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December 27, 2004

Every once in a while I get e-mail. This is just such an e-mail. I'm not much impressed with the author.

Dear David,
I'd like to thank you for a service you've rendered me without your realizing it. I understand now why I can't stand liberals. Of course, stop reading now if you'd prefer to not hear that and how you've helped a conservative.

You showed me the reason in your recent comment in "I Drew This," entitled "The Social Security Crisis." In your first panel, you have drawn an elderly version of your leftist self saying "I'm old now! Gimme money!"

Upon reading these words, it struck me that this, above all else, is what I can not stand. The belief that simply because someone has a certain status (old, young, poor, minority), they deserve to be given things that others are not. The belief that they deserve to be handed something not because of what they've done, but because of who they are.

So, basically, you've shown me an ideal that liberals worldwide embody: the desire to be very generous with other peoples' money. Certainly, people who work in specialized, high-demand areas earn the money, but that's not the point. There are people who were too stupid or lazy to save up money when they were young. Instead, they spent it on cigarettes and cable TV, or had kids they couldn't afford to raise, hurting both themselves and their children. And after all, even though those people made bad decisions in their youth, we should forgive them!

And since you aren't one of the people who had the will to make something thoroughly productive of himself, we must punish those who did. We must take a full half of what they earn, no, more!

**Now pay attention, because this is your most important philosophy: We must give out the money of people who have worked for it to people who, you believe, deserve to be handed it by virtue of their existence.

This is the soul of liberal economic beliefs. And it is what I hate the most. I thank you sincerely for handing me this revelation to tidily, and hope that you have profited as much from this message as I have.

Best regards (colloquially),

- A young conservative

A few things strike me:

1. This is exactly what I dislike about many conservatives, particularly young, smug ones like our friend here: their habit of taking something completely out of context, pretending that the statement represents your philosophy in its entirety, and then congratulating themselves on disagreeing with it.

2. Apparently there are parts of the country that still have not developed sarcasm. (My guess is they're mostly in red states.)

3. Also apparently, the major problem with liberals is we don't want to starve old people as punishment for having had children.

4. "Colloquially"? Is this word in there for any reason other than to show me he knows it?

5. He doesn't; he used it nonsensically.

6. And the final, slightly wonky thing: he seems to be under the mistaken impression that only extreme liberals like me favor social security.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the current debate isn't "do we continue social security or scrap it?". It's an incredibly popular program. I think it's clear that this White House, and the wingnuts it listens to (people like Grover Norquist, who says he wants to shrink government down to the size where he can drown it in the bathtub), would propose scrapping social security, were it not for the fact that that would be political death. Thus, their rhetoric is more along the lines of "we must fundamentally change social security so it will continue to exist," the key here being that this concedes the almost universal belief that its continued existence is important.

So they've invented a crisis, claiming the system is about to go bankrupt. It isn't, of course, and that's what that cartoon was about.

If our ignorant friend wants to go around hating anyone who supports paying social security benefits to old people on principle, fine, but he should know that that means hating nearly everyone who isn't a far-right-wing fruit basket. Of course, he doesn't know that. Or, based on his letter, much of anything.

December 15, 2004

I've been declaring, on various pieces of merchandise in the IDT store, that the founding fathers were liberals.

Do I actually believe they were? The short answer is, yes, I'm convinced of it.

I say that because, to me, liberalism is defined by wanting to buck the status quo to make life freer and more tolerant for everyone. Yes, I know that's the kind of weighted definition of the term that only a liberal would actually give. But it's the lens through which I view politics.

This was a group of people who looked at the system, said "this isn't fair," and, via a violent uprising, cast off the existing form of government and installed, in its place, something that had never been tried before.

I mean, these guys weren't just liberals. They were radicals.

On the other hand, they were also biased against women, any religion that wasn't Christianity or Deism, blacks, Indians, and poor people.

I mean, these people, the progressives of their day, held beliefs that not even the most bigoted, toothless red-state hick would today own up to.

Therein lies the central difficulty of the question: today's progressive position is tomorrow's reactionary conservative position, because history marches inexorably to the left.

So the question is: "liberal" by what standard?

