The Smear Response

Like many, I've been angered that the extreme wing of the GOP has been allowed to smear Kerry's service (ironic considering Bush barely served at all) and define all debates. The media picks up their points like loyal lapdogs and runs with them as if they are established truth.

But to be fair, I'd also expect the American public - not delegates, not partisan hacks - to be smarter, to see through the veneer. We have to pay attention to some of these stories and less attention to Nick and Jessica, Anna Nicole's weight loss, and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant.

In some respects, it's very difficult this year - of all other years - to imagine that someone is reaching a point less than two months from the election undecided. What more proof do you need about who's headed in the wrong direction?

Under Bush, the US is bankrupting fast. If your wallet is still OK, that's an anamoly. Schools are in crisis, the military is overtaxed, security is a shill, and we might just as well all be working at Mickey D's with benefits and retirement accounts and overtime protection disappearing right and left.

Will Kerry be our saviour? Hell, probably not. But he will reverse some of the most devastating of Bush's all-out-plunder policies. He can't do it alone, however; we need to get rid of people like Denny Hastert, Tom DeLay, Rick Sanctimonious, and Bill (here kitty, kitty) Frist who have turned Capitol Hill into a staging platform for the president's disastrous policies. We need Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Norton, and Chao GONE (prosecution for crimes committed for them would be nice, too).

We've repeated civil liberties everywhere, and we're no more safe. Yes, eighty-year-old women have been removed from flights and chained to their walkers in holding cells because of their presence at protests, but Osama could fly into any airport right now and drive off in his rental car.

If one thing should be obvious now, it's that WE NEED CHANGE.

Mr. Bush is right there telling us he not only won't change, won't reconsider any of his decisions, he wants to continue his scorched earth policy that will result in more global hatred of us, more jobs that can't feed our families, and more policies that undermine sacred public institutions such as schools.

That's a hint, people. A hint with the blunt end of a splitting maul.