Reality has hit. Hard.

I wanted to say good-bye to everyone who has been so kind to me here, and to all the visitors who, I hope, got their money's worth (how could you not? it's free) over the past year both here and at Omnium before I vanish into the ether from whence I came.

The fact is that I have been struggling along on part-time work since June, rarely more than two days a week, and it doesn't look like the work is coming back any time soon. Three or four times in the last year and a couple this summer I have been in the same spot, but something always happened to pull me out--a couple of extra days' work, somebody buying something I was selling, my vacation pay--and as long as I had hope I hung in there. But this time it's different.

Barring a minor miracle, the phone company is going to shut off my service sometime this week, maybe tomorrow. I have nothing left to sell and no one left to borrow money from. I was hoping for just two extra days of work in the last two weeks and I could have staved this off but it wasn't there. Rumors of lay-offs are flying around, and it would hardly be surprising at this point. We've lost two huge accounts since June to companies in the South with lower labor costs and apparently haven't been able to replace them. Maybe it will get better, maybe it won't. I've tried to find other work but there isn't much for a 50+-year-old man without a college degree. Businesses aren't coming into this area, they're leaving--for the South, Indonesia, Borneo for all I know. It's an old story now. I'm not the first one this has happened to and god knows, with W back in charge, I won't be the last.

I hope you learned something now and again--I learned tons from you--and that you usually enjoyed whatever time you spent here.

To the friends I made here--Peter and Seattle and briank and eagle2 and Kathy and eRobin and Nick and Eric and all the rest of you--I'm going to miss you like hell. Hopefully this will be temporary, a few months away while I re-group. I hope so, but you never know--there's a Bush in the White House and I always seem to be scratching to survive whenever that happens. In any case, I didn't want to just disappear without telling you what you've meant to me.

I felt for years as if I was a lonelier and lonelier voice shouting into the wind. I watched the union workers I grew up with go for Nixon and Reagan; I saw my country making a hard right that it seemed everybody I knew either ignored or dismissed as unimportant; I watched people who had been hippies and counter-culturists and peaceniks and fighters against corporate power over democracy turn into their exact opposites: suits and investors, going for the gold the first time it winked at them. I watched most of my generation turn its back on everything it said it believed, and heard it stop talking about peace and justice and start talking incessantly about stock portfolios and earnings indexes. We had changed the world--we thought--only to run back to the safety of the very world we said we wanted to leave behind.

It wasn't until I got online that I discovered that not everyone had abandoned their beliefs to beef up their bank accounts. That's not fair, I suppose, but I have met people here who manage to make a living without turning their backs on those who can't, without swallowing the corporate line like a happy-pill. People who still talk about peace and justice as if they're important, still fight for something beyond themselves and their immediate families, so I know that all the excuses I heard over the years for why it couldn't be done were bullshit.

I came online angry and cynical, and I'd be lying if I said I was leaving any other way. I'm still angry, still cynical, still snorting and pawing at the ground. But there is a difference: I came online with little hope that anything would change. I leave it, thanks especially to Kath and Rob, with some hope that the spirit I thought was dead is still alive, still breathing, still chipping away at that brick wall. Hope is a gift, and you have all given me some of that. I may remain a dour old fart, a black-hearted Scot with a perpetual cloud over his head and an evil eye, but I also have the gift of a small window opened where the sun never used to shine, and there's a little more light and a fresh breeze coming through it that wasn't there before. For that gift, I thank you. I'll try not to spend it all in one place.

As my parting gift--unfortunately, it's all I have--I've completely redesigned The Annex. Now called Reality Check, it looks better, it's easier to navigate, and only the stuff that's still relevant is included. It isn't done, of course, but I'll be adding new stuff right up to the time I can't any more. I hope you find it useful and/or informative. I only wish it could be more.

This is my last word about this. I'll post as usual until the line goes down. Good luck in the trying, testing days ahead, and remember: if a cynical, embittered old man thinks there's still reason to hope, then there must be. We're always the last to believe, and we always demand proof. Look around you. The proof is here.

Now here's an idea--Howard Dean replacing Terry McAuliffe as head of the DNC.

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean is considering a bid to become chairman of the national Democratic Party.

