Bye ~

Thanks for letting me post.

It was great to visit your blog, thanks.

(5) take the war to the terrorists and away from American soil. The terrorists started the war; we did not, unless you subscribe to wild conspiracy theories that 9/11 was anything but a surprise attack in the good old fashioned sense of that word (i.e. no amount of preparation short of actual knowledge could have prevented it–if you want to find the person to blame, see the video released by the 9/11 commission of the negligent airport security workers who are shown letting some of the hijackers through security).

My point is that it is very easy to criticize what Bush has done but we need to realize that we are not privy to all of the information that Bush has at his disposal. Also, hindsight is 20/20 and it is fallacious to judge Bush’s decisions in a crisis on what a professional commission has dug up after months of research. He had to make his decision with the intelligence available at the time and did so with a strength of character that is admirable, or should be, to everyone, regardless of political persuasion.

As to your distasteful reaction to the RNC, you are allowed to your opinion and I would never presume to take it away or force you to believe something else, but I am also entitled to mine and here is what I suspect: you went to the RNC expecting to see something and so that is exactly what you saw. To be sure, the fact that you saw it meant that it was indeed there. The thing is, though, that you might have missed myriad other things (many positive) because of your focus, which stems from your openly admitted preconceived worldview.

I thought that Bush’s speech was very good, objectively speaking (i.e. no Elvis-comparison necessary). He only began on Iraq after spending 35 minutes on domestic issues. He was good-natured in his criticisms of Kerry and his self-deprecation, which you jeered at, was really very funny. One reason that it was funny was that it confronted much of the personality criticism that the left hurls at Bush head-on and accepts some of it while showing how silly it it at the same time.

I sense a latent criticism of the Republicans in this statement, as if you are implying that Republicans are too quick to “sensor” speech or something like that; I guess I would just point out that if a protester did that at the Democrat Convention they would have been carted away in the exact same manner as someone interrupting the program.

They are counting on the traditional strength of the Republican Party–national security–and are, I suppose, hoping that people don’t dig too deeply into the logic or morality of this administration’s choices.

I suppose that you have some morally superior insight than half of all Americans who avidly support Bush. For example, rather than believe that Bush really believed that there were WMD, I suppose you hold to conspiracy theories instead. Maybe you even sign on to Michael Moore type hysteria as to evil designs of personal enrichment. Bush is anything but a sincere and religious man, right? He is evil and has malicious designs.

The convention was surprisingly negative.

So the RNC actually addressed the opponent, his record, and his character? You mean politics has stooped so low?

I guess that there is no reason for you to hold back on your own negativity then.

This is not the issue. The issue is that the incumbent obviously feels that he can’t run on his own record. When he spoke of his goals for the next four years, it was as if some other guy had been president.

I have decided that we are like the battered wife, convinced that he’s going to be better to us in the future.

I feel Chris Matthew’s reporting on the RNC was quite miserable and biased. At least a few questions I heard him ask (not that I was following him too closely) were so loaded and inaccurate in their assumptions that I was wondering how a supposed consummate professional like Chris Matthews could be asking them.

I can fully understand a reporter being liberal and I don’t have any problem with that — I just expect them to at least make an attempt to appear objective and reasonable.

Book burning is obviously a reference to Nazis. Who has not had those old news reels of Nazi bondfires that used Freud and Enstien for kindling.

The best refernce I could find for Evangelical bookburning was a parish or two that took a disliking to Harry Potter.