Kudos to this woman in Ukraine:

“The results announced by the Central Election Commission are rigged, do not believe them,” Natalya Dymitruk told UT-1 viewers when asked to relay the [declaration of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s victory] in sign-language. … [She] told hearing-impaired viewers that Yushchenko was the real winner and apologized for conveying previous official statements, saying she was “sorry for being obliged to lie … and I will not do it again.”

Congrats to her, and people like her, in Ukraine who stood up to corruption and have won a chance at a new election.

I’m watching NBC and boy to they have the gimmicks going. Rockefeller Plaza is ‘Democracy Plaza’. The ice on the rink in the plaza has a map on it and as they call a state they collor it in on the ice. And there’s these two ribbons climbing Rockefeller Center, a red one for Bush and a Blue one for Kerry, that climb the building as each candidate gathers electoral vores. Sheesh.
Every so often Brokaw will turn to Tim Russert for an update on what sates who needs to win. Russert has turned in his white board for tablet PC to do his little break downs on. You can tell that Russert is absolutely loving this. He’s grinning from ear to ear.

You read that right. Me, the guy who dislikes politics and tries to avoid it, went to a political rally on Friday. Actually it was kind of fun and I’m glad I went. Bush was in town and the governor of “Caleeforneeah” was to be with him. We got several personal phone calls from recordings of important people inviting us to come. My wife, again prodding me to get off the couch and do things, thought we shouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see both the terminator and the president. When will I next get such an opportunity? So we went. Here are my thoughts and observations:

• We had little difficulty getting in – except the line 4 1/2 blocks long! We got in line at 5:15 and got inside right at 6:00, when the doors were supposed to close. For a while I thought we had spent $15 to park for nothing.
• We had pretty pathetic seats. We were in the very top row at the very back of the auditorium. I took that picture with my Palm Camera (A wopping 0.3 Megapixels). The podium is in the middle of the white area. It was so far away, you didn’t even look down there and just watched on the jumbo-tron. So in the end it wasn’t much different that watching TV.
• Buttons, shirts & hats – oh my! There was an endless string of folks hawking Bush paraphernalia. These didn’t strike me as supporter, just opportunists. I bet the showed up at Kerry rallies too.
• It was a pretty packed house, only the luxury boxes and some scattered seats, mostly with blocked views, empty. Nationwide arena seats just shy of 20,000.
• There was only about half of the floor with people standing in it, the rest was empty. This is the cheering squad that you see on TV.
• I expected more protestors, in fact I was a little worries that we might run into some confrontations. But there were few of them. One RV circling the line to get in with a loudspeaker proclaiming “Bush L – I – E – D!” and a group of 4 on the opposite side of the street with a loudspeaker.
• An R & B group performed a version of the Musiq Soulchild song “Love” using the “George” instead of “Love” in the lyrics. Real hokey. They also sang a bunch of acapella patriotic songs. They weren’t that good and frankly were probably there because they were 4 young black guys supporting Dubya.
• I thought that my kids would appreciate having a flag or something that I assumed would be handed out for folks to wave. It makes for good images, that sea of waving banners. But it turns out only the folks in the lower seats got them.
• Here in Ohio, especially near Ohio State, you can split the crowd in half, point at one side and shout ” O H!” and the other will immediately respond ‘I O!” You’ll then get an alternating “O H!” “I O!” for just about as long as you want it. Well, after a couple rounds of that they changed it to “B U!” “S H!”
• There was a series of speakers prior to the main event, most of which we didn’t see. Then there was some video of Bush and Cheney from various events and then just some music while we waited. Just after 7:00, the music changed, exactly like the music before a professional sports team comes out into the arena. After about 5 minutes of that, they introduced Arnold and the place went nuts. Only about 30 seconds or so later they announced Bush and he came out with Laura. The three of them stood on the stage waving for a 7 minute ovation (I timed it.) It was incredible and I hadn’t anticipated how emotional that would be. There’s something about seeing the president coupled with the screaming adoration of 20,000 people that can’t help but move you. It moved my kids too as Jessica hid under her coat from the noise.
• Arnold spoke first, and for only about 10 minutes. I thought he’d speak longer, but he was only there to, in his words, “pump you up” to get support Bush. This was the only campaign stop for the Governator. He has a special relationship with Columbus, having won the Mr. World competition here in 1970. He has since made it sort of his second home. He owns part interest in a local mall and holds a fitness expo here every year.

