WARNING: POLITICAL POST

Ok, enough is enough. Apparently I've got a Republican troll who is just determined to harass me. Fine. You've convinced me absolutely. Bush Republicans are so far out there this year that expressing my opinion on politics just isn't worth the effort. Bush Republicans are so into harassing people who disagree with them, that there is no longer any reason to post anything political on this blog.

Here's the story for those who haven't been able to follow thanks to my prompt deletion of abusive comments. I posted a note a few days ago about how I finally got Eric to allow me to put up a Kerry yard sign, after reading about the police abuse in New York during the Republican Convention (reports that have now been confirmed by MANY other sources, do a nice Google search on them and you'll be as horrified as I was). This Republican attack on constitutional freedoms was the last straw.

I got a couple of comments, then a person who apparently was determined to remain anonymous posted a scathing attack on Kerry. I answered the note point by point, then the person posted another scathing attack, this one with a personal insult thrown in. I deleted the note and banned the poster.

A few hours later a person from a different IP but using the exact same phrasing as the first poster posted five comments, each to a different blog entry, that also included a personal insult and a scathing attack on senator Kerry. I deleted them all then posted a comment in the original thread: "I will continue to delete any political comments that have a personal attack in them. I will also continue to delete, and will ban the poster, of any political comments posted on a non-political blog post."

Shortly thereafter the comment thread was bombarded with hate posts. After getting bored with reading about what a horrible person I am, I started deleting anything posted to that thread. I fear I may have deleted a couple of legit comments along with the nasty ones, but I was past caring. A person can only take so much abuse before they get too tired to deal with it. If you posted a legit, non-attack comment to that thread, I apologize. I was a wee bit stressed.

I eventually figured out how to remove the comment thread entirely and did so. It was a hack of a fix, and I don't like it, but I was tired of dealing with anonymous abuse, much of it apparently from the same idiot. You would think that after I banned him the first time he'd take the hint and go find someone else to harass.

Now the same person is posting yet MORE comments, off-topic, to harass me. I'm not sure why this person feels the need to get me to hate him even more, but apparently he's not satisfied with being told to go away. He's also making it sound like I'm deleting some kind of legitimate debate, and pretending to be a different person who "heard" that this was a place where people get banned. Yeah, like people are talking about my blog in a political context. Get real. A civilized person can debate without resorting to personal attacks and lies. This Bush Republican cannot.

He also implied that I'm "forcing" people to listen to my opinions. This is a blog. A PERSONAL weblog. In order to read it, you have to COME TO MY PAGE. This is one reason I like blogs so much. Because the posts are never forced on you. They aren't on a message board where you can't avoid them. They aren't in your e-mail inbox. They are on a website that you have to actively seek out in order to read. The idea that I'm "forcing" my opinion on anybody is ridiculous. If you don't like reading my opinion, DON'T READ MY BLOG. Duh.

Now, on to my opinion:

I've stated many times in the past that I think Bush is the worst president the United States has ever had. I have also stated that I think anyone who votes for Bush this year, knowing what he's done to destroy the United States, is either completely misinformed or so rich they don't have to care. A vote for Bush is a vote against freedom.

Bush had his opportunites. He had the entire freaking world on his side when he went into Afghanistan. All he had to do was finish the job and take out Bin Laden. Instead, he deserted our troops in Afghanistan by putting our resources into a completely unrelated invasion. He resorted to false evidence to build a case against a country that wasn't involved in the terrorist attacks AT ALL, then invaded that country with the entire world against him. And he might have pulled it out if he'd at least done a good job there, but he couldn't even do that much! There was no forward planning whatsoever, and the whole thing has become a horrible shambles. For every good thing happening in Iraq, there are twenty bad things... and the death toll continues to rise. Instead of strengthening the United States, he's made our military dangerously weak by bogging us down in a country we never should have entered in the first place. He sent our troops off to fight imaginary threats to our country when the real threats still loom large, from Bin Laden to Korea.

That alone is enough reason to get rid of him, but he has messed up on every other front as well! He's done absolutely nothing right since getting into office. He's weakened the economy, done his best to destroy public schools, taken away constutitional freedoms in the name of security, sat around in photo ops while the country was being attacked, and taken more vacations than any other sitting president has ever taken in the history of this country. It's simply amazing that anyone can believe he's worth re-electing.

I've also stated more than once that I'm not a big Kerry fan. I do, however, believe that his record is light-years better than Bush's on everything from national defense to economics, and anyone who takes the time to actually look at his record, instead of listening to Rush, will see the truth. The Bush Republican smear machine doesn't actually look at his real voting record, apparently. They just look at bits of bills and ignore any evidence that doesn't support their claims.

I've actually grown to appreciate Kerry's record more thanks to the Republican smear machine. I thought he had a pretty crappy record until the Swift Boat Liars came along and made it clear that Republicans have no respect for the truth this year. If not for their lies, I wouldn't have taken the time to check Kerry's record for myself... something I STRONGLY urge anyone who thinks they know his record because they have listened to the media to do. Don't rely on the media this year. As for me, anything I say will just be taken as Leftist propaganda, and perhaps fairly so. Don't trust someone else to do your work for you. Do it yourself.

I don't have the energy or time to get into a lengthy political debate, especially not this year when it turns nasty so quickly. All it took was one reply from me before the personal attacks started to come out. I'm tired of deleting notes from abusive Republicans. The election isn't for eight weeks, but I'm done with it. If you plan on voting for Bush, don't tell me. It'll make me think much much less of you (if you say "I'm voting for Bush" to me, I'll hear "I'm a complete moron who hates America"). And in the meantime, I have no intention of posting anything directly related to the presidential election itself from this point on.

That's right. Nothing related to Bush or Kerry or any other political party. I reserve the right to continue to complain about voting machines, as I think they are a very serious problem. I also reserve the right to report with relief when I send in my absentee ballot (though I will not be repeating at that point who I am voting for). I reserve the right to complain about the so-called "Patriot Act" and the so-called "No Child Left Behind", but if I do I'll stick with the actual effects of the acts and not the political jokers behind them. I also reserve the right to report news from Iraq that I find interesting, both good and bad. I will attempt to avoid putting such news in a political context, though. I will delete any comments that are political from here on out. You'll note that this entry does not have comments. That's intentional. I don't want to hear from you.

See, I've made up my mind, and my Bush Republican Troll has further convinced me. Nothing anyone can say will change my mind on this matter. I know who I am voting for, and I know why. There is no longer any point to any debate. I suppose I should thank the troll for solidifying my resolve. So thank you, mister troll... and if you don't like my opinion, stop reading my blog. So simple, and yet apparently so hard for trolls to master.

Now, if you want debate, here are some good places to visit: Washington Monthly, Daily Kos, Eschaton, Blah3.com, This Modern World, Talking Points Memo, OxBlog, The Volokh Conspiracy, BuzzMachine, Instapundit, Pacific Views, and Crooked Timber. From those blogs you can find other blogs that are actually political blogs, not a comic book blogger that occasionally mentioned politics because her country has become so utterly polarized. Going to a comic book blog for political debate is like going to an ice cream shop to find diet food. It's possible, but you aren't going to get the best stuff.