Because this particular Penny Arcade strip about sums up my KOTOR experience lately. That and the "I most definitively did NOT let the Wookie win" quote I made to Whir.

And just because this strip is funny as hell, we shall link it.

"One actually has to be something of a specialist, today, to even begin to grasp quite how fantastically, how baroquely and at once brutally fucked the situation of the United States has since been made to be."
---William Gibson

Let me present the Nifty Program of the Day, a thing called World Wind. By NASA of all people. It's an earth globe that can be covered with Landsat images, USGS topographic maps, and aerial photos, amongst other things. You can make landforms 3d if you want.

Yes, this is very cool.

Topographic map of the area near my house.

Aerial of my house (house/land in the lower left corner).

Aerial of Oregon State University. Directly right of the "Campus Post Office" in yellow is the history building, Milam Hall, and across the quad from it is the MU. Further right is a grassy area with crazy looking paths, and just below that is the library. Just to the right of the yellow "KBVR FM" thing and above the big parking lot is Callahan Hall, with McNary Hall, Wilson Hall, and the McNary Dining Center just to the right. And as we all know, I lived in Callahan and ate at McNary.

Neat stuff.

On another note, I finished Masanobu Tsuji's book, and it's interesting stuff. Too, the author is an interesting guy, if half of what's said about him is true.

So apparently U2 came out with a new album. Thusly, small forest animals came unto Circuit City, and were provided with said U2 CD, and also KOTOR.

The KOTOR part of this entry can be summed up by a comment Cole left on the original KOTOR entry:

"Also known as CracKOTOR, this is a serious disease and we need to help all those affected by it. Please send donations to me so that i might oversee their treatment to my... I mean OUR benefit."

I was up until like, 5am this morning. So, yeah.

But about this U2 CD. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is the name of it, and it's...yeah. I dunno, Bono. I dunno. I remember the band saying something to the effect of how maybe it was all going to sound like a cross between Electrical Storm and The Hands That Built America, and that was just fine by me, because, well, both those songs rule.

This is not what we get in reality. Those of you with any interest in this will remember the discussions of "Which 5 other songs does Vertigo sound like?" Well, that's kind of what I was doing listening to the whole album. The first time A Man And A Woman (track 7) came on, I thought I was listening to the old 80s B-side The Three Sunrises. A significant portion of the rest sounds exactly like that portion of the last album that I thought was completely asstastic and the rest of the world loved. As to the rest of the album, well, maybe it was influenced by Electrical Storm, I dunno. In any case, that part rocks pretty well, and is easily the best part of the whole.

Lyrically...I'm thinking no. This is most definitely NOT Achtung Baby, kids. In fact, most of it also reminds me of that same portion of All That You Can't Leave Behind that I thought was complete crap and the rest of the world loved. Enough of this happy optimistic gooey crap, Bono. Where's the songwriter who came up Sunday, Bloody Sunday or One or Last Night On Earth? Where has that guy gone? Because I'm sure as hell not seeing much of it here.

All of that having been said, a quick track ranking, based on my about 3 times through the album.

The Great:

Nah. Almost Vertigo, but not quite.

The Very Good:

Vertigo, Love and Peace Or Else, All Because of You - Vertigo is clearly the best thing on this album. Maybe even by far and away. The other two songs are the only two other rocking songs on the album, which pretty much saves them, IMHO.

The Good:

Original of the Species, (maybe) Miracle Drug - Both of these sound rather painfully ATYCLB, but there's something about each of them that sort of works. They're not on the level of, say, Kite, but they work.

Maybe:

A Man And A Woman, One Step Closer - You can take "maybe" to mean "not painfully grating." I ALMOST like these two, but not quite.

No. Just No:

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, City of Blinding Lights, Crumbs From Your Table, Yahweh - Remember how I was talking about the part of ATYCLB that I hated and everyone else loved? This here's it. Yahweh in particular actually makes me grate my teeth together. Eeeeeeee.

I guess the verdict is to download the tracks I marked very good, and leave the rest sitting in the store. It really pains me to have to say that, but so far I'm putting this on the level of Boy or ATYCLB - Overall suckfullness, with a couple of really good songs.

