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Times like these make me good and truly ashamed of my government.

Long ago I had a bumper sticker that said “Do not reelect anyone”. I may have come around to that thinking again. If you do not vote, you have no right to complain about the results. Vote. Please, vote.

Your vote, especially in what I think we all agree is a fairly critical election, is also a very personal and private thing (should you choose to keep it private). And I’m not in the business of conversion, in day-to-day Real Life.

I feel that way too, and it makes me a lousy activist, but I think sometimes I underestimate the pull I can have. I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to convince at least two or three people who were on the fence that manmade global warming is real, and I was shocked every time it happened; people aren’t supposed to be persuadable about that sort of ideologically loaded thing, are they?

Jan, I will be voting to re-elect Rep. John Lewis, but otherwise, I think my ballot will summarize as “Throw The Bums Out.”

Matt, you’re right, in that people are surprisingly persuadable at times. But I have never had the constitution to be a salesman, which is pretty much what an activist is. And given the “sales jobs” going on out there right now, I wouldn’t get within a mile of such shenanigans.

I live in a part of the Atlanta area where quite a few will put up signs in front of their home touting this candidate or the other.

“Some’ do it simply to show solidarity with those of a like mind.

So, rather than tearing down their signs, I simply lift one leg of the sign, move it 90 degrees, and cause the sign to be ‘looking’ at them rather than the people driving by.

Makes ‘em face what they want me to face.

I usually do this around 11pm; I notice they have no time to rectify it when they leave for work in the morning. When they come back home ‘round 5-6 in the evening, they stop and stare at it for 30-seconds or so & wonder what’s different.

Round here, ‘Subversive’ and ‘activist’ are not synonomous. :)

I for one mourn the fact that the Obama camp, which initially was attack-ad free, had turned into just a mirror image of the other side. The lies that the entire bunch tell about the other half is just enough to turn me off on the whole system. If they’re that willing to tell lies to get elected, they’ll be quite willing to tell lies later on, too.

As for signs, I’m unfortunately (against my will) in the middle of a sign war in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood has some pretty stringent covenants, and one of them has to do with signs. We are limited by them to NO signs of any kind, save for a ‘for sale’ or ‘for rent’ sign of a set size. It’s very specific. I’m currently our Association president, so people are looking to me to enforce the rules.

Early on, I noted an Obama sign or two, and didn’t feel like making waves so long as nobody complained. Nobody did. Then one day the unthinkable happened, and Oh My God did the phone light up. Some evil bastard down the street had the TEMERITY to put up a ‘McCain/Palin’ sign. You would have thought that they were burning a cross- I got emails, calls, and personal visits from people demanding that I take immediate action. Sigh.

So I did- I had to send out letters, and enforce the sign covenant without exception. One person I was required to get after was a 17 year old high school senior who was forced to remove her cheerleading school spirit sign. The high point, however, was one lady who was mad as hell about having to remove her Obama sign- she felt that so long as she hadn’t had a specific complaint about her specific sign, she shouldn’t have to remove it. The irony is that she was one of the loudest people bitching about the McCain sign.

I hate the signs, I hate the hipocrasy, I hate the negativitiy. I hate that the Cubs choked again. I’m just hoping to make it to January sane, so I can pass on this silly neighborhood job to some other sap.

As a kid I don’t remember hearing anything about red or blue states. I do remember my Republican parents carefully deciding whether to vote for the Republican or the Democrat on the national ticket, and they would read the paper and decide who to vote for locally. I always thought that was how it worked.

After living through years of political campaigns, I think what really made the whole thing a “mean season” started with Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. In my opinion, they changed everything, and when you think back to the late eighties, you need to throw Rush Limbaugh into the mix too. Is “mean” a Republican thing? Let’s just say that they turned it into an art form that Democrats couldn’t really figure out how imitate successfully. In the current election, ugly as it as getting, I think voters have moved beyond all that. They are scared and they are demanding competence, from what I can tell. Period.

Yard signs. I always thought they were stupid, and never did anything except proclaim that “idiots live here”. But thinking further, maybe I’m underestimating their impact:

“Honey, the Wilsons have a McCain/Palin sign on their yard. What do you think”

“Hmmmm. Don Wilson is a pretty savvy guy. Maybe we should run down to the McCain campaign office and pick one up so the neighbors will realize that we’re in the know too…”

Or this:

“Wow, you know that weird guy who wears that Asshole teeshirt mowing his lawn on Sundays and is always cursing and scaring the kids? Now he’s got an Obama lawn sign up. Whaddaya think?

“Hmmmm…I think we’d better vote for McCain after all.”

About those yard signs. The smartest guys currently blogging have an interesting analysis of the value of yard-signs. A representative excerpt “hate yard signs with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.”

Overall it’s a pretty good read.

Here’s the url. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/breaking-obama-campaign-organizers.html

Sorry if this seems like link trolling, but 538 obviously isn’t my site, I’m a quasi-regular here (just like Reid (wink)), and it’s a great article that I have nothing to add to.

Have mercy, great and powerful Photodude!

Quote:
“there’s going to be a lot of people who haven’t voted since the last presidential election very angry to find they’ve been purged from the voter rolls)”

Wow. I need to check out the election laws in Ga. In NC I believe you’re good to go unless you move, regardless if you voted. Hmmmm. That certainly would surprise many in NC.

I can vote early in NC on Thursday. I’m gonna be glad to be done with it.