Slashdot Mirror

WE WERE ATTACKED ON 9/11.

"Thank you England and Poland and the other nations in our coalition. Together, we will root out and wipe out terrorism anywhere, anytime, in any country that threatens us."

I'm sorry, but those are just some really bad reasons. They seem (IMHO, etc.) to indicate precisely the sort of warhawk thinking that starts world wars. Germany had a desire for liebestraum, America has a hankerin' for oil. Following your suggestion, we'd be walking right into inciting a global conflict.

#1 "WMD's were just a floater to get us into Iraq and prepare for the next targets." It's appalling that you think it's acceptable for a nation's leaders to give the country's citizens outright lies to justify an unprovoked war. Were the United States to move on to "the next targets," it would incite phenomenal anti-American sentiment worldwide, and exacerbate the problem of terrorism. Furthermore, it... Ach, I'm not even going to bother to refute all your points. Just look here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110002133

George HW Bush's National Security Advisor breaks it down for you and explains things pretty well.

Ugh, the spin on this article, both the headline and the editorial comment by Michael, is annoying. (The actual NYTimes piece is worth reading.)

1) Old news. All this analysis that the tubes could have, or even
were fairly likely to have been used for rockets, not centrifuges
was known and public in Dec2002-Mar 2003. If you don't remember
it, you just weren't paying attention. It's even old news that
the Energy Department and State Department experts were the
ones disagreeing. (What *is* news is that the caliber of experts
that said the tubes were likely not for centrifuges was not
made public at that time to the best of my knowledge.)

2) Michael grossly mischaracterizes the Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld
position at the time as saying the "tubes were slam-dunk evidence".

That was *not* the way the White House or the administration
presented the case at the time. The tone of 95% of their statements
was basically... well, we're not sure but it doesn't look good.
There is evidence that Saddam is reconstituting his nuclear program, etc.
What are we going to do about it?

In fact, the "slam dunk" comment was made *in private* by CIA director
Tenet to George Bush when Bush told the director that the case seemed
weak and was that the best info he had? At least that's the
story documented by Bob Woodward's book that came out a year after
the war, "Plan of Attack" (WSJ opinion,
a longer CBS News summary.)

Now why Tenet said it was a slam dunk is a bit of a mystery to me.
And it presumably is the basis for the 2-3 statemtents pre-war
made to various obscure audiences but reported in the mainstream
press where Bush or Cheney said things like "we *know* Iraq
has WMD"... statements that were remarkable and notable precisely
because the administration was generally not so definitive in
saying that Iraq had WMD... most of their statements centered
around Saddam's recalcitrance in the light of various UN resolutions
and inspectors.

Hey, I'll go so far as to say Bush misled the American people
and/or made a poor decision to go to war, knowing that the evidence
was thin. And I think that is a #1 reason not to vote for him.
But I don't think a Slashdot article heading "White House Lied
About Iraq Nuclear Programs" or a editorial comment that the
administration was announcing that the tubes were "slam-dunk evidence"
is right. It's really sad to see such misrepresentation of what happened.

--LP

The current system DOES NOT guarantee that one candidate will get a
majority of the electoral vote.

For example if Mr. Bush were to carry the states Maine, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio,
Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas,
Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma,
Texas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska
and Mr. Kerry where to carry the rest then the electoral vote would be
split 269-269 and the vote would go to the House.

You can verify this at http://www.opinionjournal.com/ecc/calculator.htm.

The current system isn't truly winner-take-all. Two states Maine and
Nebraska (I believe) have a system in which a candidate gets one
electoral vote for each congressional district he carries and two for
the state at large.

And of course there is a referendum in Colorado this year to split the
electoral vote in a way similar to what is suggested i.e. for each
ninth of the popular vote a candidate receives he get's one electoral
vote. Can you imagine the fights over round off errors? *shudder*.

At least this article could have taken the time to point out this man is rabidly anti-Bush, and is one of the biggest bankroller of opposition groups like MoveOn.

If you want more information on this man,
Here's one excellent background piece.
Here's an article where he compared Bush to Hitler.

This question will never make it to the President, but I'd like to know how he responds to the arguments against the Iraq invasion presented by Brent Scowcroft in 2002 (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h tml?id=110002133)
Or George Bush Senior's statement in 1998 that invading Iraq would have "incalculable human and political costs" (http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/gulfwar.asp ) He also said "Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho?" he asked. "We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power -- America in an Arab land -- with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous. We don't gain the size of our victory by how many innocent kids running away -- even though they're bad guys -- that we can slaughter. ... We're American soldiers; we don't do business that way." (http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/03/a19990303bus h.htm)
Or Dick Cheney's assessment in 1991 (http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/che ney.htm)in which he said that "I think the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious," that invading would get the U.S. "bogged down in a quagmire," and that "Saddam Hussein's offensive military capability, his capacity to threaten his neighbors, has been virtually eliminated."
I want to know how the President (or anyone else, really) can reconcile the 2003 invasion of Iraq with these pronouncements. Obviously the situation has changed over the years, but it clearly has not changed enough to prevent the situation that Cheney described.

In choosing which polling stations would be audited, the CNE (Venezuelan electoral council) refused to use the random number generator recommended by the Carter Center. Instead, the CNE insisted on its own program, run on its own computer.

Damn. Let me guess.... Kerry fan? With a little Moore influence? So, did you choose a glass with the red, or the green kool-aid? Well, if you paid for it, at least you got a full dose. Well, never mind.

If you take a few deep breaths, and read from a wider group of media outlets, you might still have a chance. There are now even antidotes for the F 911 fever swamp. Otherwise, I'm sorry.

And actually, impeachment is essentially an indictment, not an investigation. There actually has to be wrong-doing involved for impeachment to be considered. Anti-Bush fantasies aside, 9/11 didn't involve that. If it did, Clinton would be up for more trouble.

