Andrew's Wandering Mind

10476.9

Hmm.. still pondering the outcome of this second presidential debate. An ABC News poll has it at a virtual tie, Kerry over Bush 44%-41%, with the acknowledgement that the polled group was 38% Democrats and 35% Republicans.

Here's a funny bit:
Kerry alluded to Bush's interesting definition of a small business owner, 900,000 of which, under this definition, would have higher taxes under a Kerry presidency. Bush reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise, on his 2001 federal income tax returns. Bush pulled a Reaganesque "I don't remember that" and managed to pull some humor out of it:

BUSH: I own a timber company?

(LAUGHTER)

That's news to me.

(LAUGHTER)

Need some wood?

Another fun quote from tonight included Bush's "I'm trying to decipher that" in reponse to Kerry's carefully worded response to a question about using taxpayers' dollars for abortions:

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

The fact that Bush doesn't understand not legislating from "an article of faith" is one of several reasons I don't want him in the White House any longer than January 20th.

Do people who disagree with war get to make sure their money doesn't build America's nuclear weapons? Do racists have the option to redirect their tax dollars away from affirmative-action programs? Can vegetarians request that their property taxes don't put hamburgers on schoolkids' plates? No. The way it works is that we send in the money and we trust (I know, scary thought) the government and a zillion agencies to allocate the funds in ways that are generally considered necessary or useful by a sufficient number of us who've sent representatives to Washington, Pierre, Tallahassee, Salem and so on to carry out priorities and responsibilities. We don't always agree of course, so we write letters and call our congresspeople, and if enough of us disagree with their choices, we elect someone else, or in a few cases, some jump into the campaign fray themselves.

Cheers.