Journal Archives from theDreamworld ... October 2004

October 2004

October 31, 2004

Yeah, I let my meat loaf again ... uh, I mean I made meatloaf again ... turkey meatloaf. It was part of a big dinner with whipped potatoes and green beans and gravy and stuff - it was all very popular.

That was sort of the highlight of the day, sadly. I've been working on papers, a poem, and studying for my Mythology midterm tomorrow (actually, all of those things are due tomorrow). I'm tired, and I'll have to get up early tomorrow to finalize the papers and poem and to study more and more.

At least it'll all be over by the end of the day. Then there's more stuff I have to do Tuesday. And Wednesday. And ... well, I've got stuff I have to get done all week, significant things. Hopefully, though, it'll slow down a bit around those things (which seems, theoretically, possible). We'll just have to see. For now I need to finish up some last things and try to wind down. ... easier said than done.

Posted at 10:28 PM

October 30, 2004

Hell, I couldn't even make up an article like this that's so revealing about how the Republicans are running this campaign. It's so obvious and so disgusting, and I hope people see things like this so that they can have no doubt about how important it is to vote Republicans out of office - Bush in particular, but all of them. Maybe then their party will take a long hard look at themselves and truly rebuild the party.

See Tape as Boost for Prez
by Thomas M. DeFrank

With his typical flair for drama, Osama Bin Laden inserted himself directly into the presidential election yesterday, and both parties believed it would boost President Bush's reelection hopes.

Bin Laden popping up like a malignant jack-in-the-box four days before the balloting may bolster John Kerry's argument that Bush should have finished wiping out Al Qaeda before turning his attention to Iraq.

But it also refocused the nation on terrorism, which polls show helps Bush. And it reminds voters of their horror on Sept. 11 and Bush's well-received response, as well as obliterating the recent flood of bad news for Bush.

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Kerry has accused Bush of "letting Bin Laden escape" when he was cornered at Tora Bora by "outsourcing" the job to unreliable Afghan warlords instead of using U.S. troops. And he has mocked Bush for never mentioning the Al Qaeda leader after pledging to get Bin Laden "dead or alive."

But the new tape - which is so nakedly political that it should end with the words "I'm Osama Bin Laden and I approved this message" - makes it difficult for Kerry to keep hammering Bush on the subject without appearing to be capitalizing on terror. Kerry eliminated those lines from his speeches yesterday evening.

"If Kerry had been making this a bigger issue, as he should have been, it would definitely translate to his benefit," said a Democratic strategist with ties to the Kerry camp.

Kerry's staff looked somber.

"It's very important for us to move forward. We're going ahead and doing our events as we would," said spokesman Mike McCurry.

Posted at 9:38 PM

October 29, 2004

I need a break. I was busy all day, even past 10:30 PM, and yet I still have all sorts of stuff that needs to be done before this weekend's over. On top of all of that I'm tired and just simply not wanting to do everything I need to, and I don't have the option of just sitting back, even for a few hours or something.

Feh - who wants this crap anyhow? I'll say it again, just to be clear - kill me. Please.

Posted at 2:13 AM

October 28, 2004

Today was relaxed but busy, allowing myself an easier day after a series of down-to-the-minute rushes but taking care of a lot of things for my grandmother and mother as well as for school. I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I'd hoped I would regarding schoolwork, but part of that was because I decided to go to the Creative Writing Reading Series at the university tonight so that I could hear Wendell Mayo read. Wendell was the head of the program two years ago, before leaving on sabbatical all last year, and he has three published books and about 80 published stories. Wendell read two stories from his most recent book, B:Horror, and I had mixed feelings. I wasn't really impressed by the first story, although I liked what he had done with some very crisp visual descriptions, and I liked the second story quite a bit, both for the plot/story itself and for his language. Overall, however, I would have to say that Wendell simply doesn't do a great reading. I imagine that if I were reading his work I would actually have enjoyed it much more than the fairly monotone, sometimes stumbling read. Still, I like Wendell a lot, and he's shown me again, with this reading, how talented he is, so I have to give the reading an overall thumbs up.

After the reading I caught up with Theresa Williams, another instructor I've had for fiction workshops. I had e.mailed Theresa earlier that I wanted to meet with her, and she was available, so it worked out well. I asked her to be my thesis advisor for my Creative Writing Senior Thesis, and she agreed. She also offered to write me letters of recommendation for grad school, so both of those things are great steps forward.

Strangely enough, I had taken my mom with me to the reading, as she had wanted to go, and we got along rather well and talked all the way there and back. It was going pretty well until I got pulled over for a speeding ticket (which I would never have gotten if I wasn't being forced through all of these small, hick towns by these numerous and ridiculous detours for road construction. Still, even with the ticket, the day was overall fairly a success, and I was able to get to feeling a bit more rested after the past few frenzied days. That in itself probably would have been great, but other things worked out well, too.

Posted at 12:02 AM

October 27, 2004

The evil history paper is done and gone. I worked through yesterday, went to bed at Midnight (and got to sleep sometime within the following hour), and then got up at 6 AM to fiendishly rush to finish yet another paper. I did it - somehow. I hadn't a minute to spare, and I could honestly have used another two hours to go through for revisions, but I at least got it done, respectable, and I was able to get to my classes on time. I'd like to say that I'm never going to let myself get into a position like this again, but considering every paper this semester has been completed in a similar fashion, I don't know if it's worth even making any claims.

In other news, the total lunar eclipse tonight was quite cool. A moon gradually eclipsed and the turning red at full occlusion was a perfect lead-in to Halloween, I must say. It's a shame that my camera was totally unwilling to capture that image for me, but that's what I get for not having something where I can set a longer exposure.

In still other news, my grandmother is back. My mom flew back with her tonight, and they arrived just after I got back from classes. My mom will stay for a few days before flying back to Florida, and we'll all share some time together, I imagine. My grandma was quick to tell me that she was glad to be back and that Florida was getting less appealing after three and a half weeks. I'm not sure how seriously I take all of that considering she was just full of energy telling me about what they did, showing me things she'd bought, and just reminiscing as she tends to do when she's got a lot of fire in her. It's good to see, but I suspect that she'll be pretty tired for most of tomorrow. The flight will have drained her a bit, and her unpacking and fussing over mail - which she'll be sure to do tomorrow - will wear her down quickly after having such a long day today. She was up rather late for her, and she's never been good about sleeping in, so I expect her to be quite a bit more slowed tomorrow.

And that brings me back to me. Here I am in the wee hours of the morning - heck, it'll be light soon - and I'm dead tired. My neck aches and my forehead tingles even, that's how tired I am (or maybe it's an aneurysm). You'd think I could go right to sleep, all things considered, but no - that would be too simple. Well, I'll keep trying. Sooner or later I have to get it to work.

