Today’s article, my last before the election, is dedicated to a very small audience: the undecided swing-state voter. The Kerry and Bush campaigns have been targeting you for weeks – all seven of you. This election season began before J. Lo’s second marriage was over. That has been long enough for 98% of us to make up our minds already but you – you seven indecisive potato heads – could not pick an ice cream sundae if the two flavor choices were “vanilla” and “mung beetle”.
A couple of you have complained about the two sorry choices we have for president. You two crazy yahoos might be thinking about voting for the Independent, Ralph Nader, or the Libertarian, Michael Badnarik, or the Green Party’s David Cobb. Well, if you feel like throwing your vote away, why not have some fun with it and support Mike Bay of the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party or His Royal Majesty Caesar St. Augustine De Buonaparte of The Good Party. (You think I am kidding? Check it out for yourself at www.vote-smart.org.)
I know, you’re going to tell me you’re not “throwing your vote away” by voting your conscience. You’ll tell me “We have to break the two-party system in America! When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you’re still voting for evil!” Listen, while you enjoy your exercise in electoral frivolity, the rest of us adults will be making a serious decision about which real candidate will take America in a less evil direction. Don’t you think voting for less evil is a good thing? No matter how good you think America is, wouldn’t it be better if it were even less evil?
We know Kerry or Bush will be the next president; you know Kerry or Bush will be the next president; even Native American Party candidate Jacques Yves ‘Chief Jack’ Boulerice knows Kerry or Bush will be the next president. You want a real third-party choice, work to build a real third party from the ground up. Get yourself some Green city council members, some Libertarian mayors, or some Independent state representatives first. Let me know when one of the third party candidates could realistically garner 35% of the vote.
Another two of you vacillating vapor brains are unsure about Bush, but you can’t quite put your trust in Kerry. Let’s see if I can help clarify this difficult choice between two nearly identical candidates.
George W. Bush is a rich kid who went to Yale and was a drunken frat-boy cheerleader who got a gentlemen’s “C”. Bush was convicted of a DUI and is assumed to have been a raving coke fiend. Bush dodged Vietnam by joining the Guard with the lowest possible passing pilot aptitude score and some help from daddy’s friends. Bush went into business with the help of the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family but went bankrupt by failing to find oil in Texas or Bahrain. On the bright side, Bush did make the Chicago Cubs a better baseball team by trading Sammy Sosa away from the Texas Rangers.
In his first attempt at governance, Bush turned Texas into the nation’s worst polluter, highest rate of working poor and children without health insurance, worst teacher’s salaries and among the lowest high school graduation rates, and increased rates of teen drug abuse. That’s when Bush wasn’t trying to execute a retarded guy with the mental age of six or sophomorically mocking the pre-execution pleas of his fellow Born Again™ Christian, Karla Fay Tucker. On the bright side, Bush’s Texas did manage to kill more death row inmates than any other state (and more than all but four countries) even though studies suggest up to 7% of those inmates may have been innocent.
In his second attempt at governance, Bush presided over the worst terrorist attacks on American soil and in four years has failed to catch Osama bin Laden (remember him?) or the guy mailing anthrax to our government offices (remember that?) Bush has failed to enact any serious measures to protect the country against the next attack, because it might cut into his friends’ profits. Bush presided over the two biggest intelligence failures in American history (9/11 and WMD’s) yet opposed all attempts at investigation of those failures. On the bright side, Osama’s just put out another one of his “Bin Laden Gone Wild!” videos.
Bush started an illegal war based on lies with no regard for planning or exit strategy and will have soon spent $225 billion of our dollars doing so. He’s gotten 1,120 of our soldiers killed and thousands more maimed, while supporting the troops by failing to appear at any military funerals, concealing the return of soldier’s flag-draped coffins, and cutting military pay and benefits. Bush couldn’t find the weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there in the first place and now Bush has lost the weapons of mass explosion that we knew were there. On the bright side, we’ve only killed 100,000 of the Iraqis we came to liberate!
