The Opinionated Bastard

Reading the transcript, I think President Bush was doing OK in the debate until this moment where Kerry said this:

I've met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they're going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.

I think that's wrong. Humvees -- 10,000 out of 12,000 Humvees that are over there aren't armored. And you go visit some of those kids in the hospitals today who were maimed because they don't have the armament.

This president just -- I don't know if he sees what's really happened on there. But it's getting worse by the day. More soldiers killed in June than before. More in July than June. More in August than July. More in September than in August.

I think it was the implication that President Bush didn't care about our troops more then anything else that made Bush lose his temper. His response to Kerry was this:

First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force and now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place.

I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?

No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I've just outlined.

Which wasn't that great a response. It would have been better to just let it slide rather then do a response, especially since that response wasn't very articulate.

I think the President got mad here because he sees that Kerry's constant criticism and calling Iraq a "colossal mistake" as making the war harder. To a large extent he's right, if you had to choose it would be much better to have Kerry shut up then it would be to armor all those Humvee's, because less soldiers would be dying in Iraq. Those months that Kerry rattled off? They correspond to when Kerry started campaigning. Remember that the President has made a huge effort to meet with the soldiers and their families, and I think he truly does feel their pain. So being criticized like this with outright lies would piss me off too.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that the challenger in a Presidential race, even in wartime, has to question the President. What I object to is the smarmy way Kerry is doing it: Style over Substance. Senator Kerry really doesn't have any idea what he would do in Iraq past January. So instead of talking about real alternatives, he makes these smarmy attacks.

Because I think it means people have been paying attention for awhile.

I was gritting my teeth during the debate as I saw Kerry make these baseless attacks, and watched Bush fumble his responses. Personally, its OK for me that Bush isn't super-verbal. As a UI designer, I know that verbal people tend to be better on details, worse on the big picture. Clinton was great on details, but terrible on the big picture, which was why he was worse on terrorism then President Bush.

However, according to Gallup, Kerry may have won on style, but Bush definitely won on substance.

I think that shows that people have been paying more attention to this election then typically, and doing it earlier. The Opinionated Wife was unimpressed by Kerry. She thought President Bush didn't do very well, but she noted that Kerry really didn't have a plan for Iraq. I was worried that Kerry would sound like he had a plan, because after all, its Bush's plan, but she wasn't fooled, because she'd done some reading on her own.

So perhaps its a good thing that the electorate is fired up.

About that global test...

1. Is there an old copy of it floating around we can get our hands on?
2. Is it multiple choice or essay form?
3. Is the test written in French, German or English?
4. Who determines if we can retake the test?
5. Is it pass/fail or is it more like the SAT?

Hat Tip to Instapundit.

An American Soldier who's actually fought in Iraq describes what bugs me about Kerry and his war criticism better then I ever could.

Read it here.

Is it weird to imagine what you would have said in the same situation? I don't know, but I hope not because I do it all the time.

I realized that part of what frustrated me about last nights debates is that I wanted President Bush to verbally bitch-slap Kerry, and he didn't. So here's my version of some of the debate.

Of course, I have a huge advantage over President Bush in that I have infinite time to respond, I was able to Google the COPS program Kerry talked about, and I don't have to be presidential, but its still fun.

Yes, I'm writing a post kind of defending Kerry. I think it dramatically illustrates the differences between the two candidates.

In the debate, Kerry proposed:

I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.

Now most people, especially conservatives, reaction was something like: Give Iran nuclear material? Are you insane? They definitely have a point, because the fact is, we don't really want Iran to have any nuclear material at all with their current government. For one thing, we don't want terrorists to be able to build a dirty bomb, that is, a conventional bomb tied to some sort of radioactive material. From my wife's experience with a recent train accident attests, radiation seriously freaks people out. (read here and here).

That's not quite the point. The issue with Iran has always been that they claim that they want to build a nuclear reactor for "peaceful" purposes. Its just that no one believes them. What Kerry is proposing is calling their bluff by offering them nuclear fuel for free, which they could use only in their nuclear reactor.