Ta ta, and good luck with all that.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but there is no unbiased news anymore. The media...print, radio, online...is mostly controlled by a few of the major conglomerates. Not only that, but they all have their slants on what is reported and how it is reported. Here's an interested quote from WSJ Opinion Journal

"The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need."

It's nice to know the media is deciding what to let through and what to report "in our best interest".

I enjoy the style and humor applied to the daily news and commentary around the web and in the media at the Wall Street Journal's Best Of The Web put together by James Taranto and others.

At first I was a little surprised when reading this thread that it wasn't mentioned- then I thought of the typical reader around here and realized it's probably not frequented that often...

Anyways, it's a good round-up, funny, and it's new every weekday. And I figured that it deserved mention here.

Another noteworthy site is http://www.RatherBiased.com. Their motto is "Watching CBS News so you don't have to". :-)

But seriously, I have been checking it out it daily since the whole MemoGate controversy erupted. The blog is on top of this story; the operator of the site appears to have a number of internal contacts within CBS News. It also has deep archives that go back years, detailing previous spats between Dan Rather and the Bushes.

Of particular interest to me was this interview with former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg, whose recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is also an informative read.

Thanks for pointing out Boortz.

As a longtime Atlanta listener, I must apologize for actually having worked today. I was too busy to check /. and post a link to the Mouth of the South, the High Priest of the Painful Truth, the S.A.W.B ('Smartass white boy' as he was called by then-Mayor Andrew Young)... Neal Boortz.

I have to mention James Taranto, the esteemed pundi-blogger that uses the editorial 'we' in his always witty Best of the Web Today.

The site is here.

1. Instapundit. Written by a Glenn Reynolds, a libertarian law professor at the University of Tennessee whose expertise is in second amendment issues, technology and communication. Perhaps the most influential and widely read blog.

2. The Corner. National Review's group weblog. Lots of contributors, who vary widely in tone (after you read it a while you come to recognize who the various authors are, and what points of view they hold). If you're not a conservative, you should check it out -- you won't agree with most of the stuff, but after a while you might learn that the folks on the "other side" aren't a bunch of moronic power-mad nazis: They actually have coherent reasons for believing what they believe, and can ably articulate those views. Understanding their arguments will help you sharpen your own.

3. The Volokh Conspiracy. A group weblog of libertarian and conservative law professors. The lead conspirator, Eugene Volokh, is a computer programmer-turned UCLA law professor; he is an expert in free speech issues, with some expertise in the second amendment as well. A lot of bloggers could learn from the civil tone of this blog -- i.e., no yelling, taunting or name-calling. Volokh believes writers should try to persuade others, not alienate them with overheated rhetoric.

Note that Volokh, like Reynolds, is a true libertarian: Conservatives are unlikely to agree with either of them on things like abortion and homosexuality.

4. Andrew Sullivan. An influential writer for Time, The New Republic and other print outlets. Perhaps the best-known openly gay conservative.

5. Kausfiles. A moderate-to-conservative Democrat, Mickey Kaus is utterly unsparing (and occasionally downright brutal) in his criticism of liberal excess, fellow democrats and the media. Doesn't write a lot, but is witty and sometimes offers extraordinary insights you won't get anywhere else.

6. Best of the Web. The Wall Street Journal's blog, written by James Taranto. A once-a-day read, it sums up a lot of current issues from a conservatives' point of view.

Yes, there are many many many many others. But if the conservative/libertarian blogosphere is like a tree, these are the trunk.

- Alaska Jack

Since we are talking of democracy, the democratically appointed Kofi Annans opinion surely weighs more than that of the US installed Iyad Allawi.

You're trying to paint Annan as a neutral observer.

It just doesn't pass the laugh test. Annan's office directed hush letters to administrators in the Iraq Oil-For-Food program, from which billions of dollars have gone missing. Supervising the import/export of the goods in question was Cotecna, who employeed Annan's son first as an employee then as a consultant during the period immediately prior to their being awarded the UN contracts.

Annan has alot to lose if Bush is reelected. Bush is known to be displeased with the state of the UN while Kerry holds it up as a model of international cooperation and is likely not to press these issues in a new administration.

This is an astute political move by Annan, but let's not play games about his motivations.

What was found on that hard drive proves that some members of the U.S. Senate had unethical and criminal motives in blocking confirmation of judges to federal courts. If that is going on, I want to know about it. Any patriotic citizen would. I think the guy deservers an award for whisteblowing, not prosecution.

The real story here is not the leak itself, but the content of the leaked documents. They contradict reasons some Senators gave publicly for filibustering judicial nominees. Some powerfull people got caught in a great big lie. Even worse, what was found on the hard drive reveals the true motives for blocking judicial appointees to be unethical and even illegal.

In particular, the leaks reveal that Senators 1) tried to manipulate the outcome of court cases by delaying appointments, which is a federal crime. 2) used racist criteria in deciding which appointees to block. They blocked confirmation of a judge, Miguel Estrada because he was Latino. Shit. The Senate Judiciary Commitee actually wrote that down as reason to block someone from becoming a judge, "because... he is Latino."

Well, the secret is out and you go read about the U.S. Senate's racist and criminal motives, in their own words. The Wall Street Journal has some of the juicy parts from the leaked documents.

Check out exactly what closing those loopholes will do. Kerry released his economic plan yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, citing the $12 billion in loopholes he would close. Seem a little low? Here's why. That $12 billion is a drop in the bucket of our multi-trillion dollar budget because less than 10% of all businesses actually pay the corporate tax. So Kerry is talking about closing a loophole for less than 10% of businesses, who are then expected to go out and use all this extra cash to hire workers. It's a longshot, at best, since I doubt all $12 billion will actually go back to the companies, and I doubt all 8% of those companies will use all that money to hire people.

Someone else made this claim also, but he was anonymous, so I'll respond to you.

