Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Live Free or Diebold!

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

…and I’m too busy doing election stuff to blog…

Here I am in Ward 2, Nashua, NH, doing a “visual,” my very first one.

One of the great things about being a blogger instead of a reporter is that you get to go and do stuff that interests you.

Voters in Cambridge, MA wait outside the firehouse

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

I love the smalltown look and feel of this experience, so much the same every year.

Same autumn colors around us as we wait, same people working behind the tables inside, same little funny voting booths that are fenced off from one another by mini-shower-curtains.

If you haven’t voted yet, do it!

I just posted this photo of my polling place to The Polling Place Photo Project, which I heard about via David Weinberger (JOHO).

What are my issues?

Yes, I do believe terrorists want to harm us–and we can’t afford to have “emergency management” by incompetent cronies of cronies of cronies of Republicans.

Think Republican’s one-party rule in DC is making us safer? You must not live in New Orleans. The level of incompetence and disorder at FEMA still astounds–and the only staff support poor Michael Brown could get was advice from his PR team to roll up his shirtsleeves so he’d look as if he was working. Compare the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina to their swift, hard-hitting, well-organized jump on the case of Terry Schaivo, which smelled to them like a political wedge issue.

Oil companies dictating our energy policy as we watch gas prices go through the roof

Our nation is weakened by our dependence on oil-producing nations. Our world is threatened by global climate change. Yet Republican “leadership” does nothing to help get gas mileage standards or promote fuel conservation, because the oil companies don’t want to see anything done.

“Family values” that are shocked by John Kerry but wink at Mark Foley

Mark Foley’s “page problem” was an open secret in Washington, DC. If any Republican leader had wanted to investigate further, the first thing he’d find out is that pages routinely warned one another about Mark Foley’s behavior. But Republicans didn’t want to know there was a problem, because Foley was holding a safe seat for the party. When the secret finally came out, compare the muted responses from GOP leaders to their full-throated outrage campaign about John Kerry’s remark about “stuck in Iraq.”

And finally, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

Osama Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. Instead of concentrating our forces there on a winnable war against some very bad terrorists, Bush and Rumsfeld trumped up a bunch of fake excuses to start a new war against Iraq, something they’d wanted to do before 9/11. Now our young soldiers are fighting without the support or equipment they need, defending with their lives the failed NeoCon plan for the Middle East.

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Thanks to my brother-in-law Bill for sending me a long list of things to think about today, which inspired my much shorter version.

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Think about the following when you VOTE today

Iraq
Iraq
Iraq
Abu Ghraib
Guantanamo
Unwarranted Phone Taps
Unprecedented Powers
Unmatched Incompetence
Unparalleled Corruption
Governor Bob Taft
Representative Tom Delay
Representative Roy Blunt
Representative Ken Calvert
Representative John Dolittle
Representative Tom Feeney
Representative Katherine Harris
Representative Jerry Lewis
Representative Gary Miller
Representative Marilyn Musgrave
Representative Richard Pombo
Representative Rick Renzi
Representative John Sweeney
Representative Charles Taylor
Representative Curt Weldon
Representative J.D. Hayworth
Representative Don Sherwood
Representative Bob Ney
Representative Duke Cunningham
Representative Tom Reynolds
Representative Chris Cannon
Jeff Gannon
Representative Mark Foley
Representative Dennis Hastert
Senator George Allen
Senator Bill Frist
Senator Conrad Burns
Senator Rick Santorum
David Safavian
The Vice Presidential Energy Task Force
Three bucks a gallon
Record oil company profits
Anwar Pipeline
Anbar Province
Adelphia
Merck
Halliburton
Arthur Anderson
Qwest
Tyco
WorldCom
Global Crossing
Global Warming
Global Boiling
Exxon
Enron
Abramoff
Adam Kidan
Timothy Flanigan
Ralph Reed
Rita
Katrina
Fema
Terri
Condi
Harriet Miers
The Supreme Court
Diebold
John Bolton
Florida, 2000
Ohio, 2004
North Korea
Iran
Darfur
Stem Cell Research
Scooter Libby
Valerie Plame
Golden Parachutes
Shrunken Pensions
Bernie Kerik
Eminent Domain
Social Security
Habeas Corpus
Ahmad Chalabi
The Baghdad Museum
Tora Bora
Taliban Resurgence
Iraqi Insurgents
General Eric Shinsecki
General Anthony Zinni
Mission Accomplished
Illegal Immigration
Intelligent Design
Kenneth Tomlinson
Claude Allen
Swift Boat Hit Squads
Ari Fleischer
Scott McClellan
Tony Snow
Ann Coulter
Expiration of Assault Weapons Ban
John Ashcroft
Alberto Gonzales
George Tenet
Paul Bremer
Paul Wolfowitz
Richard Perle
Kissinger Redux
Duck Cheney
Donald Henry Rumsfeld

And finally, the Uniter-Decider-Reader of Camus, Shakespeare and “My Pet Goat,” who describes the party that successfully prosecuted two world wars as people who “cut and run”.

GOP_propaganda004

Originally uploaded by zakur.

…no wonder Bush didn’t bother to catch this guy.

Thanks to the Ohio Republican Party for this latest example of campaign sleaze.

Doolittle mailer – front

Originally uploaded by A Fighting Faith.


If your stomach can take it, he posted more from this flyer: another sample.

Apparently Democratic candidate Charlie Brown is a “proud” member of the ACLU, who hopes to bring pedophile rape and murder to your town.

Yet another deceptive campaign mailer

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

This one’s from New York.

Fear and Smear

Originally uploaded by Maia C.


Thanks to MaiaC for posting this Michigan flyer!