http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004974.html

Megan McCardle's decision on who she is going to vote for. I only discovered Megan's blog a few weeks ago, with a link from Instapundit, but I was immediately a fan. Her writing is as intelligent and well written as it gets in politics, with a dash of humor and ideas that she always backs up with good reason. Also, she uses a lot of big words. Most people, when they use big words, seem to be trying to show off. McCardle, on the other hand, seems to use big words in places where no other word would fit right, and that only happens when what you are writing about is very intelligent and nuanced, and specific. John Kerry, for instance, uses a lot of big words, but when he uses them it only makes what he's saying harder to understand not easier. Typically he could substitute small, normal words and be more clear, but you also get the idea that he doesn't really want people to fully understand what he's saying because if they did, then they might actually ahve an idea of what he stands for. So he uses the big words for two reasons, to sound more intelligent, and to obscure his meaning. Megan uses big words where only a big word will fit.

Remember that 380 tons of explosives that went missing in Iraq? Unless you've been living under a rock, or avoid tlak of currents events at all costs, you know what I'm talking about. Well ABC is now reporting that the group that said the explosives were there in the first place and are not now there, the IAEA, now has released documents showing it was actually 3 tons, not 377. Stay tuned for more info.

That sure is a big difference. One wonders if the mistake was politically motivated. Actually I don't wonder, I'm pretty darn sure. Seems like there are a lot of mistakes being made in the media lately, and almost all of them hurt Bush.


Later:
So I'm not confident at all in the 3 tons thing. Silly rumor.

So I guess I'm starting to worry that Kerry will be elected. It probably won't be that bad if he is, because there will legislative gridlock. I'm more worried about him throwing Israel to the wolves than anything else. Up until he got in to serious campaigning, he'd pretty much been on the opposite side of me in any Israel related issue, and it seems like his current not too horrible stand on Israel is just him saying what he thinks people will want to hear. I don't understand people who think that he's going to continue to be this golden boy instead of reverting to the pacifistic/appeasement type of person he had been for the entirety of his life previous to this campaign.

I also get the feeling that, if he wins, a lot of people who voted for him will spend a lot of time over the next four years saying things like, "What the hell was the President thinking? Well at least he's not Bush." And "our economy has gone down the drain since Kerry took office, Bush must have sabatoged it before he left office."

Aren't the Dixie Chicks great? So full of bleached hair, big boobs, insightful political commentary, and abject hypocrisy. Let's cover that last one first. These are the girls that complained of censorship after their rude comments about George Bush got them shunned from most of conservative America. Radio stations chose to stop playing their songs, people burned their records, and people stopped buying tickets to their concerts. Consumer choice became, in their eyes, censorship, and they decried this as evil and blamed Bush for all their problems.

Now, in the wake of the Sinclair Broadcasting scandal, the Dixie Chicks are applauding the same sort of techniques used against them. It's not censorship when it's against an evil right wing organization, or a big business, it's just what's right. I think it would be right if the Dixie Chicks are suddenly relegated to a dusty attic, never to open their mouths again. They'd probably come off as a lot more intelligent.

What the hell!! I just read a memo written at UNC-Wilmington in which a desire was stated to make the public restrooms gender neutral so as not to make transgenger folks uncomfortable. What about the far higher percentage of normal people who would be made uncomfortable by gender neutral bathrooms? Do they count for nothing? This kind of stuff has gone too far. I don't care if you think you're a woman, if you have a penis, you're a man and should use the men's bathroom.

Let's look at Kerry's anti-Bush rhetoric.

1. Saddam was no threat.
2. 380 tons of explosives went missing on Bush's watch, explosives which are now going to be used to kill American soldiers.


So why is it that 380 tons of explosives wasn't a threat before when it was in Saddam's hands, but is now? Is it, perhaps, because it scores political points?

Just so you know, US forces and our allies have found and secured something in the range of 150,000 tons of explosives in Iraq. Makes bitching about 380 tons seem a little nitpicky, doesn't it? That's 0.253333% of the total so far, and I'm sure the total will rise more.

