I saw a thing on tv news tonight about how President Bush refused to appear at the recent NAACP convention in Philadelphia. Of course, Kerry seized on this, and talked there instead. What a stupid move on Bush’s part. Apparently, it was done because some senior members of the NAACP had made statements to the effect of Bush getting his political support from the American right-wing version of the Taliban. Talk about a bold thing to say. I’m not gonna say I disagree, either.

That got me wondering whether the NAACP had any kind of formal support going for gay rights. Specifically gay marriage. Without going into a ton of research, I found a couple things that said there were some senior members who supported gay marriage as being analogous to interracial marriage, and therefore a worthy civil rights issue. But that, as a whole, they were abstaining from taking a formal position on it as a group, for fear of dividing the black community members, who are not all in agreement on the issue. To me, this is crazy. It is so clearly the same thing as racism to deny gays rights.

Another good black news item was on right after that. It was a Congressional Representative from Florida (from one of the contested regions of the 2000 election). I don’t know her name. But she was advocating that the United Nations be brought in to monitor the upcoming American elections. They showed her on the floor of Congress, totally going off about how the election had been stolen, and calling it a coup d’etat, and all that good stuff. Fucking great! I love it! Anyway, she was made to shut up by that guy with the gavel. Right after that, they took a vote, which went right down party lines (she’s a democrat, obviously), and she lost, and her words were “stricken from the record,” and she was punished by not being allowed to speak for the rest of the day.

Also, on a related note, there was another report on another station, where Homeland Security head, Tom Ridge, said all this stuff about how they are NOT planning to postpone the elections. If they’re not planning too, then why are they seeking that authority? Also, he had this big crazy smirk on his face when he said it, which just made it so damn clear that they ARE planning to do it.

And if they do postpone the elections, what then? That’s pretty much the last straw, in my eyes. Time to make some hard decisions after that.  (Although, I have to say, I think voting and elections are largely illusory anyway. Especially presidential ones. But it’s just the fact that they’re so ready to do away with even that illusion that has me worried.)