NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF
I bet you thought this would be about the Homeland Security warnings, etc. You are wrong. I have largely stopped worrying about that. Like so much in life, why stress about what you cannot control.
Instead, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that an underprivileged 13 year old from Boston at a camp in New Hampshire died after he became frightened by a black bear. The kid and his guide saw the bear twice and ran away from it both times. After the second time, the kid collapsed and died.
This story is absolutely insane. I hardly know where to start, except to say that the story indicated that “the last time a bear killed anyone in the state was in 1784. Let me be the first to say that the non-killing streak, in my judgment, remains in tact for the bears. My goodness, can you imagine a black bear (as opposed to a grizzly or Kodiak) realizing it scared someone to death?
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
I make it a practice not to respond to the blogs I read because I generally think my blog sucks too much to be taking any shots at anyone. This is true even of Belle du Jour, who hasn’t written anything remotely interesting since she got a book deal. Who wants a prostitute to write about which boy she likes most? BORING!
Anyway, F has inspired me to just a short couple of rebuttals to his agony with the Republican Party. Towit: the Republican Party has been hijacked by the Ashcrofts. They stand for nothing that moderate Republicans stand for. Retaining them in office is as dangerous to our liberty as anything the twisted clowns attacking us can think of. See, they can kill a few of us, but the Ashcrofts can institutionalize a loss of freedom.
Second, Kerry may not have the foreign policy expertise that one would wish for, but he has at least as much today as Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, arguably Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, or the current President did when they entered the office. Only Ike and George Walker Bush were left off of that list from the end of World War II. If we have done ANYTHING correctly on foreign policy since 1945, it was most likely done by someone who was less experienced than we would have liked.
Third, Kerry and Edwards are wrong on trade. Free trade helps us in gross terms, even if in specific areas it hurts. I always ask people who complain about this if they know why there are so many “old mill towns” in New England. It is because the low wage Southerners in the Carolinas took away the textile jobs from New England. Just as the Chinese are about to take those jobs from the Southerners.
Fourth, there is no number of additional carrier groups that would have prevented 9/11. Funding was not the problem for the intelligence services. Their reliance on technology to the exclusion of individuals on the ground was. We are overstretched in Iraq now not because of military cuts made in the 1990s, but because we went to war before we were ready to, and for reasons as yet unclear. The two war doctrine was appropriate after the Cold War and still is. You just have to pick your second war more wisely that Bush did. Whether Europe actually decides to act like an ally in Iraq if Kerry is elected is largely irrelevant, since even the possibility of such assistance is an improvement over the relations we have with Europe today. Finally, and frankly, if “Mission Accomplished” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” are not the sort of glib talking points we are being run on now, I’m not sure what they are.
I simply don’t understand why people identify themselves with parties. On the issues that I care about (with the exception of trade), this President has been an utter failure. Therefore, regardless of party, I want to see him go. No fuss, no muss, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what party he’s from. The other guy at least deserves a chance to see if he can be a bit less of a screw up.
I bet you thought this would be about the Homeland Security warnings, etc. You are wrong. I have largely stopped worrying about that. Like so much in life, why stress about what you cannot control.
Instead, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that an underprivileged 13 year old from Boston at a camp in New Hampshire died after he became frightened by a black bear. The kid and his guide saw the bear twice and ran away from it both times. After the second time, the kid collapsed and died.
This story is absolutely insane. I hardly know where to start, except to say that the story indicated that “the last time a bear killed anyone in the state was in 1784. Let me be the first to say that the non-killing streak, in my judgment, remains in tact for the bears. My goodness, can you imagine a black bear (as opposed to a grizzly or Kodiak) realizing it scared someone to death?
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
I make it a practice not to respond to the blogs I read because I generally think my blog sucks too much to be taking any shots at anyone. This is true even of Belle du Jour, who hasn’t written anything remotely interesting since she got a book deal. Who wants a prostitute to write about which boy she likes most? BORING!
Anyway, F has inspired me to just a short couple of rebuttals to his agony with the Republican Party. Towit: the Republican Party has been hijacked by the Ashcrofts. They stand for nothing that moderate Republicans stand for. Retaining them in office is as dangerous to our liberty as anything the twisted clowns attacking us can think of. See, they can kill a few of us, but the Ashcrofts can institutionalize a loss of freedom.
Second, Kerry may not have the foreign policy expertise that one would wish for, but he has at least as much today as Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, arguably Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, or the current President did when they entered the office. Only Ike and George Walker Bush were left off of that list from the end of World War II. If we have done ANYTHING correctly on foreign policy since 1945, it was most likely done by someone who was less experienced than we would have liked.
Third, Kerry and Edwards are wrong on trade. Free trade helps us in gross terms, even if in specific areas it hurts. I always ask people who complain about this if they know why there are so many “old mill towns” in New England. It is because the low wage Southerners in the Carolinas took away the textile jobs from New England. Just as the Chinese are about to take those jobs from the Southerners.
Fourth, there is no number of additional carrier groups that would have prevented 9/11. Funding was not the problem for the intelligence services. Their reliance on technology to the exclusion of individuals on the ground was. We are overstretched in Iraq now not because of military cuts made in the 1990s, but because we went to war before we were ready to, and for reasons as yet unclear. The two war doctrine was appropriate after the Cold War and still is. You just have to pick your second war more wisely that Bush did. Whether Europe actually decides to act like an ally in Iraq if Kerry is elected is largely irrelevant, since even the possibility of such assistance is an improvement over the relations we have with Europe today. Finally, and frankly, if “Mission Accomplished” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” are not the sort of glib talking points we are being run on now, I’m not sure what they are.
I simply don’t understand why people identify themselves with parties. On the issues that I care about (with the exception of trade), this President has been an utter failure. Therefore, regardless of party, I want to see him go. No fuss, no muss, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what party he’s from. The other guy at least deserves a chance to see if he can be a bit less of a screw up.
posted by David at 4:46 PM
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