Choke On The Blog!

A bit of background before I begin: I and two other college students co-ran Jerry Brown's campaign for the Democratic Nomination back in 1992 for the state of Arizona. Arizona's primary came almost dead last in the schedule in 92, so the whole point of voting for a Presidential Nominee at that time was pretty moot because Clinton had it wrapped up months earlier... but regardless, we scored Brown almost 22% of the vote, 3 times his national average. It was essentially a protest vote against Bill Clinton, a man who many of us didn't completely trust because we thought (it turned out rightly) he was a lecherous womanizer. I got to go to the New York City Dem Convention where I was interviewed on MTV by none other than heavily drug addicted Dave Mustaine, lead guitarist and singer for my favorite Metal band of the era, MEGADETH.

I'm a pretty committed Democrat, mostly because I haven't found a party which better represents my views in this country yet. I often veer Green but then they do something extremely stupid to drive me away again... last time it was hobbling Al Gore and thinking that 4 years of Bush Jr. wouldn't be that bad. Ooopsie! I've flirted with Libertarianism, but they don't seem to mind if people starve in the street and that 1930's way of thinking just doesn't go down my throat without making me gag.

So, all of that's been said to establish my Bona Fides as far as this current Primary race is going. 1996 was a given and in 2000 I was too busy to get much more involved than just writing checks, but this year I'm jumping back in whole-hog.

Despite the desperate longing by Liberal Lunatics and Right Wingers Hoping The Democrats WIll Commit Suicide, dark horse candidate Hilary Clinton will probably not get into this race... and if she does, she will be quickly defeated. The negatives on Hilary are still radioactively high nationwide. She's going to have to spend more than two years in the Senate before she gets a shot at the Brass Ring. Besides, Senators almost never get the nod... the road to the nomination is littered with the skeletons of Senators. It's almost always a Governor who gets the nomination.

If you look at a schedule of Primaries, http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president_state_primary_dates.php, you'll note that the race will be boiled down to four front-runners in February and is essentially finished on March 2nd when Texas, California and New York all have their primaries. Sure there are other states remaining, but they don't have anywhere near as many people and are extremely unlikely to change the results of the previously decided big three plus Michigan (2/7/04).

The Democratic Party has deliberately arranged things this way. They WANT a hasty race to the finish without an opportunity for the various candidates to grow desperate and savage one another with Negative advertising which only does Bush's job for him.

This front-loaded nomination process means it is essential to get on the television airwaves in the early states. South Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma hold their primaries on Feb 3, Washington State on Feb 7 and Wisconsin on Feb 17. This is going to be an extremely expensive ad buy, especially considering that most of the Candidates' money will be spent in Iowa and New Hampshire. There won't be time to raise money between Iowa/NH and the next round of primaries the way there was in the past. Used to be that if you came in a decent 3rd or 4th, you'd have a shot at picking up some extra cash and maybe getting into the top two in the next Primaries over a month away. That's not really true any longer. Therefore the Candidates with the best money-raising apparatus are most likely to last to the end of the Primaries. This thing is going to happen really fast and it's going to suck money out of the Candidate's pockets like crazy.

Never before has the ability to write a $2000 check meant you have so much power. Hell, these suckers are dying for $100 contributions. If you want your voice and your issues heard by these candidates, speak with your wallet... they are DEFINITELY listening.

From my perspective it's pretty clear that at this point, we're -really- down to Dean, Clark or Kerry in the lead spot on the ticket.

Since Sharpton, Kucinich and Mosely-Braun don't even have real campaign committees in the states, they are, for all intents and purposes, Vanity Press candidates out to promote their narrow agenda, not to truly run for the Presidency. Their continued presence in the race is a distraction. They can be better served by bowing out gracefully and throwing their votes and support to whichever Candidate best represents their views.

