d0rkorg

So the local rag has officially endorsed a couple candidates for the election. Surprise! They chose Bill Clinton’s wife and the 71-year-old John McCain. This actually got national press because for some damn reason we now have to have our caucuses on January 3rd for an election that happens 10 months (that’s 306 days) later.

Does anybody actually like Bill Clinton’s wife? I think her idea of “progressive” is the new way of saying “socialist”. She just seems way too calculating and focus-group oriented to actually be a likable person. Who knows what her actual convictions are (if she has any)?

And John McCain? The dude is 71. He’ll be 72 by the time the election rolls around. I don’t care if a guy with a very similar name can kick a F-35’s ass in hand-to-aircraft combat. McCain needs to throw in the towel here. Yippie-kay-yay …

I think this election cycle will prove just how useless these endorsements are.

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I’ve been listening to the Glenn Beck Program on our local FM talk radio channel (98.3 WOW FM) for quite a while now and it has easily become my favorite talk show. He’s on from 10am-1pm so I usually catch 10-20 minutes while driving over lunch. He’s also on XM Radio channel 166 XM Radio channel 165 from 8am-11am (which I can’t pick up in the steel office building I work in unfortunately). The show mixes politics and humor, but usually with less politics and more humor.

Glenn just announced his new TV show is airing on Headline News on May 8th. I think this means that CNN will actually have something on worth watching. He’s played clips and has eluded to what the TV show will be like and it sounds like it will be pretty damn funny.

In other Glenn Beck news, the Mid-Life Crisis Tour has a scheduled stop in Des Moines on June 13th, with tickets going on sale May 8th. There really aren’t many details about the show, but from what I’ve heard about the Christmas show he does, it sounds like it’d be fun show to see.

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I got in a bit of a debate yesterday with a few Bush-haters (of the canadian and european variety) that was sparked by this whole G-8 meeting and the focus on Africa. I was told that I’m a “typical selfish American” for beliving this aid is not a high priority when compared to the war that we’re fighting. Apparently liberals just plain don’t believe that people are capable of achieving for themselves and that they need the aid to survive. I can understand the emotional argument, as this is really a bad situation for the people of these African countries, but I don’t think hand-outs will do anything to help them back on their feet.

Today I ran across an article [via DailyPundit] that puts my thoughts about our whole foriegn aid policy into a very simplistic perspective.

Key quotes:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

This is true, and Shikwati goes on to explain why.

Shikwati: I am afraid, though, that the money will still be transfered before long. After all, it has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, the Europeans’ devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason.

This is such a gem that I had to include it. He speaks volumes of the UN’s policy and the bleeding-heart liberal’s attempts that can “no longer be countered with reason”. I love it.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They’re in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria’s textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

I suggest you read the full article.

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I ran across this joke from an old email today:

HOT AIR BALLOON

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He lowered altitude and spotted another man in a boat below. He shouted to him, “Hey fella can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consulted his portable GPS and Replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”

The man in the balloon rolled his eyes and said, “You must be a Republican.”

“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”

“Well, answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’re no help at all to me.”

The man in the boat smiled and responded, “You must be a Democrat.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Well,” said the boater, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s all my fault.”

Good stuff ;)

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A friend passed along this open letter, which is addressed to open letter writers of the Left. I think the author makes several good points, but unfortunately I don’t believe it’ll make a bit of difference in the face of the swelling hatred of the Left.

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So, on Tuesday after I finished voting, I went home and flipped on the TV. I fired up my PowerBook and launched a few tabs in OmniWeb, refreshing the following pages:

• The Drudge Report for the latest news — sometimes I’m amazed by how quickly Matt Drudge gets the word out.
• Daily Pundit for some Quick insight.
• Yahoo’s election coverage to see where things stand as states were being called.
• CNN’s coverage of the same because it looks like they’ve spent oodles of time making that slick site.
• TradeSports only to regret not having bet on Bush when he was down (I’m still kicking myself — I could have been in at 20 and stood to multiply my money by 5 times).

I soon realized that I was in sensory overload and left the election coverage in my living room while I wandered off to play some CS: Source and kill some time. In the few servers I played on, people were talking politics and at least one player on every server had a name endorsing some candidate (Bush/Cheney 04, Kerry/Edwards for a Stronger America, etc.) Normally I wouldn’t suggest mixing politics and CS, but in this case it was actually fun. Granted, most of the people playing probably weren’t even old enough to vote but it was interesting to see how passionate they were about whatever candidate they were supporting.

