1. I went to see Outfoxed at a MoveOn house party this weekend. A good time was had by all. The house was easy to identify; it was the one surrounded by cars with pro-Kerry, anti-war or anti-Bush bumper stickers.
One car, in particular, was just plastered with at least 30 or 40 liberal bumper stickers. I happened to meet the woman who drives it, and she said that she’s had the bumper stickers on the car since the 2000 election. In all that time, living in Houston, she’s never had anyone say anything rude or critical to her. Not one middle finger, one “why do you hate America”, or anything.
2. Another woman at the party mentioned offhand that under Bush, we now spend over half of the federal budget on the military. This isn’t even close to being correct. She was an activist, and surely considered herself quite well-informed.
3. Some people that I know well had a MoveOn house party in Houston to discuss Fahrenheit 9/11 after its premiere. A couple of guys brought lawn chairs and rifles and sat on public property across the street, watching people drive up. They apparently weren’t breaking any laws by doing this, but the police sent them on their way when some people who had come for the house party crossed the street to argue/fight with them. (I don’t know which.)
David Brooks, are you listening? You can coast on this stuff for a week.
{ 23 comments }
John 07.20.04 at 4:28 pm
Perhaps she meant that more than half the discretionary spending in the budget goes to defense? But that’s been true since before Bush, hasn’t it?
Nick 07.20.04 at 4:32 pm
john, I had the same reaction. And yes, the US has been spending 50% of Federal discretionary budget on the military for a long time, according to the War Resisters’ League. WRL prorates the percentage of national debt that’s due to borrowing for military spending, and includes that, too (they call it “Cost of past wars”), but I think that’s valid. When I calculate how much of my income goes to housing, I use by actual mortgage bill, not the “purchase price” of my house.
Morat 07.20.04 at 5:26 pm
You live in Houston? Will wonders never cease…I thought all the interesting people left this godforsaken state long ago. Or at least moved to Austin.
John James 07.20.04 at 5:56 pm
The phrase ‘liberal bumper stickers’ puts a chill down my spine for some reason. What next -conservative chocolate? It is a shame that such a decent word has been hijacked for what is, by the sound of it, blatant partisan politicking.
Ted Barlow 07.20.04 at 6:20 pm
Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Morat. I am not interesting.
Barry 07.20.04 at 6:25 pm
Brooks can (and does) coast on his own hallucinations for weeks, let alone actual facts.
Jeremy Osner 07.20.04 at 7:07 pm
John — but bumper stickers are different from chocolate, in that they are a means of communicating political positions. (Also they don’t taste nearly as good — DAMHIKT) So it makes good sense to talk about ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ ones.
perianwyr 07.20.04 at 7:32 pm
I don’t like bumper sticker parades.
My previous car had two stickers, one because I worked for the Dean campaign and the other because it’s my friends’ art group. I mostly put them on the back because I had an extremely common car and color that was difficult to pick out at a distance in a parking lot.
What I don’t get is the giant wallpaperings of stickers that some folks put on their cars. Conservatives do this too- there’s a guy that I keep passing on my way back from work that has a ton of tattered anti-Clinton stickers and some new anti-gay-marriage ones alongside them.
Pick a message, folks! It seems to me that a giant flock of bumper grafitti is best used as a way of finding out what topic you shouldn’t ever discuss with a person if you value your time.
matt 07.20.04 at 7:53 pm
There are plenty of liberals still in Houston. I even know one who lives in Suger Land.
Tom Doyle 07.20.04 at 8:34 pm
Favorite bumper sticker:
I Brake for Hallucinations
kellan 07.20.04 at 8:40 pm
the WRL has been putting out their excellent piechart for years, here is the 2005 budget:
http://www.warresisters.org/2005_piechart.pdf
In that same document they address briefly why their chart looks different then the one Ted linked to.
Keith M Ellis 07.20.04 at 8:44 pm
There must be plenty of liberals in Houston—it’s the fourth largest city in the US. It’s huge. For that reason, I’ve always assumed that it can’t be that bad.
But then there was that post a while back by Ted about the story in the Houston altweekly about Spalding Gray. It’s hard for me to imagine an audience, come to see Spalding Gray for crying out loud, in a large metropolitan area would be dominated by pro-Iraq war Bush supporters who’d walk out. That blew my mind.
And my best friend, who’s from Houston and is gay, also told me that there’s nowhere in Houston that compares to the gay-friendly, cosmopolitan area of downtown Chicago he’d recently visited. I’ve always thought of Dallas as more cosmopolitan than Houston—a scary thought.
I love Austin. I’ll be moving away soon, though.
