Countering the Religious Message

(note: Sporkeypost)

How on earth do we counter the right wing fanaticals? We should stop reacting to them and start to spar with them. They are good Christians, at least, their church tells them so, and they voted not for Bush, but for God.

It is sad that this is their way of thinking. But it can be countered. We can't igore them, because the powerful will get their way by selling the souls of their flocks. And I am angry that so many people don't discuss God, or their beliefs, because that only reinforces their notion that "Democrats" and "Liberals" are "godless".

About the only way we'll do that is to use the most powerful and influential book in our arsenal: the Bible.

This may seem pretty bad to an atheist or an agnostic, but to tell you the truth, wouldn't it be fun to watch the heads expolde if a "Homo" says, "But didn't Jesus say that you should love the sinner, but hate the sin?" or someone who doesn't believe in God say, "Well, the bible also says that women should be sequestered in a room, given her food and drink there by other female family members, during her period." or, better yet, "Didn't Jesus tell us the parable of the man who made clear to his congragation that he was fasting, and of the man who kept himself clean and did not make a show of it?"

We need people to throw Jesus into their face. They've been propping up the cardboard cutout of the Savior and have actually convinced people that it's really Jesus. Not only am I scared, but I find it morally repugnant (repeat those words often, and make an icky face) that they would think a vote for Bush is a vote for God. And no amount of "saving" is going to help them...they are sinners. It's the commandment of Moses: "I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me." And by voting because someone who says that God talks to them told them to, or that they believe that Bush is godly, or by pledging faith in Bush, they've just broken that commandment. And God is a jealous God; his wrath will crush them. You are only to have faith in God, and His son Jesus, and if you're placing the faith of that kind elsewhere, you're being idolatrous. That will get them to think. Do they really like Bush that much so that they go to hell for Him? It may take some convicing, but I think they'll get the point.

Another point: The parable of the goats and sheep. "For whatever you didn't do for the least of my brethern, you did not do for me." Which means that if you don't take care of the needy, then you'll end up in hell, or at least flames licking your ankles as demons poke at you. Remind them of the parable and ask, "Are you a sheep who's helped your neighbor? Your friends? The poor people at the shelter or in prison? Or are you a goat, stepping over the homeless on the way to buy yourself a new car?" That's as simple as it gets... goats or sheep. (I'd say also to use the very famous example of "The Good Samaritan"... the guy who had helped a man who lay in ditch bleeding after being robbed and passed by by a priest and a merchant... but most people don't understand what was known at the time of Jesus: Samaritans were considered horrible people, they wouldn't help someone unless it was to their wallet. So Jesus' tale of the "bad" person helping the injured man instead of the "good" people helping him had more of an impact. We can, however, update that parable so that modern day people can truly understand it....)

There are many examples, and this with me just writing off of the top of my head. And these are ideals rooted in religion that benefit everyone. And I'm quite sure that the Koran has words like these in it somewhere. The famous Sporkey, giving a speech at which thousands clawed their way just to get into the auditorium, said, "There are many people who contend that Islam is the opposite of Christianity. Some people even go so far as to say that Judaism is the opposite of both Christianity and Islam. I don't really agree with that. There's many names for our respective deities: Yahweh, Jehova, Lord, Allah -- but they are all one God. When I look around me today at all of the faces, at all of the colors, at all of the faiths and beliefs, I am reminded of Genesis, Chapter 1: 'God created man in His image'. God truly must be a sight to behold, a being of great proportions. To include all of us, even those who don't believe in God -- I tell you, it makes my faith so strong I want to hug the world with open arms, regardless of the world's belief. That is my God, a God who understood through Jesus that we are merely mortals and imperfect. It just takes my breath away. I do apologize to non-Christians for this outburst, but I do offer you this: If I believe that God loves you and respects you even though you don't believe in God, and I try my hardest to follow the words of God, would you rather speak with me or with someone who believes that God is vengeful, angry bigot? I can only offer myself as a person, and if you are only so kind, you will excuse my emotional outburst...."

Seriously. We need to combat the "Moral Majority".

"Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power." -- Salaman Rushdie

Liberal? HA!

(note: Sporkeypost)

Forget "Liberal".

