HOME
Message Board
CURRENT COLUMNS
- Editor's Corner
- Blogfest 2005
- Commentary
- Commentary Too
- Down The Middle
- Faulking Around
- Global Warning
- This guy walks into a bar...
- Investing 101
- Faulking Opinions
- Off The Rail
- Words
ARCHIVES
LINKS
CONTACT US
 | |||
Blogfest 2005 - Nov 2, 2006 - Printable Version
- How Low Can They Go?
by Mark Faulk
“Get out and Vote…Amen” Those were the words of a Pastor to his congregation just minutes ago on CNN, in a report about how the evangelists are trying to rally their “flocks” to go to the polls next Tuesday and help President Bush and his fellow Republicans keep control of Congress.
This year’s campaign might the ugliest in memory. Okay, yeah, I know I said that during the last presidential campaign, but that just shows you that when it comes to getting down and dirty, limbo champions are rank amateurs. No one can get as low as our elected officials in Washington. We’re still five days away from “D-Day,” and every day is uglier than the one before.
Let’s recap just a few of the lowlights of the past couple of weeks:
The Mark Foley Scandal: Ouch, that one had to hurt. I don’t even have to recap that bit of perversion, but suffice it to say that he won’t be speaking at any Congressional page recruitment drives for a long, long…LONG time. My favorite newspaper article title was this one in the Houston Chronicle today: “Florida race thrust into spotlight by fall of Foley,” which also had this memorable quote from Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida: "That's really made this a tight race."
“Thrust into spotlight” (emphasis on the “thrust”)? A “tight” race? Whew...I wouldn’t touch that one with a ten foot…um, wait, let me rephrase that. Let’s just say that Foley’s replacement is going to have a hard time…oh hell, you know what I mean.
Moving on…well-known drug addict/talk show host Rush Limbaugh made a total fool of himself (I know…I was surprised too) by attacking Michael J. Fox for exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease," Limbaugh told listeners while waving his arms wildly to mock Fox’s debilitating disease. "He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act. This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting." Granted, Limbaugh is an expert on medication, but I can only hope that he comes out and admits that he was the one taking medication when he made a fool of himself, even by his low standards.
Not to be outdone, John Kerry decided to grab the spotlight for a couple of shining moments, in what he later described as a “botched joke,” or more accurately, was shoved into the spotlight by Republicans desperate to shift the focus from…well, from every single thing they’ve done over the past six years…from their ruthless assault on Democracy, from stolen elections and a rigged stock market (or is that rigged elections and a stolen stock market?) to depriving Americans of their civil rights and launching attacks on foreign countries based on misinformation and outright lies. And the ploy worked…for about a day.
Republicans ruthlessly hammered Kerry for saying that “"You know education, if you make the most of it, and you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Bush seemed downright gleeful in his attacks on Kerry, delighted that someone besides himself had finally screwed up a punch line.
This response to the Kerry faux pas pretty much says it all:
“Again President Bush is showing his hypocrisy by demanding that Kerry apologize for a crudely worded dig directed at him. As a combat veteran, I'm wondering when the commander in chief is going to apologize to the nation and the families of the more than 2,000 American troops killed in Iraq since he so brazenly declared, ‘Mission accomplished.’ I regret that I have but one vote to return our country to sanity.”
Then, today, as CNN was airing their segment about how evangelists are prodding their sheep…okay, yeah, that one was just a cheap shot. Let’s try again. Then, today, as CNN was airing their segment about how evangelists are trying to convince their flocks to “Get out and vote…Amen,” they cut in with a breaking news story. Just before the segment showed a Christian woman lamenting that “all this talk about Iraq was taking the focus off the amendment banning gay marriages,” it was announced that the president of the National Association of Evangelicals had just resigned after denying an accusation by a male prostitute that the pastor paid him for sex over three years.
Whoops.
According to news reports, “the Rev. Ted Haggard said he is also temporarily stepping aside from the pulpit of his church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, pending an internal investigation by the church. The National Association of Evangelicals is an umbrella group for more than 45,000 churches and some 30 million members across the country.”
It was one of those things that almost makes one wonder if God really has had enough of the corruption that is destroying our country, and decided to make a pointed example of Rev. Haggard just to remind those in power that there are limits to how much greed and deception America…and Americans…can tolerate.
So here we are, facing the more important election in decades, one that could nail the coffin shut on Democracy forever, or, more hopefully, one that will send a message to Washington that our country is still about “WE THE PEOPLE.” Do we see beyond the smokescreens and sleight of hand and do the right thing, or will Americans fall for rhetoric and lies yet again?
Next Tuesday, it’s not enough that we simply vote the Republicans out of their control of Congress, we have to do it so decisively that even Diebold can’t rig this vote. We have to do it so clearly that the war veteran who said that he had “but one vote to return our country to sanity” can wake up the morning after the election still believing that his “one vote” actually did count, and that it wasn’t stolen in the dead of night along with our Democratic process.
And that, my fellow hopeful patriots, is the Faulking Truth.
Voice your opinion on our message board (you don't have to sign up to post).