Here's where we get to the difference between Senator Kerry and President Bush. Kerry needs this proof in order to keep the granola and Birkenstocks crowd quiet in his own party. This faction in his party is going to seriously cripple his foreign policy, because they insist on being beaten over the head with the obvious. No one seriously believed even before the recent announcements by Iran that they wanted a nuclear reactor to more cheaply make electricity. For one thing, they produce oil. Its ten times cheaper for them to produce electricity using that then it every would be for them to use nuclear energy. It's never made any sense for them to have a nuclear reactor, so its always been obvious that it was part of a weapons program. They have a name for people who believe Iran wanted a nuclear reactor for "electricity": morons.

So while Kerry feels its important to call this non-existent bluff to keep the bland pacifism in his own party at bay, President Bush has never really bothered. Everyone already knows, that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, and at some point, the US (or hopefully Russia) will have to shut them down.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure Kerry (or any other Democrat) is up to the task, because foreign policy means dealing with uncomfortable truths. President Bush may be a bit of a cowboy, and he may piss off our allies sometimes, but he's actually been pretty effective.

But this time, before the VP debate. Maybe someone can send this to Karl Rove. :-) I really like the "mashed potatoes" line...

Edwards: Blah, blah, Halliburton.

Cheney: You know, I'm glad you brought that up. I've been quiet up until now, because I felt that the country had more important things to talk about then me. But since you brought it up, here goes.

Mary Beth Cahill said he looked "mean".

That's the devastating criticism of the head of the Kerry campaign? Cheney looked mean?

Anyone speak Yiddish? Can women be putzes?

Just go read his latest. He doesn't blog very often, but when he does, WHAMMO!

So with the report of the Iraqi Survey Group out about WMD in Iraq, we have a good chunk of the pieces we need to Monday Morning Quarterback the President. The report provides four pieces of new information. Even with this information though, the choices remain the same: A well planned war in Iraq.

Over the last week.

Kerry’s Blog: 45 Negative entries 52 Positive entries. That’s 46% negative. Kerry’s actually usually even more negative, but this week had lots of “Kerry won the debate” entries.

Bush’s Blog: 17 Negative 44 Positive. That’s 28% negative.

In general, I find Kerry’s blog, negative and whiny. It’s not as bad as Atrios but its not much better, and has the same sort of factual errors and logical errors that Atrios shows. Bush’s blog on the other hand tends to be more focused on making positive statements about Bush. Unlike the whining on the Kerry blog, the negative pieces tend to be better reasoned and presented. He’s a little more negative this week with 3 ad announcements that were negative ads.

So this week, Bush was more more negative, but still predominantly positive, while Kerry was more positive, but still hugely negative.

I find this interesting, because one rule of marketing is to never mention the competition, yet Kerry is doing it constantly. Of course, marketing isn’t politics. If it were, you wouldn’t be seeing President Bush repeating Kerry’s line about “wrong war, etc.”

Overall, President Bush did much better. If you ask me he won, but I’m a pretty informed voter so most of what Kerry said just made me scream at the TV.

In no particular order:

• Does it bother anyone else when a Democrat invokes Republic presidents? (Ike and Reagan)
• As is typical, Kerry didn’t answer a single question on his plan. One thing I particularly noticed was he said his spending wasn’t really going to cost 2.2 trillion, but didn’t come back with his own number.
• On that theme, Bush was great when he said, “they say 800 billion, we say 600 billion, that’s still not enough”.
• Thinking about it, it was very weird when Kerry talked about how Rubin was going to help him make the numbers add up, that he’d scaled back on the things he’s promised. Er, ok, then what is is plan for America then? Bush has the Agenda for America, I guess Kerry has the “Secret Plan”? I’ve read his book, its just quotes from stump speeches…
• The President gave a great answer on the draft. A draft isn’t the right answer for the new kind of wars.
• The part where he cut off Charles Gibson just seemed to me like he was jumping to respond. They both did that.
• In the previous debate, President Bush lost his center after the question where Kerry accused him of shortchanging our troops on body armor. That really pissed him off. I was glad to see him come back with the obvious rejoinder that Kerry had voted against that body armor.
• In general, Bush did much better. His “I own a timber company? Anyone want some wood?” line was pretty funny.
• I think Bush is going to force Kerry to spend October defending his Senate record, which is a loser for Kerry, since its either underwhelming, or bad.
• Kerry thinks that “Equal Pay” is in the Constitution? Shudder…