Let's start really screwing with the wingnut's heads. How about "socialist"?

First, we need to change the meaning of the word. And repeat it, reapeat it, reapeat it.

Religion?

"No, I'm not a Liberal. I'm a Neosocialist. I believe in God, but the real, true God, and I believe in Jesus, the real, true and everlasting words of Jesus. 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Is that such a horrible rule to live by? Decency? Respect? Love? I don't think so. And every American, both Christian and non-Christian, can abide by those simple words of Jesus. 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.' I don't put myself above God, nor do I claim to know what God will do. To do so puts you on God's level, and weren't the first man and woman booted out of Eden for that? I'm not God and to tell the world that I am, or to know God's will, well, that just is plain sinful. You're an idol then, and God doesn't want that. And the people who believe you are...well, they're just as sinful. We've all committed sins, and we'll pay our price for them. That's not my department...that's God's. To judge someone as God does is asking for the Lord to judge you the same way. And by the way, let's not forget 'What you do for the least of my brethern, you do for me.' So, in that vein, I believe in socal programs that truly uplift those in poverty, like funding education so that no child goes through life illiterate, or programs that actually can help the sick and needy. Homosexuals and abortions? I'm not going to pretend that those are truly that important. Joe America's being played for a fool, and rich are winning."

Class Warfare?

"I'm a Neosocialist. Yes, there is class warfare. Joe America may not realize the depth of it. The rich control the media, and Joe hears he needs this, he needs that, and above all, don't pay attention to the rich laughing at him. All Joe America wants is to feed his family. And the rich are stealing his money...he pays far more taxes than the rich. Of course, it's in the rich's interest that Joe America votes for candidate who wants tax cuts...it benefits them. Joe may get a few more pennies that, if he puts them in a jar for the next four years, may buy him a gumball. They tell Joe that it's the poor people's fault because they're on welfare, scamming him, and that's why his paycheck doesn't cover all of his bills. That's just a load of hooey. The real reason Joe can't pay his bills? The rich want to be richer. They want to be so rich that they can roll around in money, fill swimming pools with their pocket change, and would rather Joe be a slave so that they can eat caviar and drink champagne and laugh at him. Frankly, I'm sick at millionaires laughing at everyone else, like we're completely stupid. Aren't you?"

Tax and Spend?

"Well, think of it like this: I go a to job, I get paid for my work, and that money goes to my bills. That's what taxes are like. We need a military, a good military, and to fund it, because we as a people need it, we tax. It benefits everyone to have a military. Same with schools. Same with a lot of things. I mean, how many fighter craft can you really shoot down with a hunting rifle? And would you rather have someone recieve money to go to school, so that you don't have to come home to find your house robbed of everything? And would you like the police to show up if they did?"

Well, that's all I can think of now. I'm sure I'll come up with something more.

All around us, it was as if the Universe were holding its breath, waiting.
All of life can be broken down into moments of transition, or moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both.
G'quon wrote: "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos, and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us; we know only that it is always born in pain.

Tuning back in...

I believe regular blogging will resume again soon, with a couple of rather longish posts of my own material (no blockquotes!). Not tonight, though, but probably Monday at the latest.

Recommendation for the day (so far)

The Brains Thing

Liberals unanimously believed that Bush was not up to the intellectual challenges of the job. But fearful of re-enforcing a stereotype of left-wing elitism, they time and again shied away from pressing the argument....
Three-plus years later we know better, or at least we should. Intelligence matters. The job of the president of the United States is not to love his wife; it’s to manage a wide range of complicated issues. That requires character, yes, but not the kind of character measured by private virtues like fidelity to spouse and frequency of quotations from Scripture. Yet it also requires intelligence. It requires intellectual curiosity, an ability to familiarize oneself with a broad range of views, the capacity -- yes -- to grasp nuances, to foresee the potential ramifications of one’s decisions, and, simply, to think things through. Four years ago, these were not considered necessary pieces of presidential equipment. Today, they have to be....
Reviewing Clinton’s My Life in the June 24, 2004, Los Angeles Times, neoconservative Max Boot happily concluded that “conservatives like character, liberals like cleverness.” He’s right. But to state what should be obvious, the president is not your father, your husband, your drinking buddy, or your minister. These are important roles, but they are not the president’s. He has a job to do, and it’s a difficult one, involving a wide array of complicated issues. His responsibility to manage these issues is a public one, and the capacity to do so in a competent and moral manner is fundamentally unrelated to the private virtues of family, friendship, fidelity, charity, compassion, and all the rest....
But Bush’s bungling has gotten people killed in Iraq, saddled the nation with enormous debts, and created long-term security problems with which the country has not yet begun to grapple....
And if we are to [succeed], the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” -- some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia -- but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.
The price to be paid for such errors is a high one -- it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again.

