Politics on the Old Web

In the process of putting this portion of this site together I've found a TON of interesting older political sites, just by digging through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and obsessively following every link I find. They're basically all from the Bush Era, since obviously the further back you go the fewer websites there are (and especially well-preserved ones! But if possible I'd love to find more websites from Clinton's presidency). These sites are where I pulled a lot of the gifs and stickers you see on both sidebars of this page - clicking on the ones with a blue border will lead you to the site I got each one from, and the ones with a white border lead either to the Busy Beaver Button Museum or the GeoCities Gif Archive (also hosted by Internet Archive!).

But, if you don't have time to go digging through all of those, here are some of my favorite sites that I've found. Most of them are dead by now, so I'll link the Internet Archive version...

• Al-Gore-2004.org and algore04.com Proud patriots campaigning for the re-election of our greatest president, Al Gore. To be honest this one makes me a little sad but it's also really cute and I love the "Hey Smirk Boy" gif so much...
• WhiteHouse.org The shop section is a great time capsule into the early 2000's liberal scene. I desperately want to buy some of those stickers but unfortunately this site died a slow and painful death, briefly becoming the campaign site for Ron Paul's 2012 campaign, and now becoming an extremely unfunny Gen X humor site about Trump :(
• ImpeachBush.orgThis one's less funny - it's an actual campaign to get Bush impeached. It's hard for me to imagine that happening (imagine if Obama was the only president between 1992 and 2020 that didn't get impeached!) but still an interesting site.
• PushyCheater.com As far as I can tell this website just sold a single sticker, but I still like it.

Political Character Shrines

These are lightly interactive animated shrine sites I've made to some of my """"favorite"""" political figures. These take ages to make, so don't expect new ones any time soon... (button artwork painstakingly made with Picmix)

Trading Cards

In 2022, I randomly stumbled on these Operation Desert Storm trading cards and Election 1992 trading cards in an antique store in Morro Bay, CA. Obviously my friends and I bought a few packs, but I've been thinking about them ever since. So, of course, I went back a year later and bought a few more. But I was curious about just how many were out there. So I did some digging online, made a bid on an ebay auction, and ended up with a few hundred (maybe about a thousand?) trading cards, from a couple different series, based on Operation Desert Storm, Operation Desert Shield, and the 1992 election. Here's my collection:

Desert Storm Pro Set (1991)

This is the first Desert Storm set I found, and probably my favorite out of all of them. The cards are really high-quality, and the graphic design really speaks to me for some reason. Each card has a really high-quality photo on the front, with a name and flag below the photo, and a logo and category above. There are a bunch of different categories:

• Geography (countries, cities, military bases)
• Leader (presidents, prime ministers, generals, etc.)
• Government (election systems, departments and agencies, laws, and national anthems)
• Personnel (military branches, specific military jobs)
• Military Skill (general information about the military like the phonetic alphabet and discipline)
• Intelligence file (languages, organizations, religions, culture, history, and basically anythuing that doesn't fit into the other categories)
• Military Asset (ships, tanks, missiles, and planes)
• ... plus a single "Peace" card with a picture of a dove!

The backs vary a bit depending on the category but all the card backs have a small photo, a card number, and a paragraph about the topic. Some also have additional information - the military assets have statistics (ie. missile range or ship size), the language cards have a few relevant phrases and their pronunciations, and the leader cards have information like date of birth and education.

As far as trading cards being sold based off on an ongoing horrific war go, the Pro Set cards are actually handled pretty well? They're obviously selling an extremely simplified and detached version of the war, but they don't lean too heavily into complete jingoism beyond, like, "respect the troops" and "the military is cool".

Wild Card Decision: 1992

As far as I know, the Decision trading card series has only been made for the 1992, 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections. Which is a shame! I would definitely want cards from the '96, '00, and '04 elections if they existed. I'm glad they've started making them again recently, because I think they'll be fun to collect in the future - but they're so expensive now that they're very hard to collect in the present day. In fact, as far as I know, they don't even sell them in traditional trading card packs -- you have to buy a complete set box. Which is really stupid, what's the point of a trading card you can't trade?

Anyway: the cards are labelled with a few different categories, but there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which cards are in which categories, some categories are used more as flavor text on a single card, and most of the cards aren't in any category. But, if you're curious, the cards are:

• Candidates
• Flashback (relevant history and previous elections)
• Major issues
• Billionaire (all the cards about Ross Perot have this??)
• The Electoral College (there is only one card in this catogory)

Each card has a photo on the front, as well as a Wild Card logo and Decision '92 logo, and a title. Some also have a category above or to the left of the photo, and some also have really faint flavor text under the title, which is hard to read because it's almost the same color as the background and often overlaps with the obnoxious american flag styling. In general, the design of these cards is really poor but I have to respect it because I would not want election trading cards to be any less obnoxious and plastered in flags than these are. The cards also have a tendency to get stuck together? I've resorted to storing them in binder sheets because when I originally stored them in a stack, they all stuck together and some of the photos got ripped when I peeled them apart.'On the back is a short paragraph and a card number, with just the Decision '92 logo as a background. I would have loved another photo on the back like the Desert Storm Pro Set cards have, but I guess that's too much to ask for.