Bush has recklessly cut taxes in wartime – something no leader in Earth’s history has done – to benefit the rich people and corrupt corporations that support him. Bush’s vengeance-oriented, misdirected, incompetent foreign policy has squandered the goodwill of the entire planet that supported us when the twin towers fell and has made us as popular with our traditional allies as a rabid pit bull in a daycare. He’s created a whole new breeding ground for terrorists by invading the wrong country. On the bright side, Bush did capture Saddam Hussein, the guy we never should have made leader of Iraq in the first place and who had nothing to do with al Qaeda and 9/11.
Bush has given massive, no-bid, fraud-ridden business to his vice president’s corporate buddies. Bush has taken the first government surplus in modern times and turned it into the highest deficit in American history. He’s been on more vacations and given fewer press conferences than any president ever. He’s led an administration so secretive it’s giving Nixon’s corpse an erection in the grave. The only secrets the Bush administration couldn’t keep were a covert CIA agent’s identity (a treasonous act perpetrated to punish a political critic) and the naked-leashed-homo-beating-and-piling modern art exhibit we made at Abu Ghraib (a reprehensible act that works well in convincing undecided terrorists). On the bright side, Bush is letting law enforcement imprison our citizens and enemies in secret and spy on our citizens in secret.
Bush doesn’t believe all the science on global warming and medical marijuana because his corporate energy and pharmaceutical pals don’t like that science. Bush is blocking reproductive health care worldwide and stem-cell research because his fundamentalist Christian friends love embryos more than people. Bush would rather our schools teach the Christian Genesis and how to pass federal tests but not provide Head Start, after school programs, or any meaningful sex education. Bush has turned the wall between church and state into a fuzzy line and appointed corporate shills and radical fundamentalists to the highest positions of administration and jurisprudence. On the bright side, Bush does want us to spend a lot of money on a “Star Wars” missile shield and a manned mission to Mars.
Bush has allowed his corporate chums to poison our air and called it a “Clean Skies” Act. Bush has allowed the lumber and mining industries to pilfer and defile our land and called it a “Healthy Forests” Initiative. Bush has allowed the energy industries to pollute our waterways to the point where pregnant women can’t eat fresh fish because the mercury levels may cause them to give birth to a child with too low a mental function to even become president. Bush decided to Leave No Child Behind then he went and left the funding behind. On the bright side, Bush did win this year’s grand prize for dystopian irony from the Orwell Institute.
OK, there’s no such thing as the Orwell Institute… it’s actually called John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice. At a time when Osama is proving that he actually can run and he can hide, Ashcroft’s goons are putting the screws to America’s elusive arch-villain, Tommy Chong, and that deadly gang of state-approved medical marijuana patients! When we need to put the choke on terrorist funding there’s four times more agents watching Castro’s finances than terrorist’s finances. We’re all afraid of terrorism and violence at home, so Bush has taken police off the street, put assault weapons on the street, and put more potheads in jail than violent criminals. On the bright side, we did dismiss some of our talented Arabic linguists in military intelligence because they were gay.
Bush wants to put our Social Security on a roulette wheel called “Wall Street” and prefers Drug Company profits over Medicare-negotiated or Canadian-imported medicines for our elderly and ill citizens. Bush champions a federal amendment to deny civil rights to our gay taxpaying citizens, an amendment he knows has no chance of passing, to rally his homophobic base to the polls to vote against the guy who dared point out that the vice president’s proudly-out gay daughter is, well, gay. Bush is just itching for the next few Supreme Court retirements so he can restrict the reproductive rights of our female citizens. On the bright side, Bush has been very supportive of our no-taxpaying top-one-percent corporate white male citizens.
However, on the other side you have John F. Kerry, a rich kid who went to Yale, volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam, won five medals and was decorated for valor. Kerry led peace activism that helped end that war. Kerry became a successful prosecutor and lieutenant governor. Kerry served four terms in the US Senate, where he helped re-establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam and fought along with John McCain to bring our POW’s and MIA’s home. Kerry broke with liberals in Congress to support a balanced budget and investigated the government’s criminal involvement in the Iran/Contra affair. Kerry voted against raising taxes far many more times than he voted for it, and supported only the reductions in military spending and intelligence that were asked for by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.