Bottom line:

You could have replaced Kerry with a tape recorder to playback his canned responses, it would have been the same.

All he has to say is: “Yeah, I didn’t do so well in the first debate, because I spent the day traveling around Florida talking to the hurricane victims.”

There is a clear difference between the two candidates.

After September 11th, President Bush had a choice. Did he focus on Al Queda, or did he focus on all terrorists organizations. In other words, was the enemy Al Queda, or was it terrorism as a whole?

President Bush decided that terrorism as a whole was the enemy. It was a tough decisions, one with far reaching consequences.

Senator Kerry thinks differently. To Senator Kerry, we were attacked only by Al Queda, so we should only go after Al Queda.

Senator Kerry is wrong.

Osama’s organization was dedicated not just to promoting and training their own terrorists, but training and funding terrorism all over the world. Some of the Chechyen terrorists were trained by Al Queda. Not because they were particularly followers of Osama, but because that’s what Al Queda did. Osama’s true ideology was hatred, not any particular cause. To fight Al Queda, we really have to fight against all terrorism.

I used to be one of those people who felt that the Presidential candidates were almost identical. Now I feel that our decision in November is one of the most important choices we’ve ever had as voters. It is our chance to make the same choice that President Bush made. Its important for us to choose correctly, because if we don’t, more Americans will die.

On September 11th, we were attacked not by Al Queda, but by terrorism. So we must fight not just Al Queda, but terrorism and the hatred shared by terrorists. If Senator Kerry would acknowledge this fact, perhaps it wouldn’t matter who we voted for this election. Since he has chosen not to, I can only conclude that he cannot make the tough decisions a President must make.

I plan to vote for Bush.

I call it the “Bush Plan”.

I wrote my Clear Choice piece before I ever read this. (This is the article where Senator Kerry called terrorism a “nuisance” like prostitution or gambling.)

Here’s the conclusion (and remember, this is the New York Times, not exactly a bastion of conservatism):

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America — and certainly in Washington — had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism — which is exactly why he has come across, to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists. But his less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying — and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign — in a world where the twin towers still stood.

September 11 didn’t change Kerry? I guess that means that he’ll continue his 20 year history of downgrading our military and intelligence services in favor of more meetings? sigh, I really pray he doesn’t win

Kerry, still my best argument for voting Bush.

Afghanistan successfully concluded their elections on Saturday.

Now in the WaPo, An Opening For Arab Democrats.

If I had to wait to find a political party where I agreed with every single one of their positions before I could vote, I’d be living in a cabin in Montana making bombs…

So I’ve watched three debates now, and typically, the town hall debate had the best questions, while the two mainstream media representatives didn’t ask Kerry any tough questions at all?

However, I have a question for the mainstream media: Is Kerry really such a lightweight that you can’t ask him any tough questions? I don’t think you’ve done him any favors.

Overall, Kerry came out ahead. President Bush should have spent the day of the first debate relaxing, instead he visited the hurricane victims. If he had been rested like he was for the last two debates, he would have cleaned Kerry’s clock, and the election would be over. Since President Bush went into the debates with a strong lead, Senator Kerry really had to look “presidential” in that first debate, and he did so. He was therefore able to convince people that he was a “real” candidate.

