I don’t often write about politics, but I feel that the United States has just witnessed a fairly historic election. Even after all the extreme vitriol and outright seething hatred of Bush by the Democratic Party and its supporters, the Democrats still couldn’t pull off a victory. In my estimation, the 2004 general election will be viewed, depending on the Democrats’ next steps, as either the death or rebirth of the Democratic Party.

If you believe the left-leaning weblogs, then I am among the uneducated, oblivious, easily manipulated, and downright evil masses who willingly and/or ignorantly invited the destruction of the American way of life by inciting terrorists and simple-mindedly handing over our democracy to fascist Nazis that are chomping at the bit to reward their corporate cronies through war profiteering.

In reality, I am an educated, well-informed, thoughtful voter who weighed the candidates’ views on a variety of subjects and found that while both Bush and Kerry hold positions that I strongly disagree with, my disagreements with Kerry were unacceptable and my disagreements with Bush were tolerable (if only just barely).

I am a registered Republican, but if there were a candidate that more closely matched my views, then I’d be happy to vote for him/her. Case in point: although I voted for Bush here in Illinois (despite his steep odds in my state), I would have rather gnawed my own arm off than vote for Keyes over Obama. Keyes is a nutjob of the highest order, and voting against him was almost as strong of a motivation to get to the polls as voting for Bush was.

So how do the Democrats get back on track? How do they rebuild? I have a simple, 4-point plan for the Democratic Party chairman that would make the Democratic party more attractive to me (and, I suspect, a great many others).

1. Security and Foreign Policy

Forget what Clinton told you; there is no “peace dividend”. Asymmetrical threats like Al Qaeda require as much time, money, and vigilance as cold wars, and additionally a large conventional force is required to intervene in destabilizing regional conflicts, to quell genocide or support other peacekeeping efforts, and to act as a deterrent against would-be enemies of the American homeland - especially if there’s more than one of these threats at any given time.

As commander-in-chief, don’t let domestic or foreign politics compromise military operations. The President is empowered to set military objectives and - on a grand, strategic level - military priorities. Once that’s done, get the hell out of the way. Let the military do its job. Don’t force them to accomplish their goals with rules of engagement that place a higher priority on protecting America’s alliances and PR status than on protecting American soldiers (as Clinton did in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, and pretty much everywhere else). Don’t punish American soldiers who are deployed in a war zone by voting against $87 billion in desperately needed funding just because of the way the political winds are blowing domestically (like Kerry did). Kerry repeatedly criticized Bush for not sending enough troops to Iraq, but Bush listened to the military leadership’s requests and then gave them everything they asked for - U.S. military doctrine has been trending toward smaller, faster troop deployments for the past 20 years, and technology (especially communications) has finally caught up to the point where the senior military leadership could make it work (which it did, in such spectacular fashion that we didn’t have enough time to plan for the aftermath). Bush’s level of trust in the military’s judgment and professionalism is in stark contrast to Clinton’s distrust and compulsion to have non-military political operatives micromanage military operations. This is why the best military professionals love Bush and sought early retirement in droves under Clinton.

When it comes to foreign policy, quality beats quantity. Countries who share our core democratic values and with whom we have a vigorous and mutually beneficial cultural and economic exchange - countries like Australia, Germany, Japan, and the UK, among others - are always more important than rabble-rousers who are at best suspicious and at worst resentful of the United States’ role in the world. Don’t get me wrong; the support of as many countries as is practical is always preferable to no international support when the U.S. acts outside its own borders, but it is by no means required if America or its allies are threatened. The U.N. has neutered itself into irrelevance by refusing to enforce its own resolutions, and most voters are not really interested in being lectured by France, a country whose rabid anti-Semitism invalidates any moral superiority they claim with respect to human rights and whose ridiculous and unwarranted vanity brought you such classics as “Paris Mean Time” to replace GMT and the legal requirement to use the term “courriel” (since “e-mail” sounds too Anglicised).

2. Economics

Grand social programs (you know, the ones where the government knows best and will take care of everything because the masses are clearly not altruistic or smart enough) are deader than Dillinger. That kind of thinking only reaffirms the general populace’s belief that the Democrats are a bunch of cultural and intellectual elitists. Insulting your electorate by not-so-subtly saying “we’re going to take a bigger share of your money because we know better” doesn’t win a lot of votes.