Posted at 4:08 AM

October 26, 2004

Ugh! Damn history paper/legal brief/nightmare!

Someone kill me now!

Posted at 11:55 PM

October 25, 2004

I can't say that my campus newspaper, the BG News, is really all that great. In fact it's usually rather disappointing for its slow reporting, factionalism, inconsequential choices of subject matter, and its incredibly poor spelling and grammar. It does, however, manage, somehow, to do a good job just enough to keep me reading. Today's editorial is a great case in point. I should also note that the staff this year has been, overall, quite conservative, so I am pleased to see an opinion like this see the light of day. It gives me hope for our campus rag.

Why Republicans Blame Liberals

Any time you flip the dial on AM conservative talk radio, it can all be summed up in one word: Anger.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Co. are all angry at liberals who, they say, are running America into the ground.

Ann Coulter makes millions writing books about how evil liberals are and how liberals are taking this country into the abyss.

My question is this: How can we ruin America if we don't control anything?

At the federal level, the Republican Party controls both Houses of Congress (51-48-1 in the Senate and 228-206-1 in the House, with the Independent in each House caucusing with the Democrats and one House Democrat pledging to defect to the GOP in the next Congress).

Seven of nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents, and at the Circuit Court level, six circuits are dominated by conservatives, two by liberals and five are roughly even.

This dominance continues once you drop to the state level.
Republicans control the governors' mansions by a margin of 28-22, and in the state legislatures they have the edge in majorities by a 53-44-1 margin, not counting Nebraska, which has a nonpartisan, unicameral legislature.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I think some of this anger comes from the dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.

There is plenty to be upset about -- we added more money to the national debt (approximately $700 billion after the plundering of the Social Security surplus) than every president from Washington to Ford combined (a span of 188 years).

We have two wars that have stagnated, we didn't get Osama bin Laden and federal spending has skyrocketed.

David Brock also gave a fascinating reason in his mea culpa "Blinded by the Right."

He noted that his time as a Republican attack dog was marked by one constant in the span of over a decade: There has always been a bogeyman that had to be destroyed. At first, it was the Communists, and then it became Bill Clinton.

Brock argues that this is because by its nature, conservatism thrives against an enemy.

Now, they are talking about terrorism and about Kerry being "soft on terror" the way they talked about Democrats being "soft on communism" from the McCarthy era to this day.

This can be seen in the way Bush started out his presidency as the anti-Clinton and in the way Cheney has recently said that John Kerry would have lost the Cold War.

I think that the best answer is probably a mixture of both.

However, there is a bit of cognitive dissonance that has occurred because of this. So, when things aren't going well on their watch, Clinton is blamed.

When deficits balloon, liberals are blamed. But I have one simple question: How can we be blamed when we don't control anything?

It seems to me that Republicans need to start being honest with themselves (and the recent PIPA poll about how misinformed Fox News viewers and Bush supporters have been suggests that they aren't) and reassess why things are going so wrong.

If the Republican Party is always looking for scapegoats when they control things, maybe they shouldn't control things anymore.

Posted at 2:17 AM

October 24, 2004

Recent news articles have supported what I've always known: George Bush will be devastating for the Republican party whether he wins or not, and the majority of Republicans are apparently idiots that blindly believe what they have been told, even in the face of overwhelming factual evidence. Amusingly enough, the first article, seeing the problems that will come from Bush, win or lose, is written by conservative Republicans who are worried about the fate of their party. The authors must be some of the few Republicans who don't fall into the large percentages who are too dense to face reality, as the other article shows. Does this all seem a bit extreme and nasty of me? It shouldn't. The fact is that Bush has fractured the Republican party and he has lied to the Republican party, and the additional fact is that, even though it is clear that he has done these things that have been proven in a wide variety of documented sources, still huge numbers of Republicans aren't willing to face those facts because it shows George Bush to be the deceitful, dangerous man that he is. It's not my fault that those people are too dense or stupid to face reality.

This first one is from the American Conservative.

Kerry’s the One
by Scott McConnell

There is little in John Kerry’s persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge—the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry—seems overdone, as Kerry’s contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.

But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.

It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil—its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries’ budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been “anti-Americanism.” After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a “Third Way” between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe’s radicals embraced every ragged “anti-imperialist” cause that came along. In South America, defiance of “the Yanqui” always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It’s the same throughout the Middle East.

Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that “good” countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.

These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists—indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America’s survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world’s most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.

I’ve heard people who have known George W. Bush for decades and served prominently in his father’s administration say that he could not possibly have conceived of the doctrine of pre-emptive war by himself, that he was essentially taken for a ride by people with a pre-existing agenda to overturn Saddam Hussein. Bush’s public performances plainly show him to be a man who has never read or thought much about foreign policy. So the inevitable questions are: who makes the key foreign-policy decisions in the Bush presidency, who controls the information flow to the president, how are various options are presented?

The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory. Much has been written about the neoconservative hand guiding the Bush presidency — and it is peculiar that one who was fired from the National Security Council in the Reagan administration for suspicion of passing classified material to the Israeli embassy and another who has written position papers for an Israeli Likud Party leader have become key players in the making of American foreign policy.

But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency — and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell’s departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the “neoconian candidate.” The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.

If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past—and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.

George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies — a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies — temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election — are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.

And this second one is from OneWorld United States.

Three of Four Bush Supporters Still Believe in Iraqi WMD, al Qaeda Ties
by Jim Lobe

Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided “substantial support” to al Qaeda, according to a new survey released here Thursday.

Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions.

Those are among the most striking findings of the survey, which was conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey, which polled the views of nearly 900 randomly chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters and those intending to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, found a yawning gap in the world views, particularly as regards pre-war Iraq, between the two groups.

“It is normal during elections for supporters of presidential candidates to have fundamental disagreements about values or strategies,” according to an analysis produced by PIPA. “The current election is unique in that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different perceptions of reality. In the face of a stream of high-level assessments about pre-war Iraq, Bush supporters cling to the refuted beliefs that Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda.”

Indeed, the only issue on which the survey found broad agreement between the two sets of voters was on the question of whether the Bush administration itself has been actively propagating the misconceptions about Iraq’s WMD and connections to al Qaeda.

“One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these (erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them,” noted Steven Kull, PIPA’s director. “Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree.”

The survey also found a major gap between Bush’s stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush’s position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions which is actually on record as opposing.

On pre-war Iraq, the survey asked each respondent questions about WMD and links to al Qaeda on three levels: 1) what the respondents themselves believed about the two issues; (2) what they believed that “most experts” had concluded about them; and 3) what they believed the Bush administration was saying about them.

