Straying Thoughts

Quiz

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
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The Speech

I watched a couple of minutes here and there on C-Span. Just couldn't take it. Spent the rest of the time doing refreshes on various bloggers that were live-blogging it. Powerline, Captain's Quarters, VodkaPundit, and The Corner. Powerline and VodkaPundit seem to be on the fastest servers--fastest refreshes. Lots of fun stuff. I'm jealous of the speed and wit of Stephen Green.

I get tired of politicians sacrificing truth for good lines. "we shouldn't be building fire houses in Baghdad when we're closing them at home." What does one have to do with the other? Fire houses in the US are local--municipalities. The federal gov't doesn't have anything to do with it. A false choice.

Prescription drugs--people going without their drugs while the drug companies reap windfall profits. Where the hell does he think new drugs come from? More and more, US companies are becoming the primary source of drug research and new drugs. In a lot of the countries that regulate drug prices, their drug companies have abandoned research--it doesn't pay. The American drug buyer (sounds seedy) is in effect subsidizing those countries drug plans--which is wrong, but jumping on the bandwagon won't fix the problem. And no one talks about how in many of these countries, newer drugs are not available. Just like they don't talk about the real price of socialized medicine. The long waiting times for anything other than life-threatening conditions. Canada has a 2-tier system: the Canadian system and ours--people who can afford to come across the border to US doctors and hospitals--not just the wealthy either.

With the Democrats it's always money for nothing and the chicks are free. That's why I finally gave up on them. They just go with any idea that sounds good and pretend there are no consequences. Upping the minimum wage--sounds good, but it always costs jobs. Employers didn't suddenly get extra money because the government raised the minimum wage; they still have to balance the books. I don't want some little old lady who looks just like my grandmother to go without drugs, but you can't come up with a solution to a problem that you never look at honestly.

What I did see of Kerry looked half-way decent; he actually showed some energy and modulated his voice--the things real human beings do when talking. He was actually going so fast, I thought maybe he had to pee. With the predictable media spin in his favor, this will go down as a home run, and nobody will give a shit about content.

I still don't get why he keeps emphasizing his time in Viet Nam--he was there 4 months. I'm not trying to take anything away from his service, but the way they try to use those 4 months to cover his 20 years of voting against the military and lying about war crimes and make him look like a commander-in-chief--there isn't enough material in 4 months to cover all those holes.

I sure hope when the Republicans finally start their campaign, they really show us something, because I do not want 4 years of this guy. We're just getting to the point where the bad guys and allies and whatever the hell you call countries like France actually believe us when we say we're going to do something. If Kerry wins, he's going to owe the lunatic left big time and I think it'll be the Iraqis who'll end up footing the bill. It'll be like Viet Nam, Kerry's favorite war. He'll declare the Iraqis ready to stand on their own, walk away, and call it peace.

Update
OK, another thing as long as I'm babbling on. This bit about the flag belongs to no one party... What in the world does that mean? Did Republicans steal all the Democrats flags? For crying out loud, if you guys want to wave them, then wave them. Who the hell's stopping you? Republicans are supposed to stop waving flags because you guys just don't feel like it? Maybe we need an political party flag rationing bill. No party is allowed to display more than x number of flags per event. Or everyone is limited to one tasteful lapel pin and that's it.

Spirit of America--Tools for Iraqi Tradesmen

I just received and e-mail update from Spirit of America about their "Tools For Iraqi Tradesmen" program. They've posted a story and some photos here and the Marines have posted a story and photos here.

The Iraqis receive 6-8 weeks training in construction and at the end of the course, they get a tool belt with their own tools.

Spirit of America has many projecs that they're working on. Take a look at their site and see if one moves you. They're also very good at sending updates on the projects and they're big on accountability.

I've noticed a new one: providing water barrels to poor Iraqis. This project was started by SFC Brian Soper is from Minneapolis, MN; he's with the Minnesota National Guard. So if you're from Minnestota, that gives you a "home town" connection to something good happening in Iraq.

Two Americas?