I finished Neal Stephenson's magnificent Baroque Cycle the other night, and it lived up to all my expectations. The ending was typical Stephenson, not too exciting, just more of the same, and the same was darn good throughout. If you're interested in the themes the book explores, the beginning of the monetary system, the use of the gold standard, the end of alchemy and the beginning of true scientific inquiry, and swashbuckling high seas adventure, give it a try. Slogging through the first book might be tough, but once you get in to the second, you won't regret it.

I just started reading "Mr. Norrel and Jonathan Strange" by first time author Susannah Clarke, and it's wonderful so far. Very clever writing with interesting characters and a fantasy element that reminds me of Harry Potter all grown up.

In other election related news, papers have come out revealing the extent of John Kerry's association with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese government when he went to Paris and broke the law by dealing with an enemy government in times of war without the permission of the US government. The more I look at it, the more it smacks of treason. But really I think they ought to just throw out any mention of anything before 1990 in the campaign rhetoric. Get rid of Kerry lying about Cambodia, being a traitor, not having much of a senate record, marrying two rich women in a row, etc., and stop whining about how Bush got in the National Guard because he's rich, and how Bush did drugs when he was in college (hell, who didn't try at least a little something), and how Bush had a higher SAT score than Kerry (which belies the whole Bush is Dumb, Kerry is Smart paradigm).

Start talking about today and tomorrow, which is all that matters.

Wow, the hits just keep on coming at CBS. The big news around the world yesterday was that Bush allowed 380 lbs of explosives to be looted from Iraq because soldiers weren't guarding them. Then it turns out the explosives were probably missing before US forces advanced to that point, thus basically negating the use of the story as more anti-Bush fodder. That's too bad for CBS, who had the story but were sitting on it until the eve of the election, hoping to use it to sway voters. If the fake docs from a month or two ago didn't convince you that CBS is highly biased towards Kerry and against Bush, sitting on a hot news story so as to try to affect the outcome of a major US election should. I'm just glad the New York Times got the story out, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough time to debunk yet another lie from the left before it hurts Bush.

What is wealth? You hear a lot about incomes declining, or the relative value of the dollar compared to 20 years ago, various little tidbits like that. But what does it really mean? The average American today thinks that he/she has less wealth than his/her forbears 20 years ago. In terms of pure economics, that may be true, but in terms of wealth? I know that 20 years ago my father was earning more than I am now, but I also know that 20 years ago there is no way my father could have bought himself a nifty, top-of-the-line TV like I have. I have a CD player that is not in my car, but came in my car standard. I have the equipment to publish a professional looking newsletter on my desk, yet have never even considered using it. The fact is, nearly everyone in this country is far more wealthy than 20 years ago, but as long as class warriors stir up trouble by reminding people that others still have so much more than them, people won't realize how much they do have. Almost all hosueholds have color TVs today, they have phones, DVD players, computers, so many items that make our lives easier and more luxorious, to the point where a time traveller from 15 years ago would probably be flabbergasted at the material wealth in even a poor person's house.

Wealth should be defined as the ability for a person to afford necessities, and there are few households in the United States that cannot afford the necessities if they are willing to forgo $200 shoes, or fancy rims on their cars. Yes, there are still some people living in abject poverty, but the majority of the families that get counted in national poverty numbers are anything but, by both the standards of history and almost every single other country on Earth today.

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004969.html

The actual part I'm referring to is a bit down the page, a comment by Will Allen.

How's this for an interesting and unique take on the middle east? This theory states that Bush is protecting the Middle East and Arab countries, whereas Kerry is going to cause them all the be slaughtered. How does it work? You have one of the most backward people on Earth sitting on top of the largest known stores of one of the most important substances on Earth (oil), and they are becoming more and more violent towards other countries. Eventually they are going to really piss off someone with less restraint than the U.S., like China or Russia for instance, and they'll all get themselves blown away, slaughtered by the millions. Only reform can save them from this road, and only Bush is trying to give it to them.

Possible? Who knows, but it sure is an interesting idea.

