Political non-participation in my social sphere often stems from not wanting to 'play the game.' But I’m pretty sure that if you are standing in a city, driving a car down a public road, emailing whoever for whatever, or eating food not grown within walking distance (and even then) you Are playing the game. Earth (and beyond) is the board, and it needs your help to stay a cool place to play.  Your town, the country, the entire planet is interconnected now more than ever.  We share resources across the globe and we need to participate in our little corner to hold the whole puzzle together.  It would probably take me about half a day to walk to Boston or half a day to fly to China.  One big neighborhood.  I vote in all my local and national elections, and though it won’t solve my every problem, it might effect something. It might mean more money for science, or a more flexible, inspired educational system.  It might mean marriage rights for all or government incentives for new energy research. Sure it’s a “maybe”, but it’s an easy one to reach for.  Picture a huge heavy ball with hundreds of people trying to push it, add your little bit of weight and at that moment it may give, the ball is rolling.  Four years ago Lightning Bolt was in on tour in Europe right before the election watching the debates when we could, I specifically remember watching Edwards debate Cheney. Cheney, his pals probably seizing contracts to rebuild Iraq already.  What a scheme they had, blow a country up and get everyone to pay you to put it back together.  At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush had an adviser with a bodybag company.  These people are my representatives?  Touring in Europe and apologizing to everyone for being from the USA.  My country, a country that invades sovereign nations.  A country that from the rest of the world’s perspective is a thuggish bully with the capacity to nuke the planet to atoms.

My eyes welled up with tears listening to Obama speak at the DNC, finally a person who I can be proud of, a figurehead who respects intelligence and speaks with intelligence.  Politicians constantly promise this that and the other thing so I listen between the lines, trying to judge if this person has the ability to reason, learn, listen and empathize and has a humanitarian perspective. But of course while a president needs first and foremost to be able to filter information they don’t work in a void, they have a wealth of experience around them.  Hillary will be there with all her fire and knowledge; McCain (for better or worse) will be there with his military experience. Biden will be there with his grip on foreign policy, Kucinich will be there with his vision of peace, but Obama will tie it together and make the mature decisions to put us on the path towards reason and renewal. 

And on top of that I love voting. Providence always moves my spot around. Me being in a not so wealthy area, they are probably trying to shake us off the trail. So I’ll wander into whatever school gym or apartment complex lobby I’m assigned too and say “chippendale” and the volunteers will all giggle and I’ll make a joke about my rich stripper uncle or something like that. Then I’ll vote, we will all smile and I’ll get my “I voted” sticker and walk out happy that I shared a moment with a few new people from some other walk of life. All of us participating in this grand democratic experiment.

Every time I tour the US playing music there is at least one long drive where I realize how lucky I am to live in a country where I can do this. Somehow, with almost no income to speak of I am able to do what I want with my life. It is never easy, but it is awesome that I can make art the way I want to and share it with people all over the place just by working hard at it. If America continues to have stupid presidents like George Bush though, my hard work alone might not be enough any more. I am voting for Obama because I believe he will help keep the US a place where DIY artists like my friends and I can afford to get by, can afford the energy it takes to tour, and aren't surrounded by hateful people that don't support our true freedom. I know, with hard how it is to be an artist, that apathy over voting is easy to have. But if Obama is not elected president, it will become more than hard to be an artist. It will become near impossible as the Republican party continues to insist on the use of oil, making the cost of living go up and the attitude of society more mean and bitter. If you enjoy noise music and all the other DIY arts please vote for Obama.

Thanks for the invite,  I'll try and come up with something.  Right now I have to go to work.  I'm on vacation which is funny because I'm going to work.  I need the work because I need to pay off an $800 gas bill because natural gas is so fuckin expensive.  I also have to pay $40 for only 10 gallons of regular gasoline.  That's all I can afford on my budget per week, so I try not to drive much.  Under this awesome economy I'm actually spending more than I'm making weekly. (I did not add the extra bills such a public storage because I can't afford my own place.)  So vacations and weekends don't exist anymore. 

Spending more than I am making has caused a lot of stress.  It's a big problem digging into my small savings account every week to stay even.  At first I didn't think much about it.  $20 here $40 there just to stay ahead.  Now everything is moving slowly backwards.   I may have to get a third job.  America was not always like this.

There is no conspiracy, it is absolutely obvious the Republicans are owned by oil companies, war profiteers, and you name the corporation.  There is a great advantage for corporations/Republicans to have all middle and lower class Americans in this financial pickle.  An America of worry and despair about our earnings and savings creates a perfect atmosphere for con artist corporate politics.  A person with no hope turns to apathy.  A perfect mark. 

The Republicans will not socialize medicine so I can't check out a headache I've had for 3 weeks. But Republicans are very quick to create socialized government support programs that aid plunging Stock Markets and any struggling company or bank.  That's right a rich bank, company or Stock Market fiasco will get aid before any American without health insurance.