Keith M Ellis 07.20.04 at 8:45 pm
There must be plenty of liberals in Houston—it’s the fourth largest city in the US. It’s huge. For that reason, I’ve always assumed that it can’t be that bad.
But then there was that post a while back by Ted about the story in the Houston altweekly about Spalding Gray. It’s hard for me to imagine an audience, come to see Spalding Gray for crying out loud, in a large metropolitan area would be dominated by pro-Iraq war Bush supporters who’d walk out. That blew my mind.
And my best friend, who’s from Houston and is gay, also told me that there’s nowhere in Houston that compares to the gay-friendly, cosmopolitan area of downtown Chicago he’d recently visited. I’ve always thought of Dallas as more cosmopolitan than Houston—a scary thought.
I love Austin. I’ll be moving away soon, though.
Morat 07.20.04 at 8:49 pm
Well, speaking for myself, I both love and hate Houston.
Admittedly, 99.9999% of the hate can be traced to two things: Partly Tom Delay (in whose district I had the misfortune of residing), but mostly the weather.
It’s hot, it’s humid, and we apparently breed some GIANT cockroaches.
And to top it off, my AC isn’t scrubbing moisture out of the air right. I’m not sure why, as it manages to keep the house at 75 (even when the outside temp gets to be as high as 100) which is a decent differential…but it’s still muggy in there.
Keith M Ellis 07.20.04 at 9:08 pm
It’s been very humid here in Austin the last few days. The AC isn’t keeping my house very dry, either. Even inside, I’m either hot and sweating, or cold and muggy and clammy. I’m moving soon back to my native New Mexico, where it’s much drier. I don’t know how anyone can stand Houston.
And not only are the cockroaches gigantic but, folks, they fly.
rc 07.21.04 at 12:41 am
Here is a graph based on
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/sheets/hist08z7.xls
that shows the track in discretionary defense vs. non-defense spending since FY1977:
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/temp/spending_components.png
The dotted line is the 45-degree line.
vernaculo 07.21.04 at 3:46 am
You know what I like? I like that 12% of the budget goes to interest on “our National Debt, incurred by budget deficits in previous years”.
Debt is a transitive relationship. One has a debt to someone or some thing.
One might ask to whom exactly this debt is owed, that it requires the dismantling of proven social programs, and the sacrificial hunger of millions of children. 12% of a couple trillion bucks is a lot of food.
The vague institutions behind that debt are not American, particularly. In the sense that as an American I may be called upon to sacrifice my comfort, my well being, even the lives of my sons and daughters, to preserve the United States, to defend the country. My country.
These vague, nameless institutions will not be required to sacrifice anything, ever, to preserve or defend the USA.
There was talk for a while there of bringing back the military draft. You can bet there’ll be more talk in a few months.
Draft the banks. For God and country.
Charles Kuffner 07.21.04 at 3:55 am
Hmpf. Houston liberals include, but by no means are limited to:
Pete
Jack
Cate
Gary
Greg
Rob
Michael
the Houston Democratic Forum
Gunther
Aziz
Jaye
Bob
Steve
me
and of course, Juanita proprietress of the World’s Most Dangerous Hair Salon.
Any questions?
Pete 07.21.04 at 2:02 pm
Chuck Johnson…er, Kuffner…is right. There’s plenty of us in Houston.
And as my old grandad used to say: heat and humidity keep housing costs low.
Wili Wáchendon 07.21.04 at 7:09 pm
Jesus. A house party of nothing but lefty populists. Sounds like hell on earth. “Sooo.. Bush, eh? He’s really frickin’ dumb.”
Incidentally, a house party of nothing but righty populists would be just as bad. With a bit more tweed. Although that made me think, in trying to come up with what they could screen at such a party, what’s with the lack of righty populist cinema? For every ‘Stupid White Men’ there’s a ‘Treason’, both of which rack up equally massive sales, so why no equivalents to ‘Bowling for Columbine’ et al? Isn’t it time the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy funded some propaganda of its own?
JRoth 07.21.04 at 7:38 pm
Wili-
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would be happy to sell you a documentary about all the people Clinton had ckilled in the course of his drug running in AK. Does that count?
agm 07.22.04 at 2:22 am
To pete, yeah, but heat and dryness keep them significantly lower. My rent would get me a noticeably nicer place in El Paso.
To keith ellis, enjoy some actual red enchiladas for me. Chili gravy, god, what an offense against Mexican cuisine.
p00p 07.22.04 at 5:08 am
As someone who did a twenty-year haul in Houston, it is the ugliest city I’ve ever seen. Not to mention the fleas, mosquitos, cockroaches and ants.
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