I just read a study that focused on misconceptions among voters. Not surprisingly, it really focused on trying to make Bush supporters looks stupid. One question was, and I don't know the exact wording, which is a shame since it makes a big difference, "Did Iraq have WMD's?" If it was asked in this past tense manner, then hell yes, he definitely had lots of dangerous nerve agents, and he used at least some on the Kurds. 72% of respondents agreed, but the survey says that Iraq did not have WMD's, and thus makes these Bush supporters look dumb. There were several other similar questions which served to make the entire fiasco an obviously one-sided affair.

Thanks to SmileyCo, my blog has been upgraded a bit. I now have comments and a few small asthetic improvements.

It strikes me that I know very few people who are voting FOR John Kerry. I know plenty who are voting against Bush, some who are voting FOR Bush, some AGAINST Kerry, and a few against both (Bednarik, the Libertarian guy, will probably do pretty well for a third aprty this year). Do you know anyone who is actually voting for Kerry because they think he'd be a great President, and not just because they like the alternative even less?

What a pitiful election. The parties, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, you name it, ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are supposed to present valid candidates for the people to vote on, but instead we ahve the flip-flopper, the guy that purposely gets arrested for driving without a license because he thinks driver's licenses are unconstitutional, the guy whose main claim to fame was taking votes from Gore in 2000, and the guy half the country, and a lot of the world hates. I'm not so much a hater, so I will be voting Bush, as I'm sure I've made abundantly clear in previous entries.

Several recent polls which focus on young people, 12-17 and such, have shown large Bush leads. Why is this? I think the answer is simple, Vietnam. If you're 12-17, Vietnam is meaningless to you, you don't know much about it, you don't care. John Kerry could have singlehandedly won that war, and no one 12-17 would give a damn. Take away Vietnam, and what does Kerry have? He's not Bush. What does Bush have? He's serious about stopping these people from killing us, and since Kerry's main campaign point, other than Vietnam, is that he's not Bush, he must oppose Bush policies, and thus not be as serious about stopping people from killing us. Simplistic yes, true, probably. Remember, the percentage of young people who are dumb is the same as for old people (well maybe higher, some of the dumb ones get themselves killed), but the rate of apathy and ignorance is probably much higher.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217

Great slashdot Q&A with one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson. He covers modern publishing, the monetary system, and even the Nigerian email scam.

I'm going to see Team America tonight, and I'm pretty excited. It's supposed to be really funny, full of the edgy political satire we've come to expect from the South Park guys. And it ticked off Sean Penn, who wrote a ridiculous letter bashing the movie. He seemed insulted that someone dare criticize him. Some proverb about throwing the first stone comes to mind...

I was reading the Technique, Georgia Tech's student newspaper, today and I learned that a group protested gay lifestyles on campus. One had a sign that said, "Sodomy: It's to Die For" and had a picture of Jesus Christ on the cricifix. Does that mean that Jesus died so that we can commit sodomy? What I really got to wondering was who defines sodomy? I mean I know it's legally defined, but way back in the day, who decided that missionary style is the way God intended things, as opposed to... well I won't get too graphic, but there are certainly other things my body urges me to do with a girl, and painting our nails together is not one of them. I just don't remember the part in the Bible where God says, "Hey Adam, you can't do it like that, that's the way of the serpent. Here, do it like this. Heck, lemme show you, Eve looks like she needs a real man anyway." I just want one of these fundamentalists to explain to me why it's ok to do it one way, but not another.

Derek Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge serial killer, and murderer of my friend, has been sentenced to death. I'm not particularly bloodthirsty, so it's with mixed emotions that I applaud this ruling. I can't help but wonder what Carrie would think. Would she feel this is justice, or would she prefer he suffer in jail for the rest of his life?

I wish I could ask.

When you get right down to it, the difference between Bush's foreign policy, and the most recent of Kerry's many foreign policies is very slim. The problem is the word "many" that precedes foreign policy. Kerry, if he sticks to what he has said recently, may turn out ok. On the other hand, if all the recent "plans" he refers to, but seldom actually lays out, turn out to just be a way to appeal to people who are truly worried about security and Iraq, and we see his true colors revealed when he is elected, then obviously a lot of the U.S. will feel betrayed.

