TOMORROW IS THE DAY OF THE DEAD

AND MAYBE NOT JUST IN MEXICO

Bush Will Win If You Don't Vote!
(Scary, Hunh?)

Manana, Mexican children will be eating sugar skulls, and cakes decorated with bones of icing. Their parents will go to the graveyard, with favorite foods, flowers, and tequila for their beloved dead. Say what you will about the Mexicans, they are straight shooters. Maybe it's that Aztec thing. No "All Souls" or "All Hallows" Days for them.

The attitude toward death reflected in this Mexican holiday is reminiscent of, and possibly related to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (once celebrated from Ireland to Italy, from Bohemia to Spain) when the world begins to die each year, which is also a day for the dead. Not the "Dearly Beloved," not the "Dear Departed," not the "Loved One." The dead. It is the day when spirits walk the Earth, and, hopefully, pass on to the next world. The day when the doors between the Realms are left open, that life and death may recognize one another, through the portals.

I recognize the dead of these last four years. My cousins and my friends, my neighbours and my favorite shopgirls, and the thousands of strangers who all once inhabited the buildings at what is now a great, gaping hole at Liberty Street and Church Street, in Lower Manhattan. May God rest their souls, as my Irish grandmother used to say.

I recognize the strangers in faraway lands, with whom I had no quarrel. The innocents, in what was once the solitude of Afghanistan. The warriors, on every side, who died with hot blood in their mouths, believing they were martyrs for God, or country, or something.

I recognize the one hundred thousand women and children of Iraq, killed by our finest weapons, by accident... I recognize their angry, heart-broken sons and husbands, fathers and brothers, who died to avenge them, because they do not believe in accidents...

I recognize the Marines and soldiers, fighting for their lives, and dying in a place where they know they do not belong. I recognize their sisters and their mothers, their daughters and their wives, lost to them, forever.

I recognize the twilight of an evil time in America, when men without conscience ruled the world, and were cast down by the highest and the humblest among us, wielding only their votes. I recognize many of them for their courage in going to the very polls their own fathers feared to enter, still flanked by hostile white men, some with guns, and daring to cast a ballot.

I recognize that, on the Day of the Dead, we recognize the good, and cast out the evil, and make ourselves whole again.

In the name of the beloved dead, take the democratic sacrament tomorrow: Vote.



Mexicans Cheer Day of the Dead with Food, Flowers

A Mexican Feast for Bodies and Souls (great pic's)

Samhain

Celts

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CHENEY GOES HAWAIIAN

GORE WADES IN, TOO

Aaaargh! It's Been Pretty Quiet Here, Up Till Now.

Local Politics: An Hawaiian Primer:

Boy, I didn't quite realize how DESPERATE the Repukelickins were until Dick showed up here. Christ, we only HAVE four electoral votes, and we're solidly Democratic. All the other Federal candidates here are leading by wide margins. There barely is a Republican Party in this State, not since the 1950's, when the local Japanese (feared majority Minority) took over the Democratic Party, and threw the Haoles (hated, respected Minority) and the Hawaiians (pitied, sinking Minority) out, with the help of the local Philippinos (disrespected, rising Minority).

We do have a Repuke Governor, as you may know, if you saw her TV interview with Conan's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Classic. He humiliated her, and she just stood there, like, clueless. She only got into office because the fully primed and best financed Democratic candidate for Governor in 2002 turned out to be a crook. He had to drop out, suddenly, at the last moment, due to "campaign finance irregularities": Like, extorting money from city contractors, and their families and friends and employees and dogs and cats and geckos. (He is still mayor of Honolulu, where most people in the State live --at least, he is until after this election. Then he may be mayor of the Allenwood Correctional Facility.) The Dems ran two local Japanese clubhouse pols, picked hastily just a few weeks before the election. This violated our strict local racial politics. Linda Lingle got it right, by putting a native Hawaiian Lt. Gov next to her weird white ass. She won, but not by much.