Shortly after the first polls closed, I decided to head back out to the living room to watch them with the state predictions. I primarily watched Fox News and it was interesting how much they kept talking about not being able to call states — primarily because of the exit poll data not jiving with the actual data received from the states. After talking about this for a while without actually mentioning numbers, one of the members on the panel finally said ‘enough is enough, here are the numbers’ and proceded to rattle off what the exit polls were showing for the states that were already called. Some predicted Kerry wins that never materialized, though the reporters on Fox News didn’t speculate as to why the numbers were off, they just kept predicting how states would go. I think I passed out shortly after the polls had closed here in Iowa (9pm Central) — at least, I think I saw some county numbers on CNN’s map.

I woke back up around 1:30am or so and by that time Fox News had called Ohio for Bush. This was pretty big news, as apparently only they and one other network called Ohio. This put bush at a solid 269 electoral votes — possibly meaning an exact tie if Kerry could carry all the other states (WI, MI, IA, NM, NV as I recall). Now what I thought was interesting about this was the hesitation of Fox News to call Nevada for Bush. I was flipping between FN and CNN and saw CNN had much earlier called Nevada. It seemed like Fox News just didn’t want to be the first network to call a victory for Bush — even though it was obvious at that point if they predicted Bush taking Ohio.

I decided to hit the sack around 2am, feeling much better about Bush’s victory than I had in the afternoon with Drudge posting the leaked exit polling data. I was a little dismayed when I found out no network had declared Bush the victor in the morning, but I can understand how cautious everybody was being after the mess they helped create in 2000. There was still a lot of speculation around work and on blogs that Kerry was going to legally challenge Ohio’s count, but again Drudge was the first reporting Kerry had privately conceded to Bush and was going to hold a press conference to do the same publically.

In the end, I’m glad that the concession came as soon as it did and that there wasn’t a legal battle. The majority of the country has elected their president (which many are eager to note that it is the first time a majority has elected the president since Bush 41’s term in ‘88). I don’t think this country can be led from the Left, and this election helped prove that. The Democrats seem to be looking forward instead of bellyaching and trying to overturn this election like Gore tried to do, which is a good thing for both sides.

Here’s to hoping that with an easily Republican dominated House/Senate, we can get some real conservative legislation passed — including much-needed spending cuts.

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I was hoping that both candidates would decide to break the rules and would have a real debate, but that didn’t happen. We saw pre-rehearsed line after pre-rehearsed line come out of both of their mouthes, and some attempts at pre-canned soundbites from Kerry. I knew Kerry’s focus going in was going to be Iraq, and Bush’s plan was to repeat what he’s been saying the whole campaign. No surprises were brought out, and neither candidate really pushed the other.

I think Bush was slightly off his game, but Kerry couldn’t capitalize on it. I’m amazed how Kerry can continually take non-stances on every single issue. His four points that were outlined for winning in Iraq are really what the current administration already has underway, so I didn’t really understand why that was supposed to convince people to support Kerry over Bush. This is the time where they are supposed to distinguish themselves, and these debates were no more interesting than the Bush/Gore debates in 2000. Instead of people mocking the “lock box”, we’ll no doubt hear about the “global test” we need to pass before we can use our military.

Allah has a good wrap-up of what many bloggers thought of the debates. Many people are giving Bush points for substance, and Kerry for style, but I thought Kerry just came off as a schmuck. He speaks in very carefully crafted sentences, seemingly always in CYA mode for when he changes positions in the future. I have absolutely no respect for the guy. I think his most recent position jump was expected, since Iraq seems to be Bush’s weakness with a month left until elections.

I really hope the upcoming veep debates are more interesting — I believe Cheney is capable of ripping Edwards to pieces, but we’ll see if they also play nice with each other.

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:)

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More news about the whole “Christmas in Cambodia” story. Turns out Kerry is embellishing war stories. Who would have thought?

Also the writers of that opinion piece bring up an interesting point. All of the media outlets that screamed at the top of their lungs about President Bush’s missing service records are suddenly silent on this story. Hmm…

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Last night I was watching the new Dennis Miller show on CNBC and I saw Ray Bradbury was going to be the featured guest. I have a lot of respect for the guy, usually mentioning his name includes ‘literary genius’ somewhere nearby. Apparently Miller feels the same way, after a nice introduction and Bradbury sharing some stories, the discussion came to Michael Moore.

Miller asked Bradbury how he felt about Moore using the title Fahrenheit 9/11, obviously taken from Bradbury’s famous novel (that is celebrating its 50th year anniversary) Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury explained that he heard of the “documentary” 6 months ago and was eager to talk to Moore about the title. Long story short, Moore called only a couple weeks ago and apparently didn’t seem very apologetic for not getting permission to use the title.

I’m trying to track down a transcript of the show, will update here if I can find it.

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