Anti-right rants from an obnoxious lumpen proletarian. Aiming to Arm the Choir.
July 15, 2004
Columbine Father's Petition Drive
I am writing to you and a few other bloggers asking for help. My name is Tom Mauser and my son Daniel was killed at Columbine High School. If we don’t stand up to President Bush and the NRA right now, the assault weapons ban will expire and AK47s and Uzis will be back on our streets.
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Here is what you can do to help:
1) Sign my petition to extend the assault weapon ban: http://www.tomspetition.org/blog_alert.php When you sign up, we will automatically create a bloggable Personal Petition Page.
2) Link to your Personal Petition Page from your site and encourage your readers to sign up. Our special petition software will show you the number of people that sign up because of your effort, and even generate a map showing how the supporters are distributed across America.
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Help honor the legacy of my son and prove that bloggers can make a difference!
Thank you,
Tom Mauser
Not that extending the assault weapons ban is unimportant, but the most important line in Tom Mauser's email is ". . . prove that bloggers can make a difference!" I'm a little worn down right now. The lies go on and on and on. Not just the politicians, but the media spin masters called pundits, reporters, astroturf campaigns . . . don't even get me started on TV news. TV news is to information what GW Bush is to honesty. Like Neil Young said, "Rust never sleeps." But I have to.
I feel like every campaign from now on will start from the premise that the candidate who best distorts reality wins, and the American people will be the losers. Yeah, I know that's not completely new, but the awful level it has descended to is unprecedented, and I doubt it's ever going to crawl out again. Still, to have any chance of ever making this government serve the interests of the majority instead of the elites, we've got to prove we can move voters. This is one way to do it. Here's the link to my petition page. I've also added it to the sidebar. I hope other bloggers will use the link in Tom's email to add their blogs to the fight.
c'mon, li'l help Search4Blogs The Me What I Am
I took the name Phaedrus from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not that I'm as smart as that Phaedrus, but I am a ghost. Sort of.
I started doing odd jobs at a motel when I was 14. I lasted one day at a McDonald's, quit, lasted a lot longer at Taco Bell. I've been a gas station attendant, janitor, die cast production worker, day laborer, course maintenance at a miniature golf course, warehouse, union janitor, cabbie, statistical clerk, pool cleaner, working homeless for a few weeks (day labor), and several other things I can't remember. And I've survived. Sort of. I'm not a Marxist, but I am a genuine member of the lumpen proletariat.
Largely paraphrasing the secular saint Woody Guthrie: "This shit is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 000000 (cuz this part's not true), for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught using it without my permission, will be considered mighty good friends o' mine, cause I don't give a dern. Publish it. Twist it. Rewrite it. Swing to it. I wrote it, that's all I wanted to do." This work is licensed under aCreative Commons License.