Above The Vanity Candidates, but below the Clark/Dean/Kerry Frontrunner Triumvriate, we have the Second String Candidates, the four guys who haven't caught on for one reason or another but who have a decent message and half a chance to pull it out for a VP nod or to crack the Top Three if they can catch fire and come in amongst the top five candidates in Iowa & New Hampshire. Leading the pack are Senators John Edwards (my favorite), Bob Graham and Joe Lieberman. Long-term Democratic Congressman Dick Gephardt is the last of the bench-warmers.

Only two of these guys will place amongst the top 5 in Iowa & New Hampshire. The guys who come in 6th and 7th should drop out along with the Vanity Candidates.

I can't imagine what Bob Graham is doing in this race still. He's the Aristotelian Ideal of a Senator who will never be elected President. Sure, he's qualified, but so what? He's as exciting as wet toast. The same goes for Gephardt, though I'm reserving judgement until I see if he gets the nod from Organized Labor. If he does, he's back in the game, but if he doesn't, it's bye-bye Dick. Lieberman: Vote For Me if you think George Bush isn't Jewish Enough. He's too associated with the failure of the Gore 2000 campaign, his Campaign for God 2000 rhetoric is blamed for making far-left Democrats skittish enough to defect to Nader, he makes the Civil Liberties wing of the Democratic Party very nervous with all his yay-for-theDepartment of Homeland Security talk, and he pisses off Young Democrats by coming out against violent Videogames, Movies and Rap. To top it off, he looks so "UnPresidential" that it's amazing: can you picture America electing a four-foot tall ventriloquist puppet? I can only imagine that he's just running because he's gotten into the habit. Shake the monkey, Joe.

Which leaves my man John Edwards. He's got a brilliant story: "I was poor, my parents worked hard to put me through Law School and I got rich. Bush is a spoiled brat born with a silver spoon in his mouth who wants to shift all taxes from inheirited wealth to working people." Edwards is also from The South. It's IMPOSSIBLE to win the Presidency without capturing big chunks of The South. Howard Dean has no chance in HELL of capturing big chunks of The South by himself. If Edwards doesn't get into the top four and if he isn't tapped as a VP nod (which would be a good damn idea for someone like Dean), then that's a majorly wasted opportunity. At the least, someone should co-opt his story, it's just that compelling.

We've got FOUR MORE shots at watching this gaggle of candidates on television:

Date: October 9, 2003
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Hosted by: Gov. Janet Napolitano & the AZ Democratic Party
Broadcast on: CNN
Time: TBD

Date: October 26, 2003
Location: Detroit, MI
Hosted by: The Congressional Black Caucus
Broadcast on: TBD
Time: TBD

Date: November Sometime in Iowa
Date: December Sometime in New Hampshire

I'm hoping that whoever's dropping out of the race does so before those November and December debates, but I doubt any of them have that much intellectual honesty. Don't tell anyone, but I'm secretly hoping that Sharpton stays in until the end just to call the Final Four on their bullshit.

Personally, I'm going to meet Gray Davis and Wesley Clark tomorrow in LA. I've not made up my mind about who to support as the eventual Democratic nominee. I've got favorites but I'd like to meet more of them. California's Primary isn't until March 2nd, 2004 so I'm not likely to see many Candidates out this way until December at the earliest. Thank the Unholy Bog Gods that we're not going last the way that we were in 2000 or else I'd never get to meet any of them.

I encourage anyone interested in voting for A Democrat to get involved now. You have a damn big opportunity if you pick a candidate whose state committee isn't put together yet. Remember: at 21, I was running a statewide campaign for a guy who got 22% of the vote. YOU COULD DO THAT, TOO. Only it doesn't have to be a guy who gets 22%... it could be the #1 guy if you get involved NOW.

And if you volunteer for your local Green Party candidate, Hell, you could end up running their entire campaign. I've a friend who's seriously contemplating running for Congress on the Green Ticket. If that happens, I'm going to have an unpaid part-time job this next year running his campaign.