There's a LOT of voter dissatisfaction with the Dems here: They do OK for the one-third of the labour force here that works for the government. It's "You vote for me, I guarantee your job, and maybe one for Junior." A perpetual motion machine here that's paid for by Hawaii's long-suffering taxpayers. We have a state income tax, which doesn't hit the few mega-rich or upper-middle-class all that hard. But it's a burden on the State's majority-minimum-wage- workers. The property tax rates are surprisingly low, although sky-rocketing home prices (median house price = $500k) have queered that. So how do we pay for our perpetual motion machine? Major pork from DC, courtesy of porkmeister Senator Dan Inouye. And a 4% excise tax that is pyramided, behind the curtain, so that locally produced products can carry as much as a 16% tax, of which only the last 4% is visible at the register. I tell, ya, it's rough! The cost of living is as high or higher than NY or SF, but the wages are half. Tourism is NOT an industry, folks. Neither is pearl-diving; whatever they tell you here in the Third World.

The local Dems are not real Democrats. There are no tough consumer-protection laws here, and no advocate for them, as in most "liberal" states. Price gouging is common, price competition is almost nonexistant. Rents are rocketing, too: $700+ for a CRAPPY studio, and that's ROCK-bottom. Public housing is to-die-from. No rent control. No real labour- protection, either: There are lots of phony jobs here, where people get sucked into buying merchandise which they are then unable to sell, going door-to-door. No salary. No commission. No draw. No benefits. Then there's the tips-only jobs, like parking-valet, exotic-dancer, "bar-hostess." Lots of illegal Asian and Pacific Island immigrants here too, who frequently get paid nothing at all, or have to make kick-backs to their employers. Nothing is done about it. There is no REAL industry here. We make nothing. Except crack and ice. The cops are pretty brutal, and everybody is afraid of them. Gay-bashing is becoming more common, and violent, racially-motivated attacks are endemic, but the cops do nothing; refuse to even recognize them. Waikiki is totally over-run with pimps and ho's from the Mainland, and the cops just look the other way. Meanwhile, they're mounting video cameras all over the place, to watch the rest of us, out in public. So, we're not all that liberal.

And we're not all that happy, either. By the laws of local racial politics, the dominant Democrats, the Japanese, take VERY good care of themselves, and a few cronies and toadies, from other ethnic groups. But most people here get nothing out of the local and state government, especially on the neighbour islands (to Oahu).There are no major hospitals, no university campuses, no freeways, and no mass transit anywhere except on the main island of Oahu, which comprises the City and County of Honolulu. There is a decent State health-care plan. But you have to be poor, or a full-time permanent salaried employee to get it at an affordable, subsidized rate. A LOT of people here work two or three jobs, all part-time, or as "independent contractors" or temps, no benes. And TRY starting a small-business here! The local and State government bureaucrats ACTIVELY discourage you from creating jobs here, unless they get kick-backs, or jobs for relatives. Incompetence, corruption, arrogance and hostility characterize our State and local governments. It's bullshit.

So, why are we so unshakeably Democrat? Race; working AGAINST the Republicans, for a change. It was rich "haole" (white) Republican plantation-owners, children of missionaries and the corrupt Hawaiian "aristocracy," who overthrew the Hawaiian Monarchy, with a little help from the US Navy, over a hundred years ago. It was those same Republicans who got Hawaii annexed to the US, some say illegally. And Republicans, again, who pushed for Statehood, instead of independence, which was not a ballot option in 1959 (as it was on Puerto Rican Statehood ballots). Republican = White. White = Bad, in Hawaii. (The public school system sponsors an annual "Kill Haole Day," when "Caucasians" are allowed to be beaten up. Actually, that's every day. "Locals" don't like blacks, either. One school published an administration-approved high school yearbook that was full of racial slurs. So much for "diversity," and being liberal, in Hawaii.)

The local Japanese Democrats blatantly play on that racism. All you have to do is say you're "Local," and you'll get a lot of non-white votes. Local is a race here. Everybody else is Kama'aina (been here awhile), or Malahini (newbie), nobody is "Hawaiian," except the natives. You say, "I Local," or "I'm from Hawaii," or "Hawaii-people;" NOT "Hawaiian." Hawaiians are practically extinct, or absorbed here, so other brown-skinned people are just called local, even if they are, and look to be, mostly Hawaiian. Talk pidgin here, wear an "aloha" ("Hawaiian" --invented by local Chinese, not Hawaiians), or palaka (a certain red & white plaid) shirt, have a deep tan, give the "shaka" sign (hang-loose), and say, "I LOCAL, Brah!" and you too could be the Dogcatcher of Maui. Even "locals" seem to prefer Haoles for the big jobs, esp. East-Coasters: Governor, Honolulu Mayor, Attorney General, Honolulu Prosecutor. They work long hours and have no big families here, to soak up all the patronage jobs. Plus, they have a real education, not a pidgin one. But they've GOTTA be Democrats, or "non-partisan." Nobody will vote for a Republican. Except for the FUCKIN' HAOLES, and some right-wing Philippinos (Marcos fans) and Polynesians ("Christians"). That's an electoral minority. The largest ethnic group is Japanese, who are Democrats. Whoever votes with them usually wins. Whoever votes against them usually loses his government job or contracts. Got it?

