The Opinionated Bastard

So over on Blogs for Bush a commenter writes:

I need some support here. I’ve been in a pretty heated argument with my girlfriend over this issue (Kerry and the Swift Vets) for the past couple days now. She’s been getting on my case about being so negative about Kerry all the time and not actually talking about issues.

Here’s my answer:

Yeah, I get that too from my wife, that’s why I started blogging about the election. That’s probably why I’m going to volunteer for Bush today, so I can have some fellow travelers to rag about Kerry to.

But I think you’re asking the wrong question. Here’s my take:

• I give Kerry 10 points for going to Vietnam
• I give Kerry - 1 point for speaking out against the war in the way that he did at the time (which at this point everyone agrees was FUBAR),
• I give Kerry -5 points for not apologizing since then and the generally bad way he’s handled this issue.

Net: 4 points.

So Kerry comes out ahead 4 points for me.

A candidate has to earn at least 25 points for me to consider voting for them, and Kerry hasn’t done that. I’ve tried very hard to find positive things about Kerry, I’ve read both his and bush’s web site, and I come up with zilch.

Bush has earned about 75 points in my book based on reading his agenda.

So stop being negative, start talking up Bush. Read Kessler’s book a matter of character, and start talking about the importance of phonics in reading education and NCLB.

You can read my take on No Child Left Behind here.

This is from the Washington Post yesterday: “Aides say Kerry may soon apologize for some of his most heated comments during the Vietnam War protests of the early 1970s, a move that would rekindle the debate for a few more days.”

From The Corner

From the Kerry Blog:

A poll of New Zealanders showed 60 per cent wanted Democratic candidate John Kerry to beat George Bush in the upcoming presidential elections.

Yeah, and? Who cares what someone in New Zealand thinks? I really don’t think they’ve been following the election that closely.

Kerry and those “foreign leaders” again.

Yeah, Kerry won the debate. He got Bush off center early when he pissed him off with a bunch of attacks, and Bush never quite recovered. In Bush's defense, how do you argue rationally against lies? More on that tomorrow when I'm not so grumpy.

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 I’m going to do it anyways.

Megan McArdle of Jane Galt writes a very thoughtful piece on who she’s going to vote for. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but I definitely understood her point of view.

Here’s the conclusion, but as InstaPundit says: read the whole thing.

Ultimately, I’ve decided to take the advice of a friend’s grandmother, who told me, on her wedding day, that I should never, ever marry a man thinking he’d change. “If you can’t live with him exactly the way he is,” she told me, “then don’t marry him, because he’ll say he’s going to change, and he might even try to change, but it’s one in a million that he actually will.”

Kerry’s record for the first fifteen years in the senate, before he knew what he needed to say in order to get elected, is not the record of anyone I want within spitting distance of the White House war room. For all the administration’s screw -ups — and there have been many — I’m sticking with the devil I know. George Bush in 2004.