"He told me he was thinking about it," Steve Grossman, himself a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday. Grossman was a Dean backer during the former Vermont governor's failed presidential bid.

Dean was traveling Monday in New York and unavailable for comment. His spokeswoman, Laura Gross, said "it was far too early to be speculating on that."

The roughly 240 members of the DNC will elect a new chair early next year. Several names are being mentioned, including former Clinton aide Harold Ickes; Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign; and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.

Grossman said it is not too soon for Democrats to focus on their future leadership.

Grossman said that if Dean were to run for DNC chair, he would need to pledge that he would serve the full four-year term, thus ruling out a presidential bid in 2008.

High price to pay, but who better to break the stanglehold of the DLC? And that's going to be critical for '08, assuming there's an election.

Ooo, Ive got goosebumps.

Inspired by Supersize Me!, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein tried an experiment: he stopped reading left-wing newspapers and listening to traitorous liberal network NPR and watching the destructive secular-humanist programming on PBS and devoted himself entirely to Fox for one week--election week. He discovers in the process a number of things he didn't know, like about Kerry, like for instance that he had 'aligned' his positions with France and China; that he lives in a posh neighborhood inside another posh neighborhood; and some other things non-Kerry-related, like for instance that all the female reporters on Fox are blonde.

Monday, Nov. 1, election eve:

8: 15 a.m. My doctor says I'm in fantastic shape. My blood pressure is 111/64. My cholesterol is 108. My glucose level is 77. He checks my testosterone level. The normal range is 240 to 830. I'm a tad low, but pretty good for a liberal. My doctor chuckles darkly: "Let's see what happens to that number after a few straight days of 'Hannity and Colmes.' "

9:09 a.m. It's early, but today's Fox News theme is clear: pump up Bush, dump on Kerry. News anchor David Asman grills Democratic party strategist Tad Devine on why "we continue to hear from Kerry the stuff about Tora Bora and how we allowed Osama bin Laden to get away and yet he's on record when that took place saying he wouldn't do anything different from what George W. Bush did." When Devine disputes that, Asman jumps in: "He didn't say that in December 2001 ... "

Devine: "Yes he did."

Asman: "No he didn't. I can quote him."

Devine: "You can pull out part of what he said ... "

Asman: (waving papers in the air) "I'm looking at the whole transcript!"

10:04 a.m. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans appears, offering a tribute to guess who: "I've known the president for 39 years and I can tell you this is a man that has a big heart and a great mind who wakes up every morning thinking about you."

10:49 a.m. A Fox News update from Martha MacCallum. I make a note: Every female Fox News reporter I've seen so far is a blond. Coincidence or conspiracy?

6:07 p.m. Sean Hannity asks presidential brother Jeb Bush what might possibly be the easiest question he's gotten in 15 years: "We now have discovered the Democrats were out polling the position for John Kerry on Bin Laden," says Hannity. "What are your thoughts?"

6:59 p.m. Molly Henneberg reports from the battleground state of Ohio. (If you're keeping score — another blond.)

7:26 p.m. A catfight breaks out between political analysts Susan Estrich and the very conservative (and very blond) Laura Ingraham. Ingraham says that when people go to vote they'll realize "if they support Kerry, they're aligning themselves with the people of France ... and China ... and you heard Osama bin Laden try to interject himself...."

Estrich: "I think what Laura is doing now is really destructive. People are sick of this kind of garbage...." I think it is time to check my blood pressure.

A small and probably temporary victory on Gitmo came about yesterday when a District Court judge called a halt to the trials on account of rain because they were un-Constitutional. Can't see why a little thing like that ought to get in the way of prosecuting bin Laden's limo driver as a terrorist, but Judge James Robertson did. Spoil-sport.

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 - A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals.

The ruling by Judge James Robertson of United States District Court in Washington brought an abrupt halt to the trial here of one detainee, one of hundreds being held at Guantánamo as enemy combatants. It threw into doubt the future of the first set of United States military commission trials since the end of World War II as well as other legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with suspected terrorists.

The administration reacted quickly, saying it would seek an emergency stay and a quick appeal.

Judge Robertson ruled against the government in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan who is facing terrorism charges. Mr. Hamdan's lawyers had asked the court to declare the military commission process fatally flawed.

