9.03.2004

insight-less:

I have no idea what I'm doing right now.
Anyway, I have to tip my hat to W. He was pretty impressive last night. I think he even teared up a bit when he was talking about dead vets and Sept. 11 families. Kerry really needs to get his ass in gear.
On a side note, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm a liberal republican instead of a moderate democrat. I'm pro-life, ambivalent about guns, relatively pro free-trade (with some reservations). On the other hand, I want all the gay folks to get married if they want to. On Iraq, I'm pissed that the country was manipulated and lied to, but I'm not sure if the war was good or bad in an objective, utilitarian sense. I think we should cooperate with other countries in our foreign policy, and I think we should concentrate more on global economic development and education rather than blowing up terrorists. That being said, I also want to blow Osama Bin Laden's balls off, and we need to do something about North Korea and Iran, especially Iran.
I like the idea of job training instead of complete welfare.
Then I have issues that neither party supports. Mainly drug policy reform. And I have issues that I think are important, but that I have no idea what to do about.
Maybe I'm a compassionate libertarian liberal neo-con wilsonian internationalist. Not to mention being an existentialist neo-orthodox mystic theist.
Joe

8.30.2004

Sully's back from vacation

This guy is one of my favorite political writers around these days and this post, one of several made after a month long hiatus, deserves a look. As mentioned last night, I'm fully prepared to no longer pay attention to this Swiftvet business, and in an effort to do so this caught my eye. Then when readying myself for another day at work I found that the world is apparently a safer place these days, in terms of large scale conflict anyway. Funny that, I'll have to blame my agoraphobia on something else, but good to know.

8.29.2004

Go firedance!

Let's get entranced by their... I'm watching the closing ceremonies for the Olympics. I will probably remember this for the gypsies running around behind the pick-up filled with watermelons and the clowny-guy on the bike dragging cans.

Oh my. Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine makes a good point... "It's a decent debate [referring to a discussion on his site regarding healthcare]. I said I hoped that we could devote our breath and bandwidth to something useful, like the healthcare debate, instead of useless, like the Swifties and the Mooreites, and, voila, given a real subject that really matters there is real debate. I'm relieved."

David Brooks has this long and very worth-while piece from the NYT Magazine about the evolution of conservatism.

I frankly have heard enough of and from the swifties to make some decisions. I don't appreciate how the parties involved
posed and answered questions. Spinsanity offers some analysis (that seems strong) how both of these sets of folks are being dishonest enough to compromise the integrity of their message. And I'd like to see a more comprehensive answer to some of the legitimate questions facing Kerry, i.e., what's up with this "V" stuff and how much hype is too much?

I've got enough to work with in order to decide, lets get to some substantive debate. Here's a good segway: Which one of these jokers is going to make a move at our rights to say what we want, when we want, and how we want? This is the kind of stuff I want deciding the election, sure the rest of it (the character stuff for example) all enters into the equation, but I want what truly matters to take take precedence in forming the debate.

Bush's Web of Deceit

Proof from the Kerry camp that Bush is really in control of the Swift Vets and....Kevin Bacon

I'm a member of slow skateboards for falsehood. John Kerry did not pull off the 720.
Joe