...was quite a stunner to me. I looked at the vote as a referendum on the Iraq war, which was Bush's baby, and which seemed more and more like a bad idea every day. But alas, I misjudged my fellow citizens, or at least those in many of the smaller cities and the towns and the rural areas, and Bush squeaked out another very close (and very shady) victory. For a few days there in mid-November, I was really bummed out.
In the months that followed, I became increasingly exasperated with Bush’s policies and proclamations. News of continuing death and misery in Iraq continued to flow, and on the homefront, Bush trumpeted his plan for "saving" our Social Security program - a plan that breathed new life into the old metaphor about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Behind both of these issues lurked Bush's budget deficits...thoughts of my share of the expanding federal debt began to chafe me like thoughts of my credit card balances used to before I paid them off.
Anyway, this anti-Bush angst led me to create a few twisted images of Bush on my PC using a common photo-editing program. I thought the images were pretty funny, and I thought they criticized Bush in a simple and straightforward way that might appeal to a lot of people. I started to wonder how I circulate the images and get my criticisms of Bush out there in the real world. It wasn't too long before I hit on the t-shirt as an ideal means of distribution.
