Open Letter to the Editors (and voters, obviously. That means you.)

Dear Editors,

For all the issues in the elections coming up November 9th, it really comes down to one simple question. Over the past six years, the Republicans have had complete control of our government, and everything they've done has turned out disastrously. Nobody who owns a business would keep an employee on who screwed up everything they tried, why should we? That's really all it comes down to.

It's been six years since 9/11, yet Osama Bin Laden hasn't been captured. President Bush says he "doesn't think about him much." The invasion of Iraq has hardly been "greeted with open arms," was bungled from day one, and we still haven't found any WMDs. There's still a gaping pit in the center of Manhattan. New Orleans is still half-empty and rotting, more than a year after Katrina. The Medicare superscription drug bill is just a confusing mess that's cost more than we were told it would. The budget deficit has exploded, and all the Republicans have offered are expensive wars and tax cuts most of us don't get any from.

There's any number of other examples. But all of this has been done completely by the Republicans. They have had complete control of the government for the past six years. If this is the best they can do, why on earth would we trust them to do a better job in the future?

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I'm sending this in to my local papers tomorrow, I probably should have done it sooner, but I hadn't managed to get my thoughts in order before. Any comments or suggestions or whatever are welcome, of course. And it's not really all it comes down to, but it's one of the major things.

The Competence Dodge

In many ways, the incompetence of the Bush administration is one of its worst features. But not just in how badly it means they screw things up. It's bad because it gives their supporters an easy excuse to advocate the same stupid things again. "Well, SURE, invading Iraq turned into a huge mess, but that was because the Bush crew was incompetent! Sure, tax cuts for the rich didn't work last time, but they were done wrong!" Etc.

In a lot of cases, the things the Bush administration have done haven't turned out badly just because they were bungled. A lot of their ideas are just plain bad ideas, which can't help but turn out badly. No matter how competently they're executed. But the blatant incompetence of Bush and his cronies give the apologists for bad ideas another excuse to pretend it's not their fault.

Of course, the incompetence isn't really unique to Bush and his crew. It's integral to modern conservativism. Remember Regan's "Government's not the solution, government is the problem," speech? Yeah. When people think the government is the problem, they're not going to have any reason to try and run it well. For starters, because if they ran it well and it worked, it'd completely undermine their claims about government being the problem. And secondly, if they figure government's going to get it wrong, the don't have to care if they do it right, and can just do whatever they think of, no matter how dumb.

On the other hand, I guess it'll be nice for them to have a talking point other than "It was all the liberals' fault!" though I'm sure they'll break that one out too.

Letters

I got a letter today. From Australia. With a wombat Tasmanian Devil (why did I say wombat? I know it's a Tasmanian Devil. I know what they look like and it says so on the stamp. Weird.) stamp. Sweet.

Hair Dye

If I'm to dress as Weird Al for Halloween tomorrow, I should probably dye my hair a little darker. Probably a temporary dye. Anybody have any suggestions or Things Not to Do?