The survey found that 72 percent of Bush supporters believe either that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a major program for producing them (25 percent), despite the widespread media coverage in early October of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA’s) “Duelfer Report,” the final word on the subject by the one billion dollar, 15-month investigation by the Iraq Survey Group.

It found that that Hussein had dismantled all of his WMD programs shortly after the 1991 Gulf War and had never tried to reconstitute them.

Nonetheless, 56 percent of Bush supporters said they believed that most experts currently believe that Iraq had actual WMD, and 57 percent said they thought that the Duelfer Report had itself concluded that Iraq either had WMD (19 percent) or a major WMD program (38 percent).

Only 26 percent of Kerry supporters, by contrast, said they believed that pre-war Iraq had either actual WMD or a WMD program, and only 18 percent said they believed that “most experts” agreed.

Similar results were found with respect to Hussein’s alleged support for al Qaeda, a theory that has been most persistently asserted by Vice president Dick Cheney, but that was thoroughly debunked by the final report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission earlier this summer.

Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed that Iraq was providing “substantial” support to Al Qaeda, with 20 percent asserting that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believed that the clear evidence of such support has actually been found, and 60 percent believe that “most experts” have reached the same conclusion.

By contrast, only 30 percent of Kerry supporters said they believe that such a link existed and that most experts agree.

But large majorities of both Bush and Kerry supporters agree that the administration is saying that Iraq had WMD and was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. In regard to WMD, those majorities have actually grown since last summer, according to PIPA.

On WMD, 82 percent of Bush supporters and 84 percent of Kerry supporters believed that the administration is saying that Iraq either had WMD or major WMD programs. On ties with al Qaeda, 75 percent of Bush supporters and 74 percent of Kerry supporters believe that the administration is saying that Iraq provided substantial support to the terrorist group.

Remarkably, asked whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq if U.S. intelligence had concluded that Baghdad did not have a WMD program and was not providing support to al Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no, and 61 percent said they assumed that Bush would also not have gone to war under those circumstances.

“To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions,” said Kull, “likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq.”

Kull added that this “cognitive dissonance” could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey, particularly with respect to Bush supporters’ misperceptions about the president’s own positions.

In particular, majorities or Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In August, two thirds of Bush supporters also said they believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC), although in the latest poll, that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority, even though Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the most widely watched nationally televised debate of the campaign in late September.

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush.

Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate’s and Bush’s positions on the same issues.

Bush supporters were also found to hold misperceptions regarding international support for the president and his policies.

Despite a steady flow over the past year of official statements by foreign governments and public-opinion polls showing strong opposition to the Iraq war, less than one third of Bush supporters believed that most people in foreign countries opposed the U.S. having gone to war.

Two thirds said they believed that foreign views were either evenly divided on the war (42 percent) or that the majority of foreigners actually favored the war (26 percent).

Three of every four Kerry supporters, on the other hand, said it was their understanding that the most of the rest of the world opposed the war.

Similarly, polls conducted during the summer in 35 major countries around the world found that majorities or pluralities in 30 of them favored Kerry for president over Bush by an average of margin of greater than two to one.

Yet 57 percent of Bush supporters said they believed a majority of people outside the U.S. favored Bush re-election, and 33 percent said foreign opinion was evenly divided.

Two thirds of Kerry supporters said they though their candidate was favored overseas; only one percent said they though most people abroad preferred Bush.

Kull, who has been analyzing U.S. public opinion on foreign-policy issues for two decades, said misperceptions of Bush supporters showed, if anything, that hold that the president has over his loyalists.

“The roots of the Bush supporters’ resistance to information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally into the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake,” he said.

“This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters – and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion would be critical of his policies or that the president could hold foreign-policy positions that are at odds with his supporters.”

Posted at 11:56 PM

October 23, 2004

Oh my! Where's the pickle wagon?!

Posted at 11:26 PM

October 22, 2004

I talked to my grandma yesterday morning, and it seems like she's really enjoying her visit now that she's settled in. She's been shopping a lot, and she went to a pool party (the first she'd ever been to in her life, she told me), and she'd met some new people that she had great conversations with. It was all good news to hear since she was reluctant to go and still sort of uncomfortable with being there during the first few days. She's having fun, though, even though she's looking forward to coming back next week. I'm glad she's had a chance to visit with my mom, and I'm glad she's had fun. I wonder quite a bit how she feels about living with me, and I feel far too often that I don't have nearly enough time to take her shopping or out to a park or wherever. I try to do what I can, but my time constraints make things pretty difficult. She never complains, of course, but I always hope she doesn't feel cooped up in the house.

I had another great phone call today. I called Kristina on her new cell phone (or at least relatively new), and we talked for about an hour.It sounds like she's at least as busy with college as I am and probably more. She's taking a graduate course in LIbrary Science at Kent State, and it sounds like she's got a lot of learning and memorizing to do. And it also sounds like she's having the same sort of problems I expect to have with gra school, namely that the professors assign more books than you can possibly read in the time you're given. Sarah and other people I know in grad school have told me that "nobody reads all of that", that you just have to selectively learn what needs to be read and figure out with the rest what the author's argument is and skip through the book from there. I don't see how that's effective learning, and I suspect that Kristina feels just as I do about the matter, but the difference is that she's facing it and I'm not. Still, we had a lot to talk about with each other about how our different semesters are going, and we could easily commiserate with each other.

We also spent a fair amount of time talking about politics. Kristina and I are both proudly and strongly liberal, and we've both taken a huge interest in seeing Emperor Bush defeated. Kristina was appalled to find out that a long-time friend of hers is a Republican for Bush and that he's becoming, for the first time, very vocal about it. With Kristina planning to go see Michael Moore speak this weekend, she and her friend are obviously quite at odds.

Kristina and I each seem to be doing well but trying to figure out what the future holds. I think she has a better handle on what she hopes to do than I do, but clearly we're both trying to figure things out.

It's good to have somebody to talk with who understands how I feel - regarding school, politics, the future, friends, and so much more. Kristina is, I think, much more together and much more cool than I am, but she sees the world much like I do, and that sort of shared understanding of things makes it easy to talk to her. Now that she has a cell phone hopefully we'll be more regularly in touch. And heck, she's only an hour and a half away. I could visit her easily if I put aside the time.

Posted at 1:32 AM

October 21, 2004

Damn Myth paper!

Exactly how many papers am I supposed to write in a semester anyhow? I don't remember ever writing this many papers ...

Posted at 6:30 PM

October 20, 2004

I hate this loneliness. It just never ends.