Individuals CAN change things. I get so sick of seeing people talk about the Choice of Least Regret or the Lesser of Two Evils. Get the fuck out there and help YOUR Number One Guy. Even if it's just making phone calls or writing a check for $50, that's a whole sight better than sitting back and whining about how we have "no candidates." There are ten in this Primary... surely ONE of them meets a plurality of your qualifiers?

Together we can rid ourselves of Texas Dunce Ceasar and his crony capitalist pals. Won't you get involved?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17129-2003Sep29.html

I awoke this morning to TONS of news sources all buzzing about the Bush White House leaking the identity of a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband mouthing off about the falsity of Bush's "Saddam bought Yellow Cake in Africa" story.

Finally... a scandal with a story simple enough that the average guy can understand it, has the proper amount of anti-Americanism mixed up with it, and with enough secret double-dealing and sneaking around that it pisses off the average American. To top it off, the media has finally found its balls now that only 52% of the country supports our fearless dictator.

This is all to distinguish THIS NEW SCANDAL from all of the previous scandals where the President and the liars around him have successfully played down all of the facts as either an attack on him for decades old activities, or managed to spin the Media with the whole "Osama Attacked us! Stop asking Questions!" line of reasoning (Bush was an inside trader, his wife is a vehicular murderer who killed her high school boyfriend, Bush went AWOL for a year, Bush is a Convicted Drunk Driver and therefore our first Criminal President, Bush's college friends all claim that he was massively addicted to cocaine for years, the war was planned for years in advance by the Project for a New American Century, the war was based on false intelligence including the root of this scandal -- the African Yellow Cake Uranium lies which were in the State of the Union address, Halliburton was given an endless mortgage on Iraq's Oil, Halliburton was given no-bid contracts, Halliburton wants $87 Billion of our taxpayer dollars "for reconstruction," Halliburton has been given blanket immunity for anything it does from moment it drills Iraqi Oil until it sells it at the pump, Bush has weakened the clean air act, the clean water act, not signed the Kyoto Accords, etc.).

In fact, although Bill Clinton was no Innocent Angel, I wonder just how much of ANY of this bullshit he would have gotten away with. I mean, when we spend $60 Million Dollars to investigate a $58,000 land swindle in the mid-80's and come up with "he kinda-sorta lied about a blowjob under oath," and then we can't seem to come up with an investigation of any of the above Bush Scandals (and I"m sure there are tons which I've forgotten about) the situation is more than just a little bit sickening.

Does ANYONE remember the Furor which erupted in the Press two weeks into Clinton's first term when Hillary Clinton MIGHT have had something to do with the firing of FOUR PEOPLE from the White House Travel Office? Of course, a month later it was proven that she didn't, but in the meantime it was on the front page of every newspaper in 50 point type. This Bush Presidency has put over 3,000,000 people out of work and it's treated as an interesting anecdote to be relegated to the business section (under the headline "Bush tax cuts to create 100,000 new jobs").

The problem for the Bush & Rove Spin Machine this time is that:
(A) The war fervor has cooled down and the American taxpayers are suddenly realizing that our stupid anti-world behavior prior to the war is leaving us with no one but ourselves to pay the $500 Billion tab for rebuilding Iraq.

(B) Osama hasn't hit us this week (because, let's face it, he's lying DEAD under Tora Bora in a collapsed cave -- and if he's NOT dead, I want to know why the Hell there's a specialized military unit dedicated to finding Saddam Hussein, but not one in charge of finding Osama Fucking Bin Laden, murderer of 3000 civilians).

(C) This scandal doesn't involve the President and his liars running around lying to fuck over Saddam Hussein (a guy that the Average American thought was a creepy murdering jerk and deserving of whatever he got) -- this is Bush & Rove deliberately outing one of our country's faithful spies. James Bondette was just stabbed in the back by the White House. This means that the CIA is probably behind the leaking of the details that two Bush Officials (including Rove) are responsible for the leak and for the number of reporters they leaked it to.

