Good evening, Netizens...

After a hiatus of more than a few days, I doggedly walked back to the entrance of the Virtual Ballroom this evening, tired but nonetheless almost glad to be home again... almost. Even from afar I could not help but witness the internecine carnage taking place in my beloved Ballroom, as the flashes of impertinence, braggadocio and half-baked conclusions combined to form brilliant red flashes that were visible from quite a distance away.

I severely underestimated the opinions that, like highly-sharpened semi-intellectual meat cleavers, would come crashing down on delicate parts of emotional anatomies as the result of my posting political cartoons. People have been drawing cartoon characters about public and political figures since American History began, and I had hoped that such gallows humor as commends itself at this contentious time of our lives, with scarcely months separating us from the Presidential Election, would certainly be rebutted with more humor, rather than what came about.

As I sit down at my favorite bar stool, none other than the ghost of the late President Harry S. Truman wafts his way down the bar and hands me a seething, boiling beverage that has an evil cast about it, especially when it burps violently as he sits it on the bar before me.

“This new drink is called Harry's Revenge”, Truman says with a brief glimpse of his huge beaming grin. “It is in the memory of all those people who printed news stories about Thomas Dewey defeating me handily in the election, the same election I went on to win in 1948. You will no more predict the next President of the United States based upon polls or surveys than you will by proclaiming 'victory is certain' at the top of your lungs.”

Truman paused, as if to weigh his next words carefully, then added, “This drink serves only to remind you that the real moment of truth is when you decide who is telling the truth and vote accordingly, not based upon what so-and-so's surveys show.”

I took a deep sip of the Virtual Espresso for the Day and almost immediately know I still do not have enough information to determine who is telling the truth, and that quite a few others need a good-sized cup of this potion before the roof blows off the Virtual Ballroom and ends up among the ripening stalks of sweet corn and in the pumpkin patch.

The one truth I do know is that our nation cannot continue to survive with another 8 eight years of George Bush's policies and half-baked truths. To suggest otherwise is sheer folly.

Dave