Posted at 2:32 AM

October 19, 2004

Another night, last night, of not being able to get to sleep until some time after 3:30 Am. What's this all about anyhow? It's not like there's anything to watch on tv or anything I'm trying to finish up. I just want to go to sleep so that I can get going on stuff again in the morning. It's not even like I'm energetic enough to keep doing schoolwork or anything that late - I'm just awake and unable to change that.

We'll see how it goes tonight, I guess. At least I'm getting some solid sleep once I do finally drift off.

Posted at 11:29 PM

October 18, 2004

Andrew wasn't in my film class tonight, so now I've gone two whole weeks without being able to sit behind him and stare. It's probably better this way, really. Now I don't feel quite so much like a stalker, and I'm sure Andrew, if he has any idea how much I've been staring at him, is happy for the break as well.

Film class wasn't bad, though. I got my first paper back and had a score of 100/100 - an amazing thing considering how pressed for time I was to finish that paper. I also got 10/10 on my last quiz in that class, so that was good as well.

In just about everything for my classes I've been scoring well, and that's great considering that next week will pretty much be the half-way point for the semester. Still, I'm struggling to keep up every week, and I'm behind on one project that's supposed to be worked on every week. Fortunately that project is only due at the end of the semester, but that still means that I'll have a whole shitload of weeks worth of stuff to whip together once the semester is winding down. Joy. I'm doing well, though, and that's what I'll focus on for now.

Posted at 2:22 AM

October 17, 2004

Ah, the things you learn ...

I've been reading a book for my history class about The Massacre at El Mozote, a massacre of nearly a thousand civilians (including 80% children) by Salvadoran troops funded, armed and trained by the U.S. to fight communist guerillas in El Salvador in the 1980s. The book has all sorts of historical documents included as sources to prove the accuracy of the story, and one document includes a partial transcript of a National Public Radio interview with Raymond Bonner, the first American journalist to see El Mozote and report about it in the New York Times - a story which the U.S. government vehemently denied and for which Bonner was dismissed by the Times. Even though later findings proved the accuracy of his story and vindicated him, he still was troubled by the whole series of events. During the interview he made this comment which seems incredibly prescient:

"If there's lessons out of this, it's there's got to be limits to which we go when we're fighting a perceived enemy. Now with the Cold War over, communism isn't the enemy anymore. What's the enemy - next enemy going to be? Is it Islamic fundamentalism? Is that the next 'ism' that we're going to worry about?"

Yes, Mr. Bonner. That's it exactly.

Posted at 11:23 PM

October 16, 2004

I struggled to get to sleep last night, simply unable to feel tired enough to drift off, even after lying down for hours. Sometime after 3:30 AM I finally got to sleep. You can imagine my reaction to the ringing of my cell phone a few minutes before 7 AM.

My cell phone is set with a few different ringtones. The main one is a waltz that I like, but the second most used tone is a creepy electronic, drifting sort of tune that's set to play when a number comes up that isn't in my phone and doesn't have caller ID listings. Most of the time those calls are a wrong number or a telemarketer, so I ignore them. I ignored it this morning as usual.

I knew something was going on when my land-line rang a couple of minutes later. I was still to groggy and tired to get out of bed even then, but the caller started leaving a message and I could hearing it broadcasting from the machine. When I recognized the voice as Chris', calling me all the way from New Zealand, I came immediately awake and rushed out of bed to the phone in the other room. I was able to catch him just in time before he finished his message and hung up.

Chris and I talked for over two hours about all sorts of things. While we've mailed and e.mailed each other letters back and forth since he left the country more than a year ago, this is the first time we've actually talked together. Chris sounds as happy and healthy over the phone as his letters have made him seem, and he is obviously very happy with life right now. He's dating a woman named Alice that he seems to love more than anyone he's ever met, and I think he loves James, Alice's four year old son, just as much. Unfortunately Chris is living and working in Auckland, a terribly long drive from Wanganui, where Alice lives (and where Chris spent his last semester of college when he first went to New Zealand). They talk on the phone very regularly but don't see much of each other. Chris plans to change that; he's determined to find a job in Wanganui so he'll be closer to Alice and James and also near the studios at the university so that he can blow glass and such.

We spoke a lot about Chris' living situation, but we spent at least as much time talking about American politics as well. Chris is just as concerned with the state of things as I am, and we are both disgusted and disheartened by all that we see. Even half a world a way Chris has been keeping track of the progress of the elections, and he is not alone. New Zealanders and others around the world are watching this election closely, and from what Chris tells me, they are simply unable to comprehend why the American people wouldn't be forming a titanic uprising against Bush, ready to throw him out of office. I would have to agree, and I admit that I am similarly unable to fathom why the polls are tied when Bush so clearly poses such a threat to all that is sane and good in the world.

Chris and I talked a bit about art, too, and about a children's book that Chris is finishing up. He's determined to get it published, and I'm sure he will, even though I haven't seen a single page. I just have that much confidence in him and his art.

We spoke about a lot of things, and I wish we could have talked about more, but two hours of international phone time is expensive, and it was a real treat to have any time at all talking to Chris. His call was a great treat for me, and it lifted me up at a time when I've been gradually slipping back down a bit into depression as school is getting more overwhelming. I don't know when of if I'll ever actually see Chris again, but I'm bursting with happiness to still be close to him through e.mail and the phone and all. Even without much sleep.

Posted at 11:59 PM

October 15, 2004

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

Posted at 2:23 AM

October 14, 2004

Now I've seen it all. I had thought that the Republican spin machines had shown me more than enough distortion and outright lies to last a lifetime, but when they do what they've done today I am simply amazed.

Lynne Cheney, Vice-President Cheney's wife, has attacked John Kerry for his kind words about her daughter Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian. Mary cam out of the closet long ago, outed by her dad, in fact, well before the election in 2000, and has had a very visible, very public profile ever since, being seen with her partner in public, speaking with her father at rallies, and running her father's reelection campaign. Not only that but she has been mentioned by Dick Cheney during the last three months in reference to the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. As if that weren't enough, John Edwards, the Democratic running mate of John Kerry, made very similar comments about Mary Cheney to her father dick while both men were debating each other in the Vice-Presidential debate. Cheney, at that time, thanked Edwards for his kind words.

