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Saturday, June 28, 2003
Interesting the way the MoveOn primary turned out. I decided not to vote in it - I just don't have enough information yet. I'm going to give them some more time to talk to me before I make my decision. I'm happy that Dean came out on top, he's tentatively my favorite. The Kucinich vote is disturbing. He's a rabid ideologue, not someone I would want running my country, and it's disappointing to see that so much of the progressive base supports him. He's similar to Nader in a lot of ways, except that Nader had the decency to take his extremism to a third party, instead of embarrassing the Democrats with it. On the other hand, had Nader run on the Democratic ticket instead of Green, he would have been eliminated in the primaries, and his votes would have gone to Gore. That's just a side note, though. I was glad to see that on the question of which candidates the voters would be willing to "enthusiastically support", Kerry came out well ahead of Kucinich. What this says to me is that Kucinich has his rooting section, but little support outside of it. Makes me more confident that the far left hasn't taken over control of the party. Of the people who are running, here are my opinions. I have no idea why Carol Mosely Braun is even running. Al Sharpton is just Al Sharpton - I don't want to see him anywhere near a national decision. Edwards, while I don't have any reason to dislike him yet, seems like a lightweight. I'll give him some more time, but he seems unlikely. Gephardt is 20 years ago. Go away. I have to respect Bob Graham for voting against the Iraq resolution, but, like Edwards, he seems a little short of Presidential caliber. Lieberman is a republicrat. I can't stand him, between his crowing over the war du jour and his obnoxious moralizing. Electable wing my foot, you don't get elected by being slightly less to the right than your opponent. Conversely, Dennis Kucinich is "slightly to the left of Karl Marx and Bertolt Brecht", to quote a Wally Pleasant song. I'm a progressive, not a communist. That just leaves Dean and Kerry. Kerry's Vietnam references have just turned into bragging, and I'm getting sick of it. Also, he voted for the Iraq resolution, which is close to inexcusable. However, I am 100% behind his energy policy, and he seems like a level headed enough guy. Dean and Kerry are quite similar in many, many ways. I prefer Dean because of his anti-war stance, and his medical program seems logical. But we'll see what he says in the coming months. I need to learn about them in much more detail before I can make an informed decision. Regarding the MoveOn primary again, it really does seem bizarre to me that they only gave 3 candidates the right to send out letters to MoveOn's members. It makes sense what they said, that as a liberal organization they have the right to lean toward liberal candidates, but this is way to early to be deciding who to support. They should have let everyone's message go out, and let their member base decide who to support. To an extent, it does seem that they were throwing to the election to Dean, a decision that I can't fathom. | Thursday, June 26, 2003
Now here's a good point someone brought up regarding Ralph Nader. The guy's platform is the government is in bed with big business, no one's looking out for the little guy, et cetera et cetera. So here's the question: if he's so concerned, where in blue blazes has Ralph Nader been since the 2000 election? Anybody who meant what he said would keep fighting for it whether or not he was president. If Ralph Nader runs again in 2004, I hope the people who voted for him last time will make a note of the fact that he completely abandoned his constituency and his stated principles during the non-campaign season. Fighting for the little guy, my left foot. Ralph Nader's fighting for the greater glory of Ralph Nader. OK, now I'll leave it open that maybe there's something I'm completely missing here. Maybe there's something he's been doing this whole time that I'm not aware of. Maybe there's an entire dynamic at work here that totally eludes me. But if nothing else, I can say that the reputation he's creating for himself is abysmal, and for someone involved in politics, that's as bad, if not worse, than wrongdoing. Go home Ralph. Your place is on Main Street, not Pennsylvania Avenue. | OK, now I've got a new counter, from Bravenet. These guys have been around for a while and have well known commercial services, so there's a minimal chance of sudden implosion, unlike my old counter, from now seemingly defunct service Servustats. Servustats did give me excellent statistics, but it looks like Bravenet does too, although possibly a bit inaccurate (it listed my own hit as a machine with "Unknown" resolution running Netscape 5, while Servustats correctly identified it as Netscape 6 at 1440x900). Not that it really matters, all I really need to know is if I'm suddenly getting some huge influx of hits and where from. One thing I noticed about both Servustats and Bravenet's statistics - They'll tell you exactly what version of Windows a visitor runs (95, 98, ME, XP, NT, 2000, etc), but there's just one category for Macintosh. There's a lot bigger difference between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X than between Windows 98 and Windows ME! Oh well. Another non-issue, really. | I decided to add The Onion in the News section instead of Fun. Hey, it's as legitimate as FOX, and they get to be "news" in most circles. | OK, it looks like this new format is working. I can post fine, and the archives even showed up again. I just had to wrestle with it for a while... | My Counter service seems to have ceased to exist as well. Oh well. And I'll tell you what, it was a lot easier to find free remotely-hosted counters back in the bubble. It was a lot easier to find all kinds of doohickeys back in the bubble. | So, this blog is now using Blogger's new technology. Had me down for a while while they moved it over. We'll see if the archives finally show up. | |