The Billiken's Bluff

Politics frustrates me. I hate taking time out of my BUSY work schedule to post on it. But as much as I would like to, I can't ignore it. Every morning on the Subway I see the cover of the NY Post and I want to tear it to shreads. I am aware that it is a Right Wing tabloid, yellow journalistic, piece of pulp paper, but it irks me nonetheless. Everyone on the F train seems to read it. Let's review a sampling of the front covers of the Post from the past week...



There is a pattern developing-

Cover 1. Reagan's Funeral- George W. Bush gets credit for consoling the grieving Nancy Reagan.

Cover 2. Again the Post lauds George W. for putting aside partisan differences and welcoming Bill and Hillary into the White House for the Clintons' portrait unveilling. Truly unsurpassed gallantry!

Cover 3. Clinton comes out with his memoirs and the Post runs with it. Focusing attention on a past Democratic President, a passe scandal (Monicagate), instead of on the upcoming presidential election.

I realize that the Post isn't the only news outlet focusing on these three stories, but it is the way that they frame them that makes me want to spill my coffee in the laps of my fellow communters who are reading this drivel.

Also...

-Bush Jr. is considering using Reagan in his TV campaign ads.

-The 80-yr-old Bush Sr. is skydiving out of airplanes, and making headlines.

It's a fine ol' time for the GOP. Of course the big loser in all of this is John Kerry. For the past 10 days, no one has so much as mentioned his name, or that he is still, in fact, running for president. If I turned on the TV this past week, or glanced at a newspaper I would swear that Clinton was running for a third term in office. John Kerry has been turned into a veritable invisible man.



Kerry also deserves some of the blame for fading quietly into the night. He is not charismatic, and has not taken a firm stance on any issue (and even when he tries take a stance his detractors claim that he is flip-flopping).

I was planning on making this post brief. I have things I should be getting done, but all of this just aggravates me so much. I really wish these issues weren't so important because I would much rather focus on Summertime BBQs and Vodka Tonics.

What the Democratic party really needs is an issue that ignites all those dormant voters (particularly the youth vote). And there is only one issue that will bring the droves of 18-25 yr-olds out to the polling booths. It isn't 9/11, The War on Terror, Hussien, Bin Laden, Abu Ghraib, Global Warming, or The Unemployment Rate.

The one issue that would defeat Bush is The Draft. US troops are spread thin, and there is mummering about the need, the possibility, of reinstituting the dreaded draft. Remember when you signed up for you Driver's License? Well you also signed up for the draft. Sure you thought the US would never actually need to reinstitute the draft. You thought it was a formality. You, who are in your early 20s and grew up in the ONLY superpower left in the world, probably thought (if you gave it any thought at all) that there could be no forseeable reason, at least in the next few decades, that would the US would need to reinstitute the draft. Well if Bush and Friends, do in fact bring back the draft, the Democrats will finally have an issue to rally around.

Speaking of invisible men, where has N. Dot been? The current news begs for an N. Dot analysis and yet he is M.I.A. in Beantown.