With Bush, you at least know he's going to stick to the overall ideas he's been working on. Kerry, on the other hand, blows with the wind, and I can totally see him deciding, after elected, that what he was saying during the debates is a bad idea, and going back to his normal ultra-liberal self. And don't kid yourself, no he may only be the 11th most liberal senator, but that still makes him far to the left of most people I know. Just think how much more liberal his voting record might be if he'd attended more than the small percentage of votes he did.

A lot of people are upset about Kerry throwing Mary Cheney's name around when asked about homosexuality in the debate last night. Other people don't understand the big deal. Personally, I don't mind him mentioning her name, but here's a letter I wrote to Andrew Sullivan explaining why I was upset:

"The problem, as I see it, is not so much that Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney. It was more that he seemed to be speaking for her. I have no doubts that homosexuality is not a choice, but merely the way things are. On the other hand, I have no idea what Mary Cheney thinks on that issue. For all I know, deep down she feels like she made a choice to become a lesbian, but John Kerry is putting words in her mouth, assuming that she agrees with his thoughts on the matter. That's what's so offensive to me. It would be like if Kerry started talking about how he knows what so and so felt like when she was raped. He has no clue, he's never been raped, and never will be. It's as sleezy as Jonathan Edwards acting as if he were a baby in a womb, who suddenly gets cerebal palsy because a doctor took him out wrong, in order to win a court case with junk science and tawdry emotions."

The Strange Case of Bill O'Reilly

I'm not a big fan of O'Reilly. In fact I think he's a bit of a jerk, and his politics are mean-spirited at worst, and almost agreeable at best. He's making news again, however, with a big sexual harrasment case. A producer that worked on his show basically threatened him with a suit if he did not pay her off to the tune of $60 million. The problem is, she never once complained to Fox or NewsCorp about his behavior, and as I learned in a sexual harassment course I was required to go to last week, if you don't complain, it's not harassment. If it's not repeated or unwelcome, it's not harassment. So O'Reilly is suing her for extortion, and he's probably going to win, since she has no harassment case. It doesn't matter how many recordings she has, and how much evidence, she never complained through official channels, and, in fact, someone has released an email she wrote to a friend talking about how wonderful her job was, and how great a place it was to work. If it was so great, why is she coming out with all this now? Simple: $$$$

I got the scoop from the inside of one of the biggest changes in the United States financial system in years. The Check 21 Initiative (that's Checks for the 21st Century) begins Oct. 28. What is it? Well it used to be that when you wrote a check to someone, they deposited it at their bank, and, depending ont he bank, it would often be taken to the nearest Federal Reserve Bank Office to be processed then shipped by plane to the Fed office nearest your own bank. The time this transportation takes is called float, because the money is in two places at once, it's been credited to the account at the bank of whomever you wrote the check to, and has not yet been debited from your account. Interest is being paid twice, which, among other things, leads to extra money in the economy, and that can lead to inflation. Now they're going to cut out the airplane trip for the most part, and send images of checks electronically. What does this mean to you? Checks will be cleared from your account much faster. No more writing a check that should bounce, but knowing it won't since you get direct deposit the next day. Now it may clear from your account days faster than before, so be careful. There are a lot of projections on how this will all turn out, but no one knows for sure. Just be careful about writing checks for a bit, until everything is sorted out.

There's a lot of newspaper articles out there about this that probably explain it better than I do. I'm just hoping this makes my job easier, so I have more time to learn the other stuff in my department that I'm not so clear on.

I turned on the debate last night, and the first thing I saw was John Kerry's wooden face. Then I heard him saying something like, "The President presided over... [lots of scary sounding numbers]." Then Bush responded with, "Kerry voted against [lots of numbers]." That's when I pulled out my cellphone to play tetris. I got to level 13 when I got a text message from my cousin (and host of sleepingfeet.com) saying that Bush did a good job on his health care answer. Around then my roommate got bored also, so he put the TV on split screen and played Tony Hawk's Underground on the Playstation. I soon found that I had stopped paying any attention to the debate, so I switched the Playstation from half the screen to the whole thing.