The founders certainly didn't hold the same views as today's liberals; if you plunked Jefferson down in today's world, once he got over the shock, he'd either have to update his views or become a conservative, conservatism being defined by a desire to cling to old ways of doing things.

Though the founders were not "conservatives" by the standard of their day, a case could be made that it is now "conservative" to support a literal interpretation of their views.

But it's liberals who represent the continuation of the long march toward freedom and democracy that the American Revolution touched off in the world.

So I remain convinced that their legacy belongs to us.

December 4, 2004

Most of the e-mail I get is very supportive.

In the beginning, though, it all was, so I've entered a kind of new phase, where I sometimes get mail from people who either want to argue with me, or just flat-out hate my guts.

And that's fine. The first time one arrived, I regarded it as a milestone--"You sure are stupid, you stupid liberal" isn't something anyone enjoys hearing, but if you're writing these sorts of cartoons and you're not getting that, people aren't paying attention, and that's bad.

The trick is learning to suppress the desire to actually respond. I mean, I'm not going to persuade anyone. The types of people who write bitchy letters to online political cartoonists are not the type easily persuadable by e-mail from strangers. (Neither are the types of people who draw cartoons like this one, but, hey, whatever.)

Something I've learned from experience: it is better to send nothing than to send just one sentence in an attempt to seem witty, yet dismissive. The kinds of stupid people who write e-mails like that just take that as an invitation to smugly declare that you "couldn't refute their arguments."

I know I invite allegations that I'm "closed-minded" for saying this, because people always call you that if you're not eager to grant them an audience, but...I'm probably not persuadable via e-mail from strangers. It has never changed my mind about anything that I can recall; nor has yelling half-coherently at me in any other medium. I'm also not trying, particularly, to persuade you of anything by drawing this strip. If I found out I'd changed anybody's mind about anything, I'd be happy, but surprised.

Let's be clear: this strip is an exercise in preaching to the converted, mostly. I'm trying to give aid, comfort, a laugh and a few good arguments to people already on my side. I don't know how to win conservatives over to my side; I think it's mostly impossible, in the current climate, and if it is possible, cartoons with a maximum of six panels are almost certainly not the proper medium for it.

A lot of you have told me this strip helped you get through the period right after the election. It helped me do that, too. A few of you in other countries have told me this strip helps you understand that America is not entirely a Bush-adoring backwater. Good, 'cause we're not, and if I can in my tiny way serve as an internet ambassador of that fact, let me just say I'm honored.

And if you do disagree with me but read this strip anyway, well...that's cool too.

November 26, 2004

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and I've been wondering a lot about the nature of this holiday.

The thing is, as generally understood, the word "thankful" suggests there's someone to thank. It's not as overtly religious a holiday as, say, Christmas, but, let's face it, God is certainly implied.

Though it was created as a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the image that's always conjured is a peaceful one: the Pilgrims, that second group of settlers in the New World (the first being those capitalists at Jamestown 16 years earlier), sitting around a table with a bunch of Native Americans, thanking God for their good fortune.

I guess this is either inspiring or insipid and revisionist, depending on your point of view, and there's a strong case to be made for either. For me, though, it...well, it just plain doesn't resonate particularly.

Full disclosure: I don't believe in God. I've never believed in God. And I'm tired of the constant suggestions that to truly love America you have to believe it's the product of divine inspiration and intervention.

The Indians at the table certainly didn't have the same reason to be thankful--that's my other issue with the traditional Thanksgiving image. I can just imagine them all sitting there around the table, going "yay, it's some people who will eventually take our land, force us onto reservations and try to Christianize our children. Woohoo."

And that brings me to the other thing--if God loves America, and has been helping it along, he sure has looked the other way on some terrible things--terrible things done not just to the Indians we relocated and whose culture we exterminated, to black people, to women, to so many groups of people that to list them would make me seem like the pedantic liberal I probably am.

So...is the argument that God loves America so much, and considers it such a force for Good, that he's willing to look the other way when it does terrible, terrible things to people who are presumably also his children--beginning with the country's very founding? A founding we now celebrate by thanking him on a Thursday in November?

