Tuesday, November 02, 2004
i voted, and i have the sticker to prove it
Well, I did it. I voted. I guess I'm not going to die after all. Now I'm invincible! I waited a mere thirty minutes at 7:00 am at Barksdale Elementary School, across the street from my apartment. Hooray for voting day!
I finally made up my mind for certain about who to vote for. Here's what tipped me over the edge. Kerry goes around wearing Red Sox caps and celebrating the Red Sox World Series victory as if he actually played in the Series himself. Yet his favorite Red Sox players, "Manny Ortez" and Eddie Yost, either don't exist or never even played for the Sox. Come on, did you think we wouldn't notice? How pathetic. No wonder Curt Schilling is campaigning for Bush. At first I was surprised that Kerry was willing to take sides in the World Series at all, politician that he is. Then I realized that neither Missouri nor Massachusetts was really "up for grabs," so it was safe. But here's the real kicker. The Red Sox don't just represent Massachusetts, a state that will almost certainly vote for Kerry anyway. The Sox are the home team for all of New England, so Kerry probably felt he had a chance to pick up good will in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and all their 34 combined electoral votes, at the expense of Missouri, which is leaning solidly toward Bush, and its paltry 11 electoral votes. A sound political move, but I'm not buying it.
Before you come down on me for voting because of baseball, let me assure you it has nothing to do with baseball. It has everything to do with a man pretending to be something he's not solely for political gain. Kerry, you are not everyman, you are not the sports fan you say you are, and you do not understand what it's like to be "middle class." Please don't tell us that you do.
Bush tried to tell us in the Arizona debate that the way to keep American jobs from heading overseas was to provide government assistance for community college. Oh please! The jobs we're losing are not performed by the uneducated. They are middle class jobs held by college educated employees. You're telling me that a software engineer with a Masters Degree is supposed to file for government assistance to get an Associates Degree to become a medical assistant? What better opportunity for Kerry to step in to defend the middle class, the group he says he cares so much for and associates so closely with. So how does he respond? By changing the subject and talking about budget deficits - again. Neither candidate has a clue what it's like to be a typical American. But at least Bush doesn't go around telling us that he does every chance he gets.
So Kerry, you lost my potential vote when you got caught trying to tell me you knew what it was like to be me. You don't. Only I do, nobody else. Don't try to tell me that you of privileged upbringing and heir to Heinz Ketchup fortune can somehow understand what it's like to be a regular guy who lived on credit cards for five months while desperately looking for a job, who can only buy a decent car because he works for the company that makes them, who can only fix the hideous dent in that decent car because he owns a plunger, who chose to apply at Texas A&M over Yale, not because of lack of intelligence, but because of lack of funds.
So, John Kerry, unless you want to come down here with your plunger and fix my car yourself, you do not get my vote. And, oh yeah, my favorite Sox players are Mike Greenwell, Roger Clemens, Johnny Damon, and Pedro Martinez. Manny Ortez? He exists only in your jumbled mind. And Eddie Yost? Well, John Kerry, much like yourself, he was a Washington Senator whose career can be described as mediocre at best.
¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/02/2004
I finally made up my mind for certain about who to vote for. Here's what tipped me over the edge. Kerry goes around wearing Red Sox caps and celebrating the Red Sox World Series victory as if he actually played in the Series himself. Yet his favorite Red Sox players, "Manny Ortez" and Eddie Yost, either don't exist or never even played for the Sox. Come on, did you think we wouldn't notice? How pathetic. No wonder Curt Schilling is campaigning for Bush. At first I was surprised that Kerry was willing to take sides in the World Series at all, politician that he is. Then I realized that neither Missouri nor Massachusetts was really "up for grabs," so it was safe. But here's the real kicker. The Red Sox don't just represent Massachusetts, a state that will almost certainly vote for Kerry anyway. The Sox are the home team for all of New England, so Kerry probably felt he had a chance to pick up good will in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and all their 34 combined electoral votes, at the expense of Missouri, which is leaning solidly toward Bush, and its paltry 11 electoral votes. A sound political move, but I'm not buying it.
Before you come down on me for voting because of baseball, let me assure you it has nothing to do with baseball. It has everything to do with a man pretending to be something he's not solely for political gain. Kerry, you are not everyman, you are not the sports fan you say you are, and you do not understand what it's like to be "middle class." Please don't tell us that you do.
Bush tried to tell us in the Arizona debate that the way to keep American jobs from heading overseas was to provide government assistance for community college. Oh please! The jobs we're losing are not performed by the uneducated. They are middle class jobs held by college educated employees. You're telling me that a software engineer with a Masters Degree is supposed to file for government assistance to get an Associates Degree to become a medical assistant? What better opportunity for Kerry to step in to defend the middle class, the group he says he cares so much for and associates so closely with. So how does he respond? By changing the subject and talking about budget deficits - again. Neither candidate has a clue what it's like to be a typical American. But at least Bush doesn't go around telling us that he does every chance he gets.
So Kerry, you lost my potential vote when you got caught trying to tell me you knew what it was like to be me. You don't. Only I do, nobody else. Don't try to tell me that you of privileged upbringing and heir to Heinz Ketchup fortune can somehow understand what it's like to be a regular guy who lived on credit cards for five months while desperately looking for a job, who can only buy a decent car because he works for the company that makes them, who can only fix the hideous dent in that decent car because he owns a plunger, who chose to apply at Texas A&M over Yale, not because of lack of intelligence, but because of lack of funds.
So, John Kerry, unless you want to come down here with your plunger and fix my car yourself, you do not get my vote. And, oh yeah, my favorite Sox players are Mike Greenwell, Roger Clemens, Johnny Damon, and Pedro Martinez. Manny Ortez? He exists only in your jumbled mind. And Eddie Yost? Well, John Kerry, much like yourself, he was a Washington Senator whose career can be described as mediocre at best.
¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/02/2004