Just yesterday, they ran an op/ed by John Kerry himself. It is entitled, "My Economic Policy: A new CEO in Washington would be good for American business." Right-wing propaganda?

On September 12, they ran an op/ed by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, entitled, "A Democratic Foreign Policy: President Kerry won't thumb his nose at the rest of the world."

Now, I've already said that I'm conservative, and I said that the WSJ is right-of-center. I recommended the WSJ's opinion pages because I think they're interesting. I think I've clearly demonstrated that my designation of "right-of-center" was accurate.

Have you actually read this site you're calling propaganda?

Someone else made this claim also, but he was anonymous, so I'll respond to you.

Just yesterday, they ran an op/ed by John Kerry himself. It is entitled, "My Economic Policy: A new CEO in Washington would be good for American business." Right-wing propaganda?

On September 12, they ran an op/ed by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, entitled, "A Democratic Foreign Policy: President Kerry won't thumb his nose at the rest of the world."

Now, I've already said that I'm conservative, and I said that the WSJ is right-of-center. I recommended the WSJ's opinion pages because I think they're interesting. I think I've clearly demonstrated that my designation of "right-of-center" was accurate.

Have you actually read this site you're calling propaganda?

A good starting point, in my opinion, is to read the opinion mags. The New Republic is a leading left-of-center opinion magazine. National Review is indispensible for those of us on the right. The Wall Street Journal provides the most insightful coverage of the major papers that I have seen, although they are obviously pro-capitalism and are therefore accused of being right-of-center. They require a subscription to read online, but I enjoy reading their editorial pages, which are free, and love their Best of the Web Today feature.

Obviously, I'm right-of-center politically, and what I find insightful, you may find unconvincing.

A good starting point, in my opinion, is to read the opinion mags. The New Republic is a leading left-of-center opinion magazine. National Review is indispensible for those of us on the right. The Wall Street Journal provides the most insightful coverage of the major papers that I have seen, although they are obviously pro-capitalism and are therefore accused of being right-of-center. They require a subscription to read online, but I enjoy reading their editorial pages, which are free, and love their Best of the Web Today feature.

Obviously, I'm right-of-center politically, and what I find insightful, you may find unconvincing.

I agree with you 100%... and for the record, I read the fine article, and Bush never once mentioned the Bible or reading it for guidance.

I suggest people read the article... I got several things from it: Bush talks about specific things he's done and plans to do. Kerry bashes Bush at every opportunity and talks about how he'll solve problems with the international community. Oh, and he always says "John Edwards and I..." where most of these plans must be formalised by Congress...

Kerry is not going to win on Bush bashing, he needs to stop the Bush bashing and stop talking about Vietnam and start talking specifics about what he's going to do as president.

It looks like he's trying to let Vietnam die as an issue, which is good, but I still need to find out more about his real plans. I read his editorial from the Wall Street Journal yesterday (a link ), but I wasn't impressed (and I think his numbers are not quite accurate, not that any politician uses accurate numbers).

Hey novice lockpickers, be VERY careful! Although the U.S. Patriot Act and Zero Tolerance are not directly connected, the type of thinking is...

In New Jersey, four children received school suspensions for "shooting" at each other (bang! bang!) with extended index fingers. The kids had violated their school's zero-tolerance policy against "weapons".

Commonwealth v. Milo A 12-year-old student drew pictures that depicted his teacher being shot.

In Irvington, N.J., two eight-year-olds have been charged with "making terrorist threats." The boys were "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun,"

If Colorado passes this measure, and more states follow, then it will become nearly impossible for any candidate to get the required 270 EC votes to win the election. Therefore the House of Representatives will almost always decide who the president should be. It sounds to me like a system like that would make everyone's vote meaningless save congressmen/women. James Taranto in his August 25th edition of Best of the Web Today put it best:

Will Colorado Flunk College?

ASPEN, Colo.--As long as we're visiting the Centennial State, we thought we'd write something about the initiative that will appear on the November ballot to change the way Colorado allocates its electoral votes. The Colorado Electoral College Reform Initiative would allocate the state's 9 electoral votes proportionately to each candidate's popular vote, and it would be retroactive to the 2004 election. Currently the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote gets all of the state's electors, as is the case in 47 other states and the District of Columbia. (Maine and Nebraska allocate 2 electoral votes to the statewide winner and the remaining votes by congressional district, though neither has had a split since adopting this method.)

The initiative is a transparent effort to help John Kerry, who is expected to lose Colorado. If it had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have picked up 3 of the state's 8 electoral votes (one has been added since, thanks to reapportionment). This would have shifted the overall electoral vote from 271-266 in Bush's favor to 270-268 in Gore's. (One Gore elector from the District of Columbia abstained but said she would have cast her vote for Gore if it had been decisive.) If Kerry took 3 or 4 of Colorado's electors this year, that could make the difference in a close election.

But Coloradans would have to be pretty stupid to approve this measure, for the result would be to diminish the state's power in electing a president. To see why, consider this: In postwar elections, the Democrats have never received less than 31.1% of the Colorado vote (Jimmy Carter's total in 1980). The Republicans' worst showing was George H.W. Bush's 35.9% in 1992. If we take this as each party's floor, Democrats would have a lock on 2 of Colorado's electoral votes and Republicans on 3 of them, leaving a maximum of 4 electoral votes in play in any given election--the number of electoral votes such small states as Hawaii, Idaho and New Hampshire have. And winning all 4 of those votes (for a 7-2 GOP advantage or a 6-3 Democratic one) would require a blowout victory in the state.

The Bush campaign is concerned enough about Colorado that it has been airing campaign ads here, something we never see back home in solidly Democratic New York. It's unlikely that either candidate would bother to campaign in a state where at most 4, and more realistically only 1 or 2, electoral votes are at stake.