Getting a Republican Governor was a fluke. They lost legislative seats in the same election. Getting Bush in on the Hawaii vote would be an anti-miracle. Especially since the local Repukes have been carrying out this long program, hatched by neocon "legal scholars" on the hated Mainland, of dissassembling all "racial- preferences" for native Hawaiians, who are, still, unrecognized as a special group, in Federal law; the way American Indians and Alaskan natives are. Repukes have blocked such recognition for Native Hawaiians in Congress, for years now; even though lots of Hawaiians are Republicans. Go figure. It's not like the Hawaiians get MUCH. Most of them either have jobs and businesses, or they're dirt-poor. But the agencies benefitting them, and mostly run by them, have a widespread reputation for corruption, incompetence, sloth and cronyism. Not to mention back-biting and self- embarrassment. So they are not an unpopular target. Still, most people here are on the Hawaiians' side, emotionally, theoretically, and they hate Republicans (Whitey) anyway. So the campaign against Hawaiian set-asides is politically stupid, for the minority Republicans. It just brings up a lot of old, bad feelings, from "Plantation Days." (Which, strangely, a lot of people miss, for the paternalism, or the comradery, or the separation of the ethnic groups? Dunno. That's mostly the older people.)

Then there's the Republicans' gay-bashing Congressional candidate, big Daddy of an entire family of fundamentalist Hare Krishna's, who've run for every office imaginable, on a one-plank platform of No Gay Marriage. Which we've already voted down, anyway. The Repuke's getting his ass kicked by our bright, shiny new sitting Congressman, who inherited the seat from poor old dead Patsy MInk, and then won it fair and square in the 2002 election. But it does serve to remind us of the intolerance, prejudice, preachiness and downright nastiness of the Repukes. Thanks, and a big Hare-Hare, Rama-Rama to you all, guys. (No aloha there, yeah?)

This is what ambiguous-on-gays Vice President Dick Cheney has floundered into, with his big fat unpleasant twisted white face, and cold, arrogant, Mainland haole manner; trying to press OUR buttons. Brah, you don't KNOW dose HAWAII but-tons!!! I think the real story coming out of this election, nationally and locally, is how absurdly wrong and unreliable the polls have been. Especially the analyses. One I saw last night has Hawaii split, like, about 46/45 Bush/Kerry. Another one has TWELVE percent STILL undecided!!! And they're calling it CLOSE??? There's a FOUR point margin of error! Unde's usually break against the incumbent, or so they say. (Not to mention all the people here who've dropped their land-lines, and just have cell-phones, which are not polled.) And Gore took the State by around 19 points last time. I think this is nine percent saying "Fuck you, none of your business, who I voting for, brah!" Cuz a LOT of people here are PISSED at Bush. Gas prices are the highest in the country, terrorism has cut our main industry, tourism, in half, and more and more local troops are going to Iraq, and dying. Does Kerry remember Pearl Harbor? Yeah, DICK, that's probly why he joined the Navy and went to Vietnam, while you were sitting on your ass, safe in the States! Do WE remember Pearl Harbour here in Hawaii??? Yeah, Dick! We was DERE, Brah!!! Look, there it is right over THERE: It's shipping our boys out to YOUR needless, endless, incredibly expensive, corrupt, incompetent, fucked-up war, as we SPEAK!!! See, there goes another troop-carrier, ASSHOLE!!! We just lost seven more Kaneohe Marines to that car-bomb TODAY. Wave bye-bye, Halliburton-boy!

So, don't worry, be happy: Hawaii AIN'T going Repukelickin. Democrats are protecting the voting machines here, and no voters are being intimidated. Sorry, Dick! YOU remember Pearl Harbour!!!




Cheney Hopes Aloha Stop Sways Hawaiians

Bush takes lead in Hawaii poll

Battle draws Cheney, Gore here




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