Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom you can decide you don't much care for. Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off? It's all politics, Bubba. You don't get to opt out for lack of interest. -- from Molly Ivins.

I, for one, am trying to make up for lost time. To be sure, I have voted in most elections since 1976, frequently for the wrong candidate, as I found out later. But this year I've hit the streets, made the calls, written the checks, and blogged away. My newfound activism can be traced most directly to one politician whose speeches and policies have inspired me like no other. I wish I could say that it was Paul Wellstone or Dennis Kucinich, but in fact it was none other than George W. Bush. Fear and loathing are powerful motivators.

I had vague feelings listening to Reagan and Clinton that they were lying, but I didn't really believe that they were rotten to the core. The elder Bush was certainly disturbing, but he at least seemed to possess some intelligence. Currently I think that he is and was pure evil, but I recall that I didn't think that back when he was president. But this Bush so clearly has no morality or compassion and lies constantly in pursuit of bizarre and dangerous policies, and every time he opens his mouth you realize what a moron he is. His speeches after 9/11 convinced me that there is something very wrong with the world today, and George W. Bush represents the core of it. Since then I have read books, magazines and thousands of web pages to find out more about what's wrong and what I might do about it. This blog is my attempt to share what I've learned and what I believe. There is no more important cause in the world today than stopping the Bush-Cheney war on everything.