I don't really buy it. I think the most charitable thing a realistic deity could say about us is that America, like most things in the world, is complicated. Great good, great evil and a lot of other things have come from it. I find it unimaginable that Americans are God's chosen people any more than any other group that's claimed that title over the course of history.

So...to summarize, I don't believe in God, even if I did I wouldn't believe that God uncritically favors everything America does, and in any case it seems like thanking God for America would be a bit of a slap in the face of anyone whose life is not better off because this country came into being--a not-insubstantial number of people.

But am I thankful? I guess I have to be.

Whatever role a divine being did or didn't play in this country, the fact is I'm pretty glad I was born here and not in, say, Sudan, or North Korea, or Iran.

Even for an American I was dealt a fairly high hand. Upper-middle-class suburban childhood, decent education, etc.

Even if I believed in God, though, I wouldn't believe God gave me those things, specifically, because that would mean that people born into terrible circumstances have either been smitten or neglected by God, and that just flies in the face of the whole idea of a loving deity. If we thank God for the good things, it begs the question--why are some other people miserable? I've never heard a good answer.

So, in my view, it's just really good luck that my life is really pretty good. If luck is something you can thank, then consider me as thankful this weekend as anybody else.

November 16, 2004

In Robert Graves's Claudius the God (and in the Derek Jacobi TV miniseries "I, Claudius," and probably in actual Roman history), Claudius, who became emperor by an accident of history, never stopped believing that Rome should return to being a republic.

During the early years of his rule, he governed as well as he could, and Rome did pretty well. But Claudius came to realize that if things went all right under an imperial government, the people were never going to rise up and demand the return of the republic.

Reasoning that things had to get worse before they got better, Claudius chose as his successor his stupid, fat, lazy, egotistical nephew Nero.

Graves has Claudius say (or maybe he actually said) "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Claudius reasoned that if things were good in the short term, they would never get better in the long run.

True to form, as emperor, Nero would be most famous for fiddling while Rome burned.

I've been struck by the parallels, lately. I think it's about time for those poisons to make an appearance.

A lot of Democrats have been going around saying that now that the election's over, it's time for us all to support Bush, wish him well, help make sure his term goes well, etc.

I am not one of those Democrats.

It's clear to anyone who's been paying even a little bit of attention that Bush's plans include rolling back environmental protections, rolling back regulations on big business, further severing international ties, further eroding the wall between church and state, further eroding the protections of the fourth amendment, shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle (and from wealth to wages), and basically dismantling the New Deal.

It's equally clear that Bush's plans don't include doing anything at all about the health care crisis that's left millions of children uninsured, the escalating bloodbath he's created in Iraq, or the budget deficits that are spiraling out of control.

Actually, I think that last one is part of a Republican strategy. I think the idea is to run up huge deficits, then claim the only solution is to slash popular social programs, because that's the only way the public would ever stand for it.

In short, they plan to remake the government in some sweeping, and rather unpopular, ways. Because these ideas are unpopular, they intend to implement them gradually; if they did it all at once, people would raise hell. But if they do it gradually, we'll get used to it. A frog dumped into boiling water will hop out, but a frog placed in cool water that's gradually brought to a boil will acclimate, stay there, and die.

So I confess, I'm rooting for the next four years to be a disaster. I won't enjoy seeing it, but...it's better than living in the country this will become if everything Bush has in store goes smoothly. We're talking four bad years instead of two bad generations.

What I'm hoping for is a Watergate-style catastrophe. Something big and showy and messy, traumatic for the country even, but also something that doesn't directly harm most people. Something that will discredit these people and everything they're trying to do to this country.

Rome never got its republic back. But we still could. Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.

November 8, 2004

I want to say thank you to the many, many people who have e-mailed me. It helps so much to know there's an army of us who felt crushed by the election results. Let's take comfort in each other. If I didn't get back to you, I'm sorry; I got so much e-mail, more than IDT has generated at any other time, and I haven't been my usual organized self (ha ha ha), but please do know that each and every letter has helped lift my mood.

I have only this to say to you all: you will be hearing a lot, from Republicans and from the media people who, knowingly or otherwise, are the mouthpieces of Republicans, about how this is the time to "put the past behind us" and "all come together" and "support the President."

DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM.

It has, in fact, never been more important to keep fighting.

If we really believe that we are right, and that the forces of war, outsourcing, environmental rape, theocracy and bigotry are wrong, then we do the country and the world no favors by "coming together" with these people. Especially since, as they showed us after the 2000 election and again after 9/11, they interpret any accommodation on our part as weakness. They will continue to treat us as if we must be defeated. We have to fight back as hard as it is in us to fight, or see the America we love die. It is that simple.

Rage on. I'll be with you on the barricades.

Some links that may encourage you, much as your letters have encouraged me:

From the "New Democrat Outreach Program" via The Register: An open letter from the blue states to the red states.

From some University of Michigan grad students: Some maps that disprove the conventional wisdom that Bush has won some kind of "broad mandate" from most of America.

And perhaps sweetest of all (or bitterest, depending on your point of view), From Keith Olbermann: a reminder that there are some very fishy things about this election. We should not forget that it is distinctly possible they stole the election again. And did it better this time.

November 4, 2004

I'll have more to say in this space soon. The business of criticizing the idiots in power never stops, especially when they're idiots I agree with about pretty much nothing.

I'll say only this about the next four years--I shall not want for material.

I was going to take some time off from IDT after the election, but now I think I'm going to keep at it--but I may take some time off from talking about national politics.

I'll probably write some cartoons more like this one, from last spring, that are a little more personal. This seems like a good time for a bit of introspection.

I'm sure I'll be back picking on our leaders soon enough. Right now, though, I don't quite have it in me.

November 2, 2004

What oh what will I write about after today? Other than the recounts and lawsuits. Which I'm seriously hoping will not happen.

I don't mind telling you, though, I'm a nervous mess today. Tom Tomorrow put it well:

"I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. and thought, This is either Christmas morning or the day of a close friend's funeral. I've been awake since then, and I'm still not sure which."

Here's hoping. Incidentally, a friend told me I should mention this, since I (or at least my avian surrogate) am exhorting you to vote: I myself have voted already. I vote by mail, so I voted like a week ago. For John Kerry.

Editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant has said he votes for the candidates who give him the most material, but I'm just not willing to inflict funny candidates like Bush on the rest of you.

Incidentally, this is from my inbox:

As you know, the 2004 presidential election takes place tomorrow. I attend Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania (swing state!), and I would like to post several* I Drew This strips around campus this evening. They all have your signature intact, as well as the comic's url plainly visible. All strips would be posted legally and in accordance with school regulations. Will you allow me to display your art as described? Pretty please?

For future reference: any time any of you want to print these 'toons out and post them anywhere, don't hesitate. That's what they're here for.

October 30, 2004

Never believe anyone who seems to believe that literally anything that happens proves their preconceptions were correct.

Case in point: Fox News-type commentators have been arguing for months that if Osama bin Laden attacked us right before the election, it would be an effort to help Kerry.

Then, as the election got closer and nothing much happened, they started claiming that bin Laden's silence and inactivity were themselves an effort to help Kerry.

Now they're claiming that this newly-released bin Laden video is an "endorsement" of Kerry, even though bin Laden makes fun of both candidates and expresses no preference in the election. It seems like a pretty huge leap anyway to think that bin Laden might believe his "endorsement" would gain his preferred American candidate any votes. (!)

One can only conclude that if Osama bin Laden appeared on television and declared "I want to have George W. Bush's love child," these people would spin it, somehow, as an unambiguous Kerry endorsement.

October 28, 2004

I owe a certain friend of mine an apology. I once called him naive because he said he thought George W. Bush might one day support gay civil unions.

"No," I said, "Bush is a religious conservative who needs to get other religious conservatives to vote for him. There's no way he'd ever do that."

But on "Good Morning America" the other day, Bush said essentially that. I was wrong.

"I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so," said Bush. His syntax was, as ever, slightly garbled, but the meaning was clear enough. And I was startled when I heard about it.