Yes, it really worries me that I feel the same way about both the newest albums. Seriously worries.

Right. So I guess it's about time for another update. Rather unfortunately for you, I have almost nothing to talk about. Maybe when the new U2 album comes out tomorrow, but since we all know I hate U2, maybe not.

Really about the only thing worth talking about for the moment is books. I've been doing a fair amount of reading lately. Considering the amount of BG42 that's gotten played lately, it ought to be rather appropriate that most of it is WWII reading. Since I exhausted about every WWII book imaginable back when I was, say, 8, I've been trying to take a little bit of a different approach this time. See, most of what's on the shelves is written from the Allied perspective. Winners write the history and all that. But not ALL the history. So I read a few things, starting with...

1. I Was A Kamikaze, by Ryuji Nagatsuka. About what you'd expect, given the title. It's an interesting little book for a few reasons: The author, who's not your typical Japanese militarist stereotype, and in fact was a university student and an intellectual with a love of French of all things; the look inside the kamikazes, of course; and a look at Japanese life in the last days of the war. Interesting stuff.

2. Nazi Prisoners of War in America, by Arnold Krammer. One of those things that doesn't get talked about much is the few hundred thousand Axis POWs that got kept in American camps _in America_ during the war. Very interesting stuff, from re-education efforts by the Americans to internal camp terror networks run by hardcore Nazis, from a relative lack of escapes by the prisoners to one of said escapees, who lived a normal life in the US until 1985 when he voluntarily gave himself up. The last, apparently, is the subject of another book by the same author which I should make the effort to hunt down and read.

3. God's Samurai, by Gordon Prange. Or, rather, two of his students, but whatever. This is a biography of Mitsuo Fuchida, who was the aerial attack leader at Pearl Harbor, was at Midway, and did a few other things after. After the war, he became, of all things, a Christian evangelist.

4. The Wild Blue, by Stephen Ambrose. Breaking the mold a bit, this one's about American B-24 crews over Germany. Or that's what it says it is, but mostly it's about George McGovern of all people, who you may remember as one of those guys that wasn't elected president 30 years ago. It turns out that he piloted one of the forementioned B-24s, and talked to Ambrose a whole bunch about it. It's not like you didn't know most of this stuff from, say, watching Memphis Belle, but still.

5. Singapore - the Japanese Version, by Masanobu Tsuji. This is my current reading material, written by the guy who developed the Japanese plans for the Malaya/Singapore campaign. Considering that the author apparently deeply believed in what Japan was doing, this is making for interesting reading not so much because of what he says as the way he's saying it.

Still waiting to be read:

1. Strong Men Armed: The United States Marines vs. Japan by Robert Leckie. Title ought to be self-explanatory. Somewhere in all this reading, I realized it had been quite a while (since I was 10 or 12) since I had read a comprehensive account of the Pacific theater. Hopefully this book will help me out some.

2. Decisive Battles of World War II: The German View by many many people, including ye olde German generals, apparently. Ought to be fairly self explanatory.

Assuming I don't get tired of the topic by the end of all this stuff, there's always this, this, this, this, and if I don't get tired of the subject by the end of that, this, this, this, this, this, this, and maybe this. Also, just because I've always wanted to read it, either this or this.

Watched a film, a documentary, called Control Room tonight. Watched it three times back to back maybe, given that there are commentary tracks, too. Might watch it a fourth time. Needless to say, I think it's good and you ought to watch it.

For those of you who have no idea what I was just talking about, it's a film that tries to examine the coverage Al Jazeera gave to the invasion of Iraq in '03. Lots of AJ folks talking, of course, but also a few others, including a certain US Marine lieutenant named Josh Rushing, who you may remember from an NPR interview I linked to.

Now, obviously if I just watched it for 4.5 hours straight, I think it's a good movie. In a number of ways it is an enormously interesting and powerful film, in ways that I'm not sure I can effectively communicate, but I'll try.