I really wouldn't want to wake up with the entire CIA pissed off at me... especially considering that they're -already- looking for shit to smear Bush with because of the whole "let's force George Tenet to publicly admit fault for Condoleeza Rice & Dick Cheney forcing the African Yellow Cake Uranium bullshit into Bush's State of the Union Address" scandal of a few months back.

This story will continue to unravel, as well... if it was ONLY Robert Novak who they'd leaked the story to, then they wouldn't be in much danger... he'd stand on his right not to reveal his sources and that would be that... the problem comes from the fact that Rove farmed the story around to SIX additional reporters. I wonder how long it will be before one of THEM decides that Rove's usefulness as a source has outlived itself and said reporter's career is better served by breaking a Pulitzer Winning Story about the President's men committing treasonous felonies?

I wouldn't be sleeping too well at night if I were Karl Rove.

Maybe it's time for "Osama" to attack us again. Minimum, it's time for another Orange Alert.

And if that fails... maybe it's time for the Red Alert. You know, troops and tanks on the streets looking to "protect" us.

Because I sure can't see Karl Rove going down without an attempt at a Coup. It's just not in his character to gracefully bow out of the picture.

From http://www.couplescompany.com/FEATURES/Politics/Structure3.htm

The 7 Conditions (Warning Signs) That Foster & Fuel Fascism Are:

Instability of capitalist relationships or markets

The existence of considerable declassed social elements

The stripping of rights and wealth focused upon a specific segment of the population, specifically the middle class and intellectuals within urban areas as this the group with the means, intelligence and ability to stop fascism if given the opportunity.

Discontent among the rural lower middle class (clerks, secretaries, white collar labor). Consistent discontent among the general middle and lower middle classes against the oppressing upper-classes (haves vs have-nots).

Hate: Pronounced, perpetuated and accepted public disdain of a specific group defined by race, origin, theology or association.

Greed: The motivator of fascism, which is generally associated with land, space or scarce resources in the possession of those being oppressed.


Organized Propaganda:

a) The creation of social mythology that venerates (creates saints of) one element of society while concurrently vilifying (dehumanizing) another element of the population through misinformation, misdirection and the obscuring of factual matter through removal, destruction or social humiliation, (name-calling, false accusations, belittling and threats).

b) The squelching of public debate not agreeing with the popular agenda via slander, libel, threats, theft, destruction, historical revisionism and social humiliation. Journalists in particular are terrorized if they attempt to publish stories contrary to the agenda.

3. Fascism dovetails business & government sectors into a single economic unit, while concurrently increasing in-fighting and distrust between the units fostering advancement towards war. TOP

4. a) Fascism promotes chauvinist demagogy, (appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace by fostering selective persecution and accepted public vilification of the target group. It then promotes this a "patriotic", "supportive" or "the party line" and disagreement with such as "anti-government", "anti-faith" or "anti-nation".

b) Fascism creates confusion through "facts". It relies on junk science, revisionism, the elimination of cultural records/treasures and obscuratinism to create its case and gain acceptance. Fascism can also combine Marxist critiques of capitalism or faith based critics of the same to re-define middle class perceptions of democracy and to force its issues, confuse logic and create majority consensus between targeted groups. This is also referred to as creating a state of Cognitive Dissonance, the mental state most human beings are easily manipulated within. TOP

5. Both middle and upper-middle-class dictated democracy and fascism are class dictatorships that use organized violence (verbal or physical) to maintain the class rule of the oppressors over the oppressed.

"The difference between the two is demonstrated by the policies towards non-lower-working class classes. Fascism attains power through the substitution of one state's form of class domination with another form, generally bourgeois democracy segues into an open terrorist dictatorship."
###

So... this is your country on Fascism. Any Questions?

Thanks to Loren for pointing this link out.

Is Bush's End Near?

