Mel Gibson’s on line 1 for you, wanting to know if you’re available for The Passion II.
I don’t consider you stupid at all. I consider your statement that I am obligated to assist someone with whom I am in vehement disagreement act in opposition to my own best interest to be stupid. If my hypothetical Bushista neighbor asked for a ride to the poll, I would very likely take her. But I would be under no ethical obligation to do so, your insane troll logic notwithstanding.
No, but if you had afvertised youself as a non-partisan car pool, then refused to take Bush voters, there would, to me, be an ethical problem.
Anbd “troll logic”? Calling me a troll?
And yes, I realize now that I was mistaken in thinking Move-On was not affliliated with the Democratic party, so you don’t need to point that out.
Actually, you were quite correct. As a 527, it’s not affiliated with any candidate or party. It shares goals with them, but is not affiliated in any way.
Although I do find it kind of remarkable that anyone is still unaware of MoveOn’s partisanship, since they have been the whipping boy for the Republican attack on 527 organizations for a couple of months, and are usually mentioned in the same breath as the Swift Boat Liars in news reports talking about the effect of 527s on the election.
I’m not questioning your veracity, gobear. I’m just surprised that you missed the coverage.
CNN just reported on its crawler that some MoveOn people were arrested for electioneering. I don’t know where it happened. I glanced down too late to see the location.
MoveOn is not affiliated with the Democratic Party. They are an independent group whose current mission is to get Bush out of office. (Their original mission was to end the investigation of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, hence the name.)
To those of you who think that MoveOn GOTV drive should be bipartisan, who do you expect to pay for that? People donate to MoveOn because they want to get Bush out of office, not because they want to improve American democracy in some general way. I would be pissed if the money I donated was being spent helping Republicans vote.
I knew they were anti-Bush, but I was under the mistaken impression they were also concerned with voter turnout, not merely Democrat voter turn-out.
I was wrong.
Somewhere in New Hampshire was all I could find.
gobear:
Understandably so. And commendably so – in calling people today for MoveOn, I’m not asking who they plan to vote for, I’m just reminding them that it’s election day and they should vote.
I hope they vote for Kerry, but I’m not trying to convince anyone.
It’s a Buffy quote. Dumbass.
Just out of interest: whose phone numbers are you actually calling?
Because i know someone who’s making calls for MoveOn, and the only people she is calling are Democratic voters who have made a previous commitment to be at a particular polling place at a particular time.
Now, she is simply calling to remind them to vote, and not to encourage them to vote for a particular party, but if the only people you call are people who have previously expressed sympathy with your own party, the distinction doesn’t seem to be especially pertinent.
I’m not saying that just calling people who have identified themselves as Democrats is wrong. But, if the only people you’re calling are Democrats, then it’s somewhat disingenuous to say that you’re “just reminding them it’s election day,” as if there were no partisan agenda.
Well, they may not be officially affiliated with the Democratic Party, but the connection is close enough for a reasonable person to conlcude that they are an effective wing of the Democrats, at least for the purpose of this election. And i say this as someone who generally supports MoveOn, and who is on their email list. Look at the titles of some of the emails i’ve received from them recently:
**
Kerry’s Fighting Back: Powerful Speech on Iraq
Students: Demand Answers from Bush on Iraq
Stop Tom Delay: The Right Wing’s Hammer
John McCain: Tell Bush to Condemn Kerry Slander Ad
**
And here’s the opening lines of an email i got back in August:
While they may have no official affiliation with the Democratic Party—as mandated by their 527 status—one could easily be forgiven for missing the distinction.
As i said, i don’t have much trouble with this, but it’s a bit silly for MoveOn people to claim to be anything but Democratic Party campaigners. To be honest, i’ve actually lost some of my enthusiasm for MoveOn over the past couple of years, as their noble emphasis on defeating Bush has, unfortunately, led them to ignore or downplay some of the problems and bad policies within the Democratic Party, and in John Kerry’s Presidential campaign.
This made me almost wet my pants. So did this.
Back when I was in College Republicans (sometime between the invention of fire and the wheel) we provided rides to the polls. We didn’t ask party affiliation or discuss the election - we just gave rides.
Just to be fair and balanced, the evil minions of the Young Democrats were non-parisan in their ride service, too.
I’m calling the numbers on a list from MoveOn. I already called the known Kerry supporters and reminded them to get out and vote. Now I’m on the list of “infrequent voters” – people who are registered but have not voted in the past couple of presidential elections. In canvassing, the script has you start with asking who they’re going to vote for, then encouraging the Kerry supporters and offering assistance. I’m skipping that part. I don’t know who they’re voting for. I am really, honestly, just hoping they’re voting for Kerry. I’m not qualifying them before I encourage them to vote, so I am being nonpartisan. From the results I’ve seen thus fare from canvassing, my area is somewhat more likely to turn up Kerry supporters than Bush in the infrequent voters, but there’s no guarantee. I could be reminding some guy with a huge-ass W sign in his lawn to vote, and I’m okay with that.
Ah, I was hoping that got noticed.
And yes, I was inspired by the Onion. Genius work, as usual.
When I campaigned for the NDP this year, I spent the day of the election getting the vote out. What that meant was calling everyone I knew to be an NDP supporter and finding out if they had voted, and arranging lifts to the polling place nand answering questions as needed. I don’t see why it would surprise anyone for the New Democratic Riding Association to try to get as many New Democrats as possible to vote.
You know perfectly well that just because we frequently disagree doesn’t mean I don’t love you like a brother, my dear.
Either Fox or CNN or both (they’re starting to blur together to me) reported that 30 cars belonging to Republicans who were going to carpool voters had their tires slashed in Milwaukee. I don’t know whether MoveOn did it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I even like Gobear. Always have. He used to pretty much ignore me, even though I always posted very supportive messages. (You can check the history.) Lately, though, it’s like we’re worst enemies, and I have no idea why or how it began.
Unfortunately, that has a basis in reality.