Kerry wants to give Osama access to the US court system. Our enemies would love access to our courts. can you imagine the US capturing Hitler and trying him in a courtroom? This is so stupid.

America does not want to elect a lieutenant to the presidency
Dick Morris slams Kerry and his speech. If this guy was working for Bush, the election wouldnt be close.
some highlights: "John Kerry? Oh yeah, he's the guy who fought in Vietnam and then he ran for president. That's not enough. Where did his 20 years in the Senate go?


Oddly, his absence of biography confirms the impression I formed of him during my White House years: He's a back-bencher. I never can recall a single time that his name came up in any discussion of White House strategy on anything. He was the man who wasn't there. We were always figuring out how to deal with Ted Kennedy or Pat Moynihan or Tom Daschle or Phil Gramm, or Al D'Amato or Bob Dole or Jesse Helms or Orin Hatch or Joe Biden. But nobody every asked about John Kerry.

He wasn't much there then, and he's not much there now. Only now he wants us to trust him to be president."

The lack of accomplishments, especially legislative, is something that has always bothered me about Kerry. Governors made executive decisions, and a lot can be learned from how they govern. Senators distinguish themselves by landmark legislation. It takes leadership to initiate and pass strong legislation.

Bush on the Campaign Trail:
Just watched Bush give a speech in Missouri. As a political junkie, this thing is gonna get good!. This is gonna be a hellava fight over these next three months.

I am biased, so i am sure that influences my perspective. Bush looked and sounded good. He sounded like he was ready for this, and going on the offensive. basically the issues have been framed, now this is just a matter of how events play out. I think the Republicans will benefit from having a late convention. I also think Kerry's bump from the convention will dissapear by the end of August. If it is still tied going into the Republican convention, then the momentum definitely will be favoring Bush. Don't get me wrong. I don't think bush will get a big bump out of the convention either, but he will get one.

I happen to believe the debates will be the deciding factor for most undecided voters. This will make the format very important.

Kerry's silence in his speech and on the campaign trail regarding the genocidal conditions in Sudan, are informative. This is the democratic party, the party that created the idea of a "humanitarian" war, and declared that it would never let rhwanda style genocide occur again. Their nominee was silent?

Kerry's Speech II
How people viewed the speech, seems to be typical of this election, based on what a person believed before hearing the speech. In other words, those who liked Kerry and were leaning toward Kerry seemed to like the speech. Those who lean toward Bush, seemed to dislike the speech. The gap in the opinions seem to be very large.

The effect it will have on the independent swing voters is yet to be seen. That is the ultimate measure of it's success. The polling information I am seeing, seems to only show a 5 point bounce. That is historically a very low bounce.

I feel the speech failed, because it did not address the concerns of those who are undecided, and leaning Bush. I don't understand the "expectation game" people have been talking about. They talk as if they expected Kerry to look like someone reciting someone else's words. Have they not paid attention. He has always "looked" Presidential to me. Kerry is not an idiot, and has never been as bad at public speaking as Gore. Kerry has been a fairly good public speaker, so maybe my expectations were higher.

Kerry still has this huge problem. He has to explain his votes, and explain his spending plan in more detail. When the focus intensifies, the details will become more important. Kerry's contradictory comments about Iraq and vague call for international help will have to be detailed. How does he plan on spending money on health care, increase education spending, increase military spending, not cut any social security and Medicare benefits and give the middle class a tax cut - While reducing the deficit? Raising taxes on the top 2% will not fund all of those programs. Social Security and Medicare are the fastest growing parts of the budget, and Kerry has offered no solution to both of those concerns. You can't promise to greatly increase 80% of the spending, and cut the deficit. Only large tax increases could even attempt to pay for those programs.

Kerry needs to be careful with the questioning of Bush's integrity. The latest polls still show that Americans believe Bush is more "honest and trustworthy" than Kerry. Considering that Kerry made the same claims about Saddam that Bush made, based on the same intelligence, this will only add to the perception that he says what people want to hear.

Kerry will have to offer more details on education and social security. Bush has a very clear and detailed plan for education. Bush also supports private accounts for social security, which is supported by most Americans. Kerry will have to offer more than criticism.

Kerry's Speech
The media will say he did a good job. Most convention speeches are not full of explicit policy issues.
Personally. As a Bush supporter, I feel reassured that I am supporting the right man. This speech was boring, long and meandering. It had no central theme or idea.

On the issue of security, Kerry exposed himself as incapable of being Commander-In-Chief. He did it with two simple statements:

"As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war. "

"Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response."