Over the last two years that the Propaganda Remix Project has been online, I've gotten hundreds of poorly spelled hate e-mails from mouth-breathing Right-Wing invertebrates. The First Wave came during the build-up to war, accusing me (and anyone else who didn't support Bush's private war) of being "anti-American" and of "not supporting the troops." The Second Wave came during the war, and were mostly Death Threats ("you should be put up against a wall and shot. When all some people such as you [sic] have been killed, then this country will be Great once more!" - real letter!). The Third Wave were "haw haw, I told you so, we kicked your boyfriend Saddam's ass" letters... as if I'd ever made a poster claiming that we wouldn't kick Saddam's ass or that he was my boyfriend (the shocking amount of racism, homophobia, fixation on me smoking dope and somehow believing in Communism is truly sad - and Conservatives claim that Liberals are stuck in the 60's... at least I can come up with new insults for them). I mean, the entire point of my opposition to the war was that we could kick Saddam's ass any time that we wanted to, he knew it and we knew it, so there was no compelling reason to do so... we had successfully contained him, and actually fighting Saddam over pretextual reasons would plunge Iraq into a crisis, cause the US Economy untold damage and create a wave of anti-American hatred in the Middle East. Gosh, look what came true.

The Third-Wave "I Told You So" letters generally didn't mention the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction which, we were told, were so plentiful and were in such danger of imminent use that we couldn't delay the invasion of Iraq for a mere 30 days in order to get the French and Russians on board with us. When the Hate Mailers did mention the missing WMD's, it was usually in a "who cares, we done freed them Iraqis!" type of solipsism. Well, the White House admitted the other day that perhaps they had fallen for Saddam's own disinformation campaign. If true, Saddam's "maybe if I tell them I have lots of these weapons, they'll think twice about invading!" seems to be a rather poor strategy in retrospect -- he should have ACTUALLY BUILT the weapons like our strange friends in North Korea. Terrorists and Dictators the world over are now realizing that the only way to prevent the United States from harming them is to build nuclear weapons... or to not have any oil or diamonds or Coltan that the US needs. The inability of the White House to find the nuclear weapons that they were certain existed (they showed us pictures of the buildings, remember) brought about a Fourth Wave of letters. These letters were almost identical with minute variations from author to author: "You've been proven wrong. America loves GW Bush. He is a strong leader. He defeated Saddam. He has won the War On Terror. He freed the Iraqi people. Why do you bother making your stupid posters?" (edited for clarity and spelling, believe me)

Now the Fifth Wave of letters is appearing. These show the desperation and fracturing of the Far Right, and portend, I believe, their upcoming electoral defeat in 2004. The letters are more and more incoherent as their Mind Control Network, Fox News, runs out of excuses and marching orders to issue to the troops. I get weird letters about the Alabama 10 Commandments Statue, how teenagers killing people because of videogames is all the Liberals fault, or how this country is going to Hell because of secular humanism... what do any of these things have to do with my posters? Worse yet, the Hate Mailers have devolved back to Death Threats, this time not predicated on any actual grievance, imagined or otherwise, just weird rantings about the upcoming election. I think this shows that the Extreme Right is very worried about the upcoming election, even if only on a subconscious basis.

I mean, seriously, they no longer have anything to rally around: at current rate of deaths, the guerrilla war in Iraq will have cost the US almost a thousand lives by the time the election rolls around, the price of gasoline has jumped 30% since the end of the war, our international reputation is shot, Homeland Security has taken a back seat to witch hunting at the Justice Department, the President's fixation on drilling for oil in Alaska at the expense of rebuilding our electrical grid has been exposed, the Administration has built up an abyssmal record on the Environment, the No Child Left Behind Act is in danger of being repealed due to its detrimental effects on the education system, and, most importantly, the economy is a wreck. Bush claims that there is a "jobless recovery" underway and that his tax cuts for the Rich will produce 250,000 new jobs... but that doesn't begin to touch the 3.25 Million jobs which have been lost under the Bush Administration. There are 16,000,000 people in America who can't find work now. The government chooses only to measure those who are recently out of work, thus making things look better, but this hides a vast unemployed class of people looking for a little payback on President Big Business.