Republicans are Pro-Life yet they are pro Capital Punishment, pro 100 more years of war, pro corporate pollution, against stem cell research and against life giving healthcare.  It's no wonder I have a headache. 

We Democrats are not perfect , and I like that, we don't pretend to be.  As Democrats we criticize our leaders when they are wrong.  We argue amongst ourselves.  We are a party of many branches, many opinions and I actually love that.  

I can't stand the 'invasion of the body snatchers' neo-conservative ethical society bullshit the Republicans wish to create.  It's all phony .  The entire neo-conservative philosophy is based on a sort of covert hypnosis idea.  By suggesting to society there is a great evil in the world and only a certain type of government can protect them, a society can be controlled and the government can be worshiped.  It's bogey man shit, Leo Strauss just applied it to political philosophy. 

This brings me back to the obvious brainwash that is occurring with con artist politics.  The price of Republican Oil is being pumped so high that we Americans will forget about oil spills and illegal land dealings, and okay our Congressmen and Senators to allow off shore drilling and major oil land grabs under ours noses.  We are so mesmerized by the decrease of our wallets and the slogans of media promising relief that we will do anything to stop the madness.  It would feel so good if the companies got what they wanted.  Please Congressman do whatever oil companies want.  Make it stop!!

But we are smarter then that.  With Barack Obama we know alternative energy is the only way out, not illegal corporate oil land grabs.  With Obama we know that there is no great evil, a " terrorist" is an asshole brain washed by idiotic mislead Muslim radicals and nothing more (on a side note we have a ton of neo-conservative brain washed Evangelical assholes that fuck up our country daily but that's another story).  With Obama we know these mislead Muslim radical assholes can't be stopped by killing dictators and taking over countries.  With Obama we know the lower and middle class will not be forgotten.  With Obama we hear no more fear inside us.  With Obama we feel we have a part in our future, and see ourselves becoming a nation again.  With Obama the focus is on me and you finding the ability and strength within to overcome things that piss us off.  Also with Obama we know he'll have a Vice President that is maybe even more passionate regarding some of the issues that are dribbling into my life without my consent and stealing my time and money.

Obama is just a dude, he'll fuck up on occasion as I have fucked up and will everyone.  I do know, what is great and true about Democrats, if Obama were to ever fuck up the entire country like Bush, Cheney and McCain we'd be the first in line to fire him.  We Democrats do not worship our leaders, we watch them.

We finally have a guy that cares about this great country and us.

"those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior." -Leo Strauss father of Neo-Conservative philosophy

“A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.”- Leo Strauss

"Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise."-Barack Obama

"...it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend."

P.S. I know you've probably heard all this before but constant repeating of these issues we find important is very important to combat the constant repeating of corporate trance inducing bullshit piped into our brains through junk media.

It is why noise is an important and healthy exercise.

Obama is good for us. i don't know if i can speak for this whole country or the whole world, but his views on foreign policy, his views on health care, his views on abortion and so on are right where we think things need to be. The last few elections have been real tough, we were so excited to nominate gore, then again with kerry, but in the real scheme of things we were choosing the lesser of two evils. Obama is a real human, and we believe in him and his decesions for the better of our country. The human country. Please vote

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s infamous "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president.  Much has been made of the fact that Obama is the first African-American presidential nominee by a major party.  What is often forgotten when recalling King's pivotal speech is that is was given during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Jobs and Freedom.  If you think about it, these are two central issues that are just as important now in 2008 as they were in 1963.  At that time, the Civil Rights Movement -- of which both of my parents were supporters -- represented not just jobs and freedom for blacks.  It represented "civil rights" for all, regardless of background.

In an era in which our civil liberties have been eroded, we need a change.  And that is what Obama represents more than anything.  Change.  We need and deserve this change.  With the mortgage crisis and housing foreclosures, the failures of major banking institutions, an increase in unemployment and homelessness, reductions in health insurance, skyrocketing gas and tuition costs, the war in Iraq, and fears of what the future may or may not bring, many Americans have felt the burden of tough times.

I endorse Obama because he is more willing and able to institute change than McCain.  Obama is more willing and able to address the needs and concerns of most Americans.  I think Barack Obama is tapping into the zeitgeist - people want change and are ready for change.  As long as McCain is not elected, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

It's hard to have hope, given what so many of us have been through these past two elections and eight years.  So many hopes have been lost.  But we must hope.  And Obama is helping to guide us by encouraging us to hope for a brighter future of better employment, health care, housing, education and economic stability for all, not just a minority.  He is offering hope for an end to the war.  All of this is why I'm for Obama.

It is time.  As King said 45 years ago, "Let freedom ring."