So now John Kerry is somehow to be villianized for saying that "Mary Cheney was born gay and that's the way God made her"? For saying that she deserved to be treated fairly and equally, and that she deserved to have the same sorts of rights with a spouse that married people receive? What a shame that John Kerry had something to say about the opposition. And what a shame that he said it while rising in the polls. Obviously that makes him a horrible person. Here are some additional, well-argued comments from Andrew Sullivan:

SOMETHING ABOUT MARY: I keep getting emails asserting that Kerry's mentioning of Mary Cheney is somehow offensive or gratuitous or a "low blow". Huh? Mary Cheney is out of the closet and a member, with her partner, of the vice-president's family. That's a public fact. No one's privacy is being invaded by mentioning this. When Kerry cites Bush's wife or daughters, no one says it's a "low blow." The double standards are entirely a function of people's lingering prejudice against gay people. And by mentioning it, Kerry showed something important. This issue is not an abstract one. It's a concrete, human and real one. It affects many families, and Bush has decided to use this cynically as a divisive weapon in an election campaign. He deserves to be held to account for this - and how much more effective than showing a real person whose relationship and dignity he has attacked and minimized? Does this makes Bush's base uncomfortable? Well, good. It's about time they were made uncomfortable in their acquiescence to discrimination. Does it make Bush uncomfortable? Even better. His decision to bar gay couples from having any protections for their relationships in the constitution is not just a direct attack on the family member of the vice-president. It's an attack on all families with gay members - and on the family as an institution. That's a central issue in this campaign, a key indictment of Bush's record and more than relevant to any debate. For four years, this president has tried to make gay people invisible, to avoid any mention of us, to pretend we don't exist. Well, we do. Right in front of him.

A TYPICAL POINT: Here's an email that makes a point many others have. I cite it because it's representative:

You won't read this or reply, but that's fine. Your support of Kerry's bringing up Mary Cheney in the debate just lost my respect completely. The best analogy I can think of would have been Carter mentioning Betty Ford's addiction or someone mentioning Martha Mitchell's instability and alcoholism in a presidential debate. Just beyond the pale. The young woman, and the family, are entitled to their privacy on private matters.

Notice two things. First, the equation of gayness with some sort of embarrassing problem or, worse, some kind of affliction. For people who believe this, of course Kerry was out of line. That's why Rove's base is so outraged. But if you don't believe this, it's no different than, say, if a candidate were to mention another candidate's son in the Marines. Or if, in a debate on immigration, a pro-immigrant candidate mentioned Kerry's immigrant wife. You have to regard homosexuality as immoral or wrong or shameful to even get to the beginning of the case against Kerry. That's why it's a Rorschach test. Secondly, Mary Cheney isn't private. She ran gay outreach for Coors, for pete's sake. She appears in public with her partner. Her family acknowledges this. She's running her dad's campaign! Whatever else this has to do with - and essentially, it has to do whether you approve of homosexuality or not - privacy is irrelevant.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Had the president, when speaking about immigration, referenced Teresa Heinz Kerry's experience in a positive or neutral light, would that have been inappropriate? Is Mary Cheney's homosexuality some sort of affliction? A verboten family tragedy like the death of John Edwards' son? The only "cheap and tawdry political trick" performed Wednesday night was the one turned by the Cheney parental units. It was they who used their daughter's sexuality as a weapon against John Kerry's sympathetic (and very general) remark. If only Dick and Lynne were so indignant when their daughter was legitimately under attack by an administration willing to write gays and lesbians out of the nation's founding document. Selective indignation has never been so crass …" - Kevin Arnovitz, Slate. Amen. It's legitimate to threaten every gay couple with the removal of their basic rights, but it is not legitimate to point out that Cheney's own daughter will be directly affected? By what twisted logic?

SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MARY: The Mary Cheney thing really is a fascinating Rorschach test. Many conservatives are appalled and cast their anti-Kerry opinion as a defense of Mary. Here's one:

Last night he allowed his obsession with his own selfish desire to win a point overshadow the appropriate boundaries of taste, compassion, and kindess. Lynne Cheney has the right to call him a bad man. And woman across the nation have the right to see for themselves that he is willing to victimize THEM if it comes to padding his advantage, reputation, position, or standing.

Victimize? All Kerry did was invoke the veep's daughter to point out that obviously homosexuality isn't a choice, in any meaningful sense. The only way you can believe that citing Mary Cheney amounts to "victimization" is if you believe someone's sexual orientation is something shameful. Well, it isn't. What's revealing is that this truly does expose the homophobia of so many - even in the mildest "we'll-tolerate-you-but-shut-up-and-don't-complain" form. Mickey Kaus, for his part, cannot see any reason for Kerry to mention Mary except as some Machiavellian scheme to pander to bigots. Again: huh? Couldn't it just be that Kerry thinks of gay people as human beings like straight people - and mentioning their lives is not something we should shrink from? Isn't that the simplest interpretation? In many speeches on marriage rights, I cite Mary Cheney. Why? Because it exposes the rank hypocrisy of people like president Bush and Dick and Lynne Cheney who don't believe gays are anti-family demons but want to win the votes of people who do. I'm not outing any gay person. I'm outing the double standards of straight ones. They've had it every which way for decades, when gay people were invisible. Now they have to choose.

DOUBLE STANDARDS: Let me give you an example of the double standards here. I remember once being driven around by a charming woman on a stop on a book tour. We talked about my book, and she averred, after chatting all day, that she had nothing against gay people, she just wished they wouldn't "bring it up" all the time. I responded: "But you've been talking about your heterosexuality ever since I got in the car." She said: "I haven't. I've never once discussed sex." My response: "Within two minutes, you mentioned your children and your husband. You talked about your son's work at high school. You mentioned your husband's line of work. And on and on. You wear your heterosexuality on your sleeve all the time. And that's fine. But if I so much as mention the fact that I'm gay, I'm told it's all I care about, and that I should pipe down. Don't you see the double standard?" Candidates mention their families all the time. An entire question last night was devoted to the relationship between men and their wives and daughters. Mentioning Mary Cheney is no more and no less offensive than that. What is offensive is denying gay couples equal rights in the constitution itself. Why don't conservatives get exercized about that?

Posted at 12:30 AM

October 13, 2004

Well, the results are in, and it seems that most people feel that Kerry won this third and final presidential debate. CNN's poll had him winning 53-39, CBS ranks him at 39-25 (with 36 citing a tie), and ABC polled him at 42-41, although the polling for ABC was weighted more heavily with Republicans than Democrats among those polled. So basically, it's close but many side with Kerry.

For me it was once again a tie. I found Bush to be a schmuck throughout, but setting my own personal biases aside, I would have to say that he was, in many ways, less stiff and formal than Kerry tonight, and that played well for him. Bush also did rather well with his answers for the most part. I disagreed with him on all sorts of issues, but he spoke to his beliefs and the beliefs of the Republican core, so he has to get some credit for standing with his ideals (wrong though they may be). Kerry was calm and rational all night, very fully answering all questions and finally pointing more toward what he plans to do if elected rather than just spending his time criticizing Bush's record. So for me, they each had their good and bad points tonight, but I'd honestly say it was a draw.