This ruling would be what you might call 'belaboring the obvious' in any democracy in the civilized world. Not in the First Empire, though. The Emperor is reportedly furious that he has been denied his pound of flesh, and Department of Injustice Factotum Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's own, personal Ari Fleischer, responded by declaring the Constitution void during the emergency represented by the fact that bin Laden has a car and--worse--somebody to drive it for him.

Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement, "The process struck down by the district court today was carefully crafted to protect America from terrorists while affording those charged with violations of the laws of war with fair process, and the department will make every effort to have this process restored through appeal."

Mr. Corallo said, "By conferring protected legal status under the Geneva Conventions on members of Al Qaeda, the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war."

Bur Judge Robertson replied that Factotum Corallo was missing the point.

In the 45-page ruling, the judge said the administration had ignored a basic provision of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties signed by the United States that form the basic elements of the laws governing the conduct of war.

The conventions oblige the United States to treat Mr. Hamdan as a prisoner of war, the judge said , unless he goes before a special tribunal described in Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention that determines he is not. A P.O.W. is entitled to a court-martial if there are accusations of war crimes but may not be tried before a military commission.

The United States military did not conduct Article 5 tribunals at the end of the Afghanistan war, saying they were unnecessary. Government lawyers argued that the president had already used his authority to deem members of Al Qaeda unlawful combatants who would be deprived of P.O.W. status.

But Judge Robertson, who was nominated to be on the court by President Bill Clinton, said that that was not enough. "The president is not a panel," he wrote. "The law of war includes the Third Geneva Convention, which requires trial by court-martial as long as Hamdan's P.O.W. status is in doubt."

In other words, the Emperor's unilateral dictum wasn't legal. His High-and-Mightiness had ignored a treaty signed by one of his predecessors in Ancient Times. Not to worry, though. The Supreme Court Patsies will doubtless once more throw their previous passionate beliefs out the window in order to bow to the Emperor's latest tantrum edict, and we will soon again be safe from predatory chaffeurs with lead feet.

All Hail the Mighty Emperor Bush I!

Having lost the first round of their attempt to inject creationism into the school science curriculum in place of evolution, the Xtian right next demanded that the Cobb County, Georgia, School Board put disclaimers on all the biology books that described evolution as a 'theory' and encouraged students to look elsewhere for answers. That effort has now been challenged. Six parents, with the help of the ACLU, are taking the School Board to court to force the removal of the disclaimers.

Cobb County schools needed new biology books.

The textbook selection committee chose books recommended by the state. The books included concepts about evolution, a widely accepted scientific theory. The committee, working in March 2002, told the school board to buy nearly $8 million worth.

Enter Marjorie Rogers, a parent for whom evolution is a theory that doesn't fly.

Her 2,300-signature petition decrying "Darwinism, unchallenged" prompted the school system to put evolution disclaimers on the inside front cover of the science books used in middle and high schools. And that, in turn, prompted another group of parents to file a federal lawsuit with potentially national implications.

Arguments start Monday before U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper in Atlanta in a case that could stir comparisons to the 1925 trial in Dayton, Tenn., when John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution.

The trial is expected to raise these questions:

• Is Intelligent Design, a leading alternate theory espoused by many opponents of evolution, religious? Intelligent Design holds that the variety of life on Earth results from a purposeful design rather than random mutation and that a higher intelligence guides the process.

• And, if the theory is found to be religious, do Cobb's disclaimers, which don't mention religion or Intelligent Design by name, violate the separation between church and state?

Six parents have sued the Cobb school system over the disclaimers, which read, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Filed in August 2002, the parents' lawsuit is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. It contends that the placement of the disclaimers restricts the teaching of evolution, promotes and requires the teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design and discriminates against particular religions.

The school system, Georgia's second-largest with more than 102,000 students, contends the disclaimers in science books do nothing more than promote "respectful discourse that is going to naturally arise," said system attorney Linwood Gunn.

Some people don't want the system to "teach evolution as dogma or force people to choose between evolution and dogma," Gunn said.

Gunn's attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed were turned down by Cooper in a series of rulings this year.