Thses debates suck because each side uses random numbers to attack the other side, and all of the numbers cited are up to interpretation. Sure, Bush has lost 1.6 million jobs, the only President to do so. But then again, one could argue that that number doesn't represent real jobs, just large corporation jobs, and that small businesses are thriving. One can also say that FDR, generally thought to have been a great President, would have lost even more jobs during the Great Depression, but he was re-elected and able to preside over lots of new jobs. So if Bush is re-elected, chances are there will be a gain of jobs in total before the end of his second term.

I checked out Instapundit right after, and he, of course, felt Bush won. Then I checked The Daily Kos, king of the left wing sites, and saw that he thought Kerry dominated. Who knows? I think the only loser in all the debates is the American people.

http://www.command-post.org/oped/2_archives/015908.html

A liberal Jewish New Yorker lays out why she is voting for Bush.

Did you know that John Kerry still has not released all of his military records? He says they're all up on his website, but he refuses to sign the full disclosure form, and the Navy insists it has 100 pages of filed papers that it won't release until Kerry lets them. What is Kerry trying to hide, and why isn't the mainstream media hounding him on it? Same deal with Theresa's tax returns. Why is it that Bush gets raked over the coals for anything less than making sure the world knows the color of his underwear, yet Kerry gets away with hiding all this stuff? You'd think some journalist, upset that the Swift Boat Veterans were besmirching their great hope to beat the evil Bush, would want those records released to prove Kerry's heroism. Or maybe it's a well known secret that what is in those pages would sink Kerry's campaign, so the media circles the wagons and refuses to push for disclosure.

This is yet another example of Kerry getting a pass on a dirty trick that Bush would never be allowed to pull off.

I just read an article on Sports Illustrated's website in which a guy cheered the fact that the Braves lost, calling it justice because of Raphael Furcal's delayed DUI sentence. The thing is, Furcal got exactly what a non-famous athlete would get. Same amount of jailtime/treatment time, and he was given some time to clean up his affairs. If a businessman gets a DUI, he is usually given a few weeks to get his affairs in order. A small business owner, for instance, could see his livelihood destroyed over a month-long jail sentence, but judges rightly feel that punishment goes beyond justice. Furcal was certainly not a flight risk, so I see nothing unkosher about the deal that was made.

I just recieved word that the murderer of my friend Carrie Yoder has been convicted for a second murder. To be honest, I'm not sure if the first one was for Carrie or not, but either way this asshole is going to jail forever. Does Louisiana have the death penalty, because Derek Todd Lee should get it? I think the last estimate was that he had killed at least 8 people, with Carrie being the second to last.

The Second Intifada seems to be dying a slow and violent death. Most Palestinian militants agree that their mass-murdering ways haven't gained them much. It's left to us to decipher what they really want, since it changes with the wind, much like John Kerry.

At one time the Palestinians wanted their own state. As soon as it seemed like Israel might be amenable to this, they decided that's not good enough, and that int he interest of human rights, there should be a single, combined state. What this means is pretty obvious. The new Arab majority would be able to do whatever they want to the Jews, and not have to fear the same kind of suicide bombing they used, as the Jews actually seem to value human life. This has other benefits, too. One, there's a good chance it would slowly drive any Jews left to emigrate, thus achieving one of the real goals of the militant Palistinians. Two, the new Palestinian government of Israel, or whatever they would call it, would be able to live off the hard work and infrastructure created by the Jewish Israel over the last 50 years, instead of having to use their own energy and capital. They've had since 1948 or so to fix up Gaza and the West Bank, but the places are still shitholes. Why buy when all you have to do is wait and the U.N. will steal someone else's property for you?

The single state solution is a sure loser for anyone who is Jewish and not blinded by extreme left-wing ideology. Unfortunately it's a sure winner for the Palestinians, and most of the world seems to have little care for the trials of the Jews of Israel.