If I were a more charitable person I might say this shows that Bush, though conservative, is also both decent and tolerant. But I'm not that charitable, at least not when it comes to George Bush; what I think is, this is Bush taking the default middle-of-the-road position on something he's never going to care enough about to actually lift a finger in support of it.

I mean, remember when he vowed to send a manned mission to Mars? Or send tons of new AIDS money to Africa? Or said he supported extending the assault weapons ban? He never did anything to pursue those goals other than announce them. He seems to care about tax cuts and war, and pretty much nothing else; when he talks about those subjects a light goes on behind his eyes that you never see at any other time. I don't think he even really cares about the Federal Marriage Amendment; he probably believes in it in a casual way, but he's done nothing to actually try and pass it..

So I don't actually think Bush in a second term would do anything to promote civil unions. But the big news is, supporting civil unions is now apparently the default middle-of-the-road position. That's actually pretty amazing and, I think, pretty cool.

Remember when Vermont started allowing those, in the late 1990s, and everyone was shocked? As recently as a year ago, when Governor Howard Dean was running for president, conventional wisdom was that having allowed civil unions was one of the things that made him unelectably liberal.

A year later, Bush is for them. What with the war and the election, nobody's really noticing this issue right now, but the truth is, history continues to march inexorably in a socially liberal direction.

October 27, 2004

Yes, yes, I know in the past I've blasted Marshall "Eminem" Mathers for his stupid homophobia.

But this is an odd time, right before this election. And, well, his newest video is not only anti-Bush, it's brilliantly so.

For once we're on the same side, Marshall. F**k Bush indeed.

Watch Marshall's new video,"Mosh," here.

Really. I'm serious. Watch this video.

Just go watch. And then go vote.

October 26, 2004

So, one week to go, then?

I vote by absentee ballot and always have (Washington state makes it easy), so I've already voted. (I'll give you one guess which ticket I voted for.) And the early voting in various places seems, from what I keep hearing, to prove what a lot of people suspected: the left is more motivated than the right this time out.

From E.J. Dionne's column in the Washington Post:

"Kerry's supporters view this race as more vital than the president's, suggesting they are likely to turn out in large numbers come Election Day. In the new poll, fully 77 percent of Kerry voters say Nov. 2 is the 'single most important election' of their lifetime (37 percent), or more important than most other elections (40 percent). In comparison, 27 percent of Bush supporters view this as the single most important election of their lifetime, while 35 percent view it as more important than most other elections. Thirty-five percent of Bush supporters and 21 percent of Kerry supporters say this election is about as important as any other."

So we've got enthusiasm on our side. What will the right counter with? Well, they're going to cheat. They're going to try to stop us from voting.

Paul Krugman, among others, reports that in places like Florida, the GOP is trying every bit as hard as they did in 2000 to keep minority voters away, which could make the difference in an election this close. And the NY Times also reports that Republicans are going to be placing thousands of "recruits" inside polling places in Ohio to challenge the legality of various people's votes.

So basically, it's our grassroots motivation versus their dirty tricks.

This graph, from The Economist, shows just how confident voters on both sides are that the election's going to be fair:

Most Republicans think it is. Most Democrats think it isn't.

So how are we going to win? Simple. We're going to fight this time.

Medea Benjamin writes at CommonDreams.org:

In November 2000, disenfranchised voters, victims of butterfly ballots and hanging chads, and others angry at the state's refusal to count every vote spontaneously started to protest. Black ministers were preparing parishioners to engage in non-violent civil disobedience to affirm their voting rights. Unwitting "Jews for Buchanan" were marching on the streets of West Palm Beach demanding a recount. Union reps, civil rights leaders and even Green Party members like myself converged on Florida to join the movement that proclaimed: "Every Vote Counts, Count Every Vote."

But the leadership of the Democratic Party put the kabosh on our organizing efforts. "This matter will not be determined by rabblerousers in the streets," they said, "but by professional lawyers in the courts." We saw the outcome of that strategy: four disastrous years of an unelected president.

This time, we're not rolling over for them. And John F. Kerry is going to be president.

October 14, 2004

I could evaluate the third debate, but I think you'll either get plenty of that from the real media, or else you probably don't care.