The biggest thing, I think, is the Arabs in the film saying what they think. I was struck by the, call it pan-Arab nationalism. People in the AJ studios, in Qatar mind you, are standing around watching the statue of Saddam fall in shock, saying things like "Where is everybody? Where is the Republican Guard? Where is the army?" And they make it clear that they're not for Saddam by any means, for all the reasons Saddam is not generally held to be a champion of small forest animals, but they're not exactly standing around with red, white and blue pom-poms either. And I think it's Rushing who says something to the effect of "Well, they're shocked and pissed off because it's us meddling in Arab affairs. Arab army did it, yeah they'd be angry, but not nearly so much." And that's interesting.

On the same note, there's a lot of conversations in the film that start off about Iraq and all of a sudden they're talking about Israel. And it gets made clear that in Arab minds, Iraq and Palestine are the same issue, when to our minds they are very much not. Too, there's a very interesting line about how if a water pipe breaks in Damascus, it's a Zionist conspiricy. Lot of people angry in this film. Lots of people chanting in streets and blaming Israel and the US their governments and whatever. They're angry that the US is, I dunno, getting uppity and imposing democracy, but they're angry at themselves for getting up and shouting and then not doing anything.

And of course it's a commentary on the media. Mostly Al Jazeera, but other stations, too. And the thing is, how do you, given that the people running the station are mostly Arabs, and given everything I just talked about, maintain any kind of objectivity? And it would appear that there are two sides to that. On the one hand, the guy who tries to be objective, throws a guest off for not being so, even though he has very very strong feelings about the issues. On the other hand, there's a very combative young reporter, and the (apparently American) director of their website who shrugs and says in answer to the question "Is anyone objective?" It's an interesting question.

Leading from that, you get things like Al Jazeera broadcasting footage of US POWs and dead, being criticized by the US administration for doing so, and saying right back at them "But you show Iraqi POWs on your TV. And this is a war. People die. What do you want us to show?" Apparently not that, given the administration response. OTOH, they have their own point, and Rushing kind of describes it, that AJ will show picture after picture of American tanks and planes and such, then cut away to a dead kid, but won't show the other people who are quite happy we're there. On the other other hand, there's a whole host of people who dislike AJ, including both America and Iraq, both of whom are quoted as calling AJ the propaganda mouthpiece of the other. Interesting stuff.

Delving into randomness, I now want to be like Josh Rushing when I grow up. He comes off as charismatic, highly articulate, and very obviously believes in what he's doing. Very much an optimist. On my better days, I like to think I've got a little bit of that, but watching people like him almost makes me want to throw my hands up in despair and walk away, because it reminds me that, no matter how educated and how informed and how articulate I attempt to be about these things, I'm still some half-educated hack spewing crap out of computer screens.

But I guess all I can do is try, really.

To quote Regina, "Everything I am writing about seems really frivolous in light of the discussion on Dwip's blog."

So, because we can't be putting on pseudo-intellectual airs ALL the time, let's indulge ourselves for a while.

We'll start with a quick note that this fortune cookie I just ate tastes disgusting, and just as quickly move on to, say, Star Wars.

*cue theme music*

Because, well, that lone guy in the Amazon rain forest is now alone. I too have seen the Special Edition Star Wars original trilogy. Hollywood Video is having this 99 cent per movie deal right now, and we've been indulging. So.

And really, you hear some really excited stuff about the SEs. Things like this thread on rasfwr-j. And you've heard a lot about the infamous Greedo blaster shot, and the evils thereof. And so you approach the whole thing with a sense of caution, rather like you would, say, a cute, fuzzy, yet obviously fanged rabbit.

You get the picture. Moving or otherwise.

So I watched the things. And mostly what you get is the cute fuzzy parts, sort of but not quite like this. CGI bantha herds and better city backgrounds and enhanced space fights and generally not bad. Most of it probably isn't noticable unless you've been watching the movies for the better part of 15 years like...half the people I know. Hrm.

But there are fangs. Fortunately, they are small fangs, which doesn't prevent you from leaping up in pain when they sink in, but at least you only lose a toe or something, and not your entire leg, like in Phantom Menace. And the fangs are:

The Greedo Blaster Shot. No. Just no. What the fuck, George? What. The. Fuck.