Sean Combs (P Diddy, Puff Daddy, et al) is urging citizens to "Vote or Die." Of course I don't want anyone to die jsut because they don't vote, but overall I like the message. I was reading about it on LGF (littlegreenfootballs.com), which is a very right-wing site, and many of the comments focused on derision of hip-hop culture and such, as a reaction against P Diddy saying the hip-hop vote, if fully geared up, could be as many as 40 million people. A lot of the comments went something like, "from what I've seen of the rap culture, I'd prefer these people don't vote." I hate that attitude! Yes, a lot of "those" people are probably very ignorant as far as the actual issues, but so are a lot of other people. When someone like Puff Daddy urges people to vote, he's also urging them to become educated, involved, know what's going on. I don't care what music anyone listens to, the message that you should get out there and learn, use what you learned to make an educated choice is ALWAYS good.

But I do hope they vote Bush. Fat chance of that....

I just read funny joke on bias in the media. George Bush and the Pope are on a yacht. The Pope's hat flies off and lands in the water. Bush orders the yacht stopped, gets off the the boat, and walks across water to pick up the hat. The headline in the New York Times the next day?

"Bush Can't Swim."

I often read stories about how the Republicans are using fear-mongering, saying such things as "If you vote for Kerry you'll be bombed" and using the terror alerts for political gain and such. It's all such a ridiculous double-standard. Sure, they do it, but then the Democrats got all over "The Day After Tomorrow," implying that if Bush is elected the world will freeze or whatever. Both sides fear-monger, because neither is willing to give more than lip service to positive messages.

I saw an article written by some left wing jerk today talking about how the Republicans were making fun of "The Day After Tomorrow" blah blah blah, but "the people of Florida aren't laughing after all the hurricanes." Umm... What does one have to do with the other? You've got the Earth freezing in ten minutes in a junk science movie, versus hurricanes hitting Florida during, surprise... Hurricane season!

As much as I ma able to put it together from so many different reports and investigations and such, here is the story on Iraq.

Gulf War I ends, Saddam is sanctioned. First he keeps sending weapons inspectors on wild goose chases. Eventually he realizes that the Oil-for-Food program can make him a lot of money, and allow him to bribe various officials to keep the international community from coming down on him. He dismantles his weapons programs, as inspectors are getting to close to the truth. He mothballs the production machines in such a way that he could restart his programs on just about a moment's notice. Supposedly he could have had mustard gas ready to use within days of restarting his chemical weapons programs. In order to retain his veneer of power, he does not let on to the world that he actually dismantled anything. The U.S. believes him, and decides something must be done. He cannot continue to flaunt international law and get away with it. The Oil-for-Food bribes are beginning to work, as enthusiasm for continuing the sanctions is waning among the countries that recieved the most on bribes (Russia, France, Germany). As soon as they get rid of the sanctions, he could begin building nukes, his dream! But the U.S. is putting pressure on the world to take action. Russia, France, and Germany block any UN action using their veto powers. The U.S. gets a bunch of other countries together and invades Iraq without official UN approval, though a strict interpretation of the various Iraq-related UN resolutions shows that the U.S. was actually following through with what the UN had said they would do numerous times, i.e. the resolutions threatened action if Saddam did not satisfy inspectors, which he did not. So that makes the whole "illegal war" thing a whole bunch of bullshit! The U.S. ruins Saddam's plans to rebuild his weapons program. That's pretty much pre-emptive, which fits in exactly with Bush's "Bush Doctrine" and belies the "Bush lied" crowd.

Basically if it weren't for us, Saddam would be inching ever closer to getting the UN to remove the sanctions, which means that he may have had nukes by now. Thank god someone was willing to take action to stop the madman!

http://www.techcentralstation.com/100704B.html

That's a really nifty article summing up the idea that Bush's invasion of Iraq was actually a jump to the left. How does that work? Well for decades Democrats have decried Republicans lack of care about the rest of the world, and they've been angry that our government would prop up right wing dictators for the sake of stability. Bush said, in a speech from a few months ago, that that policy had obviously not worked, it had only made things worse, so he's going to use democracy as a stabilizing force. For decades Democrats cried out for this sort of action, bring down the dictators, stop opression, don't live in luxury in the US while there are people out there to save. Bush is trying to do just that, and now is called a facist. The disconnect is obvious, but no liberal will ever admit it.