On the oil peak and its relative irrelevance

I wrote a rather lengthy comment over at the former Calpundit's Washington Monthly, and thought it was worth copying over to here (slightly edited):

Robear wrote: I believe that when we look back at how petroleum was used the 20th and early 21st century the greatest shame will be that we burned most of it, considering the other uses that hydrocarbons could have been put to: plastics, medicines, fertilizers and the like.

After wading through more than half the posts [in that thread], I was starting to think I'd have to bring this point up here, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one here thinking of it. Nonetheless, indulge me while I expand on this slightly:
Doing my own extrapolation of curves (hyperbolic functions and such, in keeping with my blog name), I'm much more concerned about what happens when we start running out of oil, than what happens when it isn't cheap anymore. I'm guessing 2040-2070ish for this (ob grain of salt warning here). Remember that oil is used for more than just private transportation fuel and electrical generation. Aircraft fuel, shipping fuel, lubrication of just about everything, and the plastics, medicines, and fertilizers Robear mentioned. A hypothetical alternative fuel source might do for shipping, but many of them would be useless for the speedy jet aircraft travel we've become accustomed to. Hybrid technology and other increases of efficiency are even more useless; a ship doesn't do much stopping and starting during a transoceanic voyage, and I dare you to bring a jet to a complete stop in flight.
It's even worse for the other products, for which petroleum is a raw material rather than 'just' an energy source. There are many other possible/conceivable sources of energy which are relatively easily interchangeable, but synthesizing these from scratch would be terribly cost-prohibitive.
If we do find an alternative energy source, or improve efficiency of petroleum-burning remarkably, we might be in the odd case of finding the costs of these petroleum-as-raw-material good rising, because if there are less and less oil wells and refineries running, economies of scales will be lost, and these goods will have to bear most of the cost of extraction of each barrel of oil, instead of being indirectly 'subsidized' by the money gained from the part of the crude useful for gasoline and fuel oil. I'd guess we'd feel the impact of this most in the prices of lubricants, plastics (which are in just about everything these days, of course), and perhaps fertilizer (I'm rather unknowledgeable about its use in fertilizers). Even if we're running all electrical motors or something like that (leaving the source of the electricity as an exercise for the reader), those motors still need to be lubricated by something, and the wires have to be insulated, and what will you make the tires out of? These cost increases would impact almost every segment of the economy, in much the way that fuel price increases do now.
And, also much like what Robear said, I fear that sometime after that point, our grandkids will be cursing us for having burned up all that wonderful raw material into the atmosphere, when it could have been turned into durable goods or used sparingly for lubrication, when all we really needed was the energy from it, which (I hope from their point of view) is so freely available from so many other sources.
The real irony would be if we burned up the last few drops of cheap, easy oil for energy before we managed to find some other source of energy. After all, research into new energy sources takes energy itself, and usually plastics and lubricants too. If we got to that point and hadn't found a seriously long-term solution by then (fusion, or 50%-plus efficient solar, or something similarly SFish), that's when we'd really be screwed, society would collapse (assuming it'd survived the peak), and it would be time for those grandkids to seriously curse us.

Bush lies, surprise surprise

You know, I thought we were going to find stockpiles [of WMDs or chemical weapons, context not clear], everybody did....

I didn't think so. As I am, indeed, a subset of "everybody", therefore Bush lied (probably again). And I strongly suspect there were others who did not think so, e.g. after a certain date, one Hans Blix.

Hesitation and uncertainty

Cheney also charged that Kerry's pattern of "hesitation and uncertainty" makes him an unacceptable choice for the White House in November.