The debates after that were enough of a tie that they probably didn’t shift opinion of the general populace one way or another. The townhall debate, as usual, was the best, because the general populace asks better, more informed questions then your typical pretty boy anchormen. What surprises me is that anyone is still surprised at how insipid anchormen can be.

From my perspective though, I now dislike Kerry even more. He had two debates where the moderators refused to give him any tough questions at all, and frankly, he didn’t do that well on substance. In general, he completely ducked the questions to claim “he has a plan”, which he doesn’t explain. Then, last night, reviewing Kerry’s website, I found out that he has an completely meaningless legislative record. His “plan”, which you can download from his website, is mostly quotes from his stump speeches, constrast that with the President’s highly detailed “Agenga”.

The man is an empty suit. He looks good, but he hasn’t authored a single interesting piece of successful legislation in 20 years. He is obviously not a leader. Looking at his voting record, his votes aren’t even courageous, they’re just weird. He has no accomplishments outside of the political arena, he’s never built anything or created anything. The only thing I can say in his favor, is that he was in Vietnam, and even that was only for 4 months.

You know, when I get hit by a Democratic troll, I always ask them to say 3 positive things about Kerry, without referencing Bush in a negative way, and without mentioning Vietnam. I have yet to get an answer.

Kerry’s blog claims:

Once again, the president is misleading America. I have passed 56 individual bills that I have personally written.” – John Kerry

It then goes on to list 56 “bills and resolutions” Kerry got passed. Except reading this list, it turns out that Bush is right. Kerry’s record is completely underwhelming.

First off, a resolution is not a bill, its not a law, its just a non-binding statement.

Here’s a resolution Kerry passed as an example:

S.CON.RES.62: A concurrent resolution expressing solidarity with the Sakharov family in their efforts to exercise their rights of freedom of expression, of travel, and of communication, as guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

So Kerry’s statement above is not true, he hasn’t passed 56 individual bills. Also, Senator Kerry needs to read his constitution again, as not all of the 56 “bills and resolutions” Kerry is listing passed both houses of Congress. So filtering Kerry’s list for bills that actually passed to become law, we get:

100th Congress:

S.2365: A bill authorizing the release of 86 USIA films with respect to the Marshall Plan.

101st Congress:

Nothing

102nd Congress:

S.1563 : A bill to authorize appropriations to carry out the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes.

103rd Congress:

S.1206 : A bill to redesignate the Federal building located at 380 Trapelo Road in Waltham, Massachusetts, as the “Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center”.

S.1636 : A bill to authorize appropriations for the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and to improve the program to reduce the incidental taking of marine mammals during the course of commercial fishing operations, and for other purposes.

104th Congress:

Nothing

105th Congress:

S.469 Title: A bill to designate a portion of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers as a component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

106th Congress:

S.791 : A bill to amend the Small Business Act with respect to the women’s business center program.

That’s 6 bills passed. But all of these are pretty underwhelming legislation. Releasing some films? Renaming a building? This, from Kerry’s own website, is his legislative legacy? Give me a break! In 20 years, he managed to rename a building. Jeesh, I bet that was really controversial and he really had to fight hard to get that through both houses…

Update: I said it first! Nyaah to the Official Bush Blog

On the Arizona for Bush mailing list I participate in, I’m often the one who goes after the Kerry trolls. Despite my blog name, I’ve gotten a reputation for being the most civil responder. So here’s my guidelines for how to have a civil discussion with a Kerry voter.

We have a clear choice this November. Last time I talked about the President’s choice that terrorism was the enemy, not just Al Queda, this time I’m going to talk about how the world has changed, and how the President’s domestic policy reflects that.

When President Bush talks about the jobs of the 21st century, he’s referring to some sweeping changes that have happened to America and the world. It used to be that people had one job with one company. Now, the average person works for 3-7 companies in their life. Because of this, its important that your retirement plan and your health insurance be with you, not with the company you work for. When President Bush talks about ownership, he’s talking about making sure that when you change jobs, that you don’t have to change everything else in your life as well.

