I’d like to reach out to everyone who shares my goals too

The Texas Board of Education is trying to insert anti-gay language into health textbooks (remember: Texas bulk-buys in a way that, say, California doesn’t, which means it exerts tremendous control over textbook production, so Texas decisions affect the books other states wind up buying).

Arianna Huffington is right that Kerry’s pandering to undecided, centrist voters, made him seem wishy-washy and poll-driven, allowing Bush to portray him as weak and indecisive. Part of the problem is that Kerry thought that issues were the most important thing in an election campaign, and his focus on issues (well, a greater focus than Bush’s, anyway) was used against him, portrayed as a failure of character. Bush downplayed the importance of issues, asserting that everything was much simpler than Kerry tried to make out, and that correct decisions can be arrived at by gut instinct rather than intelligence and grasp of the facts. And then, of course, Bush turns around and claims a “mandate” on those very issues he hasn’t been talking about.

One thing about Bush’s approach is an insistence that for every problem, there is one and only one correct solution. Not a lot of room for compromise.

If the D’s take seriously the claim of many analysts that Bush won the election (there, I said it, I finally said it, and it feels really... icky) because of moral concerns, then the 2008 election will be even more depressing than this one, with the candidates spending all their time going to churches and talking about their faith. Somewhere, right now, a D governor or senator is making up a drinking problem in his past, which was cured when he found Jesus, hallelujah.

Arundhati Roy: “It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.”