Then Dubya spoke for about 30-40 minutes. I expected to hear the series of sound bites that have been played on the news fro the past weeks. To some extent I did, but there was more to it. I heard about what he believes in and what makes him different that John Kerry. Not just why John Kerry was bad (there was a fair bit of that) but what the difference is, in Bush’s eyes, between them. He was not the bungling idiot that you see on Letterman, nor was he very eloquent. (BTW – best quip of the night by Bush: “[Arnold] and I have three things in common; we married well, we have trouble speaking the English language and we have big biceps”) He somehow became a little more real. For that reason, in hindsight, I wish I would have gone to see Senator Kerry on Thursday to get a better picture of him as well. I doubt it would have swayed my vote, but I would at least felt that I knew him better.

I’ve said I plan to stay away from politics, but I’d like some thoughts on our vote. I’m having an honest difficulty on my vote. To be honest, I’m leaning towards Bush, but there’s one big thing that’s standing in my way. More on that in a minute.
Let me start with what attracts me to Bush.
He had a plan for Social Security. Not only that, but it’s a plan that helps people plan for their own retirement. Of course, he didn’t say how he was going to pay for it, but he has a plan. Kerry has nothing because he doesn’t think there’s a problem. We’ll deal with it later, he says.
His health care plan. I like the medical savings account idea coupled with catastrophic coverage. One of the roots of our health care problem, I think, is the mentality that we shouldn’t have to pay anything for healthcare. Pushing the actual paying onto a third party drives costs up. Kerry’s huge plan and the arrogance that his plan will be so superior no one will want to keep their current one scares me.
Here’s what bugs me about Kerry:
Lot’s of new spending, little new revenue. He’s said that he’s going to cut middle class taxes, give us all great healthcare but he hasn’t provided new revenue except a tax increase on the wealthy ($200K +). It doesn’t add up.
Abortion. It’s wrong, and he thinks so, but he refuses to get involved. It’s murder John, isn’t that worth taking a stand?
Flip flop. I understand that much of this is exaggerated by the Bush campaign, but I can’t completely shake the idea that I’m not really sure where Kerry will stand once he’s in office and the political winds change. You know where Bush stands.
Here’s what bugs me about Bush:
Patriot act. The idea that we can take away rights because people scare us or we are threatened is troublesome. That we can hold ‘enemy combatants’ or other threatening people (in our view) without charge or access to a defense is frightening.
Arrogance. This is the biggie mentioned earlier. Bush’s idea that we are the savior of the world, that we know better, that the US is somehow blessed by God to go free the world, is very troublesome. Didymus has posted some interesting articles on this idea. As much as I like Mr. Bush in other areas, when I think about this arrogance, I have a hard time staying positive about voting for him.
Notice that I didn’t share anything that I like about Kerry. There’s nothing that stands out. He plan for Iraq (from here forward) is much the same as Bush’s. I suspect, however, that his attitude (less pride and condescension) may make him more successful in bringing allies to the table.
So what say you? Any advice?
For what it’s worth, I took the quiz and got the following results:
– Dead on with Bush on Economics.
– Dead on with Kerry on Foreign Policy.
– Dead on with Bush on Culture.
(I couldn’t include the results like Aaron and Justin at RC. How’d you do that guys?)

I felt I needed to say something in honor of Christopher Reeve’s passing on Sunday. He was known as Superman from his role in those movies, but in his life since his tragic fall he had become a true Super Man. His courage and determination has inspired many and it was truly tragic to hear of his death.

Regardless of your political leanings, you’ve gotta love the outcome of the CBS/Dan Rather situation with the forged Bush Guard Memos. It turns out the bloggers were right after all. After nearly 2 weeks of gradually less adamant denials of any forgery, CBS has now discovered that the documents aren’t real after all. The question here is if it was obvious to us guys in our PJ’s that they were suspiscious, why didn’t they get checked before the story aired? Some in the Bush Blog world would like you to believe that it’s becasue of CBS’s or Rather’s partisanship. Perhaps, but I have to believe that the smell of a scoop that would mean bigger ratings played a bigger part. My experience with the news media suggests that truth isn’t nearly as high on their priority list as ratings. Certainly not as high as all their high minded talk of ‘investigative journalism’ would suggest. If it will sell, use it, we’ll sort out the facts later.
The cool thing for me is how the little guy has wrestled a little bit of power back from the the big news outfits. I doin’t think it would have been possible, at least not from the grass roots up or with this kind of speed, in the past. Hopefully it will mean they will check their facts better next time. I doubt it.