After the first Presidential debate this year, the general consensus seemed to be somewhere between "Kerry won" and "it was a tie." The VP debate, however, seems to have kicked up a lot more divisive opinions. I've seen everything from left-wingers having to admit, against their desire, that Cheney won in a landslide to die-hard Conservatives thinking Edwards looked like a champ, and Cheney the chump. My personal opinion... It doesn't matter who won, it was a boring debate, and probably didn't change anyone's mind.

The Kerry campaign sent out emails before the first debate asking people to email and wrote newspapers and such after the debate and use a boiler-plate form they attached to the email. The Republicans did the same thing for the VP debate. Proving the intelligence of hardcore partisans, a large number of these emails and letters were received by newspapers BEFORE each debate began. Many of the newspapers caughton to the boiler-plate plan, but a few still printed the letters. One went so far as to print three of them on one editorials page. I think they need a new editor.

Newsweek's Evan Thomas may be the most honest reporter in America. Several months ago he was widely quoted saying that of course the media wants Kerry to win, and biased news reports and analysis will probably be worth a 15 point bump for the Kerry/Edwards ticket. Well now Mr. Thomas has done it again. This time he said that he thought George Bush won the first debate until he got to work the next day, found what that he was wrong, and now says Kerry won. Famous radio host Don Imus and NBC WHite House reporter David Gregory said much the same thing.

I'm so mad I could spit nails!! I just found out that Georgia Tech, in their infinite wisdom, is closing the Barbell CLub to put in a new volleyball locker room. They are going to displace an entire gym which has been around for decades, is self-supported, and includes over 1000 students as members, to house a locker room for twenty women who only have a team because Title IX requires football revenues to support sports few care about. The Barbell Club is a student run gym, and is, by far, the best gym I've ever worked out at. Few distractions, great equipment, open 24/7, and pretty cheap. The Barbell Club even offered $25,000 of their own money to add on to the building, but the idea was rejected out of hand by the Athletic Association and the administration. This is a travesty, and will give me major second thoughts about ever donating to the school. Whether it was scheduling Homecoming on Yom Kippur, moving the bookstore from the center of campus to across the highway almost a mile away from some dorms, or this, Georgia Tech has shown time and time again how little regard it has for its own stduents.

The U.N., in reaction to the pre-emptive action Bush began against Iraq, is meeting to lay down guidelines for nations to go to war pre-emptively. I'm not sure exactly what that means in this context. Some might even say that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not pre-emptive, but merely a re-declaration of war as a continuance of the first Gulf War. Some might also say it's merely an extension of our efforts following 9/11 to clean up the world a bit.

Pre-emption needs to be defined before we can go any further. What about Israel? They've been attacked too many times to count by too many enemies. If they suddenly decided to launch a massive air strike against Iran, they would be pilloried by the world, but is that fair? Iranian officials have made anti-Israel speeches numerous times, they've sponsored protests where people carry signs that say things like "Death to Israel" (and "Death to America"), and now they want nuclear weapons. Basically Iran has stated several times that they want Israel to go the way of the mastadon. If some guy I meet in a bar starts talking about how he's going to shoot me as soon as I leave the bar, I'd say I'm justified in kicking his ass if I see him follow me out. Iran with nukes strikes me as very similar to that guy following me out.

Heck, Israel has been attacked by Palestinian suicide bombers, yet the "world" denies Israel the right to defend itself. They ignore the world and protect themselves, and get more flack for it. How can we trust the UN to decide when a country has a justified reason for war, and when it doesn't? I have a feeling that any such discussion, whether there are guidelines or not, will be based on the political leanings of the diplomats involved, and have little to do with justice.

