Sunday, October 24

Politics — and sick of it.  

Looking back, this blog seems to be turning more political than I care. I really wanted to start this to talk about technical stuff, but…

And now, I guess it's the season, I still discuss politics.

At any rate, as I'm reading my Bloglines feeds, I'm running into some good stuff, stuff that needs more than a line of comments, so they are going here, and not into my poor neglected link blog. Attributed as I found them.

Via Scripting News, from The DesMoines Register - John Kerry, The Real Thing, critical remarks about President Bush—

It's sad that an incumbent president chose to employ so much of his vast campaign resources to tear down his challenger, and not to cite his own accomplishments or to move the nation ahead. But perhaps that's precisely the difficulty the president faces.

His presidency has been one of bold leadership undermined by a failure to achieve meaningful results. The resolute leader Americans rallied behind after Sept. 11, 2001, sidetracked the country into a mess in Iraq. The fiscally responsible, compassionate conservative Americans thought they elected, the man we hoped would improve schools, lower the cost of health care and find more jobs, has failed to do so and instead run up an unprecedented national debt.

and the positive about Senator Kerry—

Most interesting - and relevant to Nov. 2 - Kerry has a reputation for being able to work across party lines. He worked well with Republican Gov. William Weld for the common good of Massachusetts. He worked with Republican Senators John McCain and Bob Smith on POW/MIA issues.

That's a key quality, especially in an angrily polarized America. Of President Bush's shortcomings, the most disappointing is the betrayal of his promise to be a uniter. America should be united at times like these - and was for a shining moment after 9/11. But the president let that slip away, deepening divisions by adopting a my-way-or-the-highway cocksureness on both domestic and foreign affairs.

The whole article is good. Read it.

Via Fables of the reconstruction, coming from the American Conservative - Kerry's the One we get this fine little nugget.

By Scott McConnell

There is little in John Kerry's persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge—the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry seems overdone, as Kerry's contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.

But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.

It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America's conservative party, he has become the Left's perfect foil—its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries' budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation's children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can't be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

Gee, a conservative publication endorsing the "liberal" candidate, not because of what they espouse, but just because the "conservative" candidate isn't living up to his expectations that he was originally elected on. Of course this—

If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past—and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.

is actually the defining part of the editorial. (Re)elect Bush, and conservatism could be banished to the middle ages.

Via Shot by both sides, we get 100 Facts and 1 Opinion, there is just too much to think about quoting here. Read the whole thing, and pick your own favorite. The facts are backed by attribution.

From The Blogging of the President: 2004 - Letting Go and Following Through we get an extremely well thought out essay on what is wrong with America. We are Imperial because we need to make sure that the oil must flow. (A thought idea here, rewriting Dune as a contemporary novel with oil instead of spice as the issue…) That's why we have a much larger army than we need, spending more money on defense than all the others combined, with more resources than all the others combined. The problem is, it's still not big enough to bend other countries to our will. Energy is liable to be America's downfall. :(

Via The Daily Kos we get the Washing Post endorsing Kerry. They have issues with Kerry, but they have more issues with Bush.

Interesting, a piece on the Guardian (UK) no longer appears. It was a Bush bash, stating that since he shouldn't win, Bush will will. And at the end it called for Bush to be assasinated. Brave words. And now they are gone. Weird.

On another note, the Dispatch decides to endorse Bush. That editorial may become my first fisking I've ever done. But I've written enough here.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 10/24/2004 01:25:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

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