That’s not to say that Democrats need to go crazy with personal or corporate tax cuts and loopholes, but not raising taxes unless the public gives you a clear mandate to create a new spending program or improve an old one is a good start. The dirty little secret of fiscal conservatives and even Libertarians is that most of them (the ones who aren’t anarchists, anyway) don’t actually want zero government spending; that’s simply an exaggeration to contrast with what we’re typically faced with. They just want targeted, efficient government spending on things that are of clear utility to society and are areas that the government has a legitimate right and interest to be involved in. Liberal doesn’t have to mean “monolithic socialized medicine program with no choice”, it should stand for liberty. Speaking of which, liberty is a decent segue into…

3. Social Issues

This is the area where Democrats can really stand out. Instead of getting stuck, like the Republicans, with a platform dictated by a religious and moral code that not every American agrees with, the Democrats have an opportunity to be the party that stands for personal freedom and humanistic values.

The tricky part about personal freedom is that you have to be consistent. You have to stick up for all personal freedoms, not just the ones acceptable at Ivy League cocktail parties. Yes, that includes the right to own a gun if you don’t use it to hurt anyone. And the right to choose your own doctor.

With respect to humanistic values, the Democrats should be decidedly pro-people in their agenda and their spending. Don’t be beholden to environmental groups if there’s a compromise between environmental protection and preserving people’s jobs. Don’t be a slave to PETA if animal testing will advance medical research. Now this doesn’t mean you should slash, burn, pollute, and dump cosmetics into rabbits’ eyes just to see what happens, but find a prudent balance. In general, if you’re spending money intelligently on protecting people’s rights (defense, crime prevention, enforcing civil liberties, etc.) or sustaining/improving society (infrastructure, education, research, health care, retirement, etc.) while maintaining a maximum amount of personal choice and freedom, then you’re probably doing the right thing.

4. Understanding Your Constituents

After Kerry conceded the 2004 presidential election, the reaction from the Democrats was brutal. Move to Canada! No, secede from the Union! No, armed revolution! We can’t possibly live with the ignorant yokels who gave Bush a mandate!

A little tip - slinging names at the people who voted against your candidate, accusing them of being too stupid to know what they were really voting for, etc. is not the way to win people over to your cause. Insulting swing voters instead of seeking to understand why they preferred the other candidate and modifying your platform to be more inclusive is poor politics. Truly centrist voters already think that your pompous attempts to engineer society to become some New England/west coast politically correct utopian standard is just as offensive as the Republicans trying to engineer society to an evangelical Christian standard. Break that perception. Reach out to new voting blocks.

Anyhow, that’s my $0.02. Like Coldforged, I’m taking a long break from further political blogging if I can help it.

Just to point out where we are with the U.S. Presidential election, Kerry and Edwards are not conceeding the election because they feel as though they still have a chance to win Ohio when all of the provisional ballots are counted. Given that Bush will almost certainly win one or both of the remaining undeclared states (Iowa and New Mexico), whichever candidate actually won Ohio will be the next President of the United States.

Let’s do some quick math to see what this means:

With 100% of the precincts in Ohio reporting, Bush currently has 2,794,346 votes. Kerry has 2,658,125 votes, which means Bush’s lead is 136,221.

In the Democrats’ most optimistic estimate, there are 250,000 outstanding provisional ballots and they are all valid. (In 2000, only 90% of the Ohio provisional ballots turned out to be valid.) In order to win in this scenario, Kerry would need to get 193,111 of the 250,000 votes in order to win in Ohio. This is a margin of ~77.24%.

In the Republicans’ most optimistic estimate, there are 175,000 outstanding provisional ballots and only 90% of them are valid. In order to win in this scenario, Kerry would need to get 146,861 of the 157,500 votes in order to win Ohio. This is a margin of ~93.25%.

Assuming the truth is somewhere in the middle, Kerry probably needs ~85% of the provisional ballots to win. In Kerry’s best county in Ohio (Cuyahoga), he only managed to get ~67% of the vote.

So why does the Kerry campaign think such a huge margin of victory is possible among those voters who cast provisional ballots? In Ohio, provisional ballots come in two flavors - absentee ballots and ballots for voters whose eligibility to vote could not be immediately verified (usually because they showed up at the wrong polling place).

The Democrats think that the overwhelming majority of provisional ballots are from young, first-time voters that support Kerry, and these voters made a rookie mistake of showing up at a precinct other than the one where they were registered.

