Email notification to Brandon Starr's blog has been shown to reduce bad cholesterol in two-toed sloths, and has been used as an effective exfoliant.
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Sunday, October 24, 2004
#9 non-policy reason to vote for Kerry over Bush
(To get you up to speed, although there are a lot of important issues, sometimes an election features someone in power with such poor ethics, lack of judgement, and extremism that that person much be removed from power. This is such an election.)
#9: Bush is careless with his words.
At this point, you might expect some of the usual Bush gaffes: the "is our children learning?" gaffe, the "OB-GYNs practicing their love on women" gaffe, the "we will not have an all-volunteer army" Freudian slip, and so on.
But that's not really what I'm getting at.
Those kinds of quotes make Americans, Republican, Democrat, and other, cringe, and brings down our standing in the world, quite apart from Bush's other actions, policies, and words. But there's a worse habit of his:
THE WRONG WORDS AT THE WRONG TIME.
A not-so-verbal version of this was the "Mission Accomplished." Now, he never actually said "mission accomplished" during the speech. But he stood in front of the banner, and when he tried to lie by saying the banner wasn't put up by him or his team, he ended up saying his people screwed up (and, therefore, it WAS his people who put it up): "The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way."
But I'm not talking about lying, here, either. That's one for much higher up on this top ten list.
No, I'm talking about using his words as a sort of built-in Three Stooges routine, doing damage to himself and, more importantly, to our nation and our soldiers.
"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
That was Bush, just a few months after his invasion, predicated mainly on Saddam having/procuring/allotting to terrorists WMDs, causing the deaths of many Americans, Iraqis, and others, joking by looking around his podium and the other furniture, as though the WMDs might be near him somewhere. By making light of the very reason he put our soldiers in danger, he weakened the already-weak "coalition of the willing" and made it obvious he was going into Iraq, and that the WMDs were, in essence, the MacGuffin--in other words, the thing which everyone is after, but which is essentially meaningless--it's just used to set things in motion.
"Bring them on."
There are five faults of the commander, according to Sun Tzu in the classic "The Art of War." Bush showed both the third and fourth of them with those words. To quote:
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame...
An unwise and distemperate man leading a great army cannot bring victory. By encouraging the insurgency, he made things more difficult for our army. These words were not merely foolish, but cruel to our own soldiers.
"The problem with the French is they don't have a word for entrepeneur."
Bush said that to Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England. I'll bet Blair is educated enough to know that the word derives from French. Heck, I'll bet about 75% of Europe knows that. And about 33% of the U.S. But a much higher percentage of people who have been to BOTH Harvard AND Yale, like our C-Student-in-Chief. Not just embarrassing but insulting.
Which brings us to the words of our "uniter, not a divider," when he decided that Kerry's foreign policy stands are "dangerous for world peace." This from the man who took a world in love with the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks, pushed them away by saying that if you aren't in the coalition you won't have any say after Saddam falls, period, then cherry-picked the intelligence to give to Congress and the public to get support for a war with a lie.
Bush's stance on war? It's not a last resort, by any means. In fact, it's right near the front, basically as soon as the war can be "sold" to the public like a can of peaches.
"The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war!"
Bush doesn't understand at all. He thinks that because our mighty military is capable of so much, it should be used, early and often. He doesn't realize the long-term consequences.
Powell let Bush know that when it came to toppling Saddam, Iraq was strictly "you break it, you buy it." Well, that's not strictly true. Bush broke it, but we're ALL buying it. And we buy it a little more every time he says something that causes our allies to drift further away, our "coalition of the willing" members to rue their participation, or our enemies to make their attacks fierer.
And that's reason #9: Bush is careless with his words.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
10 days until the election...starting top ten list
I'm starting a top ten list, one per day, ending on election day:
Top ten non-policy reasons to vote for Kerry over Bush
Some will be anti-Bush, some will be comparative, and some will be pro-Kerry.
All will be non-policy.
In other words, I won't be arguing the benefits of one health care plan over another, or whether there should be a cut or a raise in the capital-gains tax.
Why?
Well, there are plenty of issues out there that are important. Very important. But some elections aren't about the issues. This happens when you have someone in power whose lack of ethics, lack of judgement, and extremism are so dangerous to our future that he must be defeated.
This is such an election, when the person trumps the issues.
So, here we go with the tenth reason...
