MInTheGap

This Image says it all

This image says it all.

Kerry Concedes

Wow.  What a night.  I was up to 2:00 am EST waiting for NM or NV to go
to Bush, but it didn’t happen last night.  In fact, I almost believed
that we were going to go the litigation route with the provisional
ballots– but Kerry is going to act statesmanly and concede at 2:00 pm
EST.  How late were you up?

Election Day

So, who’s it going to be, Bush or Kerry.  After all of the campaigning,
October surprises, debates, and everything it comes down to our votes. 
Living in one of the states that appears to be a lock, it would be easy
to not vote– and yet it’s our duty to let our voice be heard.  So, get
out to the polls and vote!

Reworking the system

The current voting system is broken.  No longer do we have responsible
people voting, but we grab each person, use peer pressure and
bandwagons, and pressure them into a given place to check a box for a
given man.  This dilutes responsible votes and makes the election into
a popularity contest more than a vote on issues.  How can we solve it? 
Here are some possible solutions:

• Get rid of the two party system– or the political parties at all.
• Make the House/Senate decide the election.
• Change
  the electoral vote system so that the popular vote dictates the 2
  “senate” votes, and then whoever wins each district gets the vote of
  that district.
• Have a test when entering a polling facility
  that required you to match a candidate’s position to the candidate’s
  person.  Anyone not scoring over half would be given a class or
  something before voting– or not allowed to vote.
• Compile some kind of list of votes from tax returns so that fraud could be minimized.

Anyone else got a suggestion?

Bush vs. Kerry – Round 3

I had watched every debate, including the VP debate, in totallity live
up until this one.  Given the momentum in the debates, I figured Bush
would consistantly do better, and since part of the strategy during the
last campaign and this presidency was to co-opt democrat ideas so he
could claim he got things done, I thought that the conventional wisdom
regarding Kerry’s advantage would be proven wrong.

That all being said, I also figured more people would tune into the
ball game!  We’ve been all fighting a cold or something that we’ve been
passing around along with little sleep, so I opted to go to bed at 9:00
pm.  However, curiosity and the fact that I had skipped dinner got the
best of me, and I caught the last 30 minutes of the debate– so I’ll
give my impression of that.

I can’t remember the first
question I heard– it might have been the automatic rifles.  My
response to that question would be that, although it would be scary to
enter a house with someone with an automatic weapon as a law
enforcement officer, the bad guys are always going to have access to
these weapons.  Gun control seems to only prohibit those that will
follow the rules from getting their hands on tools of defense.  I
believe that there’s a European country– Switzerland?– that teaches
all homeowners to use semi-automatic weapons and they have a
tremendously low crime rate.

On the faith question, I believe
Bush did a better job because I believe he actually believes what he
says.  It was somewhat of a loaded question– no matter how many of the
pundits say this was a softball– because had he answered directly that
his faith directs his policies he would have played right into the
argument that the democrats want to make about legislating morality and
the whole “God told me to go into Iraq.”

My reaction to
some of the closing comments by the FOX guys and the ones they
interviewed, it’s hard to say my reaction to hearing Kerry mention Mary
Cheney.  I don’t think it was as much of a secret as the pundits are
making it out to be.  It’s also a common tactic to name a person
representative of a group to illustrate your point.  Usually, however,
it’s a person that you’ve met on the trail in relative obscurity
instead of someone that is semi well known.

I guess my
feeling is that it is one thing to be spoke about as someone who needs
a solution to a problem or to attack someone in public that has a
public voice, but no one outside of the campaign rallys or Mary
Cheney’s friends have ever talked to or heard from her.  I agree with
Rush Limbaugh that the tactic would have been much better if he had
used someone he knew in the public spotlight, like Barney Frank, to
make his point– a point which I disagree with, by the way.

