11/17/2004:  

There has to be a way to address the concerns and priorities of those Americans that felt that Bush was ok as a liar and a murderer so long as the Arrogant, Woosy, Liberal Democrats (AWLDs) didn't take the White House. So in the interest of taking a serious look at those concerns, I now present:

The Democrat's 2008 Playbook

This is not a plan to steal the White House. Instead, it's offered as a very real approach to unifying our nation under a sane administration.

1. Religion. There has to be a way to honor the views of the religious conservatives without putting language in the Constitution that discriminates against a group of people or that removes control of certain personal decisions from the individual. The two most important issues defined herein are obviously gay rights and abortion rights.

I personally believe that the gay marriage issue was a non-issue designed to divide the country neatly across religious census lines. The problem is that the Constitution, by its very nature, does not and should not contain language that espouses religious views. Yes, it makes mention of God, but does not make mention of Christ. Is that bad? I don't think so. Recognizing a greater power without defining how the great power should be recognized is one of the strengths of our Constitution. So you think your God can beat up everyone else's God? Great! Good for you. But don't expect me to attend your next prayer revival. And the fact that I don't have to is what makes the country great. It's one of the reasons this country exists at all -- the freedom to worship or not worship as I personally see fit, and to not be forced to live by someone else's interpretation of God's will.

I wish the people of this nation would remember that no state is forced to recognize a marriage from another state.

Having said all that, perhaps we need to go forward with some kind of federal law that states that the term marriage is specifically recognized as a religious term when applied to the union of people for the purpose of sharing lives, personal affairs, and creating a family.

The effect of this would be to say that marriage could not be protected by the federal legal system.

On the flip side, civil unions fulfill the necessary legal requirements of not only gay couples but anyone that chooses to share their lives, finances, and responsibilities.

Guns. Democrats are, according to the pundits, too hard on gun control. Well, we're not, but the problem seems to lie in convoluted gun laws and poor enforcement. We need to make gun law reform a major part of the platform. We need to work with the NRA to come up with an Amendment to clarify the wording of the 2nd Amendment. That Amendment is not that vague, but it has been misinterpreted for so long that it needs to be eliminated in favor of an Amendment that makes sense. The new Amendment will specifically allow states to maintain and arm formal militias. It will also, on an individual basis, limit firepower to a level deemed reasonable for the protection of home and hearth and for hunting purposes. It would prevent minors, felons, and unstable individuals from having access to firepower, and yet leave the door open for your average joe to arm himself to the teeth, again, within reason. And it should leave the door open for individual states to pass their own laws furthering limiting access to guns.

Guns in and of themselves are simple tools. But they are tools for killing, and we should, as a sane society, limit people's ability to randomly kill each other, don't you think?

Environmental Protection. This administration has eliminated with vast strokes the legislated protections on our environment. We need to replace those protections with an eye to the reason why they were so unpopular in the first place. We need to provide for incentives for companies that are affected by those protections to switch to products and services that are slightly different but within the same industry that don't threaten the resources and species we're trying to protect. Like prison reform without sentencing reform, simply putting limits on companies ends up hurting the general population through a loss of jobs. We need to specifically and vocally state that we will protect the environment AND protect local economies with each piece of legislation.

Abortion. Ok, I avoided this until the very end because it's such a controversial topic. I won't spend too much verbage on this. We need to respect the people that want control over their own lives while respecting people that feel they are saving the lives of unborn children. Both are fanatic-spawning causes and must be addressed, but balance is possible.

Everyone needs to agree on a point at which the lump of rapidly dividing cells has become a child. Obviously every sperm and egg don't qualify. And the point where the child can be delivered and live without assistance would be the opposite extreme. Where do we draw that all-important line upon which all else hinges?

And that's all this act will do. Follow-up legislation can make it illegal to terminate an unborn child. And that legislation should make rape, incest, or potential pregnancy-related harm to the mother the exceptions to the law. Period.

This puts the onus on the woman to be aware of her body and either take precautions or take pregnancy tests, and then take decisive action. There will be instances where women will become pregnant, not realize it until too late, and then be forced to have the baby. Those will have to be considered acceptable losses in this battle for balance between individual rights and protection of unborn children. It also -- and this is important -- puts the onus on our educational system to make sure that girls who can physically become pregnant are informed about what pregnancy is, how it feels, how it is detected, etc., so that, heaven forbid, they become pregnant at an early age, they know enough about pregnancy to understand what's going on in their bodies and let an adult advise them on what to do next.