#10: Bush is lazy, Kerry is hard-working.
Bush's record before he started having corporations given to him by his dad and his dad's cronies is one of being a true wastrel. After being given a "get out of Vietnam free" card by his dad's friends, he goes through expensive pilot training, then blows it off and does...well, no one quite knows, but it wasn't what he had signed up to do "for our country."
Kerry's early record? While he probably could have figured out a way to weasel his way out of Vietnam, instead he signed up for military service. And then, he volunteered for one of the most dangerous duties in his branch of the service--swift-boat duty. After Vietnam, he works hard to try to get the public and the government to get the POWs out of Vietnam, and for everyone to see the policy errors of a war with no strategy for winning and no exit strategy.
After Vietnam, Bush goes through his "failed CEO" period...something for another time. Later, he became the Governor of Texas--Texas has a "weak governor" system, so it wasn't too hard for him to do. Then, of course, he fell into the Presidency after his brother made sure Florida went his way.
As President, Bush has spent more than 40% of his time outside the White House--at either of his two mansions, or at Camp David.
After Vietnam, Kerry becomes a very successful prosecutor, then a lieutenant governor, then a Senator. He has never spent any long amount of time not working his butt off.
During the first debate, we found out just how much of a strain the Presidency is on a lazy man like George W. Bush. Eleven times he talked about how he's doing "hard work" or how the Presidency is "hard work." Once he talked about how loving his wife is "hard work." And twice he talked about how he and others in his Administration are working "hard."
Kerry's first words in his nomination acceptance speech? That he's "reporting for duty." He's a man who was disciplined by military life, and worked hard ever since.
And that's reason number ten: Kerry is hard-working, Bush is too lazy to do an effective job.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Iranian hard-core theocrats endorse Bush for President (AP)
Despite Bush's rhetoric against Iran, they'd rather have him back for more:
Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.
"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.
Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues.
"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked whether Iran was supporting Democratic Sen. John Kerry against Bush.
Now that's interesting. Most of the truly democratic countries want Kerry, while false-front "democracies" and "republics" led by autocrats, like Iran, support Bush. Democrats do more harm than Republicans to these kinds of rulers, who enjoy cronylike status among the Republicans.
Who do you want for your President? Democracies' preferred candidate, Kerry? Or Iran's choice, Bush?
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Getting in the Halloween mood
Here's some short zombie fiction stories from the Twilight Creations site, makers of the "Zombies!!!" board game.
Eat well.
(added later:)
One more thing to chew on: George Romero is working on a follow-up to his other zombie movies, to come out next year. It's called "Land of the Dead." The plotline: a few years have passed, and the living dead have taken over almost all of the Earth. The surviving humans are in a walled-in city, desperately trying to survive each other as much as the zombies. Meanwhile, the zombie threat, which had started fading as the zombies decomposed, is rising again as the zombies evolve into new threats...
Sounds like it could be good.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Pat Robertson: I warned Bush about casualties in Iraq...
...Bush's response? "There aren't going to be any." (CNN)
Wow!
Bush thought there weren't going to be any casualties--as though invading Iraq was going to be like invading Grenada.
This is an amazing article. It's also full of irrationalist gems like this:
Jesus may have told Bush to invade Iraq, but God was giving warnings to Robertson: "I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy."
Robertson also believes Bush is blessed by God:
"Even if he stumbles and messes up -- and he's had his share of stumbles and gaffes -- I just think God's blessing is on him," Robertson said.
Amazing. Bush is a goofball, self-assured for no reason, mistaken oh so many times, and foolish, yet his irrationalist buddies think "God" has blessed him.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
I can't say it any better... Monday, October 18, 2004
Authoritarian supports Bush
"Democratically elected" leader Putin supports "democratically elected" Bush
Birds of a feather screw over their people together.
Putin, like so many idiots, seem to think the terrorists want Bush to lose. This is, of course, false. Al-Qaeda is already on record as thinking Bush is a fool and that Kerry would be a much more dangerous foe to them. A lot of Bush's supporters choose to ignore this fact, as they ignore so many facts that fly in the face of what they fervently wish were true.
If you believe in fantasy right up until the moment of your death or the death of your first born, vote for Bush. Osama'll thank you.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Gather together the voter fraud... Bush Administration: torturers in two hemispheres Saturday, October 16, 2004
30 years of Dungeons and Dragons
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