Any and all instances of redoing the music for something, like the new ending of Return of the Jedi. Grating and generally ungood. Also the dance scene in Jabba's Palace in the same movie. I don't think you're really getting what Phantom Menace tried to tell you about being ridiculously stupid like that, George.

You've got all this high tech computer awesomeness, and you can't improve the computer Death Star plan from the briefing in ANH? Because DAMN is that the 70s.

The entire ending of Jedi was something I expected to be a fang, but it turned out not to be in the end. The music sucks, and the montage of celebrating planets is sort of shruggy, but at least we have partying Ewoks. Marketable pack hunters rule.

So really only a few minor things as opposed to some nice additions. I see what George was trying to do, and generally I like it.

Also, I watched the commentary for all three movies, and it was mostly good. I like commentary, and I like listening to George Lucas do it, because he thinks a lot about some really interesting technical details. I also get a better idea of where he's trying to go with this whole thing, and mostly I like that, too.

However, C3PO still sucks, and Gungans still suck more than I can possibly say. My sole comfort in the whole thing is that Jar-Jar is still solely responsible for the fall of the Republic, and I guess when it comes right down to it, that's a good thing to justify some Gungan genocide with.

So you'd think I'd maybe chime in on the whole raging political debate thing before now, seeing as how it's my blog and all, but no. But no. Too much Battlegroup 42, you understand, and it turns out that it's my fate this year to get hit by every single disease known to man, so it's been a fun week like that.

So I've got a little bit to catch up with. 30 posts. I think that's some sort of record for here, both in quantity and in relative quality. So I owe you all a big thank you for showing up and posting, and an even bigger one to the people who don't show up much (Hi Samson, hi Gris). And about all this apologizing for leaving long comments and making arguments and such, well, you can just stop that. I put up political posts for a reason, and that sort of thing is the reason. So just keep doing it. As long as we're all civil, I'm happy.

Lots to reply to, so if I don't get to something, gomen.

Anyway. Let us begin with, oh, the election. Specifically with Samson's quote here:

"Map or no map. Twisted representation of said map or not, we owned you guys. 52-48 is fairly convincing enough to me. You guys were the ones who whined and cried when Gore won the popular vote but due to electoral math, Bush got the victory. Now we have BOTH and you guys are still trying to claim we cheated. Go figure why I'm none to pleased with the reactions coming from the left. Up to and including those from Moore and the media elite."

I think Griselda said it pretty good, personally:

"Now, on to politics (eek!). I'm not saying that 52-48 percent means that Bush cheated, but he's been going around as if he won a landslide victory with his discussion of "political capitol". He was the winner, but I just don't see where he gets that "mandate"."

Mandates, you say. Mandates. Well, given the definition, yeah, he's sort of got one. Certainly more of one now than in 2k. It's a tad ludicrous to behave as if the whole country were behind you when it clearly isn't, however.

That having been said, the man did win. And I have yet to see a single credible, informed person on the left side of the aisle say he cheated to do it. Which isn't to say that he and/or his followers didn't use a fair number of tactics that were low down, dirty, and generally unbecoming of the Presidency, but he didn't cheat.

But maybe I'm wrong about that. So if you'd like to cite me a major newspaper or TV station (major, mind you), who flat out says Bush cheated to win the election, go ahead. No, Michael Moore doesn't count. Yes, you can stop holding the man up as some sort of figurehead of where all us liberals get our information, because he's not. And I think we've been over that elsewhere, so I'll refrain from going into it too far.

Continuing to run down Samson's first post, let's just keep talking about the media. and the next part of his post reads:

"Calling the liberal media elite incompetant is only the beginning, and that puts things mildly. When you consider the LA and NY Times, along with the major airwave networks, it's nearly impossible to find impartial reporting. You have to either find a local TV station, local paper, or listen to AM talk radio to find anything that balances them out."

