To all of you who have contributed this week, a heartfelt thanks. Some of your emails of support have made my week. Your generosity is amazing. A large number of former donors have told me they won’t contribute again, because of my refusal to endorse Bush. Fair enough; it’s a free country, and I am grateful for their help in the past. But I have never written this blog to please readers, or pander to a constituency, or suck up to either party. In fact, one of the reasons I blogged in the first place was to avoid the kind of pressure from editors or publishers or advertizers or readers that most journalists inevitably feel. And in a world where Sean Hannity and Michael Moore rule the airwaves, I’m happy to write a blog supported by people who disagree with me but believe this pioneering blog is worth supporting. Thanks again. You guys are the true liberals, with a small “l”. If you’d still like to contribute, the details are here.
EMAIL OF THE DAY II: First of all, Islamic terrorists need Bush to win re-election so that they can continue the theme of their propaganda campaign: that America, led by an administration that thinks Muslims themselves are infidels, is in a war to the finish against all Muslims. A Kerry victory provides less fodder for this campaign because Kerry would be less hated in the Muslim world, even if his actions were as tough or tougher than Bush’s. The Muslim world has many problems with America, but they hate George W. Bush. They don’t hate Kerry. Thus Bush is the fuel for the Islamist fire.
As far as the writer’s point that “everyone knows what happened to Omar and Saddam”–if he means Mullah Omar, then yes, everyone does know. The man is still free and at large solely because, after locating him and putting him within our sights, the commanding general of Operation Enduring Freedom refused to give the order to take him out. So much for the Bush administration being tough and intimidating.
Let’s get real.”
EMAIL OF THE DAY III: “The Democrats’ policies towards drug companies are every bit as anti-intellectual as the Republicans’ policies on stem cell research.
I was diagnosed with an especially agressive strain of non-Hodgkins lymphoma a few months back. In fact, I was a couple of days away from death by strangulation, as the tumor had constricted my airway to something smaller than a pencil. To compound things, I don’t have insurance (I’m not eligible for insurance through my job for another five months, and I was too short-sighted to get it on my own.).
As I write this, though, I’m cancer-free. Why? Because of the amazing new drugs produced by those “greedy” drug companies, and because those same acquisitive bastards gave me the drugs free of charge. The greedy pricks at my hospital picked up my bills, and one of their rotten nurses came in on her day off to administer my first round of chemo because I needed it so badly.
We don’t know how good we have it in this country, and I’m afraid by the time we figure it out that mob I saw in Boston will have gutted our healthcare system and crippled our drug companies. It makes perfect sense to me that their chosen candidate is a career politician who married money, and his running mate is a selfless white knight who’s made tens of millions of dollars by going after besieged doctors, nearly all of whom have contributed more to mankind than he ever will, and charging his clients 30% of the take.”
EMAIL OF THE DAY IV: “You’re becoming more and more of a shill for the Democrats. Your obsession with prancing down the aisle in a frilly pink dress doesn’t excuse referring to Kerry as a patriot. Please spare us. Maybe patriot means something different in merry old England. I guess Kerry is a patriot … like Guy Fawkes and the dynamiters.” More feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 