He states the threat must be imminent. This is pre 9-11 thinking. He makes it clear, that it is the ONLY reason for going to war. Under that rule, then we would not have attacked Afghanistan or Iraq. We definitely would not have taken military action against Kosovo ( Which Kerry voted for.)

The second quote reveals that he does not understand the threat we face from terrorism. He is still taking from an old paradigm. He will RESPOND to an attack. This is a completely defensive position. This is what happened on 9-11.

Question
How, if terrorist pass through Iraq and are harbored by the Iraqi government, there are not "ties" or "connections".
BUT...
If terrorist pass through Iran and are harbored by the Iranian government, then there is a "connection"??

By way of Eugene Volokh:
First 'black' drug nears approval
"A heart drug being tested in black patients is on course to become the first medicine approved for use in a specific ethnic group, challenging those scientists who believe that race is a bad basis for prescriptions. . . .
[The drug] revives controversy about whether, and how, race should be used to prescribe medicines. In the clinic, for example, doctors will have to work out who is classed as African American in a racially mixed population. "It really becomes problematic," says Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, an anthropologist who studies race in science at Stanford University, California. . . .
Doctors have long known that different ethnic populations can have different susceptibility to diseases or react differently to drugs. Drug labels for the common heart drugs called ACE inhibitors note that they may be less effective in black people. . . ."
Interesting. How this effects other theories on the impact of genetics and race, will be interesting to watch.

More positive Iraq news:
Iraqis Pay Tribute to U.S. Service Members
"As the sound of "Taps" wailed from Army Sgt. Major Henry Sgrecci's bugle today, seven Iraqi citizens pressed their new prosthetic hands against their hearts at the Tomb of the Unknowns here to honor U.S. service members who have given their lives in Iraq.
The seven men, all Iraqi merchants, have been in the United States since mid- April to receive their new "bionic" hands to replace the ones amputated by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as punishment for trading in U.S. currency. In addition to providing them with new $50,000 prosthetic hands, U.S. doctors in Houston also removed the tattoos Saddam had imprinted on the merchants' foreheads to draw further attention to their misdeeds."

O'REILLY vs. MOORE
I watched the interview O' Reilly had with Moore. I give the win to Moore. Not that he said anything intelligent (That would be a miracle), but because he controlled the tempo and topic of the interview.
People like Moore like to play verbal games.  The best way to attack them is with hard objective facts. I think O'Reilly let Moore turn the interview into a verbal pissing contest. At one point O'Reilly even stated that Moore was correct when he said Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat.
Moore looked foolish, but he always looks foolish to me. The average person who is not ideological, would have called it a draw, which is a loss for O'Reilly. Then O'Reilly ended the interview by saying Moore and him just have different views of the world. What? How weak.
Moore is a liar!!! A blatant liar.  that's not about different world views.
If I had the chance to interview Moore, I would have a list of at least 10 clear cut lies in his film. I would have the sources of objective information to back up my statements. I would not get into his crazy hypothetical questions, and would not get emotional and into a verbal duel with him. I would let facts beat him upside his head. I would go down the list, one at a time. Then I would end the interview, by stating that Moore has lied for personal gain.
That's it, no games with him.

What if Bush is right?
Thats what an article in the August issue of Esquire magazine asks, about President Bush. The writer makes it clear he i sno fan of Bush, by calling him an "asshole". He also makes some very good points, it is an article that every person who attacks Bush should read.
Here are some of the main quotes that stood out to me:
    "..what haunts me is the possibility that we can't adibe him (Bush) because of us- because of the gulf between his will and our willingness. What haunts me is the possibilty that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we find his call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion."

    "The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November- no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer- is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated"

    "We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied- pristine."

    "The question is wether the rightness of the American cause is sufficient not only to justify war but to with stand war's inevitable outrages. the question is wether- if the cause is right- we are strong enough to make it remain right in the foggy moral battleground of war."

Buy the magazine if you must, but read the article. it is a great defense of why Bush is doing the right thing.

Bush and the NAACP
Even though I do not agree with the NAACP, I would have advised Bush to attend their conference. I would have advised him to challenge the NAACP, and demand an end to the language.

 I have returned from LA, and am back in Dayton Ohio.
So i will be posting on a regular basis again.

Andrew Sullivan??I have read his blog for a long time, like many people. He always offered intelligent comments on many issues. BUT.. it appears the "gay marriage" issue has driven him into an intellectual ditch.
He seems determined to attack anything religous, and his arguments are becoming shallow and short sighted.
I really wish he would get off the Kerry-McCain idea. It is a loser.

Still in LA...
I have not stopped blogging. Just out here in LA, visiting, seeing how the true die hard liberals live (lol).