I didn't catch the entire vice-Presidential debate. I could have, but I got bored. As my roommate said, it was basically one guy talking trash about the other guy, and the other guy saying, "Well if you thinks that's bad, just wait till you hear what this guy did." And the plans.... So vague! At one point Edwards said they had a plan for Iraq, and they were going to speed up troop training (ummm... wouldn't that lead to troops not being as well trained as they should be?), stabilize things, and I forget what else. He certainly never said how they were going to do any of this. It was tantamount to him saying their plan is that they are, "...going to win the war." Great. It seemed like a list of objectives that a 6th grade project group would come up with in a brainstorming session. You, let's raise money. Good idea. Then we'll shorten the school day. Great ideas, but how?

In the short time I did watch, Cheney seemed very confident, and very knowledgeable. Edwards seemed very slick, exactly what you would expect from a trial lawyer who won cases using junk science. In the end this debate will probably matter less than the first Presidential debate.

I read an article earlier in which a guy was sarcastically suggesting that schools do away with science, as it's jsut not needed in the lives of most adults. Of course he wrote this in the spirit of Jonathan Swift's, "A Modest Proposal," in which Swift waxed eloquent on the eating of babies to solve the hunger problem. At any rate, while the article on science classes was saracastic, there are probably a large number of people out there that would applaud such a move.

I was thinking about the consequences of removing science from school curiculums. It's true, not many adults directly use knowledge of science in their jobs or their daily lives, but without understanding some modicum of science, more people would have believed that the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," could really happen. Next thing you know you'd have a bunch of morons marching on Washington, decrying the evil policies that will cause the world to freeze sometime in the next two hours. I don't want to see that.

With the way the Democratic Party feeds the media little news items that are completely false, like the draft scare last week, it would be really easy to throw the public for loop with some bad science, and even easier if adults didn't have to learn any science growing up. Science and history need to be taught to keep our politicians in line, if nothing else.

I just got home from taking the GMAT. Because it's taken on a computer, you get your scores immediately, except for the minor essay portion. I did about what I estimated on verbal, and a bit low on math, but the combined score ought to impress anyone. That, along with good stuff from my current and previous employers, should offset my somewhat low undergrad GPA. Georgia State University MBA program, staring summer 2005, if all goes well. And as long as my employer pays for it :)

Last night's "debate" went ok, I thought. Actually my roommate and I both thought Bush started really strong, and fell off as the night wore on. Granted, I think I basically zoned out for the last 15 minutes, but while Bush may have fumbled for words more often, what he actually said was pretty good, whereas Kerry sounded smoother, but said almost nothing of substance the whole night. Kerry, in my opinion, needed to beat Bush handily to win the debate, whereas Bush just had to not look like an idiot. Bush succeeded in that, but Kerry by no means blew Bush away, so I'll call it a draw, which means I think very few people changed their minds in any way.

There's a large disconnect between Kerry's various plans. He says he has plans to pull the troops out of Iraq within 6 months of being elected, but he also says he's going to stay until everything is fixed, that he's going to send as many troops over there as needed to get the job done, and he wants to be seen as a liberator, not an occupier. How to respond? Well he's on drugs if he thinks everything will be ok in six months, or that he'll be able to recruit, train, and use new troops to fix things in six months. Add to that the obvious fact that the more troops we send, the more we'll be seen as an occupier. He wants to do more for Darfur, but in this case rejects Bush for trying to use the UN and diplomacy. You should only use diplomacy if you are Bush and are using military power, and you should only use military power if you are Bush and have been using diplomacy. In other words, whatever the situation, Iraq, North Korea, Darfur, etc., Kerry looks at what Bush is doing, and says we should do the opposite, even if that means being inconsistent.

Oh, and last I heard, bin Laden was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis don't want American armed forces running rampant through their mountains. But if Kerry is elected, we'll get bin Laden. Which must mean he plans to unilatterally invade Pakistan's sovereign territory. Sounds like a hypocrite to me.

Here's yet another stupid decision made by a school. Two kids were supposed to be filling balloons with helium from a tank for a school dance or some such event, but they decided to suck down a little helium for fun while they were doing it. Now they've been suspended for drug use on school grounds, with the school having the option to extend the punishment further. The problem is you can't have it both ways. If helium is a drug, then whoever supplied it to those kids should be put away for 10-15 years. BUt it's not a drug, so the kids should be back in school.