The Republicans, however, agree that some of the provisional ballots are from first-time voters, but counter-claim that first-time voters aren’t necessarily young nor do they necessarily support Kerry. The ballot initiative in Ohio to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman helped motivate a lot of churches to get their members registered, and the Republicans claim that there are as many or more of these religiously motivated (and implicitly Republican) first-time voters than there are of the young Kerry supporters - a plausible theory given the age 18-29 turnout cited in other states. To add more weight to their claim, the Republicans also feel as though they have an edge in the absentee provisional ballots, since many of Ohio’s absentee voters are overseas military personnel who are thought to favor Bush by as much as 2-1. In other words, the Republicans not only disagree that Kerry can get the requisite ~85% of Ohio’s provisional votes, they question whether he can even get 50%.

The bottom line is that the race in Ohio is close enough to justify Kerry’s wait-and-see stance, but mathematically speaking it is incredibly improbable that a full count will work out in Kerry’s favor. (Celebrate or cry as you deem appropriate.)

EDIT: Shortly after I posted this, I learned that the number of provisional ballots in 78 of 88 counties had been counted (i.e. not tallied, just counted to see how many there were) and the total was 135,149. Assuming the same ratio in the other 10 counties and that all of the provisional ballots were valid, there would only be 152,476 valid provisional ballots total for Ohio - Kerry would need to have received 144,349 or an amazing 94.67% of the vote on those ballots to take the presidency. It is little wonder, then, that shortly after these numbers were released, Kerry’s concession to Bush was announced. The United States has elected its next president, and at least we can say that this time it took less than 36 days.

If you’re a U.S. citizen, today’s the day to get out to the polls and vote.

Hit mypollingplace.com if you’re registered but unsure of where you should vote. (The website’s running a bit slow as of this writing, which I take to be a good sign.)

If you can’t get through to mypollingplace.com, then head over to your search engine of choice and look up your state’s board of elections website.

The common cliche is that many Americans have fought and died to preseve our right to vote - which shouldn’t be taken lightly - and hopefully after the excruciatingly close elections of 2000 people will realize that even their single vote can make a difference, especially in states where the race is very close.

Even if you’re not in a “battleground state”, though, exercising your right to vote is still important. First of all, no one wants to see another split between the popular vote and the electoral college. Additionally, consider the case of 1992 - there was one exit poll (sorry, I can’t find a link) that asked people if they would have voted for Perot if they thought he had “a realistic chance of winning”. As it turns out, the number of people who would have voted for Perot if they thought he could win would have been enough for Perot to actually win (at least in the state where the poll was conducted).

In other words, don’t let the pollsters and the pundits get you down. I went out and voted first thing this morning, and if 6am in my precinct is any indication, then turnout is going to be huge and all bets are off. Vote for your candidates regardless of who is “supposed” to win in your state (or, if you’re voting later in the day, who the media projects as the “likely winners”). Exercise your right!

While I am personally inspired by the first private space flight and would love to travel in space someday, my pragmatism makes me a bit wary of the things that could go wrong in a commerical setting.

This article was recently brought to my attention.

It’s an exposure piece of how Narconon (*cough cough* Scientology *cough*) is spreading Scientology lessons and ideals to children under the guise of drug prevention programs.

Hey, I think it’s great that people are out there trying to convince kids to avoid drugs. However, this group is “backed” by Scientology and though they claim they strictly keep religion and education separate, it’s fairly obvious they manage to still get their messages across.

Those of you not familiar with the insane cult of Scientology, I would recommend you take a look here but, more importantly, check out Operation Clambake.

Anyway, Narconon claims that they are not promoting Scientology but evidence like the following clearly disputes that. Let’s not forget that most of their claims are disputed my medical science:

Example 1 (a quote from a former “church” member) -
“Communication drills are one of the basic tools taught by Scientology,” said Christman, the ex-church member. “It’s the first course that anyone who enters Scientology gets — or Narconon rehab. It’s sitting across from someone and looking at them for as long as it takes to ‘be there comfortably,’ in Hubbard’s words. No movement, no speaking, no facial tics — nothing.”

Example 2 (from a lecturer at the end of a class) -
As his lecture ended, Bylsma turned to the students and said, “I want to say thank you to a man named William Benitez who started the program, and thank you to L. Ron Hubbard! Thanks to them, we have the program in 37 countries! Let’s give them a hand!” And the students clapped.