First, if you'd ever seen either of the two local Corvallis papers (Gazette-Times and Daily Barometer), you wouldn't be trumpeting the supremecy of local papers. Because, quite frankly, both of them suck. I forgive the Barometer, because it's the Oregon State University student-run newspaper, but the Gazette-Times is unforgivably craptastic. I have never seen it report much of anything remotely worth reporting on. Now, the Eugene local paper (Register-Guard) isn't bad. It's not super great, but it's not bad. Decent reporting on a fair number of issues and topics, and a decent blend of local and national and international news. But not quite.

As for the TV networks, forget it. Just flat out forget it. I've watched CNN and MSNBC fairly extensively, and I've seen enough Fox to know that I'd like Fox to show something that isn't an aircraft carrier once in a while. And you know what? The problem with TV news is they go for sound bites. They don't cover a whole story in depth very often because they don't have the time to do it. And the whole experience turns into this meaningless babble of random people saying totally random shit that very rarely makes any sense. What's more, from what I've seen of the local news around here, it's even WORSE. And radio can have its moments, but I feel like when it comes to real news reporting, it has the same issues as TV.

Too, I have a pretty good idea of what talk radio you listen to, Samson, and it strikes me as a tad unfair, not to mention a tad ludicrous to hold up conservative talk radio as some sort of bastion of fair reporting while bashing the whole rest of the media as being biased and liberal.

So we come to the question of what "liberal media elite" actually means, and some cites from non-op-ed type articles to back it up with. While this is happening, an explanation of what makes, say, Fox News or any given local news source or talk radio of all things an impartial and credible source would be, well, good.

Now, in the course of a five year career at university, I've done a fair number of multiple source compare and contrast analysis papers on various issues, quite a few of which dealt with how different media portrayed any given event. So while I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the issue, I think I have a clue what I'm talking about. And it works like this. There are four news sources generally cited to me as being "good:" BBC, CNN, Fox, and the New York Times. Of these, I can't feel that any of them are unbiased, because it's pretty much impossible to have unbiased reporting, or unbiased history, as anyone who's been trained as a historian lately will tell you. That having been said, on any given issue it seemed that the BBC was generally the furthest left on any given issue, with CNN and the NYT being somewhere in the middle, and Fox being much on the right.

Consequently I get most of my news from the NYT, because it takes the time to cover things in depth, and covers more things than most of the others. I do, however, supplement from other news sources, including the other three named, as well as a number of blogs, including but not limited to, Atrios for the more militant left, Josh Marshall for some moderate leftness, The Volokh Conspiricy for being themselves, and Fafblog for being, well, Fafblog. But of course one can't really stop there, because it's not about taking other people's opinions for fact, it's about finding where they got their own facts, and making up your own damn mind. So we supplement all of those sources with whatever sources they might provide themselves, from government speeches to other news articles to statistics to whatever. Because I've come to the conclusion that that's the only way I can stay reasonably well informed on anything, without owning mind probes and spy satellites. I'm working on those, but there's only so much room in the garage right now.

There's probably a larger discussion of the media lurking in there somewhere, but I'm going to wait for somebody else to go there.

That was a pretty big digression for a half a paragraph leading into the rediculousness of exit polls. About the exit polls themselves, I actually pretty much agree. Exit polls mean about jack, which is why on election night I ignored them and waited for the actual results to start coming in. Because, well, I knew that. The media hasn't quite figured it out, but that's all part of that bigger discussion thing I'm not going to start.

"BTW, if you want a couple more names from the liberal side who did some "unsavory things" there's Al "he betrayed this country!" Gore, Howard "he knew about 911 ahead of time" Dean, Dennis "he concocted a war for political gain" Kusinich, Al "he's suppressing the black vote" Sharpton, Ted "he *hic* lied to the American people" Kennedy, and Al Franken, who I can't think up something witty to insert right now. Though I'm sure he had lots of nasty things to say."

Some specific cites would be sort of nice, there, I guess. But running down the list:

Gore: Don't remember him saying that, and the context in which he would have would determine the response I give it.

Dean: Now, that I don't believe. There's a lot of things I think about the President, but I don't think he deliberately let 9/11 happen. Which isn't to say there weren't well-documented, deeply troublesome issues that were involved with the day, but.

Kucinich is, well, crazy as best as I and most other people can determine. Not, I think, representative of the party as a whole.