What would happen if every state adopted the proposed Colorado system? For one thing, "swing" states would be a thing of the past; the difference between carrying Iowa and losing it by a small plurality would be 1 electoral vote (4-3 vs. 3-4) rather than 7. This would benefit large states at the expense of small ones. It's a lot easier to shift, say, 3.2% of the vote in New York (which has 31 electoral votes) than 25% in New Hampshire (4).

It would also increase the importance of third parties, thereby possibly pushing the major parties to extremes. No third-party candidate has carried a state since George Wallace in 1968, but under a proportional system for choosing electors, several would have won electoral votes.

We ran the numbers for the 2000 election, and it turns out that if all states followed the proposed Colorado system, Ralph Nader would have garnered 6 electoral votes (2 from California and 1 each from Massachusetts, Ohio, New York and Texas). Gore w

If Colorado passes this measure, and more states follow, then it will become nearly impossible for any candidate to get the required 270 EC votes to win the election. Therefore the House of Representatives will almost always decide who the president should be. It sounds to me like a system like that would make everyone's vote meaningless save congressmen/women. James Taranto in his August 25th edition of Best of the Web Today put it best:

Will Colorado Flunk College?

ASPEN, Colo.--As long as we're visiting the Centennial State, we thought we'd write something about the initiative that will appear on the November ballot to change the way Colorado allocates its electoral votes. The Colorado Electoral College Reform Initiative would allocate the state's 9 electoral votes proportionately to each candidate's popular vote, and it would be retroactive to the 2004 election. Currently the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote gets all of the state's electors, as is the case in 47 other states and the District of Columbia. (Maine and Nebraska allocate 2 electoral votes to the statewide winner and the remaining votes by congressional district, though neither has had a split since adopting this method.)

The initiative is a transparent effort to help John Kerry, who is expected to lose Colorado. If it had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have picked up 3 of the state's 8 electoral votes (one has been added since, thanks to reapportionment). This would have shifted the overall electoral vote from 271-266 in Bush's favor to 270-268 in Gore's. (One Gore elector from the District of Columbia abstained but said she would have cast her vote for Gore if it had been decisive.) If Kerry took 3 or 4 of Colorado's electors this year, that could make the difference in a close election.

But Coloradans would have to be pretty stupid to approve this measure, for the result would be to diminish the state's power in electing a president. To see why, consider this: In postwar elections, the Democrats have never received less than 31.1% of the Colorado vote (Jimmy Carter's total in 1980). The Republicans' worst showing was George H.W. Bush's 35.9% in 1992. If we take this as each party's floor, Democrats would have a lock on 2 of Colorado's electoral votes and Republicans on 3 of them, leaving a maximum of 4 electoral votes in play in any given election--the number of electoral votes such small states as Hawaii, Idaho and New Hampshire have. And winning all 4 of those votes (for a 7-2 GOP advantage or a 6-3 Democratic one) would require a blowout victory in the state.

The Bush campaign is concerned enough about Colorado that it has been airing campaign ads here, something we never see back home in solidly Democratic New York. It's unlikely that either candidate would bother to campaign in a state where at most 4, and more realistically only 1 or 2, electoral votes are at stake.

What would happen if every state adopted the proposed Colorado system? For one thing, "swing" states would be a thing of the past; the difference between carrying Iowa and losing it by a small plurality would be 1 electoral vote (4-3 vs. 3-4) rather than 7. This would benefit large states at the expense of small ones. It's a lot easier to shift, say, 3.2% of the vote in New York (which has 31 electoral votes) than 25% in New Hampshire (4).

It would also increase the importance of third parties, thereby possibly pushing the major parties to extremes. No third-party candidate has carried a state since George Wallace in 1968, but under a proportional system for choosing electors, several would have won electoral votes.

We ran the numbers for the 2000 election, and it turns out that if all states followed the proposed Colorado system, Ralph Nader would have garnered 6 electoral votes (2 from California and 1 each from Massachusetts, Ohio, New York and Texas). Gore w

I think you should read the rest of the other article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Agai nst_the_War

During a meeting in Kansas City in mid November 1971, a proposal to assassinate several senators was put forth according to Randy Barnes, current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry. Scott Camil a radical key leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War proposed the assassination of the most conservative members of Congress, as well as any other powerful opponents of the antiwar movement.

According to interviews with VVAW members who were present at the Kansas City meeting, Camil organized something he called "The Phoenix Project." The original Phoenix Project during the Vietnam War was an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong leadership by targeted assassination. Mr. Camil's Phoenix Project planned to execute the Southern senatorial leadership that was backing the war including John Tower, Strom Thurmond, and John Stennis. The assignations were to be executed during the Senate Christmas recess.

The plan was voted down, although the closeness of the vote is debated. Although John Kerry claims he had resigned from the organization prior to the Kansas City meeting, one account indicates Kerry was present for the vote, voted against it, and simultaneously resigned from the organization in disgust.

And if you follow the links from the article you quoted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_VVAW_contr oversy

You'll find the source of that particular account:

There, according to six eyewitnesses interviewed by the Sun, the plan was discussed and voted down, with Mr. Kerry speaking out against it, although there is disagreement about how narrow the margin of defeat was. On the third day of the meeting, Mr. Kerry and three other people resigned from their posts as national coordinators of VVAW.

Yup, some plot Kerry was involved in. I agree though, this election is spending too much time on events that happened decades ago and not enough on the hear and now.

Kerry is has insisted on making his Vietnam service a centerpiece of his campaign. So, he shouldn't be surprised if that and his other activities during that period come under closer scrutiny. Of course, Bush has plenty of skeletons in his closet as well. But, if one insists on making character the deciding issue in this campaign, I think Kerry is on the losing side.

However, I think the attacks on "character" are a smokescreen for both sides to divert attention from the political issues. I wouldn't vote for either one of them, based on their record as politicians. And I suspect that a lot of people would make a similar choice, if they weren't distracted by the political entertainment that masquerades as "news".

