New Life for Political Signs

Turn them into folk art. This simple celebration sign took about thirty minutes.

Update, Monday, November 17, 2008: There's a bit of a political sign war in our neighborhood. I just read an e-mail on my neighborhood listserve from a disgruntled neighbor who wants us all to remove political signs from our yards. She quotes from the city code which evidently prohibits political signs in yards a week past an election. Self-righteously, the neighbor says that she removed her signs immediately after the election in order to "maintain a prettier neighborhood." Now she demands that everyone else remove their signs. Then another neighbor posted that the Georgia state legislature passed a law that pre-empts the city's code:

"no municipal, county, or consolidated government may restrict by regulation or other means the length of time a political campaign sign maybe displayed or the number of signs which may be displayed on private property for which permission has been granted."

O.C.G.A. Section 16-7-58(a)(2)

Could I get around the city code by calling my sign "folk art"? What prompts a person to take her neighbors to task so?

Oldest Voter in Central Texas: Daughter of a Slave

I came across the link to this story in the Austin American-Statesman at Truthdig.com: A 109-year-old woman living in Bastrop, Texas, just off Texas 21, happily cast her vote for Barack Obama by mail-in ballot. When Mrs. Amanda Jones cast her first vote for a president--Franklin Roosevelt--she had to pay a poll tax, a practice that was meant to keep blacks from voting. She told the Austin American-Statesman that being able to vote, for free, for the first black presidential nominee "fills her with joy."

Here's to Mrs. Amanda Jones' cup running over with joy when the votes are counted on Election Day!

Sane Voices

I just love intelligent, thoughtful, sane voices. James Fallows is one of those voices. I don't know the man personally, he lives a more international life than I have ever had the opportunity to live (though I have traveled way more than Sarah Palin--sorry, couldn't help it), and he is a member of the "elite" media (and I don't mean that word "elite" to be pejorative in any way: I'm all for an elite. well-educated, and humble corps of writers and leaders in this country). But over the years I've enjoyed reading James Fallows' writing in a number of publications. I now read his blog at The Atlantic. Here's a link to today's posting which cheered me up, and I'm not quite sure why it did: "If campaigns are driving you crazy."

Maybe I'm cheered because although the public discourse right now seems to be absolutely stupid, focused on the most trivial details and the most outrageous lies, there are people who still think truth matters and try to suss out truth in the best ways they know how. They listen to other thoughtful and intelligent people and adjust their judgments and views to accommodate what they have learned rather than repeating over and over the trite and partisan phrases that resound in their own heads. Listen to Terri Gross interview Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, (the link is there on Fallows' post and here), who lost his son in Iraq. You might well ask: why aren't our presidential nominees listening to this guy?

Fighting Back

A few journalists/editorialists advise the Democratic Party to respond aggressively to negative attacks on Barack Obama's character:

• Hendrick Hertzbert, "Attackdog Days," in the Comment column of The New Yorker, September 1, 2008.
• Paul Krugman, "Accentuate the Negative," in The New York Times, August 24, 2008.

How about hitting back on judgment? John McCain questions Barack Obama's judgment as a potential president? How about his own judgment? In 2001, he said that if he had been president, he also would have chosen Dick Cheney as vice-president and Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. (Hat tip to Matthew Yglesias for that link to Jed Lewison's blog, The Jed Report.)