They will never quit, these people. They want their religion taught as 'science' and even the courts can't stop them. Like all conservatives who think changing the image of a fact changes the fact itself, they think designating it 'Intelligent Design' somehow dodges the separation of church and state rules--if you don't use the word 'god' or the word 'religion' in describing it, then it isn't religious.

I don't think Judge Cooper is going to buy that specious line of reasoning, so look for him to be attacked the next time he's up for election. They'll call him an 'activist judge' and claim he's 'taking the law into his own hands' and 'twisting the Constitution' in order to illegally remove Xtians' right to worship as they please. See, if society doesn't bow to their beliefs, then society is preventing them from believing. It's an ugly argument only a bigot could love, but it's all theirs.

The pigs are already lining up at the Admin trough:

WASHINGTON — Lobbyists for the nation's leading business groups have been toasting the success of what they describe as an unprecedented effort this year to help elect President Bush and Republican congressional candidates. Now they plan to collect on that investment.

"With his victory and better numbers in the Senate and the House, we hope we would get to some things we believe are long overdue," said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors and a leader of this year's effort to mobilize the business community behind the Bush candidacy.

Business was generally pleased with the first four years under Bush, but Tuesday's victory now brings within grasp some of the things it was unable to secure in his first term.

The list, according to interviews with lobbyists and trade associations, includes making tax cuts for capital gains and dividends permanent, limiting liability lawsuits, changing bankruptcy laws and opening previously restricted land in Alaska and elsewhere for energy exploration.

Business groups also count on more narrow shifts, such as changing health insurance rules in a way that benefits some of the GOP's most ardent allies, easing corporate government reform measures at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and making specific adjustments to the tax code.

Assembling interest group wish lists and agendas is a postelection rite in Washington, a modern-day spoils system in action. For businesses, spending time and money on a campaign is a practical and tactical decision, literally an investment.

And so it begins. The Boys have come to collect.

I argued recently, both here and at RANDOM THOUGHTS, that ignorance was a huge part of why Bush won. Bob Herbert makes the care far better than I could.

The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated.

Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

I haven't heard any of the postelection commentators talk about ignorance and its effect on the outcome. It's all values, all the time. Traumatized Democrats are wringing their hands and trying to figure out how to appeal to voters who have arrogantly claimed the moral high ground and can't stop babbling about their self-proclaimed superiority. Potential candidates are boning up on new prayers and purchasing time-shares in front-row-center pews.

A more practical approach might be for Democrats to add teach-ins to their outreach efforts. Anything that shrinks the ranks of the clueless would be helpful.

It hasn't taken the greedy bastards in the Bush Admin long to plot out their next move to destroy the Democrats and turn America into a one-party state. In fact, their earliest initiative is a two-fer: it sells off the air and water to Bush's corporate cronies and then uses a pretense of protecting it to attack heavily Democratic states. Only.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - With the elections over, Congress and the Bush administration are moving ahead with ambitious environmental agendas that include revamping signature laws on air pollution and endangered species and reviving a moribund energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration.

In addition, the administration intends to accelerate conservation efforts by distributing billions of dollars to private landowners for the preservation of wetlands and wildlife habitats. The White House also plans to announce next month a new effort to clean up the Great Lakes.

Here's the prediction a child could make after four years of Bushian bait-and-switch:

• Everything in the first graf will happen--with teeth. The pollution laws will be weakened if not revoked, the endangered species act will be disemboweled, and the energy bill will open vast tracts of forest, wild places, and National Parks to oil and gas exploration which the corporations that take out the leases will pay peanuts for. We, the people, will, as usual with the Pubs, get nothing from the theft of our resources to line their pockets.



• Everything in the second graf will happen, too, but there won't be any money attached to the bill and the expense of this unfunded Federal mandate will be dumped in the laps of the Democratic states that surround the Great Lakes, states Junior lost in the election.

The purpose is easy to understand once you know how they think: they reap the benefits of seeming to support the environment without putting so much as a nickel of their own where their mouths are; they put enormous pressure on the enemy to come up with $$Billions$$ to meet the demands of the law at a time when the bankrupt economy they created isn't generating enough tax revenue to keep schools open; and when the states won't or can't allocate the money, they attack the Democratic party apparatus in those states as 'anti-environmental' and blame every single environmental problem on them from that day forward. Given how well similar tactics worked in the first term--look at how far the NCLB has gone toward turning our public schools from learning centers into testing centers starved of all money that might have gone toward any other purpose--they have every right to expect it to work again. And it probably will.

