Should I have some ice cream or gouge my eyes out with a toothpick? Decisions, decisions.

Mark Morford, once again, BRINGS IT:

Who The Hell Is "Undecided"?
And why do so many election polls leave you angry and stupefied and drunk?

Polls are the genital warts of election year. They are the swarming gnats in your Jell-O salad, the dead escalator in your shopping mall, the sour milk in your coffee.

Because clearly, if you attempt to follow any of them, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls or the American Research Group polls or the Newsweek polls or the ABC News/Washington Post polls or the CBS News/New York Times polls or the Zogby polls, you can only conclude one thing:

These polls are designed solely to mangle your head and confound your synapses and elate you and titillate you and then plunge you into instant despair and then yank you back out at the last second like some sort of "Fear Factor" death-plunge moronism.

Word. I am doing my best to ignore the polls as much as possible. They change every damn day and I just can't figure out where the frell they are finding this people.

Could it be true? Are there simply millions of voters out in this sad and divisive nation who are so gullible, so unsure, so unclear about who they want to vote for that one overblown Vegas-style political convention followed by numerous insidious smear campaigns maligning Kerry's Vietnam heroism could sway them that easily, back and forth and forth and back?

That's what I really don't get. How in the world can you be undecided?!?! These two candidates are so very opposite. You either approve of the way Bush has handled the country or you don't. If someone doesn't do their job, YOU FIRE THEM! You don't give them four more years to figure shit out. If you think he did a good job, you are insane, but fucking vote for him then.

I don't understand people who are all "well, we just don't know what Kerry will do, so we will vote for Bush because we know him." WTF? Can Kerry be any worse? We've already had the worst terrorist attack in history, the economy and environment are both in the tank, we are fighting a losing war and almost every country in the world thinks our leader is a moron.

How could Kerry POSSIBLY do any worse than that? Unless you think he is going to steal nukes himself and attack Kansas, he really can't. Oooh. He might raise taxes! Heaven forbid we do something about the GIANORMOUS defecit. Ooooh. He might not discriminate against people we don't like. Oooooh. He might only go on vacation for 10% of the time he is in office. THE HORROR!!

What's so hard about that decision??

A thousand points of light

NYT: A look at those who died

Look at them. So many of them are just babies. You can't tell me this war was worth the lives of 1,000 people. How can you look at those faces and tell me that their sacrifice was for a noble and just cause? I don't understand.

Fafblog sets me straight

You know, the Power of the Glow might just change my mind and get me to vote for Bush. I like glowy, sparkly things, ya know.

Like so many of the unenlightened, Saletan and Krugman miss the point by overlooking the single - but essential - presidential power George Bush posseses. He posseses the Power of the Glow.

When George Bush stood on a pile of rubble in New York City with a bullhorn, he was not standing up to terrorists; nor was he risking his life. He was Showing strength, if not using or applying or doing anything substantive with it - and by that Show of strength he emitted, from hidden Presidential glands secreted deep within his chest, a powerful radiating Symbolic Force that rippled throughout the world, confronting and striking back at the Symbols of Islamist Terror. It is only there, on the Iconic Plane, that the War on Terror can be won - it is, after all, a war of civilizations and ideologies, not a war of terrorist cells and counter-terrorist intelligence apparatus - and thus it is symbolic actions which matter, not petty, real-world results.

George Bush emitted the same symbolic glow in striking Iraq. No, al Qaeda was not in that country; no, Saddam Hussein possesed neither weapons of mass destruction nor meaningful ties to Osama bin Laden. But by demonstrating that he was willing to go to war somewhere - yes, even to ground the bulk of the armed forces in a nightmarish quagmire rife with religious and ethnic factions clawing at each other for control - George Bush was Showing his Seriousness in the war on terror. He didn't need to show his competence or his ability in fighting terror by actually stabilizing Iraq or pursuing al Qaeda instead; he just needed to Show his Seriousness by starting a war, since war, after all, is a very Serious business done by very Serious men, and making war against Arab Muslims somewhere in the world has therefore Shown Bush's Seriousness to the vast spirit of Symbolic Arab Muslim Terror.

Glow: It's not just JLo's assy perfume anymore.

Yay for ponies!

Get Your War On is en fuego. Another fantastic update. This stuff is so funny, I just have to share my new favorites:

Dick Cheney gone lost his mind

Cheney Warns Against Vote for Kerry

Fuckhead. Last time I checked, 9/11 happened on YOUR watch. I am pretty sure that Kerry won't ignore a memo that says "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," asshole. Oh, hey! Remember Bin Laden? The guy that is actually to blame for all this shit?

Pro-active my ASS! That is just so fucking low, I can't even comprehend the depths that he is willing to sink. What a complete and utter ASSHOLE!!!!

MSNBC needs a theasaurus

I've noticed that MSNBC uses 'rips' a lot, especially describing the Kerry campaign's responses about the Bush administration. I can't decide if that is good or not. I am kind of tired of reading that word, though.

9/7 - Kerry Rips Bush Over Outsourcing

9/5 - Kerry Rips Bush Over Record Medicare Hike

9/2 - Kerry rips Cheney's Vietnam deferments

9/2 - Edwards rips GOP for bashing Kerry

And those are just in the last week. I mean, they use it for both sides, but I wonder why they seem to love that term so much. Just an observation I felt like sharing.

Bounce? Ha! I laugh in the face of the bounce!

My Dad and I share a common love of comics. I believe it started with Calvin & Hobbes. We owened every book of those strips and always seemed to find the same ones funny.

Now that I live far far away, he still likes to share comics he finds amusing. He clips them out and saves them for a week or two, then sends me a nice envelope filled with the funny and a few articles about the Red Wings or Meeeeechigan football. Lately, most of the 'toons have been political, which helps me keep my sense of humor. It's also nice to know my Dad is on the same page as I am politically.

This latest package includes an Opus Returns comic from two Sundays ago. It's worth a look just for Cheney in the hamster suit, yo. He also sent me this Boondocks strip, which I really must share:



Heh. Word. And last, but not least, a funny my father did not provide. Fafblog takes on consumer issues and comes up with one of the most insightful and funny observations about people who plan to vote for Bush that I have read yet:

"Well we agree to disagree," says me. "Like we do whenever we talk about Coke™ versus Poison™."
"It may taste bad an curdle my blood an kill me," says Giblets. "But at least I know where Poison™ stands."