives". It's like "libertarian", which used to be a way of calling yourself an anarchist, but a bit less likely to frighten the horses.)

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 05:49 PM

My reference to a VERY late trimester abortion above was a tongue-in-cheek allusion to tossing out the baby with the washwater----and was intended only to clarify, not muddy, folks' recognition of what I was saying. I meant no parallels between my chosen terminology and the debate between choice and life. I am sorry if I used a baggage laden image.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 06:10 PM

VERY late indeed. Since a trimester is a period of three months, a 243rd trimester baby would be some 60 years old.

It's best to actually read things through before erupting in indignation. Sometimes even looking up words in a dictionary is a good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 06:14 PM

way back up there,^ 'guest' said .."Voting does NOT give you a voice in government any more than not voting doesn't."

in 1976, I, personally, affected governtment in the state of Kansas by being a candidate for state Senator. I did not win, but the votes I got from 794 OTHER participants kept an avowed racist from winning and allowed a decent man to have the job.

There are stories like this all over the land....and 500 different votes...less than the number I recieved in 1976... in Florida 4 years ago would have made an entire nation and world different.

I see why Bruce Phillips refrained from voting in the past, but in his case it was to make a point which probably did more good than his actual vote would have. You & I are not the activists and lightening rods he was...we need to vote.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 11:16 PM

Guys, that reference was a COMIC reference with a serious intent on and within a serious topic. 243rd trimester abortion being a VERY LATE abortion is a JOKE !!   To me, that seemed and seems obvious.

Art ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 28 Oct 04 - 12:44 AM

" …Bruce Phillips refrained from voting in the past, but in his case it was to make a point which probably did more good than his actual vote would have. You & I are not the activists and lightening rods he was...we need to vote. "

Yes. Utah Phillips' not-voting means more in the context of his life than me not-voting after Johnson's administration means in the context of mine.

(Is that perfectly clear?)

Not-voting in elections but "voting with his body" has made a point and had an effect that my not-voting didn't. I was just disillusioned and grumpy.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 12:00 AM

Clint, run that by me again...

Seamus

Subject: RE: BS: Utah Phillips is going to vote!
From: Peace
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 12:28 AM

Clint, I gotta disagree. A vote's a vote.