And that goes for Al Sharpton, too. Because one of the things I regret about American politics as a whole is that the racial minorities can get some disturbing people as representatives.

And I happen to think Ted Kennedy's right about that particular thing, so I can't exactly bash the guy.

I'm blanking on Al Franken and who he is right now.

And the Swift Boat folks. And Bush in the Guard. I suppose I first ought to say that I don't particularly care about either, especially Bush's Guard record, except that the one casts some doubt on Bush's honesty, and the other is so far as I can tell a massive distortion of the truth, or an outright fabrication. To quote Griselda on the subject:

"Oh, and the Swift Boat vets. Heh. I know for a fact that they did not put a substantial effort into detemining that the people in their ads *ever* served with Kerry. One of the vets is from around here, and it turns out that he never served with Kerry. So, no, I'm not going to put much faith in a group that can't even check its own facts."

I've heard the same sort of things quite a few times. Further, some browsing through this is some interesting reading, as is a search on "swift boat" at Josh Marshall's blog and then following a few of the links. I guess if a good chunk of Kerry's crew, the guy he saved, and official records all agree on the decorations thing, I'm inclined to believe them.

As to Iraq, I am fully aware that before the invasion a whole host of people including myself were absolutely convinced that Saddam had WMDs. That doesn't mean I'm not unhappy with our intelligence services and our leadership, who ought to have shown some measure of sense when it came to this invasion thing. Let's start off with this timeline, which I've linked before and rather enjoy. I'd also like to link you to an interesting letter to Clinton in 1997 advocating the invasion of Iraq by a group including (IIRC) Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, but I can't seem to find it. Probably Googling on "Project For a New American Century" will get you there.

At any rate, the fun parts of the timeline involve the 9/26/02 accusation by Rumsfeld of Iraqi-Al Qaeda ties, Powell's exceedingly weak UN briefing from 2/03, and the nicely plagarized/outdated 2/03 British intelligence report. One also likes Osama bin Laden's call to overthrow Saddam and the US and the part where US special forces were operating in Iraq way the hell early in the game. Too, there's the Niger uranium documents forgery, which was always a fun one.

I'd also like to link you to some entertaining quotes about politicization of CIA intelligence, but I can't seem to find those, either. Truly, I do not have l33t search skillz.

I did, however, find this link, which I thought was exceedingly interesting in a number of ways.

Nevertheless, the conclusion I come to is that, whatever it was Iraq did, Bush was going to invade anyway. While I'm not exactly sure what I think about that at this point in time, I do know that I'm not with the apparent self-misleading about intelligence and the attempts to sell us on utterly bogus claims. I really dislike that sort of thing.

That I have thusfar been completely unable to determine an actual strategy or goal for what we're doing in Iraq is similarly disconcerting. In amongst a whole host of other issues about the thing.

As to the economy, there's a whole host of people who can do a better job at talking about that than I can, but to Oregon in specific, I can echo what Griselda has to say on the subject:

"As far as the economy goes, what I've seen here is a very different situation than you describe, Samson...But, the local economy has been hit hard, and at the moment there's not much of anything available."

I can but note that with a college degree, I can't seem to get hired anywhere, including McDonald's. So, yeah. Tax cuts, well, I don't remember them helping much. Certainly not me, and not the parents, as I recall. I do know that a job hasn't been forthcoming, and especially one that would provide me with any sort of living wage if I had it. I can also hear about things like record deficits and the falling dollar and wonder how this is a good thing.

Now, since I've been writing this for a few hours, I'm in need of a break. There's a rebuttal of Cole what needs to happen at some point, but I shall do it later. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves.

You know, I don't think Samson's ever gotten his own blog post, and since he's the one providing me with the space to HAVE a blog, that's probably a little ungood of me, isn't it? So we'll just be doing that for a second, after these messages:

Whir and I have been playing a Battlefield 1942 mod called Battlegroup 42, and it is leet. Astonishingly leet. What BF1942 should've been in the first place leet. Maybe a couple too many antitank rifles running around, but oh well.