One last thing that I do really like about this series is that they had a "Surprise Card" promotion. Basically, you had a change of getting one of three placeholder cards, which you could mail into the company after the election based on the result. So, you could mail in Surprise Card #3 for a card of the winner of the election, or Surprise Card #2 for a card of the Republican VP Candidate. Obviously this promotion is no longer running, so I'm stuck with these placeholder cards, but I do think that's a fun idea for a trading card game and a pretty cool promotion, too. It makes me wonder if they printed cards for multiple different outcomes - is there a Ross Perot victory card out there somewhere??

There's some extra game layer going on here where randomly selected cards have a numbered stripe printed on them, and you can combine cards to get a higher number by mailing them in? I honestly can't parse their explanation of how this works, and I'm not sure if I have any of these striped cards, but this seems more confusing and less fun than the Surprise Cards...

Anyway, I can't say much thought went into this card series but it's one of my favorites solely because it's so stupid. The cards are all just really funny without context (I'm endlessly entertained by the fact that I own a trading card for "The Hillary Factor" and "Gay Rights". like, why are these things I'm trading?? It's so cool) and the obnoxious graphic design really adds to that. I unfortunately do not own a complete set, so I'll have to keep my eye out! And some day in the future, when prices have hopefully dropped substantially, I'd love to get some of the more recent series. I think it would be really funny to own trading cards of Clarence Thomas and Pete Buttigieg and Gretchen Whitmer but I just cannot justify the prices and I refuse to give this company any money because I think it would be extremely embarassing to do so.

Dart Flipcards' VIETNAM Fact Cards

I actually found these at a different antique store (in Felton, CA) in a complete set. Unlike the Desert Storm cards which were focused on facts and trivia, these are more focused on individual moments of the Vietnam War, either specific factual events like an individual battle or just a general "scene" like soldiers getting ambushed. Interestingly, the cards all have text in both English and French, and focus pretty heavily on French involvement in the war, though there is some inclusion of American troops.

The art is all in this really pretty handpainted watercolor style, which I really like but which clashes pretty heavily with card topics such as "Shocking Public Suicides", "Agent Orange", and "Frantic Refugees". Each card has a painting on the front along with a title, and then a paragraph and card number on the back.

There are a total of 66 cards including 2 checklists, which I think is just about the perfect amount for this type of card! The Desert Storm sets definitely felt like they had some filler cards - like, I'm way more interested in a card like "Women in the War" or "Protests at Home" than one of thirty different boats. But because the Vietnam cards all about scenes and events, they're all pretty interesting, and you can even kind of piece them into a chronological story of the war.

Pacific Trading's Operation: DESERT SHIELD

These are like the sad little brother of the Desert Storm Pro Set. They're way more focused on military assets, which are not as interesting to me as the politics around the war. The graphic design is also a lot worse - the card fronts just have a very basic yellow and red block design with a logo, and the camo design on thh back is simeultaenously uglier and more distracting than the one in the Pro Set. I wouldn't say that these are very fun to collect, unless you're really into planes and boats, which I'm not. There are a few individual cards that I like, but most of them I'd consider filler and would happily trade away.

With that said, they do come with some stickers, which have the emblems of different military organizations, regiments, and medals. I haven't found a good place to put any of these stickers yet, so I've just kept them on the cards, but hopefully I find a good spot soon.

America's Major Players, Inc.'s Desert Storm Weapon Profiles

I only found these cards recently, so I haven't looked much into them. I'm not really that into weapons or vehicles so I can't say they're my favorite but I can appreciate that, because the whole set is dedicated to one topic, they are really detailed and I like that the weapon cards aren't randomly intermingled with other topics. The design on the front of the cards is decent in my opinion, but the backs all include these little "schematic" drawings that I really like. And if you're interested in weapons, I think you'll probably like these.

And, of course, I have to mention that this sert comes with a 31-inch foldout color "situation map" of the war in Iraq. The front is mainly a (very simplified) map of Iraq with the locations of cities, bases, and battles pointed out. There are also insets showing specific city street maps, and a wider view of the middle east. On the backside of the map is a huge sheet with a bunch of information about different vehicles and weapons, comparing each faction's weapons to each other. When I move into my new apartment I will absolutely be hanging this map up on the wall somewhere to annoy my roommates.

Topps Desert Storm: Coalition for Peace

These are very very similar to the Pacific Trading cards, so much so that I didn't even realize they were a different series at first. They have a similar-looking camo pattern but on the front instead of the back, and a simple paragraph on the back of each card. In terms of topic, they're pretty similar to the Pro Set but with a heavier focus on vehicles and weapons. There are a few interesting ones like the Dick Cheney card but to be honest I haven't really taken the time to sort through all of them yet. I believe I probably have a complete set, and if I'm missing any I have two full cases of sealed packs that I don't know what to do with. I've started handing them out to my friends as party favors and including them in letters I write. If you actually read this far and you want a pack of Desert Storm trading cards send me an email at agoodone.contact@gmail.contact and I'll mail one to you. I'm not joking.

My Books

I've also collected a few different books about George Bush - I gave most of them away as gifts, so right now my collection is pretty small, but it consists of: