thehowe_v7.1

Silly voters. It's not how many votes a candidate has that determines the presidency, it's how many lawyers he has. Didn't you know that's the American way? Don't worry, though - your votes counted. After all, how else would the candidates know where to most effectively litigate?

Seriously though, I hope Bush gets the message this election delivered. People didn't vote for Kerry because they like him. Kerry's a lying, fact-twisting, spineless politician. They voted for Kerry because they like Bush's policies even less. Bush knows how bad Kerry is - he spent the entire damn election rubbing it in our faces. Maybe, just maybe, he'll get the picture.

...And while we're at it, maybe Santa Claus will use his magical powers to turn the world's supply of weapons-grade uranium into candy canes.

The last presidential debate is on tonight. To be honest, I don't want to vote for Bush or Kerry. I don't like either of them, and I'm sick of their skirting around the issues. Both are constantly bringing up "my opponent's record", and how "it speaks for itself". Both are constantly twisting statistics and figures to support their cause. They are both politicians, and I don't trust either of them.

That being said, I decided to use my time constructively tonight, and instead of watching two monkeys hoot at each other I muted the debate and looked up their respective websites. After looking at the policies they outline, here's how I'm scoring them:

• Education: Kerry wins. When I look at his page on education, I see an emphasis laid on improving standardized tests to cover the skills kids need and providing more funding to our schools. When I look at Bush's plan for education, I see an emphasis laid on more standardized tests and pre-school/adult education. Today's standardized tests are worthless, and we need to focus on better education for everyone.
• Jobs: Tie. Both candidates are saying pretty much the same thing - helping the common worker and tax reform.
• Science & Tech: Bush wins. Key elements that swayed me: Bush supports Nuclear Power, increased R&D funding, and has detailed info on how he plans to support alternative energy research and implementation. Kerry does support stem cell, which I approve of. However, he never mentions Nuclear power, his plans on supporting R&D are vague, and the alternative energies he mentions are only more of the same old thing: coal, oil, and gas.
• Environment: Kerry wins. The deciding factor was their policies on the Great Lakes. Bush has a paragraph. Kerry has a whole page.
• Character: Bush wins, in possibly the most important category. I stated in a previous post that I liked Bush better than Kerry, and I stick by that opinion. Here's an example of why: the war. I don't think that we the reasons Bush gave us for going to war were good enough to justify the act of going to war. I believed the same thing when he first announced it. However, it wasn't my call, and I don't (didn't) have access to the information that Bush had at the time. What I do know is that Bush believes he did the right thing. He strongly believes he did the right thing. I respect that. As for Kerry, who really knows what he believes? Whenever he talks about the war he delivers classic politically appeasing statements in an even, unemotional tone. I just don't like the guy. He's too much of a politician.

Edit: Kerry just criticized Bush for not meeting with enough minority advocate groups, citing it as evidence that Bush doesn't support Affirmative Action. Well, I guess that's one more point for Bush. Affirmative Action is such bull-shit. "We need to give minorities special consideration and privilege in order to make them feel equal." After all, if they're not treated like they're different, then we'd all just be Americans. Oh, wait.

So who wins? Not the American people, that's for damn sure. Both have good points and bad points to their proposed programs, and both have bad points to their character. I still haven't decided who I hate less.

I wonder if people who claim that Bush is dumb have ever actually seen him speak. Watching the second debate, he comes off to me as a very intelligent man that has a problem with enunciation. Despite his constant pauses, stutters, and misphrasings, he is still an amazingly good public speaker. What strikes me most is the impression he gives that he really feels very strongly about what he says. It's a quality I don't see in Kerry. Now, whether what he believes so strongly is right or wrong is another question, and it's one I don't know the answer to. What I do know is this: I have a fundamental distrust of politicians. I cannot understand the kind or person that willingly submits himself to that kind of lifestyle, and I do not trust what I don't understand. Right now, Kerry is striking me as being a much better fit to the classic politician mold than Bush.

In last month's issue of the Michigan Review, a lecture on "European Anti-American Sentiment" was covered. I did not attend this lecture, but I am going to assume that the Review presented the contents of the lecture in a mostly unbiased way. The lecturer, one Professor Andrei S. Markovits, claimed that there is an unprecedented level of anti-Americanism being displayed by both the aristocracy and the "lower classes" of Europe. Now, I know that I'm not always the most socially observant person in the world, but over the summer I spent over a month traveling all over Europe. I visited Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, and never in all of our travels did any of the members of my family get the feeling that there was a prevailing level of anti-Americanism. In fact, one Frenchman specifically told us that the vast majority of the people in France don't have a problem with Americans, just with American foreign policy. Professor Markovits, on the other hand, claims that this anti-Americanism extends to nearly every aspect of American culture.

Okay, so granted Markovits probably did lots of research and all that crap on this topic. I still think that he's wrong, and that this isn't the message we need to be sending the American public. The last thing we need is an "us vs. them" sentiment to emerge in the American public, and it's unprofessional schmucks like Markovits that are breeding it.

Well, we started bombing Iraq today. Normally I don't talk about political issues, because I'm usually pretty apathetic when it comes to politics. Even in regards to the war that we're undoubtedly now starting, I don't really have any strong feelings. I understand that Saddam needs to be removed, and that he most likely has at least some weapons of mass destruction, and the capability to make more. I also agree that we really haven't been given great reasons by Bush to get into this war. It doesn't sound like Saddam's doing much of anything new, but we decided we needed a war so we called him out on it. I also don't understand why we're ignoring North Korea, a country that has essentially publicly declared they have nukes, and one that really doesn't like us to boot. Ah well, I suppose I'll just have to hope for the best. I still can't get over the delicious irony of going against the wishes of the UN and attacking Iraq for, among other things, going against the wishes of the UN. Wonderful.