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Here's why Ed Gillespie (R-Chinless) thinks you should dislike John Kerry: he's rich.

Well, actually his wife is rich. But still, you know how Republicans dislike wealthy people. Why, I can't even count the number of times I've bumped into a Republican CEO fishing in a polluted lake to supplement his diet. Or all the times I offered a cheery "Hi, Mr. Cheney!" while going up to an atrocious fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn where the rats running around in the walls keep you awake at night. Or all the times that sonofabitch Donald Rumsfeld butted in line at the food stamp office (times were tough for him between his first stint as Secretary of Defense and his getting to be CEO of G.D. Searle & Co). Then there are all of the Republicans like Douglas Feith and Richard Perle who enlisted in the military to find a way out of dead-end, minimum-wage jobs. Those guys were real pranksters at sea, let me tell you. Oh, and I can't forget poor Condoleezza Rice. Yes, that former Stanford Provost, poor girl, only had ONE oil tanker named after her. I'm sure her parents were disappointed.

He's rich? That's bad? To a Republican? Those people start drooling when they see a five-dollar bill!

For the record, I don't think that Kerry's been campaigning as a "man of the people." He runs a lot of ads in Wisconsin (though not nearly as many as does Bush), and he talks about having been privileged enough to attend Yale, and how he feels it necessary to serve a country that has been so good to him. Not a bad idea, that.

The really important part of this story, once you get past the mind-blowing hypocrisy, is that they're all rich.

All of the high-level people involved in this Presidential campaign are rich, rich, rich. Republicans and Democrats. Even Nader.

To borrow a quote from Bill O'Reilly, then, who's looking out for you?

Nobody, really. Although the Democrats really do seem to be nicer people. As arrogant as it is, there's something to be said for noblesse oblige.

Especially when it's compared to the "Gimme that! It's mine!" school of thought espoused by so many Republicans.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, AFDC, veteran's benefits, the CPSC, access to health care, living wages, decent vacations, child care, community clinics, public transportation, affordable housing, student loans, labor laws, unions, Americorps, school lunch programs, PBS, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Cooperative Extension Service, and all of the things that matter to people who aren't rich are simply intellectual exercises for rich people--and targets of rich Republicans. They don't know what these things mean to the non-rich because they'll never need programs or ideas or entities like the ones just mentioned. You think that George Bush will ever worry about having to eat dog food because his fucking Social Security check won't cover a month's worth of bills? Do you think Dick Cheney, that rich gangsta bastard, will ever have to fret over whether or not the prescription he needs to keep living (assuming that he's not already an immortal cyborg--a distinct possibility) will be covered by some goddamn indecipherable health care plan? Those answers are just too obvious.

The programs and ideas and entities that do matter to those rich GOP motherfuckers, though, they're all over. Repealing the estate tax, massive tax cuts for the super-rich, getting rid of capital gains taxes, avoiding taxes on corporations, not increasing the minimum wage, not paying a progressive income tax--see a pattern here? Anything that involves rich people not paying--or, even better, massive transfers of wealth from the lower- and middle classes to the already rich--Republicans are all over that shit.

Ugh. I need to go for a long walk.