I prefer an Obama presidency because it would do more to encourage the real and potential agents of positive change than a McCain presidency. Claims of Obama's score on the left-o-meter are obviously exaggerated by both his supporters and detractors. Anyone who thinks that Obama himself will make the U.S. a fair, just society controlled by something other than big corporations and the military, either has inserted too much wishful thinking into the gaps in his platform, or invests the presidency itself with the imagined task of remaking the power structure of the country, obviously a contradiction in terms. If he wins they are in for a big disillusionment.

But there are worse things than disillusionment. It's preferable to utter hopelessness and alienation from the political process, which I think is what a lot of us have now and have had throughout our lives. In ancient Greek theater there was a division between "tragedy," where the hero had a chance but failed, and "pathos," where the hero never had a chance in the first place. Better that the Obama presidency be tragic than the McCain presidency be pathetic. Better that our hopes are raised and dashed than that they are never raised.

To claim otherwise is tantamount to raising hopelessness and alienation themselves to aspirations. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that this is a temptation. As anyone who finds a community through or establishes their reputation by making noisy aggressive music knows, vague and undirected anger is often encouraged and applauded and can easily start to become an end in itself. I'll never forget an interview with Lars Ulrich in the 90s where the interviewer wondered what Metallica could possibly still be angry about now that they're millionaires living the good life. He was immediately defensive and insisted that yes he was still angry, settling the argument since anger itself was clearly both his and the interviewer's goal.

Back to my Obama endorsement, perhaps the main thing he keeps doing that is encouraging to me is that he keeps making sense when he opens his mouth. I don't mean this in some figurative or poetic sense, I mean he speaks in something other than gibberish. I mean he finishes his sentences and the sentences have a meaning that can be followed and understood. Simple elocution may seem a paltry charm point for the supposed "leader of the free world" but it depends what you're used to. Everyone loves to joke around and make light of Bush's difficulties with English, but given the fact that the meaningless utterances and lying of politicians are repeated verbatim by an American news media that apparently sees that repetition as its main job description for political coverage, Bush and other politicians' destruction of English and destruction of logic are no laughing matter. And contrary to the "elevated discourse" that the pundits promised should an Obama-McCain race emerge, McCain and Palin both are turning out to be slaves to (or masters of?) this same same tradition of language debasement.

Some of it is simple bumbling and bungling, but for me that doesn't compare to what are clearly systematic language-debasing propaganda techniques. Logical fallacies, non sequiturs, oversimplifications, insinuations, exaggerations, emotional appeals to fear and prejudice, evasion, subtle but deliberate reinforcement of erroneous assumptions, sloganeering, technobabble, and of course who could forget...bald-faced lies. Often the amount of meaning in a sentence seems to be inversely proportional to the volume at which it is shouted.

Of course Obama is not entirely innocent of these techniques, especially the sloganeering. But there's no comparison between his speaking style and that of not just McCain but all the presidential candidates I've seen this year. And no I'm not talking about Obama's "soaring" speeches. I'm talking about something that no one ever seems to bring up which is that when he speaks, there's a meaning that can be followed. There's a logic that can be traced from one end of a sentence to the other. His arguments proceed in an order that follows from one to the next.

When most politicians start talking in detail on a technical topic, my eyes glaze over almost instantly. I know I'm just a drummer so that's probably par for the course, but I firmly believe this is intentional on their part, to create the impression that they are know-it-alls and that us citizens needn't concern ourselves with the finer points.

Which brings me back to my not-so-fine point, that an Obama presidency would encourage the real and potential agents of positive change. An "understandable" president would be a real danger to the status quo because the citizens might tune in rather than tune out. They would start to develop the expectation that their leaders make sense. They would feel that they are being included in the discussion and that it is their responsibility to be educated about what is being discussed. With an engaged population who knows what might happen?

I believe the grassroots organizations, foundations, and spontaneous groupings of people around a cause that are the real agents of peace, justice and sanity could get a boost. And perhaps even more importantly the kids (the potential agents of change) growing up in such an environment would be imprinted with these higher expectations of a leader, without developing this unhealthy clinging to hopelessness and alienation that has been the ground of our generation's existence.

  So as not to encourage the view that an Obama endorsement means Greg or Deerhoof believes in candidate-centered or president-centered solutions to world problems, Deerhoof is giving a percentage of digital sales revenue from their upcoming album to an important grassroots non-governmental organization. We have narrowed the choices down to five:

• Why Tuesday?
• FAIR
• Peace Action West
• Z Magazine
• Doctors Without Borders

and we are asking for your help in picking which of these will receive the donation. Cast your vote by sending an email to deerhoofcharityvote@gmail.com with your choice. Submissions will be accepted until October 1, 2008 and the organization that's chosen will be announced on October 7, 2008. Please vote only once for the organization of your choice. 

-Brian Cook
these arms are snakes/russian circles
 

-Chris Daltry
record & craft sale promoter, vintage store owner + musician
http://www.myspace.com/what_cheer
http://www.myspace.com/themericans