I began to write a satire in which John Kerry accused President Bush of wanting to draft senior citizens to work in Halliburton's clandestine oil rigs, but it didn't seem funny. I scrapped it and began again, writing a spoof news report in which Kerry blamed Bush for the Black Death. That didn't seem very funny, either... then I realised why. If he thought it would gain him a single vote, Kerry would actually make these denunciations and more.

If you listen to the wild accusations and unfounded charges Kerry and his mouthpieces are leveling at President Bush, it seems that the Democrats are growing increasingly desperate. Almost 18 solid months of nonstop Bush-bashing, and they still can't quite manage to push Kerry ahead of the President in the polls to any degree. As Kerry winds down towards the end of his unusually negative campaign, it's clear that the only thing that keeps him from going under is the rhetoric of hate and fear. Whenever the news of the day can be spun to make Bush look bad, Kerry gains a temporary point or two. As long as he and his surrogates keep churning out the muck, Kerry's campaign can tread water. According to the Democrats, President Bush will steal your Grandma's social security check, draft everyone between the ages of 18 and 35 to die in wars of conquest, turn anyone left alive in the country into a corporate slave, insist on a throne instead of a seat at the UN, destroy the environment (presumably just because he hates it so), and personally infect any surviving Americans with the flu out of sheer malice. That's not America they're having drug-induced nightmares about -- it's Mordor! It's almost incomprehensible how they manage to make these allegations with straight faces. No wonder they seem so chummy with most Hollywood actor types and vice-versa... there's a hint of professional respect there. When asked why there's not the slightest hint of evidence of any such evil and violent purposes, not to mention the fact that no President could act on those intentions without the backing of Congress, glib Democrats tell gullible potential voters that these are all Bush's Secret Evil Plans, for Doing Evil Things in Secret. Of course you can't prove their existence -- They hide the evidence too well! Democrats aren't merely out of touch with mainstream America, they're getting out of touch with reality altogether. Are you really dumb enough to swallow this kind of two-dimensional cartoonish fantasy hype? John Kerry is counting on it.

Kerry's campaign digs itself a deeper hole every day with this sort of baseless drivel. Not even the miracle cures promised by John Edwards (if he and Kerry are elected) can save the Democrats from the mud they've chosen to cover themselves with. Even if they somehow manage to convince enough people to vote for Kerry out of hate and fear, the low moral standards of Democrat campaigning has still doomed them. Not being a religious person, I'm not given to quoting the Bible. (In fact, I'll admit that I'm really quoting the Bruce Willis/Tom Hanks movie "Bonfire of the Vanities," based on the Tom Wolfe novel.) But one question from that book applies to the Left: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? * 

John Edwards promised that "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." Hallelujah! John Kerry scares young people and parents with hints about "the great potential of a draft," though every responsible person in the chain of command, up to and including President Bush, has unequivocally stated that there will definitely not be a draft. (In reality, the only people who proposed a draft were Democrats, and that as a political tool. Therefore, it must be a Secret Evil Plan!) Both Kerry and Edwards feel it's "fair game" to drag Dick Cheney's daughter Mary into the conversation when the subject of gay marriage comes up. Don't they know any other gay people? Kerry even accuses the President of responsibility for the shortage of flu shots... despite the fact that the only reason flu vaccines are in short supply, and manufactured overseas, is that manufacturers are too liable to litigation. By definition, after all, vaccines make some people sick. According to Jim Copeland of the Manhattan Institute, "From the early to mid-1980s, as tort litigation exploded, the number of U.S. vaccine manufacturers fell from 15 to three... So Congress took vaccines out of the courts and instead created a 'no-fault' system, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program... In recent years, however, the congressional safeguards have been eroded as enterprising trial lawyers have circumvented the law." Logic and reason, however, will not stop Kerry and Edwards from fear- and hate-mongering in hopes of scraping up enough votes to win the White House. No lie too big, no issue too small, no slander too vile to be used by Democrats to attack Bush.

The Democrats have already lost their souls in this drive for power. Whether it shall profit them is up to you.

* Note to the overly sensitive rabidly anti-religious reader: substitute "that which is moral, noble and ideal in the human heart" if the phrase "his own soul" gives you galloping hysteria. Sheesh.