Anyway. Politics. We'll start by quoting two comments made to the Four More Years post:

Jesus. It scares me to no end to see how completely ignorant to reality the democrats have become. Really folks, Michael Moore is in fact a big fat ( literally ) liar. You should stop listening to him.
Stop letting the media and its liberal bias dictate how you think, because contrary to what they've been telling you, the job numbers have grown like mad under Bush. Despite Clinton's recession and the impact of 911. Yes, it was Clinton's recession. 6-8 months prior to him leaving office, the stock market spiraled down. It is well known the market is a reliable indicator of the economy in 6-9 months, and lo... what happened... a recession. Before Bush's economic plans were ever put into place. Before he had a chance to enact them, 911 hit and nearly destroyed the airline industry which also heavily impacted plenty of other sectors.
Only through aggressive tax cuts were we able to stop this recession and get the economy back on track. To deny this is to deny how the economy works. Tax cuts for the rich? Maybe so. Who employs you? Surely not the poor. So by pumping money back into the economy, employers were able to hire new people again. Then the second tax cut enabled many of those employees to become permanent. The 3rd tax cut then allowed several of them to invest in long term commitments ( btw, this describes not just myself, but nearly everyone where I work in the last 2 year ).
All this crap about how Bush is going to privatize social security, suppress votes, institute the draft, and otherwise destroy the economy is crap. And the people have seen it as crap, despite the media's best efforts to prove otherwise.
Want to talk about right? Freedoms? Why should I accept the democrat plan to raise my taxes, and use that money for things I don't support? Why should I not be allowed to divert my SSI taxes to an account of my own choosing? Why should I be made to pay to provide benefits to lawbreakers? Illegal aliens in case it wasn't obvious.
All this crap about how the country is supposedly more democrat than republican is also crap - check this out: http://www.iguanadons.net/gallery/Bush-Country-2004-4.html it's a copy of the map at www.hannity.com on his front page. I'd say this more or less proves we are the majority here.
The people saw through Kerry and his terrible Senate record. His dodging of questions during the debate. His flipflopping on every last issue he ever took a stand on. The media's lack of challenge to anything he said. The voters of this country sent a clear message that Bush was their choice to lead us for the next four years, and I assure you they chose wisely.

BTW - the democrats are the party of hate. Just look at how quickly Moore turned from spreading lies about 911 to calling for the impeachment of a president who has done nothing criminal.

Responses will be in some sort of random order, but I'll start by linking to this Tonto thread, which is a pre-election debate thread. I think I lay out my reasons for disagreement with the President fairly clearly, especially in the latter part of this post (the bit below the dashed line). I'll likely be coming back here from time to time.

We'll start with the whole Republican Majority thing, because I've seen that particular county map before, and it amuses the hell out of me. Here is the map Samson posted, which is a county by county map of the US, showing which ones went for Bush, and which for Kerry. Yeah, that's a lot of red. But it's misleading, given the amount of that red being counties in the middle of nowhere where people are thin on the ground, and given the amount of blue being in dense urban areas. So here are a couple of maps putting things in a bit more perspective. Doing a state by state browse of CNN's map is even more fun. Too, let's quote some numbers from there: 59,459,765 people voted for Bush, or 51% of voters. 55,949,407 or 48% went for Kerry. Other people went for random other people, but in the grand tradition of Two Party snobbery, I will choose to pretend they and their 1% don't exist.

So it's not so clear as you might think.

Now, about, oh, Michael Moore. Don't hear a lot of good about the guy. Wouldn't know firsthand, having zoned out halfway through Bowling for Columbine. As to liberal media, well, it's funny. Conservatives scream of the whole media except Fox News being liberally biased, and liberals scream of Fox being a Republican propaganda machine and the rest of the media being dangerously incompetent. Me, I lean towards the incompetent side of things, which is why I do my best to read several different sources for any story I care about, and try to rely less on commentary than my own training and common sense.

So, no. I got to where I am without Moore's help.

That having been said, there are elements on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide who engage in some fairly unsavory tactics. Moore's one from the liberal side. I know there are others, but since I don't listen to them, I don't remember offhand who they are. On the conservative side, well, the whole Swift Boat thing is a pretty (un)shining example of outright fabrication and lies.