I can see how the choice would be difficult. After all, they are both rich white guys who went to Yale. How will you ever make up your mind? Well, gosh, you two ambivalent airheads, if they’re both so alike that voting for either makes no difference, why not just pick the taller of the two? He’d be up higher so he could spot the terrorists easier.
Then there’s the two of you dithering dimwits who’ve been convinced that John Kerry may be the more dangerous of the two choices. Karl Rove’s slick marketing machine has played upon your fears like a gold-toothed Mafioso convincing you to pay protection money. “Hey, paisan, that’s a mighty nice lookin’ country ya got there. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it. Like maybe if it – hypothetically – got attacked by a pack of wolves. You know, hypothetically. So, who youse gonna vote for, Bush, right? Right…”
Somehow you believe that placing our nation’s security in the hands of a decorated combat veteran will magically erase the lessons we’ve learned about global terrorism and put us back in a “pre-9/11” mindset, which is odd, considering that the man with the “pre-9/11” mindset on August 6th, 2001 was George W. Bush, clearing brush on his critterless ranch rather than follow up on Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States. No meetings, no discussions, no plans, no orders, no questions, no requests, no curiosity at all from George. Somehow you believe that firing the fraudulently-elected Cheney puppet – who was on watch when terrorists attacked us with airplanes and anthrax – will somehow put us in greater danger of the next attack.
Somehow the party that champions character, integrity, and military service has you believing that the dry-drunk, lying, Guard-deserter who cooked up this failed war might be the better choice for Commander-in-Chief than the hard-working, intelligent, war hero who fought in the last failed war. Thanks to a compliant facile Conservative Media and the incredible marketing power of Flip-Flop chants and Swift Boat smears, you’ve quenched your limited intellectual thirst on Karl Rove Kool-Aid.
Somehow you’re ambivalent between the guy who speaks fluent French as a second language versus the guy who barely speaks broken English as his first language. Bah! We hate the French! – those Revolutionary War and 1812 War allies so instrumental in creating our liberty and helping kick Britain’s ass long enough for us to get on our feet. Bad French! They’re smelly, snooty, and they gave us that lousy Statue of Liberty that keeps inviting in all the poor huddled masses. Stupid French!
Well, for you two irresolute ignoramuses who are so impressed by clever sound bites given to crowds of hand-picked loyalty-oath-signing supporters, so dazzled by photo ops in bulge-enhancing uniforms during flashy landings on aircraft carriers, but so indifferent to such trivial concepts of issues, records, and facts; for you two I offer this helpful suggestion: pick the ticket with the young, good-looking vice presidential candidate. His face will be more pleasant to see on the television for the next four years. Also, perhaps Senator Leahy can go back to work without being sworn at.
Finally, there’s the last one of you undetermined voters. Ironically, you actually have made a decision; you’ve decided to not vote at all. You don’t think you make any difference or you’re just too damn lazy to care. September 11th, a full-blown war, thousands of deaths, billions of dollars, none of it is enough to make it worth your while. The struggle and death of women, minorities, youth, and our military to earn and protect your right to form your own government mean nothing to you. The evidence that the people behind George W. Bush worked in 2000 and are working now to deny the voting rights of thousands of us who do care merits only a shrug of your shoulders.
If Bush wins and is forced to reinstate the military draft, your name should be placed at the top of the list. What, you say Bush said there won’t be a draft? Well, he said Saddam had WMD’s, we know where they are, he was restarting his nu-cu-lar program, he bought yellowcake uranium from Niger, he had ties to al Qaeda, we’d be greeted as liberators, the Iraqis could pay for their own liberation, and Mission Accomplished. You might want to think twice about the promises Bush makes.
Soon enough we’ll have our election (and missing votes and voting machine frauds and recounts and lawsuits) and you seven undecided swing-state voters can go back to not mattering much anymore. If you’re still undecided on November 2nd, do me a favor. Just flip a coin. It doesn’t matter anyway, right? Heads you vote for John Kerry, tails you vote against George Bush. Simple, huh?