Bush has disappointed a lot of his core political supporters, and the Democrats have once again fallen for the fantasy of Camelot and have nominated another Massachusetts liberal for President (that worked well against the elder Bush). If there were a "None of the Above" choice that was truly binding and forced a new election with new candidates, I think it would win.

Not to criticize js7a--he gave you fair warning--but his list leans to the left. I don't know if I have the definitive right-leaning counterexample, but here's a list of guys who are biased right but seem to be fair in their analysis...
mainstream media:
Best of the Web Today
Andrew Sullivan
The Corner
blogs:
Instapundit
oxblog
JustOneMinute
Daniel Drezner
Captains Quarters
cartoons:
Cox and Forkum
Day by Day

All are blogs and/or openly opinionated. They are generally right wing. This is in no way a complete list, and should not even be considered the "best of", since I haven't spent a lot of time exploring. YMMV.

I'd actually be interested in hearing from people who knew of right-leaning blogs not on this list that they recommended. I am not trying to start a flame war about who's better or why Instapundit/Daily Kos is a snooty liar.

Sure. Here is a CNN article on the shortfalls in the 1990s. Here are some articles on recruiting for 2002, 2003 and 2004.

The concerns about recruiting and reenlistment have all been based on opinion polls that predicted that shortfalls would arise. So far there is no sign of those shortfalls actually arising. I guess the polls are not reliable predictors of what people will actually do.

As for the stop-loss orders, this is reasonably informative. The orders only apply to units that are deployed, so they make no difference to the task of meeting yearly recruitment and reenlistment goals.

Yeah, that's modded as funny except that the so called "ban on stem cell research" is, in fact, a lie. I know people will ignore this link simply because it's to the Opinion Journal, but facts are facts.

The (Political) Science of Stem Cells.

The president has barred the funding of promising biological research using embryonic stem cells...

President Bush is the only president ever to authorize federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

Under Bush, NIH has increased spending on embyonic on human ebryonic stem cell research from $0.00 in 2001 to $24.8 million in 2003. In the same period NIH spending for all types of stem cell research, human and non-human, embryonic and non-embryonic has increased from $306.0 millon to $521.1 million.

Look here for a detailed breakdown. (Link could require free registration.)

I'm pretty rabidly anti-electronic voting (as currently implemented), but these two papers I stumbled across have me rethinking my position:

CFP'93 - Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat

Paper v. Electronic Voting Records - An Assessment

WSJ's OpinionJournal.com has a pretty poorly written article as well at:

No Doctored DRE (Subscription might be required for this one though)

Enjoy.

" was their lack of will to kick the US' balls until they cooperated with the world."

As an European you should realize that UN ability to do anything is based on US ability to do anything.

No other nation (with possible exception of UK) has ability to project power beyond their borders and organization like UN is completely useless without a credible threat of force. IT was the case with UN intervention in North Korea , The Gulf War and the Serbian war.
Without US niether of these problems would have been solved.

What you are calling cooperation with the world in reality meat giving up to deamns of France and Germany and that is my friend something we won't do if it is against our national interest.

" but being an European I don't have the mental capability to understand those witty people from Arkansas."

Yeah, frankly given that Arkansas, one of the poorest states in US, offers standard of living similar to that of Sweden or Germany ,I think you might be right with this one.

For a nice little tour of N. Korea, you might visit the report at hrnk.org

A national policy of starvation, overwork, and torture. Newborns murdered on grounds of suspected genetic diversity. Imprisonment of three generation of an offender's family. A lifetime political prisoner population of 200,000 - more than all the US military in Iraq; more than all the people in a small industrial city.

Claudia Rosette wrote a column when the report was released.

The real push for tougher enforcement has come from Democratic commissioner Michael Copps, who was outraged by Mr. Stern's kidding about hookers and rescue workers at ground zero. Mr. Copps also wanted to yank a station's license because it aired a vulgar shock jock called Bubba the Love Sponge.

Chairman Powell himself believes that Mr. Stern's desire for "unbounded on-air expression is a fair argument"

WSJ

Brokaw: Senator Kerry, what about the French? Are they friends, are they enemies, or something in between at this point?

Kerry: The French are the French. I think there's a . . .

Brokaw: Very profound, Senator.

Kerry: Well, trust me. It has a meaning. And I think most people know exactly what I mean.

citation here

I despise the French but know enough about their ways to have a similarly detached attitude to them. One thing everyone should understand- the recent wave of Franco-phobia in the U.S. has been so visible precisely because the average American- in their good-hearted ignorance- was genuinely shocked and hurt by the way the French turned against us. In their minds Franco-American relations are defined by LaFayette, the Statue of Liberty, and the Normandy landings, not DeGaulle, de Villepin, and amoral, a-ideological back-stabbing.

But since at least DeGaulle France has consistently betrayed the Western Alliance, caring more about "national honor" and grandeur than ideals or decency. I've heard French moans lately about why the President can't be more like FDR, and laugh when I remember that in the latter's time DeGaulle was a constant prick and thorn in the side of Allies, always caring more about France not looking little than winning the war.

French foreign policy has followed this course for the last 50 years, sadly. Automatic opposition to the United States to make itself feel important and relevant; convenient alliances with anti-American states (no matter how repugnant) to have more influence. Do people forget who built Saddam's nuclear reactor at Osirak? Or who gave arms to their Rwandan Hutu clients during their campaign of genocide?

But what makes this truly sad and despicable is that it is done for no larger purpose than self-aggrandizement. German opposition to the Iraq war was at least honorable because it was based on ideals; Joschka Fischer turned to Jurgen Habermas and his neo-Kantian ideal of foreign relations. France, on the other hand, had Napeoloen-worshipping Dominique de Villepen, and it wouldn't have mattered if the government was Socialist, National Front, or Communist- the outcome and selfish, short-sighted reasons for it would have been the same.

France- you were humiliated in WWII and have been trying to regain your national honor ever since. Hint- the way to do it is not through grand-standing, self-involved, perverse behavior on the international stage. Stop being the bitch-nation of Europe.

