Catchup and Catchall

Well, I'm back. My excuse is laziness and politics. Lazy is self-explanatory. Politics is another matter. Frankly, I spent the last few months infuriated at my television and the people on it. I get this way every four years. It takes over my life.

Too much has been said about this election cycle already, and frankly, I am wrung out by the process. So I will just make a few brief points. I will have more to say about Arkansas politics later, but this is it for the national election.

1) They called Abraham Lincoln a baboon, a gorilla, and an imbecile. They called George W. Bush a chimp and a moron. The hyperbole of the anti-war element during both elections was over the top. That puts George Bush in good company. It also provides two proven cases where mindless name-calling of the simian variety failed to sway the electorate. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to win fewer electoral votes.

2) How many times will the Democratic party spit out a Massachusetts liberal? The evidence is mounting that this does not work. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to win fewer electoral votes.

3) In an effort to increase the bigotry against non-liberal Christians, the punditry announced within minutes that Kerry lost the election due to right-wing fundamentalist born-again Christian zealots flocking to the polls. Liberals want to believe this because they do not wish to even contemplate that 60,000,000 or so voters maintain some level of traditional conservative values. Yes, voters responding to exit polls indicated that they voted on moral issues. This does not mean that they are Christian "fundies". Liberals just don't want to accept that millions of non-churchgoing "normal" people aren't in favor of gay marriage and other extreme liberal positions. Millions of these people would have had no problem with some sort of civil unions. I personally hate it when I hear that somebody is prohibited from visiting a terminally ill "life-partner" because they don't have legal standing. It makes me sad. But liberals cannot compromise. They insist on associating the term "marriage" with their efforts. They refuse to acknowledge that in addition to secular meaning, the word "marriage" has a separate religious meaning. Rather than accept this as a semantic obstacle and going around it, they insist on banging their head into it. It cost them. But they are zealots, and will trade the legal protections they seek to be "in your face".

4) Dan Rather. Need I say more? Much of the media doesn't even try to hide their efforts to influence elections in favor of liberals any more. A comparison of the news stories about the candidates during the election cycle shows that there is a clear bias.

5) The Swift Boat Vets. All I can say is that there were a lot of them. Most of them just plain folks. Some of them were awarded Medals of Honor or were held as POWs in horrific conditions. They were dismissed by the media offhand, raked over the coals for speaking what they thought, and called all sorts of names. Bush's National Guard service was fair game and any story about it was fit to broadcast, even with forged documents. Medal of Honor winners however, were just bastards whose charges were not worth even mentioning.

Thats pretty much all that matters out of the last couple of years of politicing.

In an earlier post, I mentioned my friend in Baghdad. He is at home right now for a well-deserved 15-day leave. Its been a hard deployment, but he is proud of it. He still believes its worthwhile. He says that Iraq is a place of poverty and filth, but that it does not have to be that. His purpose there is to try and make it something other than that. No matter what you think of the war, I hope you can respect that view.

Now that the election is over my four year cycle is over. But my laziness is a different story. I hope to contribute a bit more to this than I have in the last few months. We shall see.