A lot of Fifth Wave letters say that it is not fair to blame Bush for the economy... he inherited a bad economy from Bill Clinton, and the President doesn't really have much to do with the economy anyway. Leaving aside the logical inconsistency that the President doesn't have much to do with the economy, but somehow the bad economy was the previous President's fault, let's concentrate on the idea that the President doesn't have much to do with the economy.

The simplest question I can imagine is "If the President doesn't have anything to do with the economy, why is he always pretending he does?" Worse yet, why does he keep making decisions which obviously DO affect the economy? How does bankrupting the Federal Government help the economy? How does returning to Reagan-era budget deficits ($455 Billion for 2003, an estimated $480 Billion for 2004) help the economy? How does giving $1.7 Billion Taxpayer Dollars PER MONTH to Halliburton for rebuilding Iraq help the economy? How does spending $4 Billion per month on military actions in Iraq help the economy? How does not punishing Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay, Sandy Weill and the rest of Bush's Corporate Criminal Campaign Donations Squad help the economy? Most people don't realize it but corporate crime costs our nation more than all street crime combined. For example, the FBI reports that in 1995 all burglary and robbery cost the United States about $4 billion. Professor W. Steve Albrecht of Brigham Young University estimates that white-collar fraud (usually committed by lawyers, doctors, accountants and businessmen) costs 50 times as much - about $200 billion per year. Shouldn't Bush's Justice Department and SEC crack down on these corporate criminals to help the economy? Oh, wait, I forgot... when it comes to punishing his friends, Bush is too busy counting their campaign donations.

People vote their wallet. I can't help but believe that lacking another war, the voters are going to send GW Bush Jr. packing the same way they sent his out-of-touch old man packing. Bush's one saving grace in many people's eyes, his steely-eyed determination to invade Iraq, is looking more and more like madness to the average American. When you regularly cut Veterans benefits, health care and hazard pay, Veterans groups tend to turn against you, and you begin to lose credibility with the average person who might have once been impressed by your pro-military stance. Months ago, I predicted that things were going to turn ugly for the US once the Iraqi people realized that far from simply liberating Iraq, we were there to stay. Sadly, the Administration's poor planning has now resulted in MORE American deaths since the "end of major combat" was declared than during the actual war! This was an easily and often predicted event, and shows that although the Military seems to have learned how to conduct peacekeeping duties, their bosses in the White House have not learned the lessons of Bosnia and Haiti. Instead, the Bush Crew seem to have taken the lessons of Somalia and Mogadishu to heart, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and the wounding of up to five times as many. Luckily the White House can always count on the Corporate Media to ignore that last figure... that some reports say that over 4000 soldiers have been wounded - the papers have only been interested in the death toll and have ignored the far greater amount of non-fatal attacks. I suppose American soldiers only losing a limb or an eye or a hand isn't worthy of print ink or videotape, but once that number sinks in on the American voters, Bush's pro-war stance will prove to be a detriment in the upcoming election. The bad thing about wounded vets is that they linger... they aren't as easily forgotten as dead soldiers because we have to see them in the grocery store and at the gas station while we fill up our SUVs.

Lastly, Bush himself appears to be desperate. His Campaign unveiled their new fundraising effort for the upcoming election: Help Us, We're Broke. President Bush's campaign is appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won't have enough cash to defend himself against Democratic attacks. "Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him," campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote in the fund-raising e-mail sent Wednesday night. "If you need more convincing the president needs your help, consider what the Democrats are saying. The race is just starting, but their rhetoric is already red-hot."