What I will do is quote David Talbot from Salon.com:

OK, America, now that you've watched the last presidential debate, the choice should be perfectly clear -- even for you dazed undecideds still out there. On one side, we have a candidate who thinks we should have targeted Osama more than Saddam; we should allow cheaper prescription drugs to be imported from Canada; we should give women the right to choose and would not appoint any justice to the Supreme Court who feels differently; we should outlaw assault rifles; we should raise the minimum wage; we should uphold affirmative action; we should offer all Americans the same health coverage enjoyed by their elected leaders. And the other candidate? Well, he doesn't believe in any of that. But he is a man of deep faith. Oh, and he loves his wife and kids a whole lot.

If you're still confused about how to vote after tonight, maybe it would be better for you to go see "Team America" instead on election day.

October 13, 2004

This is really something.

This video, with clips of George W. Bush speaking during his first campaign for governor in 1994, shows him articulate and coherent, not stumbling over his words at all.

I know, I didn't believe it either; go look.

Something in that man's head has deteriorated.

October 9, 2004

My favorite moment from the second debate was when Bush made a reference to "the internets." ("How many does he think there are?" one blogger wondered.)

Anyway, over here on this particular internet, I thought Bush got creamed again. Kerry looked and sounded like he could be running a country. Bush looked and sounded like a guy on a streetcorner waving a misspelled cardboard sign.

Yes, yes, I know the early conventional wisdom is that it was basically a draw, probably a modest win for Kerry but not a huge one. But...after watching that performance, I think Bush is losing it.

Actually, "watching" is not strictly accurate, since I caught only the last ten minutes on television. Orv and I got stuck in one of those traffic jams where we literally took an hour and a half to go two miles, so mostly we heard the debate on the radio, but in the first half hour or so, even without seeing him pumping his fist and leaping out of his chair and looking like he was going to throttle various people (I'm taking other people's word that that's what he was doing) he sounded shrill and angry and, well, about as presidential as a petulant 6-year-old.

(He came off as desperate. I remember a moment from late in the 1992 campaign, when Bush I, increasingly worried that he was about to lose his job to Bill Clinton, lost his cool at some hecklers, and called them--these were people far too young to have gone to Vietnam--"draft dodgers." Last night his son was about as shrill and about as coherent.)

I do think this is important because it underscored, once again, that Bush thinks dissenters are completely beyond the pale, which is an absolutely terrible trait in a president. His tone, once again, was "how dare you disagree with me??"

This was spelled out even more clearly when he answered the final question of the night, in which an audience member asked him to name three mistakes he'd made as president. I thought he'd just claim he couldn't think of any, but he managed to come up with an even worse answer.

In addition to claiming he'd made exactly the right calls on every major issue, Bush said "Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV."

For certain Bush means people like Paul O'Neill. People who had the unmitigated gall to, you know, disagree with him. Those bastards.

Translation: "None of my policies are ever wrong. And my only mistakes have been occasionally appointing someone who doesn't agree with one of them."

I suppose I don't need to explain this to anyone reading this, but that isn't "strong leadership." It's total pigheadedness.

October 4, 2004

My favorite moment from the debate, and, it would seem, a lot of other people's:

JOHN KERRY: Secondly, when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.

JIM LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President.

GEE DUBYA: Well, actually, he forgot Poland.

Oh, and incidentally, Poland is probably going to pull out next year.

September 27, 2004

This is my favorite Molly Ivins quote. Pass it around to your politically apathetic friends:

"Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom you can decide you don't much care for. Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off? It's all politics, Bubba. You don't get to opt out for lack of interest."

I simply adore Molly Ivins.

September 17, 2004

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." -Mark Twain

So about the mountains of...well, you know what that Bush and his surrogates have slung at Kerry--you know the stuff I mean, stuff like "Kerry would just sit idly on his butt until the next attack" or "Kerry tried to gut our weapons and intelligence systems" or "Kerry says we should show al-Qaeda our softer side" or "Kerry has voted to raise taxes 98 times" or "Kerry can't stick with a single position on Iraq"...I could go on, but you get the idea.