Based on what I know, of course, and based on where my ideology falls, Bush lost hands down, but I've tried to look at all of these debates through the eyes of an uninformed, undecided voter, and I've felt that all but the first one - where Kerry very clearly did much better than Bush - all but the first one were pretty much a draw between the two candidates (both in the second and third presidential debates as well as the vice-presidential debates).

Now, of course, they're all over, and only nineteen days are left until Election Day. Both candidates will surely be going non-stop on the campaign trail, and I've already heard rumors about the even uglier tone that's to be expected from this last wave of attack ads that will be pouring out during the last days. It will be both exciting and disturbing to be sure, and I'm getting anxious to actually see how it all plays out on November 2nd when all of the numbers start coming together and showing how everything will finally play out.

Posted at 2:59 AM

October 12, 2004

I had a great visit from Steve today. He has taken some vacation time recently and offered to drive from Toledo to see me, and I was happy to play host. Of course it would have helped if I had given him directions so that he didn't have to try to figure where I lived by memory, and that would have gotten him to the house an hour and a half earlier, but it worked out alright. By the time he found the house I was just finishing a call from my grandmother, telling me about how things were going in Florida, and Steve and I were both hungry, so we just headed straight out to lunch.

I drove Steve out to Berardi's, a local family-owned restaurant with a long tradition in Sandusky, and we had a great meal (at Steve's treat) and talked about politics (as we had during most of the drive there as well). Steve and I spent the rest of the day talking, in fact, moving from one topic of interest to another, all while moving around Sandusky. I drove Steve around and pointed out the sights and such, and we talked in the car or talked while we walked around downtown or on the docks or through the mall or or even just around the house when we got back, all the while still talking about politics, computers, employment issues, movies, websites, past friends, past experiences, and - and I'm not kidding when I say this - the meaning of life.

Steve left just after 10 PM, and we'd had a good ten hours of talk. I'm sure that we could have kept on going for hours and hours more, but I was getting a bit tired, having gotten up early today, and I have class tomorrow, all in addition the the fact that Steve still had an hour's drive in the dark before getting home, so we decided to call it a night. Steve's visit was a good break from what's been a pretty busy schedule for the last week or two, and the chance to just relax and talk and do pretty much nothing else was just what I needed.

We also came up with two great new, amusing political satire-type movies on the net, one each that we had found recently. Here is what I had found and here is what Steve had to offer (all of the video's at this second site are funny, but by far the best is "This Land"). I'm sure you'll find them as amusing as we did.

Posted at 12:08 AM

October 11, 2004

Hmmm ...

Why do you suppose it is that one minority never seems to appreciate the plights of other minorities and never supports any cause but their own? Don't people get it? There can never be equality for anyone so long as any group of people are treated differently.

It's very frustrating to see people be so stupid again and again, struggling for their own acceptance and then turning right around and saying somebody else doesn't deserve equal rights because they're different. Morons.

Posted at 11:47 PM

October 10, 2004

The last thing I want is to get my readers thinking that I'm some paranoid conspiracy theory nut, so I'm prefacing what I'm about to say with this disclaimer: There is no proof to these claims, and they are probably unfounded, just as the Bush campaign claims.

Having said that, however, I must also point out that the Bush campaign has been more deceptive than a Nazi propaganda machine and has told more untruths than a compulsive liar. Even though these allegations are probably untrue, it's hard to not wonder what that box-shaped thing in the center of Bush's back could be (you have to check out the photo with the article to see it, but it's clearly there, whatever it is).

Feeding answers to Bush through a wireless signal certainly would explain why he was so much more at ease and so much more ready with answers in the second debate than in the first. Of course there's another possibility, too. Bush might just be a mindless automaton, and that box-shaped thing on his back is where they insert the key to wind him up.

Posted at 8:09 PM

October 9, 2004

Not that this will mean much to many of you reading this, but Jacques Derrida - the creator of deconstruction and a leader in contemporary literary criticism - is dead. I have always made clear that I have problems with the application of most forms of contemporary literary criticism, but that doesn't mean that I don't have respect for the concepts espoused by men such as Derrida. He was, in many ways, a true genius. I'm sure Phil, my favorite professor, will be crushed by the news.

Derrida, Founder of Deconstructionism, Dies

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the founder of the school of deconstructionism, has died of cancer at the age of 74, France Info radio said on Saturday.

It said Algerian-born Derrida had died on Friday of cancer of the pancreas.
Derrida, who divided his time between France and the United States, argued that the traditional way we read texts makes a number of false assumptions and that they have multiple meanings which even their author may not have understood.

His thinking gave rise to the school of deconstruction, a method of analysis that has been applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and architecture.

It is heralded as showing the multiple layers of meaning at work in language, but was described by critics as nihilistic.

"In him, France gave the world one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures in the intellectual life of our time," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement after learning of his death.

"Through his work, he sought to find the free movement which lies at the root of all thinking."

Born into a Jewish family in El-Biar in Algeria on July 15, 1930, Derrida began studying philosophy at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure in 1952 and taught at Paris's Sorbonne University from 1960 to 1964.

From the early 1970s, Derrida spent much of his time teaching in the United States, at such universities as Johns Hopkins, Yale and the University of California at Irvine.

His work focused on language. Challenging the idea that a text has an unchangeable meaning, Derrida said the author's intentions cannot be accepted unconditionally and that this means each text can have multiple meanings.

His ideas were seen as showing unavoidable tensions between the ideals of clarity and coherence that govern philosophy.

He was seen as the inheritor of "anti-philosophy," the school of thought of predecessors such as Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

Derrida's work was at times controversial. Some staff at Britain's Cambridge University protested when the university proposed awarding him an honorary degree in 1992, though he did eventually receive it.

In the early 1980s he was detained when he left his Prague hotel room for the airport after displeasing Czechoslovakia's Communist authorities by giving a lecture on deconstructionist theory.

Derrida was once married to Sylvaine Agacinski, who is now the wife of former Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Derrida and Agacinski had one son.

Posted at 10:38 PM

October 8, 2004

Emperor Bush ended up coming off much better in this town-hall debate than I had expected. While I feel that Kerry did very well at showing his strengths and differences from Bush, I don't think that either side was really a decisive winner. It was basically a draw. That's disappointing because I expected Bush to really fumble in this format, but he must have been coached well since the last debate because he seemed much more relaxed and much less defensive and snippy.

