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January 15, 2006
Broken Dreams
"Too much dream, not enough balloon." Such is the hard reality that Winslow learns as he once again fails to fly, but since the Intelligent Designer wants his butt stuck to the ground he isn't going anywhere.
Today's full color strip reminds us of the folly of being a Democrat. We might have pie-in-the-sky dreams, but will we ever have enought to pull them off? Hell, we even had a half million more votes than the Republicans in 2000 and we still lost. Bush won by that and declared a mandate in 2004.
Which got me to thinking: five years later, how would things have been different if Al Gore had won in 2000?
- A world without Dick Cheney in power! No Donald Rumsfeld! No Conde Rice ignoring PDBs about "Osama determined to strike within US!" No Jon Ashcroft or Scott McClellan or Richard Perle! No Colin Powell lying to the UN (okay, maybe he would have been there but he wouldn't have been lying).
- No outrageous deficits and balanced budgets! Sure, we'd have plenty of "Gore is a bore" jokes, but wouldn't that be a whole lot better than being 8 trillion dollars in debt?
- Gore probably spends his first nine months in office working instead of 40% of it on vacation. That means setting up the lock box (no tax cuts for millionaires; Social Security is fixed).
- 9/11 probably doesn't happen. I can imagine Gore actually listening to Clinton's warnings, and besides - Osama didn't have a personal grudge against the Gore family.
- I doubt Gore would have illegally spied on Americans. I really should put this before 9/11 on the timeline, since it's just been revealed that Bush actually started to wiretap Americans BEFORE 9/11. So much for "we have to fight the terrorists!" as an excuse to ignore the Constitution.
- No invasion of Afghanistan if there's no 9/11, despite Unocal's desire to build an oil pipeline across the country.
- No declaration of a "war on terror," which is by its very definition a war without end. How do you defeat "terror?" Aren't there ALWAYS going to be terrorists? Last time I checked Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were both terrorists that never heard of Al Qaida.
- No invasion of Iraq. Unless Saddam threatens to kill Gore's daddy and Gore somehow became an oil company executive intead of believing in alternative energy and saving the environment.
- I doubt there would have been a controversy over the 2004 election. The Republicans would have probably run Bill Frist, and it would have come out that he illegally traded his family's healthcare company stocks.
- No Terri Schiavo case. I don't see President Gore flying across the country on his day off to sign a bill into law that's just for one person.
- We wouldn't be worrying about going backwards to the Dark Ages thanks to a court packed with ultra-conservatives like Roberts and Alito. Women everywhere wouldn't have to be concerned about losing their right to choose or hell even their right to vote.
- Katrina still happens, but Gore at least acts quickly to keep things from getting as bad as they were. Remember how Bush took a week to even admit something was wrong? Yeah, one day to help a brain-dead woman whose brain was liquifed - a week to help thousands of people stranded by a hurricane. You Republicans should be ashamed of yourselves.
Wow - the world really would be a different place under Al Gore. Sure, these are all just dreams - but it would be a whole lot better than the nightmare we're living in now. Let's just hope the Democrats actually fill the balloon up enough this time to float our country back to greatness instead of letting the Republicans pop it yet again.
Comments
I know I'm supposed submit some funny comment here, but The Furnance's summary of 'what might have been' under a Gore administration just makes me feel depressed over the lost opportunities and how fucked up this country has become.
Posted by: jackmac at January 16, 2006 10:29 AM
One of Gore's daughters is named Katrina, so a good political cartoonist would have had a field day with that. In the alternative universe, though, Prickly City would be whining that it took Gore six hours to get to New Orleans and that only hugged black people instead of everyone.
Posted by: Annie at January 16, 2006 12:30 PM