If you've got friends who actually believe some of this junk and are trying to decide which candidate to vote for (I swear, I am a peaceful man but I am having to forcibly restain myself from hurting people when they say stuff like "gee, I dunno, I don't like Bush but Kerry's so indecisive"...), LiberalOasis has help:

Check out this word document of "Suggested Answers For Tough Questions About John Kerry." I think they put many of the most direct answers rather well.

They're just suggested answers, of course. Pick the ones you agree with and put 'em in your own words, but don't let your undecided friends swallow Bush's lies. It can't be overstated how important this election is.

September 15, 2004

How well each candidate is actually doing could be debated (and is). But with Bush running almost entirely on being "tough on terrorism," has anyone else noticed that this mostly seems to be working in places terrorists are never even going to consider attacking?

Electoral-vote.com goes back and forth on which candidate has an electoral vote lead (it's Bush at the moment), but one thing that seems constant is that Kerry is a lock in New York and in Wasington D.C., the two places attacked on 9/11 (I'm not counting Pennsylvania, a swing state, because it was an accidental target) and the two places with by far the best chance of being attacked again.

So...the people who actually need protecting from terrorism want Kerry to do it. The people who want Bush doing it live in places like Wyoming, Kansas, and Alabama--places no sane terrorist would hit.

I'm just saying.

September 2, 2004

Okay, I admit it, I haven't watched much of the Republican convention. I didn't see any point, since I already know where I stand in this election and have no particular desire to torture myself.

That said, here are a few thoughts on the speakers so far at the convention I'm not watching. (I've been limiting myself to Daily Show coverage--a spoon full of Jon helps the Republicanism go down.)

John McCain: I have a hard time respecting a man who could get smeared as badly by the Rove slime machine (which, in 2000, tried to paint him as pro-breast-cancer, and tried to use the fact that his daughter isn't white to peel off voters in South Carolina) and still try to help Rove's man get reelected. Shame on you, John.

Rudy Giuliani: What can I say? I just haven't been able to get past the fact that he openly thinks Bush was selected by God. (Giuliani fun fact: after the 1993 WTC bombing, Giuliani proposed the creation of an antiterror command center--inside the World Trade Center. Now, I'm no expert, but, um...Rudy?)

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Arnold basically called anyone who isn't optimistic about the economy a "girly-man." That's the kind of combination of stupidity, insensitivity, and macho swagger that's impossible to satirize--if I had made it up you'd accuse me of being unfair to the man, and yet...2/3 of Californians approve of him. I honestly do not get this at all.

The Bush daughters: Like, totally, gag me with a spoon.

Dick Cheney: I salivate at the thought of Edwards debating this man. He makes Jabba the Hutt look like Brad Pitt.

And finally...

Zell Miller: ...wow. Maybe this is just because I'm a liberal, but I don't think a prime-time convention speech has been this hateful since that famous Pat Buchanan "culture war" speech in 1992. I think this is going to backfire.

The Georgia Democratic Party has put up this video featuring footage from the last time Zell was the keynote speaker at a nominating convention in New York--in 1992, for Clinton. It's full of very good points about the millions of uninsured, and how President Bush "just doesn't get it."

Zell, baby? There are still millions of people suffering. And this President Bush doesn't get it either. He gets it even less. And you can call me a pinko if you like, but I really think that's more important than some childish fantasy about Bush in a showdown at high noon with O-Sama Bin.

Git.

August 17, 2004

From this article in the Washington Post, in which the paper second-guesses its own one-sided and very pro-war coverage of Iraq in the leadup to the invasion:

In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."

And, lower down, this, from reporter Karen DeYoung:

"We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," DeYoung said. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said."

So let me get this straight. The Washington Post--the paper that broke Watergate--1) had forgotten that politicians sometimes lie, and 2) to this day sees mindlessly parroting what the government says as an essential component of journalism.

Try to believe that some people still call the mainstream press, and the Post in particular, "liberal."

If it were not for The New York Times's Paul Krugman, I would be sorely tempted to write off mainstream journalism altogether.

August 11, 2004

Check this out: George W. Bush, playing rugby in college, in an old yearbook photo.

Somehow, it's...not even 1% surprising to me that the young Dubya would feel that punching someone in the face was more important than following the rules.