Well, it’s an election year and the Big Day is only about two months away. Absolutely everything on radio and TV is election related. So I’ve succumbed to Election Fever. I’ve actually watched some of a convention. I managed to avoid the Democratic convention, but we were watching the Amazing Race and the convention came on next. I wasn’t intending to watch it, I just failed to leave the room or change the channel. Arnold, governor of Caleefornya and Mrs. Bush spoke. Some random thoughts on the night’s event:

• Don’t these people have lives? I have a real hard time relating to folks who would go to a political conventions and stand up and hoot and holler at these speeches. They are nearly all sooo fake, how does one get excited about them?
• There seemed to be a co-ordination of signs. When Arnold was speaking it was the tall, “4 More Years!” signs that kept popping up and down. During the First Lady’s speech it was “W Stands For Women” signs primarily. Did they even give out instructions on what sign to use when?
• Arnold’s speech was better than Laura’s and the Bush twins’ (they introduced the President, who introduced Laura, via satellite from a softball game) I think it was that the twins’ and Laura’s speeches came across as so deliberate and careful. They spoke in loving terms about their family, but it was obvious that it was carefully written and carefully delivered. I understand that one cannot afford to have folks speak carefully at events like this, but the effect was to dilute the desired ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling you were supposed to get for the Bush family. What does that say of the system when even the man’s wife & children have to watch their words carefully? I don’t necessarily doubt anything said, it was just too stiff and cautious.
• There was this strange crowd dynamic going on. I guess it can happen in any sort of crowd, but it seemed that the spontaneous standing and applauding at every point was almost robotic for some. There’d be these shots of folks staring blankly off into space but clapping none the less. Other times you’d see people rising to their feet, obviously not moved in themselves to do so, but because the crowd was. The power of the crowd.

(Yawn) That’s it. Can you sense my political fever? I think I ought to lie down. 🙂

Yesterdays Wall Street Journal (the online editon is subscriber only) has an article on the front page about two women who had done some work for Google years ago. They each billed Google for their services, woman A billed $4,000 and woman B billed $5,000. Google offered them both stock options instead of cash, woman A said no and woman B said yes. Woman A said she can’t remember now what she spent her $4,000 on while woman B is now a millionaire with her stock options worth $1,700,000. Oops.
Is it too late to change my answer?
I may have those figures off slightly, I’m doing this from memory as the paper has been trashed.

Ok, this might be considered political too, so I guess my staying away from the political didn’t last long. I got this link from this post at Radical Congruency.
Go read this and then finish here.
Do you think, as I do, that the title is bit misleading? It’s not complete (the last item seems to go against Kerry on abortion), but the subtile message there is that Kerry is the choice of “more thoughtful” Christians. The implication is if you’re for Bush you’re less thoughtful.
I found it a bit ironic that that they criticize Robertson and Falwell for their blatant support for Bush, but they aren’t willing to be honest about their obvious (to me) Kerry leanings. It seems, frankly, that Robertson and Falwell (as silly as they sound) are at least not hiding their partisanship behind a thin veil of objectivity.
OK, now I’m really done with politics.
(BTW – Don’t Roberston and Falwell sound ridiculous? I mean really, my Christian ‘responsibility’ to be serious about supporting Bush? Bush appointed by God no matter what he does? No wonder fundamentalist Christians get slammed in the media. Sheesh.)

It’s an election year, so I figure I need to say something political. I hope to have very few political posts here. Why? Because I see politics as such a messed up business. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and Rebublicans. People think there is, and on the surface the rhetoric would lead one to believe that there is. But in the end they both seem to think that they know better how to spend your money than you do. I will probably end up voting Republican this year, by default, because I like their rhetoric better than the Democrats. One year I voted Libertarian (this is where I find the most to agree with), but that seems like a waste because they have so little chance of winning. In the end, however, I think politics divides people far, far, far more than it unites. Anyone that does not see the world as you do is less inteligent. I mostly choose to not go there.
As an example, look at this post(my inspiration for this) advocating a Christ centered, non-partisan look at politics. After his well written plea for a ‘third door’, centered on our commitment to God and where that leads us individually, the comments immediately went into why the Conservative or Liberal position was superior. Granted, it was polite and mild, but it took a unifying message and began to divide.
Mostly I just wish that Government would get out of my way. Let me fund my own retirement instead of sucking in 15%+ of my wages into Social Security and then redistributing it. Let me choose how to do my support of the poor. Let me choose where that money goes. Wouldn’t a novel idea be to decree that a certain percentage of your money go to charitable work (or retirement). The government would have no hand in it except to see that you gave. Think of the charities that would spring up to compete for your dollars and care for those in need. Think of the additional good that would be done as your money wouldn’t be filtered through the government expanse of red tape before reaching the needy. I’m sure there’s a flaw in this reasoning, but I can’t see it now. Think of it as a mix of the care of socialism and the efficiency of the free market. (Quick, somebody pop my idealistic bubble here.)
So as I contemplate the election to come, I sigh and wonder what would be if we really had a choice other than more government for our security or more govrnment for the less fortunate (to reduce the entire election and campaign to one phrase).
End of politics for as long as I can manage (hopefully a long time.)