Monday, December 13, 2004

Koufax Awards & Favourite campaign postings

Could never figure out why a Blogger would win an award named after the great southpaw pitcher Sandy Koufax, but now I'm enlightened. The awards are for bloggers from the left - guess my predictions of a plethora of blog awards is proving to be a reality. I put in my nominations:

Best Blogger: Kevin Drum
Best Group Blog: Crooked Timber
Most Humorous Posting: Fafblog's hilarious interview of a 1970 IBM Selectric.
Best Writing: Riverbend


During the campaign season, I had 3 favourite postings:

During the campaign itself, my favourite posting was Kevin Drum's "Bush lies more than Kerry....Film at 11" giving weight to the lies told by the candidates in the 2nd "townhall" debate. The 2 big whoppers from Bush were that he was more fiscally conservative than Clinton & how Kerry had raised taxes 98 times.

Just before the election, it was James Wolcott's "96 hours of mope-and-dread". That became my mantra for the November 3rd-5th, a rough time for those of us on the left.

Finally just after election, it was a posting from the right, ASmallVictory's morning after. Her best paragraph
"What does the (presumed) election of George Bush mean to you, as a member of the left? It means you and your party have four years to get yourselves together and figure out exactly what you stand for. It means you have a couple of years, max, to come up with a viable candidate who represents the majority of you and doesn't pander to every knock off group of your party. It means you have time to get your act together and decide once and for all what you stand for and produce a leader who will stand up for your ideals. It means you better find a candidate who is someone you can vote for with conscience, and not just vote for out of hatred for his opponent."

In the end, I could not vote for Kerry in good conscience, so voted for Badnarik as a representative of the Libertarian Party. (side note: found it amusing that janegalt didn't vote for him because she was worried that his 0.317% of the popular vote might make a difference & she didn't want a gate crasher to give the LP too much attention).

There were a couple of other postings I wanted to comment on. One was addressed to "non-moonbeam Democrats" - can't remember the blog - that I found insulting & worse, it did not hold up to repeated readings. Basic argument boiled down to "be afraid. be very afraid if Kerry gets elected." One comment was from a reader who wanted to print out the posting & attach it to every Kerry/Edwards sign in their neighborhood. Wanted to respond "look. I don't get why you feel Bush makes you safer. You don't get why i don't feel Bush makes me safer, but giving someone a blog posting sure as heck isn't going to make me share your fears - especially a posting based on fear mongering."

A better written posting from the right was from the Belgravia Dispatch. His argument boiled down to

"George Bush, in my view, understands the nature of the evil we are combating. He understands it deep in his gut, to his very core, and this is why I will be voting for him in November. ...I am confident and, indeed, proud of my vote because Bush's intellectual firmament has grasped this essential truth. "

"I don't believe, in his gut, Kerry believes that we face an existential challenge with regard to the war on terror. "


This is the "bush gets it" argument - I would actually agree that this is a 5% truth. Bush was right that the status quo needs to change, but unfortunately he doesn't recognize what the status quo truly is or have much desire to change it. The status quo has long been that the US will support thugs when it suits our purposes - Papa Doc, Mobutu, The Goat, Somoza - and over throw them when they prove to be too much of an embarrassment or have outlived their usefulness - The Pineapple & Hussein.

The status quo we should be changing is ending ($2B/annum) foreign aid to benign dictators like Mubarak or support for thugs like the Uzbekistan rulers. If there is one change I would make in our foreign policy, it would be to end foreign aid. Israel can survive without our $4B/annum & totally opposed to giving anyone, much less Columbia drug fighting aid.

What's funny is the almost mystical beliefs Bush engenders. A president's job is to figure out who wants to kill us & protect us from the killers. Nothing mystical about it, and to a large extent what the government does to keep my family safe at night is largely independent of the president, or at a minimum, is irrelevant to who is president at the time - future post will cover 'the generic president'.

Enough ramblings for a Monday Night Football evening (kennison just caught his 2nd pass of the night - both for TD's!!), so as a final note, I'll give the last word to asmallvictory

And that's the great thing about waking up today. See, the world is still here. The sun has risen, there were no great floods or earthquakes or visits from Lucifer during the night. We have the future.


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