I was pleased with the way Kerry responded to Bush's attacks in this debate. In the first debate Kerry had responded to Bush's attacks or condemnations with counter-attacks or counter-condemnations, sometimes adding a comment about his "plan" for such-and-such, but never really responding to the personal criticisms Bush laid upon him. I could see the reasoning - why dignify Bush's inane attacks with a response - but the slurs against Kerry have been too constant from the Bush campaign, and they have had a strong negative effect on Kerry. Tonight during the debate, however, Kerry countered Bush's attacks again and again, showing Bush's misrepresentations or outright lies for what they are. Kerry also continued to counter-attack and to tell about his "plans" for the various issues, but the direct response to Bush was very effective and certainly long overdue. I think that if Kerry had managed to more clearly detail how he intends to do things, rather than just saying he "has a plan" - then he would have won the debate. Unfortunately I see how only having 30 or 90 seconds to respond to a question sort of precludes giving a solid answer, so Kerry's "I have a plan for that" response is understandable, but it also seems vague, so while understandable it is still a weakness for him.

One question during the debate, directed to Emperor Bush, told about how relatives returning from travels abroad were amazed at the strong animosity toward the United States and to Bush based on the war in Iraq and the conduct of the president in the world at large. Bush claimed that we have a lot of support internationally and that even if we didn't, America wasn't going to care about what any other country feels. Kerry attacked Bush in his response to this question, pressing his point that Bush has avoided reaching out to the United Nations and the world community regarding the war on Iraq. What neither of these men faced - or even admitted - was that this wasn't simply a question about alliances with other governments or about how international leaders feel or respond to the U.S., this was a question about how the average person in another country feels about the U.S., and the overwhelming majority of people in the world right now don't like the U.S. They fear us, but not in a cowardly way, either; they fear us in a resentful way that places them vehemently at odds with the U.S. I can't blame them, and I feel much the same way as they do, but I think people need to realize - and whoever becomes president needs to realize - that allowing worldwide resentment for the U.S. to build will inevitably make everything the U.S. has to do a struggle, not necessarily militarily (although that is certainly a possibility) but certainly politically and economically and culturally. Kerry is closer in his claimed views to understand this than Bush, but I don't even think that Kerry really gets it.

Check this out to get some idea of what I'm talking about. It's how people in other countries feel, and it's fairly close to the mark as well.

Posted at 12:49 AM

October 7, 2004

I don't think that I've really commented about it, but I absolutely love my Classical Mythology class. Sure, there's a fair amount or reading, quizzes, exams, and papers to be done, but my prof, Dr. Pfundstein, is great fun and a very good lecturer, and the materials are very interesting to me.

I've always been interested in the classical world, myths in particular but classical society and culture as well. I can't remember when I first started exploring Greek and Roman mythology, but I clearly remember my high school Latin classes, where we translated passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses and discussed the myths that we were translating as well as the context of the culture where they were observed. Mr. Pawlowski was a wonderful teacher, and while I retain only small amounts of Latin, I remember oh so much about myth.

A few years ago, when I first came back to college at Bowling Green State University, I took classes in Great Greek Minds and Great Roman Minds. They were classes that looked at Greek and Roman society based upon their writings - plays, myths, epic poems like The Iliad and The Odyssey and The Aenead. philosophical texts, poems, historical biographies, and anything else Dr. Hendry could find. Dr. Hendry, who left the university a few years ago, was (and remains) one of my favorite teachers ever. He, like Dr. Pfundstein, loves his subject matter and made it fun for the class, even though he also expected you to put in a lot of work. I got 'A's in both of his classes, and I always wanted to take Classical Mythology with him as well, but he was gone long before I had the chance to fit it into my schedule, and I like Dr. Pfundstein so much that I don't feel at all cheated that I missed having Dr. Hendry teach the class.

Now, even though the class meets three days a week, resulting in my only class on Fridays (meaning a nearly three hour drive for a 50-minute class), I am loving every minute of lecture and every page of the readings. It's a high point for the semester, and while I'm appreciating and even enjoying my other classes as well, it's Myth that's really making things worth my while.

Posted at 12:57 AM

October 6, 2004

Rest well, Rodney Dangerfield. You have earned my greatest respect.

Posted at 1:23 AM

October 5, 2004

While I certainly can't say that I was impressed with Dick Cheney during the Vice-Presidential debates tonight, I can say that I was disappointed in John Edwards. Granted, I expected Cheney to beat Edwards before even a word was said, and to his credit John Edwards appeared confident, calm, and solid against Cheney, and he did far better than I expected he would, particularly during the first parts of the debate.

Unfortunately I felt that Edwards began to repeat himself after the first 20 minutes of the debate, making the same attacks repeatedly and using the same sound bites. Worse, in my mind, was the fact that he came off as merely a cheerleader for John Kerry and had nothing to say for himself, even during two pointed questions from the moderator which specifically asked why he was a good choice for vice president and why he was a better candidate than Cheney. These two questions were not the only times, either, where Edwards failed to answer the actual question that had been asked, either, mostly because he was too busy repeating things he had already said before.

Still, he did hold up well in comparison to Cheney, and that says something when you consider that Cheney is much older and has much more experience in his years of politics than the young Edwards. For the most part the debate was a draw, but I would still give the edge to Cheney. There was certainly not enough difference that I think it will affect polling numbers, and I don't think either candidate was strong enough to sway any undecided voters, but Cheney, for as much as he did distort things and did avoid certain topics (like a clear avoidance of the gay marriage issue), still came off appearing much more knowledgeable about a wide variety of issues.

Cheney did look a great deal more shifty than Edwards, and that might make a difference subconsciously for people, but I always think he looks shifty, so it wasn't a big change. I think to some extent Edwards was trying to get Cheney mad, to the extent where he would get visibly angry (which Cheney is known to do), but Cheney appeared unphased and stayed calm throughout.

Friday's town hall meeting, the format for the second presidential debates, should be much more revealing, I think, and is certainly the best chance for John Kerry to prove himself and make some real gains in public perception and polling strength. I still believe that the polling numbers are not very accurate or revealing, but they are being touted loudly enough by the media that they themselves have some effect on what people perceive, so a solid positive polling bounce for Kerry certainly couldn't hurt.

We'll see what's to come of that Friday, however. For now, it's time to wind down. My bed is calling.

Posted at 1:04 AM

October 4, 2004

Yea. Another paper finished, and I only had to get up at 5 AM to make it happen.

Far more frustrating news is that just as I thought I was about to see and end to huge stretches of the road construction I've had to drive through and around, the idiots in seemingly every municipality have decided to fuck me harder. Inside the city, here in Sandusky, an entirely new section of roads have been ground down for resurfacing and are a mess, this after they have been done with the previous huge stretches of resurfacing and just last week finished rebuilding the entire overpass through town. That's minor, though. The most grossly inept new problem is work that's being done on two small bridges just outside of the Sandusky limits. The detour for this two mile stretch takes me on a long, stretched loop that takes 20 minutes of extra driving. Because the whole area is a mass of active farmland, there are simply no other roads to use otherwise, and I am nearly insane thinking about how much problems I'm being caused with these construction projects. If they were going to do all of this shit and close huge sections of Route 6 at a time, they just should have fucking closed the whole damn road and done everything at once so that the whole stretch could be AVAILABLE for people to drive. But I'm sure nobody thinks about the need to drive on the roads. How silly of me.

