I just happen to stumble upon this interesting New Yorker interview with William F. Buckley, Jr - a supporter of Bush, but irritated at his Big C - Compassion and little c - conservatisim:
“Government is now 20.9 per cent of G.D.P., and that’s bad stuff,” he said. “Drink to that!”
Yes I will. 1994 seems like so so long ago.
I have to admit, Newsweek’s very in-depth look inside the Bush and Kerry campaigns has been an excellent read. Set aside an hour or two and check it out. Interesting things I’ve learned:
Here’s my big question: How long until DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe gets shown the door?
And before it gets slammed, I want someone to ask him “So, how many more people woke up on election day and voted for Bush than Kerry?”
Here is a long and thought-out presidential endorsement by Jane Galt.
Here is mine: I voted for Bush.
I voted by absentee ballot and no offense to Ms. Galt, there was never any doubt. UPDATE: This one sums it up quite well also.
Two of three candidates that ran for president in 2000 are running again in 2004. While Al Gore is busy regaining all the weight he lost for the last contest and giving irritating speeches when he gets bored, George Bush is duking it out with John Kerry. And every once in a while you might hear something about Ralph Nader.
The only things I have heard about Nader in this election center around his legal battles to get on the ballot in some state or another (he is currently on the ballot in 34 states according to his website) or his single-digit presence in the polls. I haven’t seen a single interview with him or news story detailing his positions or analyzing the impact of his candidacy on this close election. Not one word about his exclusion in the debates, or what he eats for breakfast for that matter.
The two magazines I have subscribed to the longest are Newsweek and Esquire. Coincidentally, one of the reasons I stuck with them over time was based on the merits of their financial writers - Allan Sloan for Newsweek and the recently-back-from-hiatus Ken Kurson for Esquire. Eventually, the increasingly leftward tilt and regularly scheduled Anna Quindlen claptrap were too much and I let my subscription to Newsweek lapse. Esquire, which recently won the Too Cute by Half Award for publishing a boilerplate “George Bush is Very Bad” article by the very insightful Ron Reagan (right after the death of his father), is teetering on the same demise.
What does that have to do with anything? Nothing really, but in the November issue, there is an interview with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the movie, Team America: World Police:
Esquire: The movie makes fun of celebrities who try to speak out about politics. Who are the biggest targets?
Matt Stone: Basically the activist, liberal Hollywood Left. If you don’t laugh at Sean Penn on TV talking about the political implications of invading Iraq, then you don’t know what funny is.
Trey Parker: Having to sit there and listen to George Bush do and say a bunch of stupid shit while he was bombing Iraq was no more offensive to me than watching Alec Baldwin go on TV and say “Let me tell you what this war’s about.”
Very insightful, indeed. Maybe I’ll stick with them a little bit longer. After all, their Q&A columnist predicts a Bush victory… “and no, it won’t even be close.”
Castro Falls After Speech, but Recovers
Well, I guess the 9/11 commission was right. The CIA still doesn’t have their act together. Next time, try the flaming bag of dog poo on his door step.
Well, that took a while. So where the hell have I been the last year? Lemme see… six months in Las Vegas which was mostly work. Actually it was a lot of work. After the New Year, the lovely wife and I moved to Tucson in warm and sunny Arizona. Alaska it is not. Six weeks later I was off on a luxurious trip to a couple of countries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. You have probably heard of them.
Upon returning to the Big U.S of A and after a little procrastinating, I finally decided to buckle down and renovate my humble little shack here on the Internet. I upgraded to Movable Type 3.11 and rebuilt the entire site from scratch. I must say, the upgrade to the new version of MT has been worth the time and money. For the past six-months, the near-daily ritual of deleting comment spam had become more fun than I could handle, especially considering the mouth-breathing spammers were posting more to this site than I was. Since the upgrade, I have received the sum total of one spam comment. This is certainly due to the fact that I deleted all my old posts, but the new version of Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist is a huge improvement.
As for the site re-design, that was a long process of ‘type-save-refresh’ in a text editor and numerous browsers. Everything seems to be working fine, but please let me know if something looks screwed up from your neck of the woods. There are still a few things to work on:
On the archive page for each individual article, the link offering to sign in to Type Key doesn’t appear. Right now, it doesn’t really matter because I’ve set up the site so anyone can post a comment. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Work on the banner image at the top of every page. It doesn’t get much blander than it is right now.
Re-import all of my old entries.
Customize the RSS feeds.
Let me know what you think. It’s good to be back and I have a lot of catching up to do.
P.S. Gotta give props to Kevin McGehee for already giving me my link back and stopping by when this place was as dead as a door nail.
I just tore everything apart and installed the brand new squirrel cage that runs this place. Got a little more work to do…