The second thing that it happening in this century is that it used to be that one guy worked at one machine making something. Now, one guy works at a computer, that talks to ten machines, that make ten things. That’s just progress, but because of that, manufacturing jobs all over the world have declined. We work smarter these days, not harder. That makes education even more important. America’s dominance in the world has always been because we have the smartest, most flexible workers in the world. We need to continue that in a more difficult world. That means better schools for kids, grants for people to upgrade their skills at community colleges so they can get better jobs, and tax credits for people going to school.

The world didn’t change overnight, it changed slowly. But the President is the only candidate who realizes that the government has to change when the world changes. Its a “big picture” viewpoint that Kerry doesn’t seem to have.

Because God has a sense of humor.

Let’s hear it for tolerance and compassion, those sorely neglected Christian virtues.

It’s a given that President Bush has made mistakes.

It’s a given that a “President Kerry” would make mistakes.

My issue with Kerry is that he seems in many ways to be dead set on repeating President Bush’s mistakes, and making new, possibly worse ones.

Our fundamental problem in Iraq seems to be too much top-down imposition of “big projects” with “big goals”. In other words, all the things that bug me about the US government at home. America in civilian accomplishes most tasks with a sort of “positive chaos”. That is, you have millions of people every day making decisions that move us forward at a breathtaking clip. Mistakes get fixed quickly, and things move well. This even applies in our military: We run our military in such a way that we have more sergeants per soldier then any other army. That’s because we expect our sergeants to make decisions that normally only officers in other armies make.

The government on the other hand, being huge and unwieldy, tries to accomplish everything from the top down with huge, overly structured “positive order” campaigns. Its slow, and mistakes drag out for months, years, or decades.

Well, given that I had a Saturday deadline, I’m going to assume The Noise (the local paper I write for) is out in print, so here’s the long version of the article I wrote for it. (I’m limited to 900 words and no web links on paper…):

Since I got interested in politics, I get lots of strange emails from both the right and the left. About a month ago, I got this strange email claiming that Kerry was ineligible to be President due to the fourteenth amendment, specifically section 3. Now I didn’t take it too seriously, for one thing, the email had edited the fourteenth amendment down to be shorter. It seemed kind of silly to be saving electrons in an email, so that made me suspicious. I went to a Constitution website and got the full text of the 14th amendment:

From the Times UK. The most interesting part for me is where she talks about having met the leaders of Hamas:

On arrival in Gaza I was disturbed that the Hamas leaders I met would never look me in the eye. To them, it was indecent even to glance at a member of the inferior sex. All their answers were directed at my boyfriend, who was taking pictures. But they were co-operative and eager for publicity.

We were taken upstairs in a mosque and, to my shock, were introduced to a dozen or more would-be suicide bombers in their mid-teens, who declared their fervent wish to martyr themselves for their cause.

At the time, there had been no suicide bombs in Israel. Some Hezbollah members in Lebanon had blown themselves up, but they were Shi’ite Muslims: Palestinian Sunnis were not supposed to go in for that sort of thing. Yet here I was, looking at a bunch of boys with kaffirs masking their faces, brandishing knives and practising karate in a place of worship. These weren’t boy scouts in a church hall; they were being trained to become fanatical killers by their religious elders.

When I heard the other week that Cat Stevens had been refused entry to America, I thought good riddance.

When mosques are raided by US forces, I am not surprised. I know mosques are used as terrorist bases. I expect most of the young men I talked to are now either dead or sitting in an Israeli jail. They were triumphalist about the global spread of Islam and confident that it would one day dominate the planet. They hated the West, they wanted to kill Jews, and none of them had ever heard of George W Bush.

