A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE THE REPUBLICAN

From a forwarded email, original source unknown:

Joe gets up at 6am and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications is paid by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought theiremployers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his workday. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union member fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get workers compensation check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of a temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the country would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loan, he attended a state funded
>university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking cheese eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that the liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day and takes for granted today.

Joe agrees: We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.

Thoughts for the night…

First, I may have to stand corrected. It’s looking like the problem was not that young people didn’t turn out — all though proportionally, there doesn’t seem to have been an improvement from 2000 — but rather that Republican-supporters turned out in much higher numbers than expected. Karl Rove’s “4 million evangelicals?” Perhaps.

Second, two amusing graphics I got via forwarded mail. Enjoy…

4 more years?

I am ashamed for my country today, but I am even more ashamed of my party (the Democrats) and my generation.
Kerry wussed out by conceding.
My generation and younger wussed out by not voting.

What do we get in return?

4 more years of rule by fear,
4 more years of record deficits,
Up to 4 new conservative justices,
4 more years of secret no-fly lists,
4 more years of eroding civil rights,
4 more years of tax cuts for the rich,
4 more years of “faith based initiatives”,
4 more years of the threat of a new draft,
4 more years of pro-big-oil “energy policy”,
4 more years of hatred of the non-mainstream,
4 more years of not catching Osama Bin-Laden,
4 more years of “preemptive” military adventurism,
4 more years of Americans increasingly hated abroad,
4 more years of concern about women’s right to choose,
4 more years for Diebold to prepare to steal another election,
12 more years of Bushes if Jeb is elected in ’08.

Let’s all enjoy the future we let them steal.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin

If Bush has, in fact, won…

…my next concern is if he lied about a possible draft.

My guess is that he won’t have the guts to put one through, but if he does then I hope that those younger than my 29 years won’t take it lying down. I’ll be out there protesting with you, if it comes to that, and if they ask folks as old as me to participate in any way, I’ll probably emmigrate instead. I wonder what it takes for the EU to classify someone as a refugee?

One day more, or maybe 10, or maybe more…

Election results as of my bedtime:
Bush 249
Kerry 242
Iowa count suspended until tomorrow

Ohio is possibly contestable, and argued too close to call until the overseas and provisional ballots are counted… a 10-day window by Ohio law, if the pundits on TV are right.

If Bush sweeps the remaining states (NM, NV, WI) and takes Iowa tomorrow, Ohio ceases to be an issue. That would be a 296-242 victory for Bush, and just at my outside guess of “One Florida” for how strong a victory either side might get… but not really what I’d call “close,” and various folks on RASSF are entitled to an “You told me so” from me.

In the more likely event that Kerry takes Wisconsin, or Wisconsin ends up within the margin of litigation, well… we’ll have to see how the the Democrats decide to play it, and see if Ohio is a clear victory or another squeaker. Or if it looks like Florida 2000, with significant fraud.

The one point I genuinely worry about is if WI ends up in the margin of litigation, and either the Democrats decide to fight a slight Republican victory there, or the Republicans decide to fight there to preempt any contest in Ohio. I think the country could take one contested state this time. Two would worry the heck out of me. Blood in the streets? No, but bad nonetheless.

Effing Bush.

Like something out of Scooby Doo…

“But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along…” …?
“You meddling kids!” …?

No, apparantly The Votemaster of Electoral-Vote.com has finally come out publically with his identity.

Who are You?
My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Most of you have never heard of me but in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny corner of the universe I have done enough stuff that Google has somehow managed to dig up 10,000 pages referring to me.

(from his site)

For all I know this page has been there all along, but dang it, this is news to me. Cool, though. What I really want to know is what Linus thinks about it and the election…

Even Eminem does GOTV by kos
Tue Oct 26th, 2004 at 18:20:31 GMT

Eminem’s new video is amazing. Truly. Even if you think you don’t like hip hop.
Post mirrors if you’ve got ’em. I know they must be out there.

Update: Sorry about the infected link. Mea culpa.
Also, from the comments:

We need this video on MTV

Go here to nominate it for TRL.
Go here to nominate it for MTV’s hip hop request show.
Scroll to the bottom, click “Other”, and enter Eminem for artist and “Mosh” for song title. Vote it in as many times as you can!

As should be obvious, from Daily Kos… links re-added manually, any errors mea culpa.