(To Gen. Rodriguez) Do you have anything you need to add?

GEN. RODRIGUEZ: No, that's it.

Q Larry, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charlie Duelfer, told Fox today that his team has found a dozen artillery shells and rockets that confirmed contained sarin or mustard gas. Now, you talked previously about the two shells that were unexploded in those IEDs, and you pointed (out) that they were from the first gulf war, dated back to that time, and this new discovery is supposed to date back as well. Is there a feeling that they're not a threat or that they still couldn't be used as weapons of terror?

MR. DI RITA: Well, first of all, Charlie in the ISG report to the director of Central Intelligence -- and I wouldn't want to try and characterize what he may have said. I saw a transcript of some remarks he did provide, and he did talk about there's a lot of questions about these shells. There was, in fact, an obligation that Saddam had to declare what he was holding, and we know that he only declared a small percentage of what he had previously reported. So, I mean, several hundred tons of these things were unaccounted for. But again, there's more questions that need to be resolved, and I wouldn't want to try and characterize, you know, how these ultimately will be disposed -- in terms of what the disposition of these things is.

But the fact is that if we've got that kind of weapon activity -- I think Mr. Duelfer also spoke about what he is starting to see as a thirst for the insurgents -- possible attempts by them to either get control of the knowledge, the database, the knowledge base that exists in that country -- scientists, et cetera. And we know just through historical example that these groups have a thirst for weapons of mass destruction.

There is no doubt that the U.N. relief effort in Iraq has been a global scandal. A monstrous dictator was able to turn the Oil-for-Food program into a cash cow for himself and his inner circle, leaving Iraqis further deprived as he bought influence abroad and acquired the arms and munitions that coalition forces discovered when they invaded Iraq last spring.

June 19, 2004 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday buttressed President Bush's claim that Iraq posed a direct threat to America by saying Russian intelligence was tipped off that Saddam Hussein was preparing anti-American attacks after 9/11.

Putin said the warning was relayed to Bush, who personally thanked one of Russia's spy chiefs for it.

And then there are Zarqawi and Abu Nidal , two of the most blood-thirsty savages engaging in terrorism, both of whom found a home in Iraq.

No, I'm afraid you have it backwards, Saddam was both a participant and an enabler of terrorism. We did the right thing just based on terrorism.

That is not even considering the many banned activities going on in Iraq in defiance of the UN. Read David Kay's report sometime, or some of the other UN material. For your convenience, here is an excert from his statement:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

- A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

- A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

- Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

- New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

- Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

- A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

- Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

- Plans a

Interesting article on GDP comparisons between the US and Europe.

In the interest of balance and intellectual honesty, you might wish to also link to the Iraqi Torture Video

hand amputation

finger chopping

beating with metal pipe

arm breaking with metal pipe
... presumably more videos exist but DOD refuses to release them

From the Wall Street Jounal Online Edition:

The American Enterprise Institute held an unusual video screening [several days ago], and hardly anyone showed up. One who did was the New York Post's Deborah Orin: The video only lasts four minutes or so--gruesome scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade--all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news ["the truth is out there" but being hidden from us???].

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it. ["the truth is out there" but being hidden from us???]

[snip][snip][snip]

As Orin notes, this "raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own [western liberal democracy] wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling."

Part of the problem may be that the press hasn't quite figured out how to deal with such "asymmetric propaganda," [the internet changes everything ;-];-];-] as Orin calls it. Yet it doesn't seem that it would be that hard to provide context--to make sure that every story about American abuses at Abu Ghraib also included graphic descriptions of what went on there before Iraq's liberation.

[snip][snip][snip]

hand amputation

finger chopping

beating with metal pipe

arm breaking with metal pipe
... presumably more videos exist but DOD refuses to release them

From the Wall Street Jounal Online Edition

The American Enterprise Institute held an unusual video screening [several days ago], and hardly anyone showed up. One who did was the New York Post's Deborah Orin:

The video only lasts four minutes or so--gruesome scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade--all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.

We saw part of this video a few weeks back, and indeed it is every bit as horrific as Orin's fellow reporters describe. Our computer crashed about a third of the way through and we didn't have the stomach to start watching again after rebooting. So we can certainly understand why television news outlets would see it as unfit to air.

As Orin notes, this "raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling."

Part of the problem may be that the press hasn't quite figured out how to deal with such "asymmetric propaganda," [the internet changes everything ;-];-];-] as Orin calls it. Yet it doesn't seem that it would be that hard to provide context--to make sure that every story about American abuses at Abu Ghraib also included graphic descriptions of what went on there before Iraq's liberation.

[snip][snip][snip]

Why the distinction between dividends and share repurchases (a signficant reason for the growth). As long as you can sell (and realize the capital gains) it doesn't matter (except in relation to taxes which favored the share repurchases until recently). I highly doubt that any 401k holder cares if they get 10% capital gains, or 8% cap gains and 2% dividens or 2% cap gains and 8% dividends. They are mostly concerned with the overall return.

In matters of sufficent severity (ie the share of labor dropped to 40% or something similar, there would be a tremendous voter turn out and assuming voting mechanisms continued to function there would be huge turnover in Washington.

I'm sorry that your dad lost his store, that really stinks.
But my basic premise is that the vast majority of owners of most companies are folks like you and me (through pensions and retirement savings). You made a good choice in bringing up Walmart as they are one of the few companies that maintains a large individual owner (the Walton children). Most companies are almost entirely owned by companies like mutal funds, life insurance companies, or banks (asset management banks) who are all really just holding the money for their wealthy and not so wealthy clients.

Incidentally, you would probably agree with most of what he has to say (he's the token liberal on the Journal's op ed page like Safire on the NYT op-ed).

