I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been spending a lot of time at home and a lot of the time I spend at home, I’ve been using to pour over polling data.

As the weather’s become cooler, Sinatra has become more cuddly and will beg to be picked up and curl in my lap for some extra-curricular petting whilst I average polls and color red to blue on a powerpoint map.

Last night, Sinatra interrupted and wanted to talk politics and I thought it was interesting enough to share.

“Belly rub?” Sinatra said.  It’s what he calls me, he doesn’t know my name.  It’s confusing sometimes because I don’t know if he wants my attention or if he actually wants a belly rub.  “Belly rub?”, he said, as I rubbed his belly, giving me a clue that he actually wanted to talk.

“What is it, Sinatra?”

“I want to vote against George Bush,” he said.

“I don’t think you can do that, Sinatra.  He’s not on the ballot this year,” I told him.  I didn’t want to tell him that cats can’t vote, he’d have been offended and scratched me.

“Well, I want to vote for some Democrat,” he said.

“Why?” I reasonably asked, forgetting for the moment that I was actually having a conversation with a cat.

“Well, didn’t you tell me the United States has the best military in the world?”

“Yes.  We have the best of everything.  We have the most powerful army, navy and air force.  We spend more on our military than the whole rest of the world combined,” I told him.

“Isn’t Jesse in the army?”, Sinatra asked.  Sinatra knows that my son-in-law, Jesse, has been in Iraq and is a captain in the artillary, so I knew this was just a set-up, but sometimes Sinatra’s memory about people isn’t so good, so it could also have been an honest question. 

“Yes,” I said.  “He just came out and we expect him home any time.”

“He was a good soldier, wasn’t he?”

“Of course, Sinatra.  We have a few soldiers who aren’t so good, but most of them are very good and Jesse is one of the very good ones.”

“So, we have good soldiers, too, don’t we?”

“Yes,” I said.  “All my life, I’ve been told how good a job our military does and how good the soldiers are and I guess they actually are pretty good.”

“Is the Iraq insurgency have bigger guns?”

“That’s a strange question, Sinatra.  No, they don’t have bigger guns, we have bigger guns.”

“Do they have better planes?”

“Sinatra, they don’t have any planes at all.”

“Do they have bigger bombs?”

“No, we have the biggest bombs of anyone in the world.  Our bombs are even smart.”

“Do they have a better navy?”

“No.  This is getting boring, Sinatra.  They don’t have any navy at all.”

“I guess their soldiers are better than Jesse and the other good soldiers,” he said, rolling over for a stroke behind the ears.

“No, Sinatra, they don’t have better soldiers.”

“Is it the American troops’ fault that we’re losing in Iraq?”

“Of course not, Sinatra.  No.”

“Who’s in charge of the army, belly rub?” he asked, once again turning so I could stroke his expanding girth.

“Well, Sinatra, I guess President Bush is the commander in chief and he’s in charge of the Army.”

“That’s why I want to vote for a Democrat, belly rub.”

He jumped down and strutted off in that “I-used-to-have-big-furry-balls” bowlegged, self satisfied way of his, having made his point.