Come on, People, I'm as bummed as the next guy, but threatening to leave the country if Bush is elected? Face it, Bush isn't evil; he's just mediocre. And maybe a vacuum of leadership is exactly what America needs in times of peace and prosperity.
Besides, four years will go by pretty fast and you can bet there won't be a whole lot of "Re-Elect Bush" signs dotting the landscape in 2004. In fact, if you ask Bush what the W stands for in his name, he'll tell you it means "Won-Term President."
And yes, I do plan on doing dumb jokes for the next four years. I don't expect every president to be smarter than I am, but it would be nice if they were at least smarter than that bimbo who does the weather reports on the NFL pre-game shows.
But even then, it doesn't matter how stupid he is, as long as he surrounds himself with smart people and has enough sense to listen to them when they talk. I'm especially impressed with Condoleezza Rice, who should end up as his National Security Advisor. For example, it's probably not that big a deal that Bush has never heard of the island of Tutuila, because I'm almost certain that Rice has. Well, actually maybe it is sort of a big deal, since Tutuila is part of the United States. But I'm sure Rice will explain that to him and maybe even point it out on a map.
TV PUNDITS ARE all claiming that the election mess will revitalize the Democrats and fuel their drive to retake both houses of Congress in 2002. One went so far as to predict a jihad against Jeb Bush in Florida.
Usually I take these things with a grain of salt, but I have to agree on this one. Why, here in Arizona, Democrats are so fired up, they're even thinking about finding a candidate to run for U.S. Senate next time.
WITH THE HELP of the Freedom of Information Act, I give it six months, tops, before we find out that Al Gore actually won the Florida vote.
RUMOR HAS IT that President Clinton is considering pardoning Leonard Peltier, a Sioux who was convicted of killing two FBI agents in a shootout back in 1975. Critics claim that after two co-defendants were acquitted in a separate trial, the FBI fabricated evidence against Peltier. (For a chilling account of the episode, its preface and its aftermath, I highly recommend Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.)
It's sad that those two men died, but the simple fact is that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. The FBI, naturally, is lobbying hard against the pardon. They've even come up with a dossier claiming that Peltier was responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center and the fire at Waco.
The FBI probably wants you to think that the fact that he was locked up in a maximum-security prison when those things happened only goes to show just how dangerous Peltier really is.
AS THE HORRIBLY inept fumblings of the courts brought a whimpering end to the presidential election, so too ended the run of what may well be the worst radio show I've ever heard in my life. And before you ask: Yes, I have heard Bill Bowler on Sunday nights on KTKT.
KNST (790-AM) had been running something called History on Hold weeknights from the day after the election until last Wednesday night. It may well have been The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer of radio--so bad, it defies description. Hosted by Steve and Dave Mason, it was an almost R-rated lovefest for George Bush.
I don't mind hosts who have a political slant and let us know about it, but this was embarrassing. It was as though the two guys were there in the studio, each one holding up a poster of Bush with one hand.
And their callers! You know how the promos for Mike Rapp in the morning tout, "Your question helps make your neighbors smarter?" Well, the callers to these guys also did Tucson a service. It helped qualify us for special federal funds that go to communities that have a high concentration of idiots.
I actually came up with reasons to be running errands in the evening so I could drive around and listen to these morons. My favorite caller of all was a guy who coined a new phrase. He said that while Gore had won the popular vote in America, that claim was actually (in his words) "a shaded lie," because if you simply took away the totals from New York City, Bush would have won the popular vote.
You freakin' dolt! First of all, what the heck is a "shaded lie"? Is that just truth that you don't like? And along your lines of thinking, how about taking away the votes from Texas, and then Gore wins in a landslide?! And as this imbecile is blathering away, the two hosts chortle and say, "Yeah, we've been wanting to get rid of New York City for a long time. Too many liberals. Huh-huh!"
Then some other guy calls in and claims that two million absentee ballots secretly went uncounted in California and since we all know that absentee ballots are Republican, Bush would have won that state, too. The only thing there are two million of in California that are uncounted are Mexican nationals living in Los Angeles.
And they tend to vote PAN.
