Bush: Go vote

In this photo, voters at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk headquarters in Norwalk, Calif., line up for early voting Friday. The long lines were echoed across the country as millions waited in long lines to cast ballots even before the polls opened on Tuesday.

George W. Bush, who leaves office after eight years, two wars and one gigantic global economic meltdown, the president whose tumultuous tenure has helped spark vivid interest in this year's election for his successor, issued a call for everyone to vote.

In his weekly radio address, the president who was first elected with a 537-vote margin, said:

This Tuesday is election day. After months of spirited debate and vigorous campaigning, the time has come for Americans to make important decisions about our nation's future. I encourage all Americans to go to the polls and vote.

Election season brings out the spirit of competition between our political parties, and that competition is an essential part of a healthy democracy. But as the campaigns come to a close, Republicans, Democrats and independents can find common ground on at least one point: Our system of representative democracy is one of America's greatest strengths.

Recalling the sacrifices made by soldiers "from Bunker Hill to Baghdad" to assure the privileges of American citizenship, including the right to vote, Bush said no matter who wins "we will be reminded once again that we are a free nation guided by the will of the people."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

Comments

[john smith]

Bush is leaving at last, that's the best thing of all this campaign
By the way, I found a very funny video about the elections called Wall Debate. It seems to me it was shot in LA. Obama, McCain, Palin & Biden talking in a wall with a Marilyn Monroe style...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFyhFJjVWVg

[Steven]

Nice thoughts from a President who has a dubious election history. I wonder what Al Gore thinks about Bush's comment.

[Ivory Hill]

Why is there no one talking about what bills Bush is signing into law before leaving office? We are being distracted with the Presidential race, the media need to info us what's going on in this corrupted administration.

[david r]

finally, after 8 years, this national embarassment is nearly over. illegal wire taps, tax breaks for the rich, unlawful detentions, environmental abuse, toadying to the religious right, torture, and so much more. just disgraceful. why anyone would not hold the republican party responsible, much less vote for a ticket including palin, is incomprehensible.

[Jorge]

The ONLY time that 'Joe the plumber' could possibly have had any legitimate reason to exist--to plug up the quite probably unlawful leak about President-to-be Barack Obama's father's half sister--and now he's nowhere around!

[David Kosofsky]

In the first paragraph of this blog-article, the writer subjects readers to this sentence:

"The long lines were echoed across the country as millions waited in long lines to cast ballots even before the polls opened on Tuesday."

If the writer can now look at that sentence without cringing, every English teacher she has had since elementary school has reason for deep frustration and shame. The inelegant repetition of `long lines' may be no more than an aesthetic failing, albeit an egregious one. But what about the use of `echo' for something with as little explicit acoustic reference as a `long line'?

How oblivious to the language she is producing can a writer be, how utterly insensitive to the workings of metaphor? Is the reader expected to have some particular sound evoked by the phrase `long lines' and then to imagine the `echo' of that sound? Hard to imagine. Or is the reader expected to say, "Well, it's a dead metaphor," and read right through the totally inappropriate, unworkable figure of speech?

Well, this reader doesn't. "To echo," is a perfectly live and useful metaphor where properly deployed. To the extent that it is a dead metaphor, it is due to writers like this one who are killing it by inappropriate usage.

I don't usually take the time and go to the trouble of pointing out abuses of the language in blog-articles. But in this case, feeling like an unwilling spectator at the attempted murder of an established figure of speech, I am moved to. Out of respect for the readers, but much more than that, out of responsibility to the language through which she, after all, earns her living, I would strongly urge the writer of this blog-article to put some effort and thought into the prose she produces. What has the English language ever done to her that she should want to use it, public (and I'm choosing this metaphor carefully, mindful of the image it should evoke in readers) as toilet paper?

[PlumHunter]

"we will be reminded once again that we are a free nation guided by the will of the people." Why don't you write that in as an Executive Statement on some piece of legislation that the Congress elected by "the People" put on your desk. You two-faced, intellectually-bankrupt Idiot !!!!