Crian Padayachee: Hey Griper, things are back to normal, my cousin left and I am now catching up. Good times though, we have flood warnings all over [...]
Griper: howdy amigo. just thought i'd check to see how Ireland was doing over there.
Hi everyone it is 125am at the moment in Korea which means it is 1226pm on the East Coast. I am back to blogging, sort off, and I apologize to all my friends for not visiting your blogs first but I just wanted to get this post done and get back into my blogging routine. First of all I want to thank Gordon and Big Blue for posting and continuing to keep this blog going while I have been busy, your posts were both great and judging by some of the comments, well received.
Korea is actually amazing and not what I expected in any way or form, the people are really nice though I really need to improve my speaking and reading. I tried to take the bus to into the city today and only realized after 30 minutes that I was heading into the country. Thankfully I got off before I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. The language barrier is the biggest issue so far as I often have to resort to hand gestures that I am sure people perceive as: “another crazy foreigner.” I have taken some pictures and I will upload them in due course, but on to the politics.
I have managed to keep track of the politics while I have been here and regarding Sarah Palin, I think she is a smart move for the McCain campaign as evidenced by her energizing the republican base. This energy is only slightly less than the Obama campaign but the problem with choosing her is that Senator McCain can no longer use the experience attack line against Senator Obama because he will inevitably be criticizing his own VP who has minimal experience. Sarah Palin is too radical and conflicts with Senator McCain’s image of a reformer as she is by far more conservative than he is and this is not a good thing.
The New York Times has an interesting comparison up on their site detailing the number of times Democrats and Republicans have used certain keywords. The interesting thing to note from a liberal perspective is that the Democrats are hitting the economy more often than the Republicans which is what the majority of Americans care about at this juncture in the political race. The Republicans have talked about god twice as much as the Democrats but that is no surprise there given that evangelicals always side with conservatives. A cursory glance at this comparison gives me hope, yes I said it , if the Democrats keep hitting the right notes and the Republicans continue on old lines of attack, we are sure to win.
With all the great speeches going on at the DNC, people often overlook the regular people that are attending the convention and their support of Senator Obama. Why do you support Senator Obama? I have often mentioned why I support the Senator but here are a few of the hundred’s of video’s on YouTube DNC Group of people at the convention expressing their opinions:
I’m a conservative, and while John McCain isn’t my dream candidate, I’ll take him over Obama any day. I’m not one of those I’ll-take-my-ball-and-go-home voters who just won’t vote if my favorite isn’t in the race. What’s more, I’m old enough to understand that the republic will survive four, or even eight years of Obama as president. It will even survive Obama and a Democrat-majority congress.
But there’s a lot of folks this time around who might go off the deep end if Obama doesn’t win. People have really invested in him as a person, not as a politician. Some of that glow is fading, a bit, but it’s still pretty strong. These folks are true believers, and if they don’t get their dreams fulfilled, they’re going to be very, very upset.
Yes, there was a lot of passion in 2000, and 2004 also. But that was passion against Bush, not passion for Kerry or Gore. Let’s face it; Gore is an annoying, lecturing bore, with a large streak of hypocrisy. Kerry is an opportunistic dilletante. No one really loves either of them as politicians; they were Not Bush, and that was enough.
But a lot of folks are FOR Obama, not against McCain. You can see it in the fundraising. Obama’s handlers are very good at promoting the Chosen One image, and that image resonates with his supporters. You talk to them, and they simply can’t imagine anyone not voting for him.
It’s going to be a fairly close election; even Minnesota, which three months ago was a Strong Obama state, is now rated a tossup. Barring some sort of major mistake by either candidate, it’s going to be a furious fall, as the two campaign planes zip back and forth along a line from Virginia to Minnesota, with a side trip to Colorado and New Mexico now and then. Undecided voter’s doorbells are going to be rung again and again, as both sides fight for those precious few votes.
Chances are, there won’t be a to-the-wire standoff like Florida in 2000. But it might come down to a few thousand votes in Ohio, or Michigan, or New Mexico. If it does, and Obama doesn’t win, there are going to be lots of charges of fraud. Never mind that the Democrats wrote the book on voter fraud (don’t believe me? look at the history). People will be in the mood to believe anything. And people who are angry, people who believe they have been cheated of hope, change, whatever–those people will be seething.
November could be very ugly.
Personally, I hope that whoever wins, wins by enough that recounts and court battles aren’t needed.
Eli Pariser at MoveOn.Org released a new video entitled: “5 things you should know.” This video touches on a few issues that some liberals like myself need to know in order to ensure an Obama victory in the general election. Everyone who has visited this blog has questioned the use of polling so I won’t go over this point again but here are the 5 things you should know:
The Polls
The Smears
The Misperceptions
The Myths
Our Path To Victory
Please watch the video for more detail but personally my number 1 goal from now until the election is to correct the misperceptions people have about Senator Obama e.g he is Muslim, and some of the deliberate smears spread around in emails and in books, you will notice that I have included the Obama campaign’s recent release of a document debunking every smear in the two most recently released Obama books:
For the past two days I have watched with disdain, the excessive use of force by the Russian military against civilian targets in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. On Sunday night, watching late edition on CNN, President Saakashvili gave a pitiful request for help. I mean, the guy looked stressed, you should have seen the way he was talking on a cellphone underground somewhere… it was not very presidential to say the least. Russia has always had some dislike for the West, in particular Vladimir Putin who blames America for the collapse of the glorious Soviet Union. This observation was made by former secretary Madeline Albright who includes this observation in her book: “A Memo To The President Elect.”
We have all born witness to the decreasing democracy within Russia as Prime Minister Putin shifted from the forefront of Russian politics to pulling the strings of President Medvedev in the shadows. There should only be two questions on everyone’s minds, how far will Russia go and what do they want? The President of Georgia has been suggesting that the rest of the world should commit to defending Georgia militarily however given Russia’s control of Europe’s energy, i don’t see that happening.
America is already committed to Iraq and Afghanistan, defending Georgia would be the final push the Russian’s needed for World War 3. What that might entail I don’t know, but Prime Minister Putin is a smart guy and if everything former Secretary Albright observed is correct, the Prime Minister has crafted an effective strategy to restore Russia to its former glory including all the territories it lost in previous years.
, if the Democrats keep hitting the right notes and the Republicans continue on old lines of attack, we are sure to win.
