Cluster F*$# To The White House ‘08
Think of this post as four very short posts in one.
As cynical as I am at times, the upcoming election is shaping up to be very interesting, to say the least. In the primaries at least, we’re actually seeing (1) things that aren’t as cut-and-dry as Red Vs. Blue, and (2) the internet being a tool to empower average people. Mike Gravel and Ron Paul are both manifestations of this. These two men were catapulted from obscurity into the debates for their respective parties in part by their online supporters demanding it. Moreover, both of them are standing for what they believe in rather than simply touting the party line. I don’t know how they’d stack up against the other candidates in terms of being a good president, but they’re still a refreshing change. When everyone else was playing nice, Mike Gravel had the stones to straight out say, “These people scare me!” Ron Paul styles himself as an old-school Republican, so much so that he advocates non-intervention in world affairs. (I don’t know that I’d agree, but at least it would make the two candidates easier to tell apart).
Likewise, this New York Times article was a refreshing thing to read. We’ve all gotten used to thinking of conservatives in general as being anti-evolution and dead-set against stem cell research, regardless of the benefits for real living human beings. In the Republican presidential debate three out of the ten candidates said they didn’t believe in evolution. Apparently some conservatives understand that disparaging evolution makes them appear to be blatantly anti-intellectual. Still if only 3 out of 10 presidential candidates are anti-evolution, why do we currently have to put up with a White House that’s evidently 100% for intelligent design?
On a similar note, Bill Maher said basically what I was thinking but couldn’t articulate half as eloquently about France. The country is far from perfect and not without its issues, but amongst other things it has an excellent health care system, and its presidential candidates’ personal lives are regarded as irrelevant to whether they’d make good leaders. Next to that, not supporting the Iraq war isn’t exactly much of a strike against the country. Of course, it helps that all the French people I’ve ever met (admittedly not many, and all people who’d been living in the U.S. for a while) have been pretty cool. That may not be the best way to judge things, but at this point I suspect I’ve met more actual French people in real life than Bill O’Reilly has.
Lastly, the online news sites I frequent have been showing a lot of articles about people advocating impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. I have no idea whether or not this is a good idea, or even a feasible one. One thing that I agree with though is that what Bush is doing with signing statements is questionable to say the least. There are about a dozen examples of bills intended to protect individual rights and maintain government transparentcy where he added a statement that more or less said “Unless the president wants/doesn’t want to to protect us from the terrorists.” I heard somewhere that he’s made more signing statements that ALL of the other U.S. presidents put together, more than 750 of them. I was of the impression that that’s not how it’s supposed to work. When it comes to bills from congress, the president either signs or vetos them, and signing statements are commentaries and opinions with no legal force behind them per se.
