Pre Vacation Ramble

Warning - there is no live-blogging or fact checking in this. Just random yammering. I don't rant so much as ramble...I've been so put off by some of the happenings, and reporting on the happenings in the news, I simply had little to say over the last few weeks.

I attended a dinner last week to watch the debates and skipped the spinning afterwards. It’s quite refreshing. It was a clear Kerry victory. I note, with dismay, that many right wing bloggers declared it a tie, and some even said it was a Bush victory. I might also take issue with those going after Bush for fractured sentences, facial expressions, and mixing up Osama and Saddam in a verbal gaffe. None of those things really matter. If he had all of these traits and was doing a bang-up job, I’d consider voting for him. I think on the right and left there is a tendency to become an echo chamber, playing to people who already believe what you believe. It’s fair to do so I suppose, but makes for some dull reading. The Veep debate seemed more substantial, with one interesting twist. With his command of the facts, Cheney made it crystal clear to me that in many ways, he’s the real President. I know it’s a cliché tossed around, but it should be disheartening, to those who support Bush as to those who decry him. At work, I’ve noted little common ground between Bush partisans and Kerry partisans. Alas, their arguments usually are pretty meaningless "Kerry will raise my taxes, he’s a liberal"."Bush is stupid, plus he used cocaine". And if I hear someone mention gravitas again, I may lose my mind. What specifically do they mean by it? Why is it something you would want? I knew when I first heard this word bandied about in the political realm back in 1999 or 2000 that we were in trouble.

Rather than pretend to be completely neutral, I have admitted that I support Kerry versus Bush. However, I doubt that I would every join a political party. I don't like being told who I have to support. Unlike such...thinkers....as Ted Rall, I don't actually think Bush is evil, or has pointy teeth, or whatever the hell Rall is drawing in his cartoons. I'd love to disavow every left-wing nut with whom I disagree, but odds are I won't live to be 400. Since by most definitions I would be called left wing - the very tiny left wing that likes guns and doesn't see why law-abiding people should not have them - so I am not called upon to disavow anyone on the right so far.

According to this electoral college site, Kerry currently leads. I'm not sure why some people find their belief that a candidate should be elected gains support from polls. Perhaps at a gross level they tell us that Nader, for example, would not be elected. It reminds me of people rooting for sports teams with utter abandon. That's all well and good, but the actions of sports teams, riots aside, rarely have as much riding on them in reality. I'm curious if after the election the blogs with the heat turned way up now will apply such ferocity to whoever wins - even if he's their man. That being said, some of the best, independent writing on the election is on blogs, many great ones of which are on the blogrolls to the right. They are, compared to me, like fine wine compared with grape juice mixed with Canada Dry. I'll be on vacation in northern Michigan for the next week, so if I blog it will be by dial-up or by audiopost.