Posted at 3:10 AM

October 3, 2004

It's strange how often I appreciate and agree with columnist George Will, even though he's about as conservative as I am liberal. He makes some very astute points about my home state, though. Let's hope that enough anti-Bushies turn out to make a difference.

Fault Lines In the Ohio GOP

CLEVELAND -- Jess Goode is a casually dressed, laconic young political professional toiling to deny George W. Bush the 20 electoral votes of Ohio. Goode is getting help from Ohio Republicans who disapprove of Democrats but seriously dislike each other.

Goode worked for a Democratic congressman until becoming a state administrator of America Coming Together, a get-out-the-(Democratic)-vote organization funded by Virtuous Money. The $14.5 million that George Soros, the billionaire anti-Bush ob- sessive, has given to ACT is not the Sinful Money that liberal campaign finance reformers want to banish from politics.

On a normal day, ACT is paying $8 to $10 an hour to 200 or so people whose job -- Goode says most are doing it for the money, not because of political passion -- is to register likely Democratic voters, more than 60,000 so far. In 2000 Bush carried the state by 165,019 votes.

In mid-October 2000 the Gore campaign went off the air in Ohio so it could spend elsewhere, especially in Florida. Election eve polls showed him losing badly, but the margin was only 3.5 percent. The polls had not properly identified "likely" voters. The uncertain effectiveness of ACT, and of both parties' machinery for getting their voters to the polls, makes polling this year particularly problematic.

Another Ohio uncertainty is the fallout from fierce fighting among Republican factions and their gubernatorial candidates for 2006. One candidate to succeed Gov. Bob Taft, who is term-limited, is Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, an African American who in 2000 supported Steve Forbes's presidential candidacy.

Blackwell says that in the 1990s an average of 1,000 Americans moved from a high-tax state to a low-tax state every day, and today, 250 Ohioans become Floridians every 24 hours. He says Ohio's 71 percent increase in spending led all states over the past 10 years. He is furious that Taft and the Republican-controlled legislature, collaborating with public employees unions and violating repeated promises to submit such increases to a referendum, passed a $3 billion tax increase. This included a 20 percent increase in the sales tax, which was annoyingly broadened to apply to such things as manicures and satellite television.

Since 2000, Ohio leads the nation in losing people 14 to 44 -- "the drivers of growth" -- and Blackwell says that "we're in an economic death cycle," with tax increases fueling the spending spree. If Bush loses Ohio, that will be because the state lost so many jobs while it moved, under Taft, from 14th to third on the Tax Foundation's list of states with the worst state and local tax burdens.

Ohio's Appalachian southeast leans Democratic, but Bush ran well there in 2000, partly because of guns and other social issues, which this year include same-sex marriage. A duel in the courts will determine whether a proposed amendment to the state constitution, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, will be on the November ballot. It would pull conservatives to the polls.

Republicans may need that. Because Taft roils Republicans, he is an uncertain asset for Bush, and because Blackwell vociferously objects to Taft, Blackwell says, "they [the Bush campaign] use me out of state more than in the state."

In Ohio, where the ideological heat is largely among rival Republicans, Goode and ACT are manifestations of relative political "normalcy," a word with an Ohio pedigree. It was inserted into America's vernacular by a small-town Ohio newspaper editor turned U.S. senator. In 1920 Warren Harding was elected president by promising Americans, who were weary of war and attempts to universalize democratic values, a return to "normalcy."

Michael Barone, author of the Almanac of American Politics, says Ohio, the 17th state, is "an epitome of American normalcy," as well it should be because it was "the first entirely American state." The original 13 had been British colonies, and the next three -- Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee -- were created from their claimed territories.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Ohio was the cockpit of America's ideological conflict, as Ohio Sen. Robert Taft succeeded, with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, in limiting the power of organized labor that had grown muscular in struggles to unionize Ohio's auto, steel and tire factories. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.

As the nation navigates a dangerous epoch, its choice of the next president, who might have to deal with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and North Korea selling them, might turn on a sales tax increase in Ohio. Good grief.

Posted at 9:00 PM

October 2, 2004

Damn film paper...

(and just for the record, this is a different bitch than what I wrote a week ago)

Posted at 10:38 PM

October 1, 2004

My grandma left early this morning with my parents, beginning their drive back to Florida and my grandma's visit. She'll be away for three weeks, during nearly all of which I'll be working on literally one paper after the next for one class or another. I already miss her some, but it's probably a good thing that she is taking a vacation now while I've so much school work to do.

I spent a good part of the afternoon at the Popular Culture library and picking up the books I'd requested through inter-library loan (one from Ohio State U. and one from U. of Cincinnati). These, with the three books I picked up earlier from the main library, should actually give me some good source material for the next paper. Reading all of these and putting a 10 to 11 page paper together in two days seems fairly impossible (it's due Monday), but at least I'm confident that I have the resources I need (my first quest for source materials came up completely empty, so this is a big accomplishment, really). This weekend will be all about the paper, and I'm dreading it already. I tell you, the fun just never stops (that was sarcasm, by the way).

Speaking of sarcasm, this article about a good use of sarcasm gave me a good laugh today. I've needed a good laugh or two (or twenty), so this was quite welcome. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Oregon State Voter Pamphlet Stuns Anti-Gay Measure Supporters

(Portland, Oregon) Four satirical statements appearing in the state Voters' Pamphlet have upset supporters of a ban on gay marriage.

One, submitted by the phony "Defense of Heterosexual Breeding Coalition" reads "The Bible states that marriage is for procreation," and adds that Oregon should bar homosexuals, infertile persons, men with vasectomies, and others from marrying.

Fred Neal, Voters' Pamphlet supervisor for the secretary of state, said such ballot argument pranks have happened before. His office can't yank such a statement unless it violates state law, which bans "obscene, profane and defamatory language" or words that "incite hatred, abuse or violence."

The Defense of Marriage Coalition, sponsor of the measure to amend the state's constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage, has urged the state to cut the statements.

Kelly Clark, attorney for the group, told The Oregonian that the state would not tolerate "such language targeted at the Jewish community, the Islamic community or anybody except the conservative Christian community."

The author of the four voter guide statements is M. Dennis Moore, a Portland freelance book editor and church organist. He said he's simply using satire, "a very ancient literary device to ridicule hypocrisy."

Posted at 10:34 PM