And one last note about a topic I wasn't going to talk about at length (cough): I'm all for teaching abstinence AND birth control. Yes, abstinence is the best way to not get pregnant or contract an STD, but that's like saying staying indoors all the time is the best way to avoid sunburn. Technically correct, highly unlikely to actually happen. But abstinence and the benefits of just simply avoiding the sex question completely until they are adults is a perfectly acceptable approach, so long as it's balanced with information on how to safely have sex should they decide to do so, how to detect a pregnancy or STD, and what people they can get advice from in the event that they become pregnant or contract an STD.

Domestic Defense.

We need to make a major point of our platform securing our borders, limiting access to possible military strike training, remove the rights mentioned above for all non-citizens, and track those non-citizens closely the entire time they are in our country.

Securing our country's borders: Build physical walls between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Electronically monitor those walls. Stem the flow of illegal immigrants once and for all. Legal temporary and permanent immigrants will be welcomed so long as they go through the correct process for identifying and cataloguing them.

Limiting access to possible military strike training: plane flight instruction, big rig truck instruction, civil engineering, commercial and industrial electrical and construction, demolitions, computer security, civil security, civil communications, and any and all specific military training. These would require citizenship and a federal permit. That permit could be denied or revoked based on a background check. The reason for denial/revocation would have to be clearly stated and a appeals process would exist, but only for citizens of the U.S.

Clearly stated limitations on rights for non-citizens: If you are not a natural born or naturalized citizen of the U.S., your freedoms would not necessarily eliminated, but would be severely curtailed. Among these would be:

Tracking non-citizens. This sounds very 1984, but we need methods for closely tracking people that come into this country, regardless of the purpose for their trip. They should be fitted with some device that tracks their movements, required to submit themselves for regular visual checking of the equipment, and should not be allowed to roam freely. Period. End of story. Don't like it? Move to Afghanistan and join the effort to find Bin Laden.

In summation, I believe these are the positions that will win the hearts and minds of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Well, ok, tracking non-citizens is probably a bit extreme, but I got a bit fired up there for a moment...

11/17/2004:   On this cold, dreary, foggy, overcast day, I decided to whip up my all time favorite cold weather meal, hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. As I sat down just now to continue this log and went to take a bite of the sandwich, I suddenly realized there was a face staring up at me from the sandwich. I dropped the sandwich on the plate and jumped away. Shocked and a little frightened, I leaned in and peered at the toasted bread, trying to figure out what it was I was seeing in the alternating shades of golden brown. And then, I saw it! The face! That face that is so well known around the world, that face that brought joy to an entire world!

Yes, it's the face of Rodney Dangerfield.

I now have that sandwich bagged up with cotton balls and sitting atop my computer monitor. May the bug-eyes of the Great Disrespected One look down on my work and bless it with the humor.

11/17/2004:   How to catch bin Laden and make Bush look like a man in one fell swoop: Bush needs to publicly recognize Bin Laden as the leader of his people. Perhaps even offer to install him as the leader in Palestine. Or as the emissary to the entire Middle East. George needs to agree to give Bin Laden huge concessions, he needs to offer to tender a personal apology, and he needs to offer Bin Laden control of the religious direction in the U.S.

Next he needs to meet with Bin Laden face to face to sign the documents and treaties and to personally tender his apologies for how the poor Muslim Arabs have been treated over the years.

And then, as Bin Laden reaches out to shake Bush's hand, George W. Bush can redeem himself for all the crap he's committed by plunging his gold-plated pen right into Bin Laden's eye, then beating him to death with a chair on international television while the Secret Service kung-fus all of Bin Laden's entourage. And when Bin Laden's head has been crushed like an egg, George needs to scoop up a handful of the splattered brains, hold it up to the camera, and say, "And that, boys and girls, is how we take care of assholes like Bin Laden."

Ok, so it's a bad idea. But y'know what? If it happens, I swear on my honor and as a gentleman that I'll vote Republican at the next election.

11/17/2004:   "Insurgent" is being used interchangeably with the term "terrorist." They are not the same, folks. We are the occupying force in Iraq. Regardless of who is getting these people fired up, they don't see themselves as terrorists. They see themselves as freedom fighters. They are fighting a war in their own country against an occupying force. No definition of "terrorist" could be stretched thin enough to cover that scenario.

The problem with these insurgents/rebels/freedom fighters is that they are most likely being urged on by those with a vested interest in seeing a democratic government fail. And so we fight them, and in the process thousands more civilians are dying in the crossfire.