The point is not to clean up anything. The point is to undercut the hold of the Dems in an area they own--protecting the environment--and begin the process of lies, innuendo, vicious attacks, and unprincipled manipulation that will convince people in those states that the Dems are the enemy, all talk and no substance. To prove it, they will block every Democratic attempt to pass environmentally sensitive laws and then scream loudly about how 'inept' and 'incompetent' they are. They will attach the standard NewSpeak terms to bills they do pass and claim credit for 'saving our environment' when what the bills actually do is sell more of it off. Gullible dupes like 'Sad American' will then swallow this blatant lie whole and blame the Democrats for destroying their 'quality of life'.

This is the kind of shit we can expect them to pull for the next four years--and afterwards, if they can come up with an excuse to suspend the next election that the 'Sad Americans' in this country will accept. It is not an accident that their first target is the Great Lakes, an area with which they were totally unconcerned the whole first term. This is nothing less than their announcement that they're planning to use their supposed 'mandate' and the power it gives them to force the whole map into the red.

More and more I am leaning toward this kind of thinking:

Let's get this straight as quickly as possible: These guys have no intention of letting go of power. They will do whatever they have to do to keep it. They stole the last election in Florida, they stole this one in Ohio and New Mexico. They will steal the next one if they have to, wherever they have to, and the next and the next. They will use their power to do this, and they won't apologize. The days of free and fair elections are over. They will win bigger with every theft, and claim a 'mandate' that demands they continue the policies so friendly to them and antithetical to the rest of us. They will use the 200 years we have built up learning to trust election results against us, and they won't apologize for that, either.

We are living in Argentina when the junta was in charge; in Franco's Spain; in Mussolini's Italy. Elections have become frauds designed for no other purpose than to legitimize the people who are stealing them. With control like that, they have no reason to bargain with us, no reason even to listen to differing or dissenting opinions, and they won't. 'Reaching out' is pointless under these conditions. You can't compromise with fascists. You can't bargain with them, reason with them, or appeal to them. They don't feel pity or remorse, and they will never NEVER stop.

The country has changed, maybe forever. The new reality is harsh, Draconian. Any plans for a political future that assume otherwise are so much spitting into the wind. We must understand and accept the new reality as fast as we can. Every day we lose is a day we will never get back.

I'm already familiar with about half the blogs on the PBA, so I figure the best way to do this is to give equal time to both: one week, an old friend like Karlo; the next week, one of the new blogs I didn't know before they joined. This week is Newcomer Week, and my pick for The Alley Awesome Blog Award is Christine at halfgeek.net.

I got hooked on this blog almost immediately. Not only is it one of the best-looking blogs on the roll, but Christine's writing is crisp and no-nonsense, sharp without being snarky, and clean as a $2 whistle. She includes lots of links to back up what she says, and she isn't afraid to dress down the Mighty who may have fallen.

First and foremost, I have not conceded. John Kerry can concede all he damn well wants, but to not count the rest of the votes is a crime worse than any dimpled chad. Even if it's just for "the record" the ballots should all be counted. And fraud claims should be investigated. Is that such a horrible thing to do? Just count the freakin' ballots. That's all I ask. If Kerry still loses both Florida and Ohio, then so be it. I will lick my wounds and move on. But Gore conceded early in 2000. And in the end, Gore would have won. But he gave up too early on America. And America suffered for it. Kerry said he would have fought for us. He said he wasn't going to give up. Even Edwards said last night that no concessions would be made until the final ballot was counted. But what happened between last night and today? Too much spin from the spin-doctors?

I fear for tomorrow. I fear the idea of sending my nephews off to war in a draft. I fear even more deficits and social programs cut from those who really need it most. I fear thousands more dying in Iraq. I fear thousands dying in America. And I fear new justices being decided for the Supreme Court who will tear out the blessed pages of the Constitution. It's a dark day for democracy. And it may get darker.