Please note that I was refering to income. Of course the wealthy will become wealthier (they usually got that way by living below their income level) and compound returns are pretty impressive no matter how wealthy you are. Also most of labor benefits from higher home prices, as they own a home.

Labor benefits from lower priced goods and services that are imported, and companies wouldn't import cheap crap if customers placed any value on quality (believe me WalMart knows more about what sells than any other bricks and mortar retailer) and they found that there was a smaller than 10% premium that people would pay for a good to be made in the US (presumably at higher quality). Some of the blame for imports must lie on customers shoulders as well.

Black Shirts in Red China?
Beijing today is more fascist than communist.

BY MICHAEL A. LEDEEN
Saturday, February 23, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST

As President Bush, just back from Beijing, got up close to the rulers of China, he must have had conflicting feelings.
We are told that the Chinese have helped us fight terror, which is cause for satisfaction. On the other hand, the CIA has recently revised sharply upward its estimate of Chinese military power in the near future, which is cause for concern. As he ponders what China is and may be, Mr. Bush might reflect that the People's Republic is something quite unique, and therefore very difficult to understand.
China is not, as is invariably said, in transition from communism to a freer and more democratic state. It is, instead, something we have never seen before: a maturing fascist regime. This new phenomenon is hard to recognize, both because Chinese leaders continue to call themselves communists, and also because the fascist states of the first half of the 20th century were young, governed by charismatic and revolutionary leaders, and destroyed in World War II. China is anything but young, and it is governed by a third or fourth generation of leaders who are anything but charismatic.
The current and past generations of Chinese leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, may have scrapped the communist economic system, but they have not embraced capitalism. To be sure, the state no longer owns "the means of production." There is now private property, and, early last June, businessmen were formally admitted to the Communist Party. Profit is no longer taboo; it is actively encouraged at all levels of Chinese society, in public and private sectors. And the state is fully engaged in business enterprise, from the vast corporations owned wholly or in part by the armed forces, to others with top management and large shareholders simultaneously holding government jobs.
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
Like the earlier fascist regimes, China ruthlessly maintains a single-party dictatorship; and although there is greater diversity of opinion in public discourse and in the media than there was a generation ago, there is very little wiggle room for critics of the system, and no toleration of advocates of Western-style freedom and democracy. Like the early fascist regimes, China uses nationalism--not the standard communist slogans of "proletarian internationalism"--to rally the masses. And, like the early fascisms, the rulers of the People's Republic insist that virtue consists in sublimating individual interests to the greater good of the nation. Indeed, as we have seen recently in the intimidation and incarceration of overseas Chinese, the regime asserts its right to dominate all Chinese, everywhere. China's leaders believe they command a people, not merely a geographic entity.
Unlike communist leaders, who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxist-Leninism, the Chinese enthusiastically mine the millennia of Chinese thought to provide legitimacy for their own actions. No socialist realism here! Indeed, this open embrace of ancient Chinese culture is one of the things that has most entranced Western observers. Many believe that a country with such ancient roots will inevitably demonstrate its profound humanity in social and political practice. Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and '30s did the same. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glory, and Hitler's favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich.
Like their European predecessors, the Chinese claim a major role in the world because of th

As mentioned in James Taranto's Best of the Web column, the authors of that study issued the following disclaimer:

The findings were not meant to and cannot be used as a basis for making broad judgments about the general accuracy of the reporting of various networks or the general accuracy of the beliefs of those who get their news from those networks. Only a substantially more comprehensive study could undertake such broad research questions.

The article to which you link itself states:

PIPA's seven polls, which included 9,611 respondents, had a margin of error from 2 to 3.5 percent. The analysis released Thursday also correlated the misperceptions with the primary news source of the mistaken respondents. For example, 80 percent of those who said they relied on Fox News and 71 percent of those who said they relied on CBS believed at least one of the three misperceptions.

Finally, and most importantly, the study confounds the politcal bias of respondants with their political informedness. Consider this: When a repondant does not know the answer to a survey question and he guesses randomly, then on average, binary responses will be just as mutch right as they are wrong. However, for appropriatly chosen questions, when a biased respondant guesses with a political bias, then he guesses more wrong than right. The person who devises the questions can manipulate the outcome of the survey by choosing questions which Fox news viewers will answer incorrectly when guessing. We could just as well conrtrive a set of questions which the (more liberal) NPR listeners would be inclined to answer incorrectly when guessing.

Let me weigh in with reviews of Bowling for Columbine, and one (the New Republic) review of his new movie. Moore is hardly honest, even accounting for his bias. And note that of these reviews, only the WSJ and National Post are conservative, the NYT, Slate, American Prospect, and TNR are left:

"Well, the speaker ought to know. As critics have pointed out repeatedly, Mr. Moore himself is a world-class expert on 'fictition'; in fact, when it comes to truth telling, not to mention logic, you might say that less is Moore."

"Mr. Moore is hardly the first to engage in a little nostalgic mythmaking. What makes him unique is his willingness to construct his myths on a scaffolding of calculated untruths. "
-- The Wall Street Journal

"Yes, it is a free country, but it is not a perfect one. Because in a perfect country, an irresponsible, intellectually dishonest windbag like Moore would not be a rich, successful, Oscar-winning documentarian. He would instead be just another anonymous nutter, mumbling about fluoride in the water and penning anti-establishment tracts by candlelight in some backwoods Appalachian shack. And he would never, ever find another funder for his 'art.'"
-- The New Republic

The problem is, once you delve beneath the humor, it turns out [Moore's] "facts and hard-core analysis" are frequently inaccurate, contradictory and confused...Like many of the political celebrities increasingly filling our TV screens and bookstores, he is entertaining, explicitly partisan, and all too willing to twist facts to promote himself and his vision of the truth.1
- Spinsanity

The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in "Bowling for Columbine" should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination.
- The New York Times

ONE OF THE MOSQUITO-BITE IRRITAtions of being on the left is finding your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore...Although he'd have made a crackerjack ad man, he's a slipshod filmmaker, and the movie quickly collapses, burying its subject beneath bumper-sticker rehashes of received ideas...At once punchy and incoherent -- Moore contradicts himself vividly every few minutes -- the film has the scattershot shapelessness of a concept album made by a singles band.