Where it gets better is, I also know that the President lied to me, too. Not seeing any WMDs in Iraq, despite what they said. Not convinced of ties between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden. Both of which this administration tried very hard to convince me were true, and both of which have pretty demonstrably have proven to not be true. This is, I think, a fairly serious sort of thing. It is one thing to, say, lie about your extracurricular fun with an intern, and quite another to lie about a war in which a lot of people are going to die. And the instant you do that sort of thing, you deserve a lot, starting with my loss of support, and continuing to things like criminal prosecution and/or impeachment.

As to Kerry's flipflop record, well, without exhaustively researching every vote he took in the Senate, which is what I'd need to do to be definitive about it, I can only say that he was pretty decisive all the times I heard him, which isn't to say he doesn't have a nuanced view of the situation. And, you know, given my choices, I'd rather have the guy who switches positions than the guy who flat out lied to me.

Let's see. Economy. I'm not an economist, and have never pretended to be. And, you know, I can even almost buy the reduction of taxes = jobs thing. Almost. But, and this is a serious but, we're also in a war, struggling to fund both it and a whole host of other programs this president instituted. There's all that news about the debt ceiling, plus the falling dollar. Color me seriously skeptical, and call me strange, but it seems to me that, you know, balancing the budget is a good idea. Which hasn't happened since Clinton's time, as I recall.

*shrug* That'll do it for the moment. Most of what I had to say is in that Tonto thread, so read it.

So I'm talking to Rema last night at Mechwarrior, and he says something to the effect of "I've decided I no longer consider myself an American, just an Oregonian." And really there's something to be said for that, because, well, consider:

We had record turnout, and while that is on the one hand a good thing, said turnout appears to have been, from all appearances, made up of the sort of social conservatives I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. This after an exceedingly ugly campaign filled with viciousness and lies (not that we didn't just have four years of such things, but the intensity went way up).

It used to be, and I am reminded of it by this post of Regina's, that I took comfort in the fact that my positions rode this sort of tide of historical inevitability, considering that the course of the 20th century has been towards freedom, democracy, equal rights, and liberalism in general. Considering the 11 states that voted against gay marriage, and such delightful comments such as this one ("They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus. Thank God Almighty.") and this rather comforting one (see the first email), I'd say it's going to be a long, hard road.

But at least I live in Oregon, which is a state that not only has gone consistently leftward over my lifetime (barring our being one of the unholy 11), and is also a state that pretty much WORKS most of the time. Funny how that works. And, you know, at least I live in a state with a proper voting system, where we get the ballot in the mail ahead of time, with a nonpartisan voter's guide included, and can mail in or drop off our ballots as we choose to, and where great pains are taken to ensure vote security. Unlike, say, Florida in 2k (or even in 2k4), or Ohio, the latter of which had serious issues with crowding and lack of proper ballot supplies, to the tune of something like 150,000 votes which may or may not have been counted at the end of the day. We live in the fucking 21st century, people. Get it the fucking fuck together, already.

So, yeah. when Oregon petitions to join the United States of Canada, I sure as hell won't complain.

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And for those of us who somehow still think the Bush administration has actual skill at financial management, I'd be sure to check this out. Debt? What debt?

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Well...shit. Not only did Bush get another term, it's 53-44 Republican in the Senate, 231-200 Republican in the House. We got RULED.

On the plus side, at least we had record voter turnout, so that's something. And at least Oregon pretty solidly tread the Path of Goodness and voted solidly Dem.

On the other hand, well, this whole thing revealed a lot of very ugly things about this country, starting with the method in which much of the campaigning was done, and ending just now with every single gay marriage ban measure making it in. Even in Oregon. And that, plus the Republicans flat out owning the federal government, worries me. A lot.

Well, here we are (we've been here for hours, but never mind). Election Day. Voting places are starting to close, and bit by bit we'll get results in. Gonna be a fun night, if you like political races like I do. Here's thinking it's going to be a close race.

Hopefully, it's close in Kerry's favor and not Bush's.