Friday, October 31, 2008

MASKS and THE TRUTH: "Trick or Treat?" Where Halloween and Politics collide!


I think this year it feels especially appropriate how Halloween and Election Day are so close together.

There's so much in politics about pretending...

After all, on Nov 4th we're going to figure out the successor to the Administration that brought us:

The Healthy Forests Initiative, which environmentalists have dubbed the "No Tree Left Behind" Act.

"Clean Water" and "Clean Air" policies which allowed MORE contaminants in our water supplies and air - like how they allowed power plants to be exempted from controlling their mercury pollution!

Minorities "represented" by appointed people of that minority who actually work AGAINST their group of origin (Condoleezza Rice is a good example - check out this argument here.)

and

moments like this:

"If we are saying that the loss of species in and of itself is inherently bad -- I don't think we know enough about how the world works to say that."

-Interior Department Assistant Secretary Craig Manson, appointed by President Bush to position overseeing the Endangered Species Act, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 2003


Really, with politics in this state of masking the truth, who needs a Batman costume?

And with Sarah Palin, we have an anti-women's rights woman who may very well become the most powerful woman in America. And if McCain is elected and dies in office, Sarah Palin will become President of the United States of America. And that day will be no triumph for women. Or any of us.

So let's keep our Masks for Halloween. And let's get the truth back into politics.

Vote on November 4th.

And even though we always say "Trick or Treat!" Perhaps, as a country, we're ready for a future without these kinds of "Tricks."

What do you think?


Don't forget to BLOG the VOTE on Monday!




To get involved with "Blog The Vote" - where kid and adult lit bloggers blog on Monday Nov 3rd about WHY it's so important to Vote on Nov 4, 2008, send an email with a url for your blog post to one of the three of us:

me leewind(at)roadrunner(dot)com

Colleen Mondor over at Chasing Ray colleen(at)chasingray(dot)com

Gregory K. over at Gotta Book blogthevote(at)gmail(dot)com

Colleen will be compiling a master list of posts - we'll pull a great quote from each one of your posts and add it with a link to the list.

Make sure you keep it nice - this is not the place for partisan mean-ness. (Anyone overstepping that guideline will not be included.)

Also, at the bottom of YOUR post, please include a link back to the master list over at chasingray (Colleen will have the master list up on Sunday, Nov 2, so it'll be easy to find.)

Thanks to Sarah Stevenson for the "Blog The Vote" Graphic - feel free to grab it and use it on your own posts!!!

We hope you join in!

Namaste,

Lee

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lee is spot on with this comment, as he is with most of what he posts on here. I would add something to it, with modesty of course... It's looking like Obama will be our next president - maybe even with a landslide and a filibuster-proof Senate. If this happens, it will be our time as progressive people to eject our cynicism and come together to bring about healthy change, to be part of the solution to our challenges in a way the Republicans (with all their anti-Washington and anti-government rhetoric even when they were in control) never were.

I applaud Lee for blogging constructively... he is an example to us all.