But the fight in me is not over. I still love the nation that I grew to idealize and respect, my nation, and I'm going to fight for it. Not for Bush. Not for Kerry. Not for Dean or Clark or McCain or even Obama. Not for any politician. But for the people. The people who died trying to make this country better. The people of the present who are currently suffering from injustices. And the people of tomorrow who will suffer for today's actions.

Anybody who can write like that, encapsulate a multitude of ideas in a single cogent graf and then wring the meaning out of it all with a clear statement of passion and belief, is on my list forever. I am therefore proud to present Christine of halfgeek.net with the Alley's

Second 'Awesome Blog of the Week' Award

halfgeek.net

Check her out. She's a hard act to follow.

This is maybe the single most frightening letter I have ever read. It is an 'Open Letter to the Democratic Party' from an obviously intelligent, thoughtful Southern woman who wanted to explain why she just couldn't vote Democratic no matter how badly she wanted to--and she says she did. It's frightening because it makes clear how deeply the GOP's extreme right-wing propaganda has penetrated into a part of the electorate that really ought to know better.

Ordinarily, I would excerpt this letter and talk about the pieces, but this time I'm just going to summarize to save space, so first you need to read the whole thing. Go do that and then come back.

Ready?

The pictures of Iraqi children who've lost arms from the bombs my tax dollars bought make me shed tears, but I recognize that the war was the right thing to do, given the information we had available at the time the decision was made.

She doesn't say what 'information' she's talking about but it's reasonable to infer that she means she believes the Admin spin that they really thought there were WMD's in Iraq and were just as surprised as anyone when they didn't show up. So a) she doesn't know about or doesn't believe the UN inspectors' reports from months before we started the war; b) she doesn't know about or doesn't believe that because of Joe Wilson's fact-finding trip and his conclusions as reported to the Admin, Bush knew damn well the Niger documents were phony; c) she doesn't know about or doesn't believe Clark, Powell, O'Neill, et al, when they say they tried to tell Bush that Iraq wasn't the enemy, that there was no reliable evidence that Hussein had WMD's or even the capability of producing them.

There's a lot more she obviously doesn't know but I stuck with the three that got so much press it would be virtually impossible for an intelligent woman like her not to know about them. Yet if she did know, she ignored all that and swallowed whole the Admin's fairy tales. She took their word for it--astounding for those of us acquainted with the actual facts to imagine anyone taking Bush's word for anything after the incredible numbers of bald-faced lies he's told the last three years, including the two he got caught telling in the debates, but she did. It bothered her, she wasn't sure, but in the end she decided to give him the benefit of a doubt he hadn't even come close to earning. Why? We'll get to that--it may be the scariest part of the letter. Her points:

1. Kerry's stance was too complicated. She didn't get it.

Answer: She's right. It wasn't until late in the campaign that Kerry gave the obvious answer he should have given from the beginning: the truth. He voted for the war because Bush lied to him and to the American people about WMD's he knew damn well didn't exist. He voted against the $87Bil because he had found out since his first vote that the war was a sham. He let Bush's propaganda people turn that into waffling for political gain.

Even so, we have to ask her: How come Bush's waffling doesn't bother you? How come the ever-changing reasons for the invasion--WMD's today, 'Hussein was a bad guy' tomorrow--don't bother you? How did you decide that Kerry's uncertainty was worse than Bush's lies? Oh, that's right--you didn't know they were lies.

2. She thinks a military response is the only acceptable one to 9/11.

Answer: It is a crime and needs to be treated as such. Except for Israel, the whole world knows this and has had great success combatting it from that perspective. Ariel Sharon's insistence on hard-line, tit-for-tat military responses has done nothing to make Israelis safer and everything to make more radicalized enemies for Israel, destabilize Rabin's fragile peace, and turn Israel into a flat-out war zone. Military responses DON'T WORK, particularly when they're aimed at the wrong target.

She apparently doesn't know or doesn't believe that Saddam had NOTHING to do with 9/11, as even Bush was forced to admit. One wonders how she justifies dumping the war in Afghanistan--where the enemy actually was--to pursue the larger, more dangerous invasion of a country where the enemy clearly wasn't. Presumably, she also buys Bush's lies about the connection between AQ and Iraq that they knew wasn't true when they claimed it (Cheney's still claiming it in the teeth of all the evidence to the contrary). She doesn't know that or doesn't believe it or doesn't care. The implication is that she wants her revenge, period, and for a crime that wasn't even perpetrated on her. She's scared ('the terrorists went to our malls', really....) and she wants somebody to tell her he'll take revenge and make the fear go away. Understandable but incredibly naive, not to say childish, coming from a 30-year-old with a brain.