The problem is that Bush's cry for help is wildly at odds with reality: Bush has set several fund-raising records, including the most collected for a presidential primary and the most raised at a single event. In 2000, Bush bypassed public financing and its spending limits during the primaries and raised more than $100 million with help from more than 200 Bush campaign "pioneers," volunteers who collected at least $100,000 each for him. The 2000 Democratic hopefuls, including eventual nominee Al Gore, took public financing and were limited to $40.5 million in primary spending. Last year, Bush set a single-event record by raising more than $30 million at each of two galas for the GOP. Bush also is skipping public financing for next year's primaries. With the individual contribution limit doubled to $2,000 under the new campaign finance law, he is widely expected to raise more than $200 million. Bush's "pioneers" club has a new level: "Rangers" - those who can raise $200,000 for Bush's campaign. Bush has no challenger for the GOP nomination to spend that money against, so it will all be rolled into his general election fund. The biggest fund-raiser among the nine Democratic hopefuls from January through June was Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, whose campaign collected $16 million. All together, the 9 major candidates have raised less than $64 Million to Bush's estimated $100 Million.

So why the scare-tactic fundraising efforts? I believe it's because Bush & Rove know that Bush's dismal record is going to be hammered relentlessly by both the Democrats -AND- a slowly center-moving press no longer cowed by the specter of appearing unAmerican for attacking Bush after 9/11. Facing an uphill fight, Bush plans to buy every spare second of television time and run sappy commercials full of American flags, elderly Americans shaking his hands, children reading by his knee, shots of Bush in a hardhat on factory floors, Bush in a flightsuit being mobbed by navy personnel during his Jet Pilot War Hero Relection Stunt on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, and Bush walking around in forests patting trees while warm-voiced announcers tell us of his love for American values and bad Aaron Copeland-sound-alike music fills your heart with cheese. He'll also be running commercial after commercial bashing whomever his opponent will be, calling them Soft On Crime, Bad for Job Growth and the Economy (he would know, he's an expert on that). Don't forget to keep an eye out for the commercials accusing his opponent of being FOR such "evils" as Gay Marriage, and the separation of chuch and state, and an all-around ally of Al Quaeda (don't expect to hear Osama Bin Laden's name in Bush's commercials, though... that would just point out another of his massive failures).

In short, Bush will attempt to buy the election by spamming the television with so much bile against his opponent (and considering that Karl Rove learned at the feet of Lee "I invented Willy Horton" Atwater, I expect there to be a LOT of Bile in 2004) that he drives all non-committed Right-Wing voters away from the polls. Research proves that when an election turns nasty and mud-slinging, people stay away from the polls in droves. $250 Million Dollars buys a lot of mud to sling. Of course, slinging mud is the first resort of the desperate campaign, so what does that say about Bush's feelings of his own chances?

Many of the Fifth Wave Hate Mails, incidentally, tell me I should Pray for Bush to win the upcoming election so that I can continue to sell my "disgusting Communist propaganda" and "earn money from the deaths of our American troops!" Again they accuse me of being a Communist... but simultaneously claim that I want to sell things and make money. Sigh. Aside from the logical inconsistency of that argument, are these people completely blind to the fact that Halliburton was revealed this week to be making $1.5 BILLION PER MONTH from the US Treasury? Who is earning money from the deaths of American Troops? I think it's Dick Cheney who is currently making $1 Million per year from Halliburton in "deferred compensation" while simultaneously serving as the Vice President of the United States. Does anyone think that once out of office Cheney won't rejoin their corporate board and start receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for stuffing their crony capitalist bank accounts full of YOUR taxpayer money?

It's true... If George Bush is voted out of office in November 2004, sales of my war posters will plummet.

I can't wait for that day to occur.

I suppose that's why I'm not a Bush-Cheney-style Republican... I just don't have it in me to wish my fellow man harm in order that I can personally profit by it.

In closing, I thank you for reading this far. Be well. Register to Vote. Convince everyone you know to Register. Volunteer for Voter Registration Drives. There's no other way we're going to get rid of this blight on our Nation. Remember: Right-Wing Republicans vote... but there's more of us than there are of them. If we all pull together, we can yank this tin dictator down off his pedestal, 60% approval rating or not (down incidentally, from the 72% it was at when just a few short months ago.