Hesitation and uncertaintly? How about sitting around reading "My/The Pet Goat" with the kiddies for seven minutes after being told the nation is under attack? Does that qualify as "hesitation and uncertainty" in Mr. Dick Cheney's book? If not, I'd very much like to know specifics as to just what Mr. Kerry has done that's so egregiously worse than that.

"We don't want to turn that responsibility over to somebody who doesn't have deeply held convictions about right and wrong," Cheney told a town hall meeting in Joplin.

Oh, I see. What Cheney really means is that that guy doesn't necessarily try to impose his religious views on the rest of the country. Cheney just wants to disguise it under the cover of talking about "hesitation and uncertainty". Well, gee, that uncertain bastard.

Appearing with her husband, Cheney's wife, Lynne, also went after Kerry's comment to a minority journalists' convention last week that he could fight a "more sensitive war on terror."
"With all due respect to the senator, it just sounded so foolish," she said. "I can't imagine that al Qaeda will be impressed by sensitivity."

Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have missed the part where al Qaeda was part of your constituency now. Yeah, of course Kerry must have meant sensitivity towards al Qaeda. He couldn't possibly be concerned with sensitivity towards, say, citizens of the United States, could he? After all, he "doesn't have deeply held convictions about right and wrong." Nogoodnik agnostic-leaning bastard!

Downtime

Been offline due to power supply problems at home since Wednesday morning. And now I'm off for the weekend, at which time I'll probably be spending something like six hours just catching up with everything. Ç'est la vie.

Going public

John's Bright Idea

This is a suggestion I originally had with Gen. Clark in mind, but I'd dearly love to see Kerry take it up now.

I feel that a campaign promise to take the oath "to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth"¹ before delivering each State of the Union Address would be an excellent move. I realize that this may make him vulnerable to impeachment if he were ever misinformed prior to a SotU address, but think of the distinction it would make between him and the incumbent with his infamous "sixteen words".
And after the acceptance speech, which included these excerpts, it could easily be tied in with existing themes:
"We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals – and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House."
"As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system – so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics."
"We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers."
"As President, I will not evade or equivocate;..."

The State of the Union address is only very vaguely defined in the Constitution, and almost all of what we consider essential to it is precedent and tradition. Here's what the Constitution itself has to say about it:

Article II
Section 3
[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient....

So, much like we now consider it to be standard that "from time to time" means once a year, and usually during the last week in January (unless you want to time it to steal the opposition's thunder), John Kerry, if elected President, could set a precedent for years, or even centuries, to come, by taking that oath before each Address. That might be a legacy worth leaving in and of itself.

And of course, consider the contrast this would give with recent history. While President Clinton's evasion about Monica Lewinsky was impeachable because (and only because) he was under oath, President Bush could get away with those "sixteen words" in his 2003 State of the Union Address without fear of impeachment, because he was not under any oath to tell any part of the truth. If John Kerry made a promise to take the oath before each Address, it would be an excellent way to emphasize his intent to "restore trust and credibility to the White House," and to differentiate himself from his opponent.

1) Due to national security considerations, he probably couldn't swear "to tell the whole truth." However, it may be that the legal interpretation of the phrase is loose enough to let him say that. Not being a lawyer, I don't know just how it's interpreted in court.

Mister Boffo

Iraqis on tour banned from Memphis hall

Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in.
The seven Iraqi civic and community leaders are in the midst of a three-week American tour, sponsored by the State Department to learn more about the process of government. The trip also includes stops in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The Iraqis were scheduled to meet with a city council member, but Joe Brown, the council chair, said he feared the group was dangerous.
"We don't know exactly what's going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed?" Brown said. "We must secure and protect all the employees in that building."
Elisabeth Silverman, the group's host and head of the Memphis Council for International Visitors, said Brown told her he would "evacuate the building and bring in the bomb squads" if the group entered.
"They are in charge of setting up processes in their country. They have to educate themselves about how it works in this country," Silverman said.
Silverman did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday seeking comment, and it was not clear whether the group had run into trouble elsewhere on their tour.
But the delegates seemed in good spirits Monday, after they were able meet with Carol Chumney, the city council member, elsewhere. Shahla Waliy, a 31-year-old native of Baghdad, said she was intrigued by the city's civil rights history.
"I heard there was a kind of majority-minority conflict in Memphis, especially in history," she said. "We have these smaller provinces, and we have majority-minority conflicts in these places."

