I like the design - good luck, but more importantly I hope that America chooses wisely this time around. Naturally, I hope my own country (Australia) does likewise.

PS. Got to your site via the EverydayMatters route.

Just wanted to say i like it a lot! It carries a message. And of course, i hope no more bloodshed…

Wow… powerful, very good concept. Although I may not share the same sentiments, it is a very well thought-out and executed t-shirt. Kudos!

I think that you will win, indeed. If — when — you do, I hope the shirts will be available on the web?

Interesting concept. I see your point and think it is well executed, athough, I must admit, I will be sick if a hypocrite like John Kerry wins the election. Democrats seem to have quite the history of liars as their candidates…

love this design! very VERY effective. hard to imagine it didn’t win… curious if you’ve ever read “The Sun” magazine? or visited the Budbill website?

Very much liked your design and thought it was the best one in that category! I was also a finalist in the contest (anti-Bush category) and I’m curious to know if you ever received an email announcing the winners? After all the emails they sent before the winners were announced, I kind of expected to get one with the final results! I only found out by visiting the web-site…

C2theMSquared,

If John Kerry, who did not want to go to war but did his duty anyway, is a hypocrite, what does that make someone like Bush, who sat around during Viet Nam, showing up when he felt like it to train on obsolete aircraft (so he’d never need to fly in combat) alongside the other sons of elite Texans, but who now calls up the children of America to go to war in Iraq - a war he wanted? A war that, as far as we can still tell, had very little justification, and certainly not the justification (WMDs) that he claimed, and little if any connection to Al Qaeda (less than, for instance, that with the citizens of Saudi Arabia who financed it so heavily).

Jacob

Jacob,

I am not terribly familiar with Bush’s past, but I believe it to be just that - the past. He was young and probably not mature enough at the time to make the best decision. John Kerry, on the other hand, who intially supported many of Bush’s stances on the war among other things, has now changed his opinions simply to please the public and thus aquire more votes. A man that is willing to give up his integrity just to win an election has no business running a country anyway. Let me provide you with some concrete examples…

Sen. John Kerry, Democratic presidential front-runner, said in 2002, “I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”

In January 2003, Kerry added, “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.”

And if that’s not enough, other Democratic candidates have said similar things…

In 2002, Al Gore said, “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

Also in 2002, Sen. Ted Kennedy said, “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”

Now suddenly, these men are against the war and claim that they have been against the war all along. If you don’t consider that hypocracy, what exactly do you consider hypocracy?

To me, the word democrat is synonymous with the word hypocrite in many cases (not all, but many).

C2theMsquared,

I agree that many democrats accepted Bush’s word on what was in Iraq. These quotes are all from the period following the 9-11 attacks when most Americans, including Democrats, were willing to put aside issues that were important to them to allow the President free reign to combat the terrorist threat.

This, to me, doesn’t make them hypocrites; it makes Bush one, for abusing that trust. While Democrats and others were allowing him that reign, he went after a target that had little to do with terrorism. Not that Saddam didn’t offer a bounty to suicide bombers in Israel, not that Saddam didn’t once have a chemical warfare program (and killed thousands of Iraqis in “tests” while Bush’s father supported him), but Saddam was already a muzzled dog. Al Qaeda, and similar groups, are now bigger than ever, and while it’s true that Saddam was a “brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime,” so are many other third-world leaders. Maybe we should stop them all, but that’s not why we were lead to believe by the administration that we should attack Iraq.

What Bush did with the trust he was given is more telling than what Kerry and others said about giving it to him. Remember that they weren’t signing a declaration of war, but giving Bush discretionary military powers, which he promised would be used only if necessary.

And I do think Bush’s history is important, because it shows that he’s part of a segment of the population that feels it is above the law. He was not a serious young man, nor a serious middle-aged one. He rode into the nomination on his father’s name, and the good feelings people still harbor for Reagan (John McCain is a man of integrity and sound politics who should have had the vote, IMHO), but he never deserved that goodwill, and he’s lost most of what he had, just as he’s frivolously spent the enormous goodwill toward America abroad after 9-11 with his unnecessary war on Iraq, making the whole world more dangerous for Americans.

Jacob

C2TheMSquared,

Interesting. Just on a whim I pasted your text into Google and found this:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37616

Interestingly, you didn’t copy the 1998 quotes from the same article, presumably because you realize that Clinton and Albright were talking about enforcement of the weapons inspections, which we now know succeeded in stopping Saddam’s weapons programs?

I’m disappointed that a GMU professor doesn’t have the same sense.

Jacob

ACTUALLY, I got my information here…

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3569

So, theses 1998 quotes that you speak of aren’t even in that article.

Perhaps you shouldn’t make assumptions. But then I guess you can’t help it…you are a Democrat after all.

As for what you posted about Bush, well all I have to say is this…

While I don’t agree with all of Bush’s policies, I have agreed with many of his decisions thus far. While I also agree that he is not a man gifted at the art of public speaking, I do think he is a man trying to do the best job he can for a country he cares about. Although I’m registered as an independent voter, I would never even consider voting for Kerry simply because I don’t trust him. He is a man well-known for contradicting himself. He says one thing and does another. Or he supports one decision and later opposes it. I just can’t imagine having someone who is so prone to hypocracy as a president. Granted, many people feel Bush has lied about a number of things, specifically the presence of WMDs in Iraq, but there’s no way to prove that there weren’t any WMDs anymore that there is a way to prove that there were WMDs. No, we didn’t find any, but they could have easily been moved. It’s similar to religion. Can God’s existence be proven with concrete fact? No. But it can’t be disproven either. Christians, like myself, have faith in God and believe His teachings. We believe He has a plan for our lives and we trust in that plan. Similarly, we have to have faith in our president and his decisions whether we like him or not. I just can’t imagine having that kind of faith in Kerry when the things he’s lied about to date are trivial. When he’s president, he’ll have too many opportunities to lie about things much more significant that could adversely affect all Americans.

C2theMSquared,

Hmm, you’ll notice that this article is written by the same person on the same day as the one I referenced. Your source is nearly the same as the one I found.

Anyway, I’m not a Democrat, either. I’m an independent voter, just like you, and I’ve never voted for a major party candidate for President, which isn’t exactly something I’m proud of. I believe I’ve allowed myself to be persuaded by each side’s negative advertising about the other, and that’s kept me from choosing the candidate I most agree with from one of the major parties. I won’t make the same mistake again.

So, I guess assumptions are only human. You are, aren’t you? Human, I mean?

I’m not sure I understand your issue of faith; you don’t actually believe Bush is the messiah in question? Certainly he has couched the war on terror in medieval terms, but I don’t think that’s really helped our image in the Arab world, where the crusades are still a bone of contention with the West.

Good speaker or not, dedicated, trying hard or not, the important thing to choose in a president is someone who can juggle the politics, keeping our friends on our side while thwarting our enemies (if not enjoining them to our side), and most importantly, upholding our rights and the spirit and tenets of the Constitution. I mean, I would try hard as President, but I don’t think I’d do a good job. I think I’d manage about a Bush+, on a scale from Nixon to Lincoln.

Yours, Jacob