I
wish Bush would have been clearer than what I heard was his response to
whether homosexuality was a choice or born with it.  He didn’t need to
alienate people– he could have said something like “Bob, in either
case we are given things in our lives– desires, physical ailments,
etc– and we have to make choices about what we will do with these
impulses and dilemmas…”  Here he could have even played up
Christopher Reeve’s amazing will to survive and honored his memory
instead of what Edwards did for another contrast, should he have
desired. “… and homosexuals have choices about what to do about their
desires and impulses, but should we as a country encourage choices that
harm these people and families?”

Other than that, I thought
Bush did so much better with humor and with his answers about the women
in his life.  It makes you connect when someone talks you through the
first time he saw his wife.  Bush totally avoided politics in this
question, whereas Kerry tried to play up his deceased mother for
points.  Time will tell how that worked.

Superman and Stem Cells

So, I was watching Inside Edition or something close to that name last
night with my wife and they were talking about Christopher Reeve and
his death yesterday.  Truly the man and his family proved resolve
stronger than anything seen on the screen.  Who we truly are is
reflected in what we are like when placed under pressure.

The part that bothered me was the linkage of him and stem cell
research.  Yes, he was an advocate of it.  Yes, I believe he supported
embryonic stem cell research, which I do not.  The part that bothered
me was Inside Edition’s poll question: “Do you support stem cell
research?”  The answer to that question, for me, is yes– just not
embryonic!  It’s a misleading question.

There have been some good discoveries using adult
stem cells, and that research should continue, but destroying human
life for research is as wrong as destroying human life to eat– ie. the
cannibals that have recently been in the news.  They don’t see anything
wrong in killing another human because they like the taste.  I’m sorry
for the grossness of this analogy, but we have become so desensitized
to what’s going on with the killing of babies in abortion, and we are
constantly asked to look at those in pain rather than the one being
killed, that we need to be awakened to what’s going on here in the name
of science!

Cheney vs. Edwards

Debates and things

There are a lot of heartening articles out there.  My favorite is one from Dennis Prager.  Here’s the part I like the best:

Here are direct quotes from John Kerry in the debate.

---

On staying in Iraq:

“I’m not talking about leaving. I’m talking about winning.”

“Yes,
we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for
those troops, now that we’re there. We have to succeed. We can’t leave
a failed Iraq.”

On leaving Iraq:

“And our goal in my administration would be to get all of the troops out of there …”

“I believe that when you know something’s going wrong, you make it right. That’s what I learned in Vietnam.”

What was it that John Kerry “learned in Vietnam?” To leave a war he regarded as a mistake.

---

On America acting alone:

“I’ll never give a veto to any country over our security.”

On America acting only with world support or within an alliance:

“But
if and when you do it (act alone), Jim, you have to do it in a way that
passes the test, that passes the global test …”

And
what if acting alone does not pass “the global test”? Then presumably
we won’t act alone. Kerry made references to the need to be in Iraq in
alliance with other nations eight times.

---

On the war being a mistake:

“This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment.”

“The president made a mistake in invading Iraq.”

“The war is a mistake.”

On the war being important enough to have to win:

“I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that.”

After
hearing Kerry call the war a mistake, the moderator Jim Lehrer asked
the logical question: “Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?

John Kerry’s answer: “No, and they don’t have to, providing we have the leadership that I’m offering.”

Now
what does that response, arguably the most important thing the senator
said in the debate, mean? Does it mean that American soldiers won’t die
for what John Kerry continually labels a mistake because he will
prosecute the war more effectively? Or does it mean that Americans
won’t die for this mistaken war because he will leave Iraq and then
there will be no mistake to die for?

The answer, again, is that it can mean either.

---

I’m glad someone was actually keeping track of what Kerry said and
didn’t say.  I have to say that since I wasn’t “keeping score” I missed
all of this.  I think the fact that it was so drawn out lead to that
confusion.  I think that I would be upset if I were Bush at the fact
that he continually changes position.  Had I been Bush’s prep team, I’d
make sure that Bush keeps track of what Kerry’s saying so he can do
more “didn’t you just say…” and that would help a lot.  Let Kerry
work himself out of his statements.