Oh, by the way, 1969 called and they said we can keep Vietnam for as long as we like -- they don't want it back.

11/17/2004:   Russia has been developing and testing ICBM missile systems for some time now. Russian President Vladimir Putin has as much as said that Russia's systems will be more advanced than any other country's, including the U.S. In the last couple of years, they've accelerated that development, with the result being a mobile version of their Topol-M (1.32 ton payload) and a soon-to-be-released model capable of delivering 10 warheads for a total of 4.4 tons. That's some serious muscle.

Now, why would they feel the need for such a system? Could it be that they are starting to see us as a threat? Could it be that, while George was chasing broken dictators and ghosts of WMDs, that real WMDs were being ignored? If a 4.4 ton nuke isn't a WMD, I don't know what is. Iran and Korea are also headed down that road, and George can't even focus on getting bin Laden long enough to catch him, then focus on the real threats of today. Saddam was the least of our worries. Now we've got insurgents running around the country trying to take control and turning our nice little war into another Vietnam.

Way to go, George. Heating things up nicely, I see.

11/17/2004:   Kerry has said he may try again in 2008.

Please don't.

Kerry, if you couldn't unseat Bush, the most unpopular war President in history, a liar and a murderer, and cheat and a thief, then you couldn't beat a toothless old woman in a stick-gnawing contest. Just stop already. You sucked. Your team lost. Perhaps it was only by 3%, but taken from the perspective that you should have won by a landslide, you got your butt handed to you. The Republicans had to play to win, and they did.

You promised to deliver us, and you failed. Now just go away.

Now Hillary, on the other hand...

11/16/2004:   Colin Powell was probably one of the few decent people in Bush's administration. He got kicked in the teeth every time he tried to do things right. I don't blame him for not sticking around. Hey, if his option had been picked up by Kerry and he'd been allowed to do the good he'd tried and been stymied to do during Bush's first term, I'll bet he'd still be there. He'd tell his wife to go to a better doctor, and then he'd have hopped on his horse and ridden to the U.S.'s rescue.

He'll be missed.

And now Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Bush's suck-up Yes-woman has been moved into that position. Four more years? Yeah, that's about what it will be. At least Powell had the balls to attempt to move things in the right direction. Rice is little more than a fawning puppet.

11/16/2004:  

I and a little over 54 million other Americans are trying to get our minds around what went wrong during Election 2004. I've heard a lot of pundits argue back and forth about what the Democrats could have done to win the White House back and unseat an evil administration. The things folks are saying boil down to this:

Of course "pro-life" is code for "we want to have control over your body and make your life decisions for you" and "pro-family" is code for "we want to codify intolerance and hatred so we can legally discriminate against people we don't understand," but I digress....

What the pundits have missed is that 59 million Americans were convinced to weigh their various disparate priorities and find them more important than the central issue driving most of the people that voted against Bush, and it's this:

A vote for Bush was a vote for a man that lied to the American people and their elected representatives, Congress, in order to rush us headlong into a war against a nation that he knew posed absolutely no immediate, short term, or probably even long term threat to Americans, America's allies, or America's interests.

And seeing Bush get elected (for the first time, of course) and realizing that the majority are either purposely sanctioning a murderer or have been so easily distracted into voting for one is making that unfortunate minority depressed, angry, and in some cases unable to function normally.

It's just unbelievable.

To sum it up, I believe my last entry in these chronicles said it best, that we are now living under "the tyranny of the sheep." Mindless, unable to put the lives of their children and grandchildren first, more interested in seeing their "team" win than securing peace and tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their prosterity, they have instead thrown out peace and tranquility, dashed diplomacy upon the rocks of blood-lust, sold tranquility and foreign relations for political currency, stolen the general welfare and given it to the very richest in our society, and spit upon liberty and their prosterity for the next decade at the very least.

I could rail for days on this topic. Heck, I railed at Bush for four years and no one was even listening. So what did we gain? Nothing positive. The derision of the rest of the world perhaps, future generations of terrorists most certainly. What did we lose? Respect. And so much more, but respect is certainly towards the top of the list. But the most important thing we lost was lives, and we're going to lose a lot more. Thousands more than if Kerry were in office. Hundreds of thousands more civilians, Iraqi and otherwise as the years roll on and retribution is paid to us for our arrogance and stupidity.

And so I go on, chronicling the foibles of the most evil man to grace the office of the Presidency of the United States of America. But now I hold no illusions that I'm educating anyone. I'm just recording so that one day people can read this and say, "Dang, you mean we knew he was evil even then?!"