Interesting comment by Alec Baldwin (3rd paragraph from the bottom): Baldwin called America between New York and Los Angeles "flyover country, not leadership America."

The Scandal That Wasn't

Powerline has posted an excellent analysis of the Army's report on prisoner abuse. Short story--there ain't no there there. The numbers show an astonishingly small number of cases of abuse the entire war on terror, not just in Iraq. 94 allegations of abuse in general, 8 allegations of abuse during interrogation out of 50,000 arrests and detentions during the Iraq war.

So Teddy Kennedy, who claimed Saddam's torture chambers had re-opened under American management, should apologize for slandering the US military. And Al Gore, who bellowed "how dare they...", needs to apologize also. Of course, I don't believe for a minute that this will ever happen. They have no integrity or sense of shame and they'll never even have to face a unkind word or tough question from the media, because the media is complicit. It was never really about what did or did not happen in Abu Ghraib. It was about damaging the President as much as possible, and if that damaged the morale of those doing the fighting or lessened their effectiveness because they're constantly wondering how this is going to play on CNN, so what? We're trying to win an election here.

Take away the rhetorical flourishes and the mock outrage and the political smoke and media mirrors, and it comes down to this. You can elect people who are serious about defending the nation or people who are not serious about defending the nation.

Squandered Sympathy

Once again, we hear the claim that we squandered the sympathy of the world after 9/11. Sympathy is what you feel for a victim and we're not victims. Sympathy was doomed the moment we decided that we had to act, to defend ourselves, to defeat those who sought to make the world a more dangerous place. The idea that we could have waged a war against Islamic extremism without offending anyone is absurd.

The problem with Democrats is that they are too comfortable with the role of victim. Or maybe it's because they really are Bill Clinton's party and he always wanted people to like him; that seemed to be his highest goal in office, in life. The whole world felt sympathy after 9/11 and the Democrats did their best Sally Field impression--They like us, they really like us.

Sympathy is the first emotion when something bad happens to someone. It's an initial reaction; it's not a permanent stopping place. Emotions are transient and shallow things; they all fade and the vaunted "sympathy of the world" would have faded sooner or later. Feelings are elevated above all other things these days, but they're fleeting and volatile; you can't build a solid structure for fighting Islamic extremists based on shallow waves of sympathy.

Who's Interfering Now

Leftist Italian parliament members want Ralph Nader to step down so Kerry can win. Anytime someone in the Bush administration mentions another country, the leftists in that country start screaming that we're meddling in their politics. Doesn't seem to stop them from screwing around in ours. ...as Europeans, we are also committed to the United States. Tell me another one.

Kerryisms

Everything I Know Is Wrong has an excellent collection of Kerryisms, including everyone's favorite "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." He's got links to source documents, so it's very useful, as well as scary.

People Are Watching--Try To Act Normal

The today's NYT, Kerry talks about the convention.

In the interview, Mr. Kerry seemed determined to tame, at least through the four days of the Democrats' convention here, the intense anti-Bush fervor in his party that has been a driving dynamic of this campaign. Mr. Kerry said that he did not want the convention to turn into a parade of attacks on the president, and that his campaign was seeking to minimize the anti-Bush oratory from convention speakers.

Isn't Al Gore going to speak? What are they going to do if Al "The Madman" Gore gets rev'ed up? Maybe they could have someone just off stage with a tranquilizer gun. Or one of those stun belts that they use on unruly prisoners when they're in court.

This could be a problem for the Democrats. If they give the Hate-Bush crowd free rein, it could cost them, like the Pat Buchanan speach in 1992 did for the Republicans, but if the extreme lefties don't get a voice, they could decide to sit out the election or vote for Nader. It seems to be a schizophrenic party right now. How does it unite the extremists and the Hollywood elitists with the average Dem who wants his party to stand for something besides "We hate Bush"?

Oops

I just realized that I've probably been sending multiple trackbacks to the same sites when I've been updating some posts. Maybe I should read the manual...Nah, if it first you don't succeed, change the code and try again.