How does she explain that NYC--who were the ones to actually suffer the worst of the attack and responded positively to Bush right after 9/11, the ones who are still at the top of the list for another attack and know it--went overwhelmingly for Kerry? She doesn't. She doesn't even try. This was a personal attack on her as an American and she doesn't care if NYC thinks Kerry could protect it better or that what Bush is doing makes the specter of a second attack more likely rather than less; she doesn't.

Sad American, I hope you're having trouble sleeping nights. YOU are not the one who will be victimized by a second attack should it come, yet you decided you knew better than the people who will suffer it who could protect them, and you made that decision based on lies you didn't bother to examine. You'll forgive the people of New York City if they don't thank you for putting them in greater danger.

3. She's offended by Kerry's war record.

Kerry went when he didn't have to. Bush ducked it when he should have gone. You prefer the Artful Dodger?

I assume that when Poppy ran bragging about his war record, which was at least legitimate, you were angry then, too? Or is it just Democrats who aren't allowed to mention it?

4. She didn't like Kerry talking about 'the rest of the world' because she 'doesn't care'.

Answer: Again, Bush is saying the same thing but you only got pissed at Kerry. Why?

You don't think your militant isolationist, 'Fuck you, world' attitude should worry us? You don't think we have to live on this planet? You don't think it's a better idea to go into a powderkeg like the Middle East with backing than without it?

Nope, because for you this is about revenge. It won't make you safer--in fact, it'll make you less safe, it already has--but it will make you feel better, and that's what's important, isn't it? Far more important than, say, growing up and facing the complicated realities of an unsafe world with no quick and easy answers.

And I doubt your mother would think her advice would apply to your decision to break into a neighbor's house and steal their jewelry because a thief from the next town broke in and stole yours but it's OK because you don't care what the neighbors think. Somehow I don't think that's precisely what she meant by that.

5. She didn't like Kerry's supposed 'demonization' of the rich because she thinks she's going to be one someday.

Answer: So you have accepted the Republican insistence that asking the rich to pay taxes like everybody else is 'demonization'?

Who do you think the 'rich' are? The millionaire down the street? The 'rich' we're talking about are worth $$$TENS OF MILLIONS$$$ and are robbing our Treasury like it was their private piggy bank--we put in, they take out. You read, so read this book. But I warn you--you're not going to like what it says.

So you don't want Kerry to bust your little day-dream of immense wealth because you want one day to grow up and rob the Treasury yourself? Nice. Remind me to put the silverware away if you ever come over.

6. She doesn't care for the 'incessant hatred' directed at Bush this year.

Answer: But you have no problem with the 'incessant hatred' directed at liberals for the past 25 years, do you? Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Savage, Coulter, Buchanan, Norquist, Cheney, Malkin, and thousands of right-wing talk show hosts on radio stations all across the country spewing out vile names and threats of murder directed at liberals is fine, you don't have a problem with that. It only disgusts you when the left has finally had enough and starts fighting back in kind. That makes you sick. How dare they? Only the right is allowed to say things like 'Democrats are the same as Communists' (O'Reilly) and 'Liberals should be put against a wall and shot' (Savage and Hannity) and 'Just being a Democrat proves you're a traitor to America' (Coulter, who wrote a whole book about nothing else), never mind the Freepers who disrupt our meetings and tell us they're going to all go home and get their shotguns to shoot us down like dogs in the street because we're what's wrong with America. That's all perfectly fine and it's been going on your whole life without earning a peep of protest from you. But just Liberals better not goddam do it because it makes you 'queasy'.

Sorry, but your highly selective 'delicate sensibilities' make me queasy. They scare me. You will sit by and allow right-wing kooks to call me every name in the book and threaten my life but then tell me you can't vote for my candidate because I responded to them? And if we don't respond--as we didn't for most of the many years this has been going on--you probably think that proves we're weak and wonder why we don't stand up for ourselves. We must be wimps, and you're certainly not going to vote for a bunch of wimps.

Did you find the 'incessant hatred' directed at Clinton for eight solid years by the same people you just voted for abhorrent as well? I would guess not or presumably you wouldn't have voted for them. AGAIN.

You've set up a nice little, double-standard, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't scenario. Cute. Face it, SA, you're not looking for excuses to vote Democratic, you're looking for excuses NOT to. And you've just announced it. Why should we care what you think when we're going to lose you no matter what we do because you've got a system in place that damns us no matter what road we take?

And you might consider, just for a minute, that maybe we hate Bush because he's trying to kill us, destroy the Constitution, and sell the country to his corporate cronies. I think a record like that has earned a little hatred from people who love America for what it promises in freedom and tolerance for differences, not for what it can put in their pockets. If you don't, well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

7. She doesn't like 'venom' on AirAmerica.

Answer: What people like you keep telling us about Limbaugh et al. Don't listen. AA isn't for you, it's for us, and if you refused to vote Democratic because of it yet voted Republican despite Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and the thousands in that crew, you're a hypocrite. Period. Think about this: AA has been on the air for six months; Limbaugh has been on the air for 15 years. Get it? Or is that too subtle for you?

If you don't want us to treat you like an ignorant cracker, I'll give you the same advice your mother probably did: stop acting--and voting--like one, especially on the basis of flimsy excuses like these. Admit it: you wanted Bush because he appealed to your fear, your emotional need for some kind of revenge, and your wilful ignorance of his actual record--all cracker-traits.

Don't ask me to pretend you won't deserve what you get for your half-assed attempt at citizenship and your willingness to swallow comforting lies like a hungry fish going after a big fat worm because it refuses to acknowledge that huge, sharp hook the worm is wriggling on.

You were duped, conned, tricked by the most sophisticated propaganda apparatus in American history. That's not something I'd be proud of, much less brag about, if I were you. And I don't consider someone as gullible and lazy as you obviously are to be competent enough to offer me or anyone else advice. You listened to a few radio shows that weren't meant for you and didn't like what you heard; you damned us for playing minor versions of the same games the people you voted for have been playing with knives in their hands for years; and as worried as you were, you never quite could manage to make yourself believe that a candidate who approves of torture and 2-year prison terms without charges much less evidence was worse than somebody who thought we ought to consult our allies.

Sounds like a would-be snake-handler to me.

But the worst and most disturbing complaint comes at the very end. After acknowledging deep doubts about many of Bush's policies, for instance--

President Bush's close relationships to people like John Ashcroft scare me. I hate the PATRIOT Act and am fearful of what might be part of PATRIOT II. The two dumbest trial balloons I've heard floated for his second-term agenda are privatizing Social Security and abolishing the income tax. When he says that God chose him to be President during this time of trial, I am embarrassed. I roll my eyes.

--she says this:

President Bush won on values, yes, but not hatred of gays or any other stereotype you have in your head about Bush voters like me.

He won because he has values, clearly defined values, and even though I agree with little of what he believes, at least I know what he believes. At least I know that he really does believe in something. At least I know that he will do what he says he will do.

(emphasis in the original)

'...at least I know what he believes.'

Yikes. So you don't agree with what he believes but you voted for him because you understood what it was?

Great. Have I got candidates for you. You'll never have to guess about their values and beliefs. Crystal clear, they are, so if that's your main criteria you're going to love these guys. Ready?

Hitler, Pinochet, Idi Amin, Stalin, Castro, Franco, Peron, and Mao.

There's nothing like a reactionary autocrat for clarity, you've got to admit. 'Clarity' is the one thing they've got by the carload. Of course, you won't like what they believe but you just said that doesn't matter as much as knowing what it is, and with these guys, you'll never have to suffer doubt on that score.

As long as we're passing out advice? You might want to re-think that particular 'reason'.

Do you maybe, just maybe, see where I'm coming from?

Oh, yeah. You've made yourself quite clear. We'll get your vote when we pander to your illusions and your demand for simple answers to complicated questions even if the answers aren't true, accurate, or even sensible.

Thanks for clearing that up.



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