That'll teach 'em about civil rights, and how to run a proper democracy!

And this is how you let freedom reign...

Al-Hayat: Marines have arrested Dr. Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, son of the leader of the Board of Muslim Clergy, a fundamentalist Sunni organization. Muthanna was interviewed on the Lebanese Broadcasting Co. harshly critiquing the way the delegates were chosen for the national congress to be held in mid-August. He later discovered 5 humvees heading toward his living quarters at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad. He was taken into custody.
If Muthanna committed a crime, for which he was being arrested, it should have been announced to the press. Otherwise, the Allawi government looks as though it is sending the rather thug-like signal that political figures who refuse to cooperate in the national congress and who are critical of him will be arrested. If that is what is going on, it is sad to see the US Marines deployed for the purpose of these political arrests. It is also a shame that the US ban on the military arresting civilians hasn't been extended to Iraq.

Fear of Fraud

It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.
Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections...."
After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.
But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.
Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.

Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, Study Finds

President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin....
For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.
They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.
"That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special," Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
The others were task-oriented -- focusing on the job to be done -- or relationship-oriented -- with a "let's get it done together" style, Solomon said.
The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.
Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."
When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said.
Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person's opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.
Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.
"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

Some Republicans Defect to Kerry's Camp

Ohio resident Bob Stewart says of President Bush: "He's been a world-class polarizer. I don't know if I can stomach four more years with him as president. He misled us into the war in Iraq and has mismanaged everything since."
A raging Democrat? No, Stewart is a Republican, one of an unknown number of such voters who plan to back John Kerry, out of despair over the war in Iraq and disappointment over budget deficits and social policies....
Stewart, 44, an insurance agent from Anderson Township near Cincinnati, voted for Bush in 2000 and is a registered Republican.
"I just have a gut feeling that Kerry can be trusted to make the right courageous decisions and will make a good president. He showed that with his heroism in Vietnam," he says.
Bush is "supposed to be a conservative and yet he's run up the biggest federal deficit in history. One thing that really turned me (away from Bush) as a lifelong Catholic ... was to see Bush go to the Vatican and try to get the pope to come down hard on Kerry for his stand on abortion. That is absolutely appalling."
In Michigan, Dan Martin has run for local office as a Republican. He says his biggest disappointment is that Bush's reputation as a "compassionate, conservative" governor of Texas hasn't proven true in the White House.
"The foreign policy is a mess. The offensive in Iraq is reckless and built on bad decision making. On the domestic front I understand that terrorism has struck and he's occupied but any real progress on a domestic agenda has ground to a halt," added Martin, 32, a customer service manager at a health maintenance organization who lives in Rochester Hills.
In Tennessee, Brian Boland, a young music company manager shopping at a market near Nashville, said: "I've always voted Republican and my folks will just kill me if they find out I'm switching to Kerry this year (should've gone anon. - ed.) ... but I am just frustrated with the way Bush has mishandled everything. All the untruths."
His wife said she too was switching. The Republicans carried Tennessee in 2000, even though it was the home state of Democratic nominee Al Gore.
At the same market Ron King, a black Vietnam Veteran, said: "I always voted Republican before but I'm against Bush ever since I found out that he doesn't love this country. His so-called military record is a sham. And the worst part is that he lies so much. He lied about weapons of mass destruction."
Lloyd Huff, 64, retired director of the Dayton Research Institute in Ohio, says he has "voted for a Republican in every presidential election I can remember" but it will be Kerry this time because "the Bush administration has been the most deceitful, duplicitous, secretive administration this country has ever had."
"Going to war in Iraq was a horrible, horrible mistake," he said. He accused Bush of "an arrogant, swaggering cowboy mentality ... he has done more than anyone to inflame the Muslim world by his words and actions."

I'm starting to feel vaguely hopeful.... Perhaps I won't have to decide whether to flee the country in November.