So has Bush inflamed hatred in the Arab world? Yes and no: he certainly did not start it. One of the most unconvincing arguments advanced by the Democrats is that the jihadists favour a Bush-Cheney victory. I don’t buy it. Their leaders are on the run and no government will afford them safe haven. They have not yet managed to pull off another attack on America. It is hard for Bush to boast about this, lest he tempt fate, but he deserves some credit.

from the New York Times

From Froggy Ruminations:

As a SEAL Reservist, I have tried to maintain contact with my friends in the Teams who have remained on active duty. This President has authorized SOF operations that were unthinkable with the prior administration. If I told you the places my friends have been, you would be shocked. President Bush’s risk tolerance for operations in support of the GWOT is satisfyingly high. While John Kerry promises to double SOF which is impossible, the President has shown a detailed understanding of what the SEALs are up to and how they are getting it done. The President has mandated the creation of 2 additional SEAL Teams, but he told our top Admiral that he would not abide the degradation of training and selection of men. This is music to the ears of a Navy SEAL who places his life in the hands of his comrades in training and war.

Hat tip: Blogs of War

Well, I saw the latest from the South Park guys. It was funny. I won’t get it on DVD, because I probably couldn’t watch it over and over, unlike South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.

After 9/11, I read this great essay on the web that talked about how the terrorists shouldn’t have messed with America, because we were crazy. It was called, Only a Crazy Person Picks a Fight with Someone Who’s Nuts . It then went on to document all the wild and silly things found in this land of ours. While watching this movie, I was reminded of that essay, because I kept wondering, what will the rest of the world think of this movie? Will they realize that America does get “it”, that we know that violence can be a dead end, that life isn’t like a Bruckheimer movie? Will they also realize that in turn, you can’t always fight evil with sternly worded memos?

I managed to dig up the original link to the essay, but it seems the original site was eaten by the dot-com-bomb. However, through diligent searching, I found the author’s new blog, and found his most recent posting of it. Which you can read here

Here’s a taste:

To those extremists that perpetrated this crime against our nation, I have a warning for you. There are those of us who look at your actions as irrational, twisted, and completely inhuman. By all measures, what you have done can only be seen as insane.

I have news for you. We’re more fucking nuts than you, and it should scare you shitless.

We eat whole pizzas with a single diet Coke and think we’re eating healthy. Taking a single pill from GNC that can cause heart attacks, psychosis, strokes, and even death just so we can metabolize that pizza faster makes it even healthier. And then, despite countless numbers of starving people throughout the world that could have used the food besides us, we go to the bathroom and puke it all up just to stay thin.

We made a sequel to Police Academy 5.

Theresa just lost Kerry the election! You never dis Laura, everyone loves Laura, even Liberals, even Alec Baldwin! And then to same something that isn’t true about Laura but is true about Theresa!

That’s what I woke up to, my liberal wife ranting about Theresa…

A metaphor even a Bush hater can understand.

President Bush is a crazy suit.

Senator Kerry is an empty suit.

I’ve worked for crazy suits, and I’ve worked for empty suits.

It was better working for a crazy suit, because they made the right decision about half the time, and the wrong decision about half the time, but they always made a decision. An empty suit wouldn’t make any decision (which is usually worse then making the wrong decision), and would blame everyone else when things went wrong because he couldn’t make up his mind.

Wizbang pointed out this section from the New Republic:

The Security Council has authorized only three wars in its history: the Korean War (while the Soviet Union was boycotting the Council), a 1960s intervention in Congo, and the first Gulf war. That there have been numerous wars since 1945 would suggest that the U.N. Charter has been violated repeatedly. But while one could argue that all those wars were technically illegal, most legal experts concede the legitimacy of customary, not just statutory, law—meaning widely accepted actual practices can, over time, become as legitimate as written rules.

I would like to point out that it was the US in all 3 instances, that only the US has ever asked for permission to use military force.

It was a Russian General who pointed that out before Gulf War, Part 2.

I’d also like to point out that if you use the simple test that we’re at “war” when we send people to other countries to try to kill them, and vice versa, we’ve been at war with Iraq since 1991, that this is all just a new battle in an old war, one with UN approval.

Fuck France.

Germany, on the other hand, has been supporting us behind the scenes…