Example 3 (an email from a Scientologist referring to an upcoming talk by the above instructor) -
“Tony will go over how to do seminars but the information is SO basic that it’ll show you how to handle kids, parents, teachers as groups OR ONE-ON- ONE on what drugs do to both the mind and body. … He gives examples of how drugs scramble the pictures in the mind, how it stores in the body and how it takes one down the tone scale lower and lower — ALL IN NON-SCIENTOLOGY TERMS. … All the Scientology and Dianetics Handbook basics but in simple descriptions!”

There are plenty of other examples. My favorite is the Scientology insistance that drugs are stored in fat indefinitely, unless you “clear” them.
Right.

What I don’t understand are the superintendents of these schools who fail to look at the evidence before them. They are allowing these maniacs into their schools and access to their children. That irresponsibility is deplorable.

What I got from this story:

Kangaroos bark?

First a disclaimer: this blog has been careful not to discuss certain topics in the past, namely work, politics, and (to a lesser extent) our private lives. Public posting about any of those topics tends to lead to professional or personal disaster - or both. This is why, by and large, we stick to posting about information of general interest or news that directly relates to our hobbies and preferred methods of recreation.

However, I was so dumbfounded after reading an essay about gay marriage by Orson Scott Card, an author of literature I enjoy and whose intellectual and political views I typically agree with, that I have to make an exception. Read more to see my (long) response to Card’s arguments.
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I should have known. I shouldn’t be surprised. OF COURSE a lawsuit had to come about from the Janet Jackson Super Bowl exposure, claiming “serious injury.”

*sigh*

I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand how litigious the people in this country have become. Don’t even try to “represent” me in this suit you stupid bitch. I wasn’t injured and neither was anyone else…unless you want to count discomfort in the nether-regions of just about every male who saw it.

All I can do is hope common sense will prevail and the first judge who looks at this suit will throw it right out. Please…please…allow me to have a little bit of faith left in this country.

*sigh*…I seem to be a noticing an evolution of my posts (DID YOU SEE THAT GEORGIA??? I SAID EVOLUTION! EVOLUTION, EVOLUTION, EVOLUTION).

I’m getting bitter. Is it my age? Maybe. But I’m more inclined to blame the increasing numbers of complete moron assholes…or morholes…in the world around me. I hate you all so very, very much.

I was originally planning on having another “Separated at Birth” post. I couldn’t help but draw “wild hair” comparisons between Saddam Hussein (at the time of capture) and James Brown (at the time of his recent arrest). But then I decided I would be insulting the Godfather of Soul, and I really didn’t want to do that.

But in the process of looking for Saddam photos, I came across this site: La Voz de Aztlan, or, How I Grew Up to Be a Conspiracy Theorist and Hate the Country That Allows Me to Have This Website….whichever.

The link that drew me in was a story claiming the Saddam capture as a hoax. Look at how nicely they used Photoshop to draw the arrows to the meat and dates! And such irrefutable evidence from sources I’m sure exist and know what they’re talking about!

Well, as you can imagine, I had to look for more! They are obviously “in the know.” I got roped into an article entitled: “New York to be Nuked on Feb. 2“, complete with another Photoshop masterpiece. My favorite part of the story:
“It is heartening to see that more and more Americans are finally awakening to the fact that there are sinister forces within the government taking their orders from an ‘International Cabal’. ”

Gah! I’ve spent more time on these people then they deserve.

Sorry to be so blunt in the subject line, but I am beyond pissed off. I’m not sure if any of you followed the story of the Representative from South Dakota, Bill Janklow, who was convicted of second-degree manslaughter, speeding, running a stop sign and reckless driving.

One day he was driving at least 70 in a 55 mph zone, when he blew off a stop sign and killed a motorcyclist. He has had 13 traffic citations since 1990. After his convictions, he was sentenced to 100 days in a county jail. A county jail. 100 days. What a ridiculous sentence for someone who killed a man, and obviously has problems following traffic laws. Oh, and it will all be struck from his record if he completes his probation without incident.

Now you might argue that losing his seat was punishment enough. Please. Imagine if it was just a “regular” guy who committed these crimes. Being a Representative is a job, not a piece of armor.

I would be insulted if I was Randolph Scott’s family. They deserved better justice.

And I can’t help but notice how the guy Randolph Scott was riding with testified for the defense and was surprised at the “large amount” of jail time Janklow received. Gee, I wonder who got to him.