I am sorry...actually no, I am not....but this whole VOTE and DIE crap is getting really tiring. Those of us in the U.S.A have most likely come under attack from bubble gum pop stars telling us to vote...oh gee, I would have forgot if Hillary Duff hadn't fucking reminded me.

It was started by P. Diddy and because of his douchebag efforts to get the young generation out there to vote he has made himself look like a fool. I applaud his intentions and his vociferous attempts but why is he being so vague?...just come out and fucking say it.."VOTE for Kerry or DIE!!!". It is no secert how adamant the entertainment industry is trying to get Kerry in office. Every celebrity has suddenly found their voice in the last few months but why be so fucking vague Diddy....just come out and say who you prefer, The Boss did it, why not you.

That isn't even the most annoying part. What really irks me is the sudden "coolness" built around the whole campaign of Diddy's. I see posters of Nelly in a low lit room, with his muscles glistening, his head down, his expression oh so stoic, and supporting the cool, trendy new Vote or Die shirt.....wow, oh man, hold back the cosmopolitan patriotism, you're making me teary eyed with national pride. I can't wait til lthe cast of Sex and the City comes out with their ad slogans for the presidental elections.

Beyonce Knowles, Hillary Duff, Alicia Keys etc etc etc and blah fucking blah. In my POV these celebrities are making themselves look like an ass in their attempts to be so eye opening. More often than not when celebrities do this they end up changing people's opinions on them rather than their political choices.

What I really want to know is: Where was this fervor 4 years ago? Where was "Vote or get Sodomized" phrase when Bush and Gore went at it? Why was P. Diddy too busy getting rich instead of caring about the youth going out to vote? What...the horrible realities of war brought them out of their comfy lives now?

I applaud his intentions but I can't help but feel that if anyone had influence and money like him they'd all be pushing their cause, so why is he so chicken shit to not come out and say it!

Ugh, I hate that shirt slogan. "Vote or die"? OMFG! Leave us the fuck alone. I can not vote if I damn well want (even if I were old enough).

It sounds like a threat. I hate it.

damn, I even got pissed when saw this thread title...
I hate threats

I hope that's not why so many voted for Bush. Damnit. Where do Busheists come from? And one would think, after looking at all the bro-Kerry threads in scis, there's almost no support for that creep.

I hope that's not why so many voted for Bush.
Is kinda twistedly funny if it did.

Look at the map on bbc. 'Tis the true face of America. No denying it this time. It's mostly pro-Bush. Can't blame it on vote counts or electoral college this time. Can't even blame it on the Independent party.

yeah, amerika sucks
tells much about it's citizens
maybe there is still hope :D
I don't know the local politics
maybe more anti-bush votes can turn up (notice, I'm saying anti-bush not pro-kerry)

Does this mean Bush won?

Please . . . please . . . please don't tell me that's what it means . . .

check out news.bbc.co.uk
they have a counter

What you see next to the map is electoral college; that's what really counts. In each county, majority winner takes all votes; then, in the entire state, majority winner takes all votes. Each state gets a certain small ammount of votes, proportionately to population (note, that if a state is large, it's not necessarily populous). If there's no winner via electoral college, the Congress chooses the Pres. Congress is mostly Rep., as you see. If there's no majority winner in the congress, then the current Vice Pres. chooses (if I'm quoting my prof correctly). Fool-proof, you see. Oh, and I'm sure we're not recounting anything this time, so nothing will "turn up."

bush 249, kerry 207.

unless kerry voters show up soon, were dead

bbc says it's ->
George W Bush: 249
John Kerry: 225

latest at cnn:

bush 249, kerry 242

What I really want to know is: Where was this fervor 4 years ago? Where was "Vote or get Sodomized" phrase when Bush and Gore went at it?

Smothered under a neatly-troweled layer of naive "dignity".

I mean, just think for a moment: what has happened these last four years was unimaginable two days before that.

Bush has transformed America from a "beacon of freeedom" into a menacing bulldog: Give us what we think we want or we'll f@ck you up.

And that does appear to be what many Americans want.

See, before, most Americans could plead stupidity: We weren't paying attention. We don't know how we got here. And during these last four years, most Americans could claim, Hey, we voted for someone else, and we weren't paying attention to our own rules.

However, as it appears the people are endorsing Bush's policies, there are no more excuses.

In regards to the original post:


I saw a Snoop Dogg commerical, asking you to vote. And it was Sponsored by... Burger King....

Amazing....

Sheesh... looks like there's always something wrong when it comes to political campaign (and the aftermaths). The 'celeb + politic' matter is also bold in Indonesia (my homeland), which obviously makes me sick... I was actually already of legal age for voting (mid-year), but I didn't want to because of that.
Politics..... the very disaster mankind had invented.. really...

I hope that's not why so many voted for Bush. Damnit. Where do Busheists come from? And one would think, after looking at all the bro-Kerry threads in scis, there's almost no support for that creep.

Was it really that much of a surprise Bush won? The voting patterns were predictable and I pretty much knew Bush was headed for victory.

Kery had the supoort of the entertainment industry and thats all that was ever on T.V: The entertainment industry...they never showed you the states that supported Bush. Most of the midwest states gave their support to Bush because they all have the mentality Bush does. Call it proud ignorance or general apathy towards other nations.

I feel bad for Kerry though....the poor bastard spent $600 million and got nothing but a simple "be proud of yourself" comment from Bush.

However, as it appears the people are endorsing Bush's policies, there are no more excuses.


Good point. I am interested to see what excuses people come up with next.

Good point. I am interested to see what excuses people come up with next.