Although Moore takes delight in thumping Cops and TV newscasts, he himself uses tabloid techniques and is guilty of manipulative heartlessness.
- LA Weekly

His journalism, in short, on the subject of Canada and Canadians, is nothing short of shoddy, manipulative and untrue. The same can be said for his journalism on his own country, and indeed on the terrible and complicated issue he purports to adjudicate.
- National Post (Canada)

If you want about as clear a demonstration as you're likely to find of the difference between truth and politics, go see Eminem's 8 Mile...and then go see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine...Though Moore claims to have made a documentary, his examination of American gun culture presents viewers with a more heavily edited fiction than producer Brian Grazer's attempt to clean up Eminem. Whereas the rapper's movie reaches for the sort of truth mere facts cannot convey, Moore's film grabs viewers with the old demagogue's trick of using just as much factual information as is necessary to lead people toward false conclusions.
- The American Prospect

"[T]he greatest danger to liberalism isn't the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Andrew Sullivan, but blowhards like Alan Parker and Michael Moore--the thugs of humanism. Given the way in which it's administered, I don't support the death penalty for people. But I emphatically support it for certain careers."
-- Slate

Furthermore, it's starting to look like it was Saddam and the UN's own fault that people in his country may have been dying "because" of sanctions. The Oil-for-Food program that was supposed to allow for the wellbeing of Iraqi citizens while maintaining sanctions on things we didn't want Saddam to get his hands on is turning out to have been the most corrupt aid program in history, with billions having been skimmed off the top. The money apparently went to many places, all of them interesting: UN officials including the one running the program, politicians and countries that ended up being opposed to the war in 2003, Saddam himself. With this coming to light, I am frankly quite happy that we "went it alone," without the UN or France or Russia. Here's a couple of links to get started on this story, here and here . There are many people working very hard to bury this seemingly immense scandal, and this could look like an irreprocable big stain on the organization that those such as John Kerry want to "legitimize" the government in Iraq.

Furthermore, it's starting to look like it was Saddam and the UN's own fault that people in his country may have been dying "because" of sanctions. The Oil-for-Food program that was supposed to allow for the wellbeing of Iraqi citizens while maintaining sanctions on things we didn't want Saddam to get his hands on is turning out to have been the most corrupt aid program in history, with billions having been skimmed off the top. The money apparently went to many places, all of them interesting: UN officials including the one running the program, politicians and countries that ended up being opposed to the war in 2003, Saddam himself. With this coming to light, I am frankly quite happy that we "went it alone," without the UN or France or Russia. Here's a couple of links to get started on this story, here and here . There are many people working very hard to bury this seemingly immense scandal, and this could look like an irreprocable big stain on the organization that those such as John Kerry want to "legitimize" the government in Iraq.

People who buy this are idiots and following on from its DIVX fiasco it is more proof that RCA really doesn't have a clue.


Or maybe it is you that doesn't have a clue. Many Hollywood productions that would normally earn a G or PG rating deliberately throw in some gratuitous profanity or other "content" to bump the rating which if pared would be fine for kids. There is also a tendency for a sort of reverse ratings creep in which objectionable content is ignored in rating a movie giving it an artifically low rating. This player could help in both directions.

Hollywood should really rethink the way it does business. It would probably make a lot more money.

After reading the article (so you understand the limitations of the technology being offered), and reading Hollywood objections (how dare they not watch what we filmed), I reccomend you go and read this article by Michael Medved. Hollywood has lost a lot of audience because they insist on producing stuff that many find offensive, and television seems hell-bent on outdoing them. The standard blow off of anyone who complains is "So don't watch".

And then they wonder why their audience goes away.

The Chicken Littles should read that article and see that they're barking up the wrong tree on this.

Bush is the least qualified President we have ever had

After checking the Wikipedia...
Kennedy - Bachelor's degree
Carter - Bachelor's degree
Reagan - Bachelor's degree
Bush I - Bachelor's degree
Clinton - Bachelors and JD
Bush II - Bachelors and MBA

Least qualified? Not by comparison to some other recent presidents.

His ties to Enron alone are enough to want him out.

Much of the Enron shenanigans were ongoing before he even took office. Clinton had some ties also. Would that have made you impeach Clinton too, or only Bush?

Bush squandered the greatest chance for peace in our time by calling all of the world "Evil"

It was 3 countries, and those countries are either state sponsors of terrorism, genocidal regimes, or rogue nations pursuing WMD. If that's not evil, I'd love to see how you define "good."

say a big fuck you to the world

Kerry supported it... No, Bush got tired of UN corruption and inaction, and going around the UN was arguably the right thing to do. Check out the latest dirt on the UN's "Oil for Pala^H^H^H^H Food" program.

think of America as a "play by its own rules" bully

If those "rules" include reining in WMD proliferators and demolishing terrorist states, screw the opposition; The Right Thing (TM) isn't always the easy or popular thing. If finding and killing terrorists before they can strike is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Not to mention the fact that he wants to hold Americans without trial or due process indefinitely

If they're terrorists, they have almost no rights. To be considered lawful combatants and thus entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, you must meet four conditions: have a responsible chain of command (autonomous terrorist "cells" don't qualify), carry weapons openly, have a distinctive uniform or insignia, and follow the laws of war... Al-Queda meets NONE of these (the commentary I cited above is interesting... I recommend reading it).

It's OK that you hate Bush... really.

Everything wants everything to be anthropomorphised.

So, we get Bush being a "deserter," and Kerry questioning his guard service, when meanwhile Kerry said this:

"We do not need to divide America over who served and how"...

Why is it all these candidates are constantly contradicting their own word?