I'm not sure, but I hope nobody voted for him because they thought he was going to clean up his act if they gave him a second chance.

sargenntlard: to put it simply, diddy has no successful records lately (that ive heard of) so thats why hes on the voting wagon. their opurtunism is amusing in its patheticness, i wouldve liked to see their faces when they realized their future and income depends on some kids who do what the [no] tell them to. [but they dont]. its quite [happy].

New Slogan:

VOTE OR DON'T VOTE...WE ARE DEATH ANYWAY

especially for the middle east ;)

"Vote or die!" this was really a slogan? That is crazy...I would expect a bit more reasoning and a much better catch-phrase.

I would expect a bit more reasoning..
erm... well, not after these elections now :rolleyes:

I would expect it anyway, I still expect it here in Germany, but the recent elections for local parliaments were worse than the elections in the USA, with the extreme right wing and neo-nazi parties getting more votes just because people were to short sighted and voted out of spite...

Still there should be some reasoning. :bugeye:

reason is dead in the US, but theyll soon learn, hehe *evil laugh* mwuhahah.

just wait :D

Hahah, the people in this thread who are furious about the "Vote of die" slogan had better not come to Australia. It's illegal not to vote here...


I feel bad for Kerry though....

What I don't get is why Kerry was so gracious towards Bush. After all, he doesn't get to run for president again.
I would have had some choice words for Bush and the people who voted for him.
And my slogan would have been "The sheep have spoken! BAAAA! BAAAA!"

What I don't get is why Kerry was so gracious towards Bush. After all, he doesn't get to run for president again.

Technically, it's a matter of dignity. If we listen to the press during an election cycle, and especially afterward, they often talk about how Democrats weren't aggressive enough--I haven't tuned in these couple days because I don't want to hear it. But there's always this nebulous idea of what equals "aggressive".

As the last four years have shown especially, as Air America has shown in response to a decade of right-wing abuse, Americans bear a not-quite double standard that goes approximately:
• We expect a certain amount of sh@t from the GOP and conservatism
• That sh@t doesn't look or sound as good coming from liberals, who are supposed to be enlightened and above this

The functional problem is that voters respond to negative aggression. It creates a difficult cycle for liberalism:
• Liberalism is more complex than conservatism, anyway. It starts with more complicated presuppositions, including "we" as opposed to "I".
• Yet negative aggression has impact: Kerry did not define himself clearly early on.
• Yet how could he? He tried letting the Swift Boat thing go for a couple days, but that bit him in the ass because it wasn't aggressive enough.
• Thus Kerry devotes time to countering the Swift controversy, which proves spurious in the end.
• That time is not spent on developing the affirmative message.

In addition to the complexities of liberalism, then, there is also a reduction of time that comes in responding to the impact of conservative belligerence. Why did Kerry's numbers not come up when the Swift story was exposed? How did the Sinclair issue come to be an issue in the first place? Stolen Honor, and its website were included in the Swift ad campaign: it was being promoted by people shown to be disreputable. How can something discredited continue to carry so much weight?

Toward the end of the campaign, it was small comfort at best to hear a pundit describing the clarity of Kerry's message. Unfortunately, it was too late to spread that gospel: instead of bludgeoning the voters with a selfish trident (e.g. greed, superstition, fear) as conservatives do, liberals must present a multivalent finesse approach. It is something akin to watching Bob Ross paint his happy trees, or reading a novel. Not everything is so blatantly apparent as the GOP appeal to fear and greed (superstition lends to both, a neat trinity).

The "sound-bite" culture, while a popular (and fair) object of scorn, is not wholly to blame but merely a contributing factor. It's harder to cram a complex idea into a short bite.

Terry McAuliffe and the DNC leadership have, for too long, played the GOP's game. They've spun for sound bites, grabbed for ratings, and told people so much of what they wanted to hear that authors with better reputations than Michael Moore are affirming that yes, the Democratic Party has abandoned its base. (Too bad they didn't listen to Moore in 2001, eh? The other author, by the way--and I don't yet have the transcript of his appearance on, I think, MSNBC--is Thomas Frank, who wrote What's the Matter With Kansas? (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Frank0614.htm))

What should happen is that the Democrats should play nice, reorganize, and take the role of opposition party. They bitched so much after 2000--and missed the point for three years, again clocking in somewhere behind Michael Moore, of all people--and the result is so definitive that there's not much they can say. They realize that the people won't tolerate the same kind of mudslinging out of enlightened liberalism that strikes such a chord with them coming from conservative yahoos.

Watching the American people react to the Swift Boat controversy, the Zell Miller speech, Dick Cheney in general, and even the bit with Kerry mentioning the VP's daughter: there's no point in bitching about it for the Democrats. Even on the off-chance they actually get it right, nobody cares. They want the pretty lights. They want the smackdown. Bring 'em on, says the majority. And so it is.

The Democrats need to be polite, need to be compassionate, and need to reconstruct bonds of trust with the American people. The Democrats need to be prepared to catch the American people when Bush and the GOP drop them like sh@t.

Conservatives are free to talk tough. Democrats actually have to deliver. As long as the world is challenging and frightening, the people will rally 'round the truculent. And when the warring way fails, someone will need to pick up the pieces. Patience, dignity, and trust make the best prescription.

Democrats know what Bush is. So do those who voted for him. The difference is what it's worth to people.

This is what a majority of participating Americans want. They deserve every day of it. As to the minority of participating Americans and those unable to participate? Compassion. We must not hold what happens next against those who suffer equally. There's nothing, however, against reminding them that this is what they wanted. Just ... you know ... be sensitive about it. Not while something's on fire, for instance.

WOW! Great post, Tiassa. Thanks, that cleared a lot up. :)

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