Make a Difference

With just a week to go in the 2004 Election, here is one of your last chances to make a real difference. Let your blogging audience know (and encourage them to spread the word) that the missing munitions in Iraq were noted as missing by NBC News on the day that the coalition forces arrived at the site eighteen months ago. As such, there was nothing the Bush administration could have done to protect the site… it had already been emptied out.

Moreover, Kerry should be required to answer why he is attacking the President on something that only happened, the way he talked about it, in the New York Times/CBS News universe. Finally, the world should hear about Drudge Report findings that indicate CBS News appears to have been planning to use 60 Minutes this Sunday to reveal this twisted piece of news in hopes of damaging the President's campaign. If anyone doubts CBS's bias, this should make it even clearer exactly where they stand.

Slam-a-lama-ding-dong

Well, let's just say it isn't going so well, and leave it at that, eh? I'm hoping the Cards were just trying to be good hosts tonight by letting the Red Sox win, but I'm not so sure about that. St. Louis is the baseball town, so we must win. The Cardinals have never lost a World Series to the Red Sox, I'd hate to see it happen now.

If you are wondering, yes, your assumption was true if you thought I was not a sports fan, but I am loyal to the home teams — and I've always been partial to the Cardinals. I like the see the Rams win just like the next guy, but baseball and the Cardinals are just special. It is, after all, the all-American sport.

Anyone else following the series? It started somewhat humorously, at least, with a bunch of fans holding “Cardinals: Slam-a-lama-ding-dong” signs. If you didn't get it, you really need to see Joe Buck's new commercial for Anheuser-Busch (which, if you didn't know it, is a St. Louis company, hence Busch Stadium).

I'll probably slaughter it, but here's the “plot” of the commercial: Joe Buck, Fox's MLB and NFL broadcaster and son of late great KMOX sports broadcaster Jack Buck, is sitting in the baseball broadcasting booth when his agent comes in. The agent tells him he needs a catch phrase to say, when someone makes a good play, like other broadcasters have. Buck asks why he would lower the quality of the broadcasts for his audience just to have a catch phrase. The agent responds “licensing opportunities.” Camera cuts away to someone hitting a home run, then cuts back to Joe Buck's head. He starts off sounding normally, but then (as the camera zooms out and shows him in a bright yellow t-shirt) says slam-a-lama (hits a gong) ding-dong. He reaches back to give the agent “five” while the camera shows everyone in the room is wearing yellow slam-a-lama-ding-dong t-shirts.

That's rather humorous, I think, but the real humor is in the fact that people are actually now using the phrase. Intentionally or not, perhaps Joe Buck will end up with the slam-a-lama-ding-dong catch phrase in real life.

Just Exactly What Happened

Laugh, it is funny: Did you miss the debates? Then check out this very serious column that sums the whole thing up in just a few short paragraphs.

The American Conservative Endorses… Bush. Pat Buchanan writes an interesting piece which I will — for the record — note that I do not entirely agree with. On the issues of today, I am generally well into the Right, but the far Right that waxes about “neo-cons” and the evils of supporting our ally Israel just makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Then again, they endorse… Kerry. Scott McConnell, editor of the American Conservative, decided that the President will damage the conservative movement for decades by giving it a bad name. Moreover, he manages to compare the President to the trio of Leon Trotsky, Leonid Brezhnev and Czar Nicholas II in the same article. Overall, it has the uncomfortable bits that existed in Buchanan's endorsement of the president and none of the more sensible parts of the same. Given that both candidates supported the war in Iraq, Kerry most certainly does not deserve the vote as some kind of punishment against Bush for the war. Scott even drinks the radical left's Kool-Aid that suggests that the U.S. manufactured the evidence against Iraq, despite the existing of overwhelming corroboration of that evidence from the intelligence agencies of the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and others. President Vladmir Putin even warned out president about a believed threat to U.S. soil from Iraq.

Why not endorse everyone? That's what the American Conservative does in other articles. Follow either link I gave above to find a box that provides links to other editorials that manage to endorse every major third party candidate to go along with Bush and Kerry. Who says you can't have it every way?

My Domestic Spending Agenda

NASA — many people on both sides of the fence simply do not understand the critical importance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I guess liberals find it too close to the military and conservatives can't necessarily justify it as a necessary part of the military. Yet, in my opinion, NASA is one of the most important parts of the Federal government. Let's face it — yes, NASA is inefficient, bloated and has been thoroughly shamed by the St. Louis's own Ansari X-Prize, but private companies will never be able to accomplish what NASA can under proper direction.

Take Mars, for example. To reach Mars will require new technologies and massive projects beyond anything the agency has ever done before. While Scaled Composites was able to reach space for a relatively meager sum, they were doing so with the benefit of thousands of technologies that were driven ahead through NASA's early, innovative days. The technology to reach Mars with humans does not exist yet, meaning that only an entity with the funding power of the world's lone superpower can likely reach the goal of the first interplanetary human mission.

NASA has probably done more to advance technology than any other government agency and our world is better for it. President Bush's 2030 goal for a Mars mission deserves respect as a plan to re-ignite our imaginations and our common goals so that the stodgy modern NASA can again become the lean, mean organization that can revolutionize technology for us. We should take technologies that come out of NASA and pass them out through an effective technology licensing program that would encourage private sector companies to use and improve what the government created. This would pay back the costs of R&D and drive the push into the final frontier to new heights.

United States Postal Service — Many conservatives I know loathe a public entity dedicated to mail delivery. The privatization call has come for a long time and sounds good on the surface. The idea of privatization of USPS, in my opinion, is a flawed and dangerous plan. USPS does not turn a profit, like it would be required to do if it were in the private sector, but personally I care much more about seeing my mail come and go without a hitch than if USPS is bringing in cash (so long as it is not a complete money black hole). UPS, FedEx, DHL and others can and do accomplish amazing logistical service feats with a profit for a reason: it costs more to use them.

Take, for example, a 6 oz envelope to Paraguay. The cheapest way to get it there using any of the major private sector delivery companies will set you back nearly fifty bucks. For just seven bucks, I can upgrade to service that should get that letter there in less than a week via USPS. Now, I hear you screaming over there: “raise the rates! raise the rates!” Hold on a second. Is not the main goal here to facilitate communication? If USPS charged the same rate as UPS, it would be very impractical to send that envelope even though I would hate not to send it. Could it perhaps be that it is worth a few of my tax dollars each year to facilitate affordable, fast, reliable postal service for the dozens of letters, bills, rebates, CD's and other things I mail out? E-mail must become far more secure, reliable and just plain better before I would consider cutting loose our core way of distributing documents and packages.

There are lots of issues that come up if USPS was privatized. Daily deliveries to rural areas would become likely targets of cuts. Even first class letters would likely skyrocket in price to achieve pricing parity with UPS, et. al. I betcha the amount of money you would spend sending out your bills each month would go up enough that the meager tax savings would soon seem less than attractive.

I would add that I believe with a relatively meager investment in more efficient delivery solutions, including some of those used by UPS and FedEx, we could dramatically improve USPS's performance. We ought to look into solutions such as outsourcing certain extra deliveries to other carriers and promoting and improving high tech solutions (which USPS already offers) such as e-mail to mail gateways.

Amtrak — This is, by far, the most controversial of my three pet government projects. I believe it is in this nation's interest to not only keep Amtrak going, but also to start a one-time revitalization program that would upgrade the tracks across the nation to support bullet train capabilities. Amtrak, in its current state, could not survive as a private company. If Amtrak shutdown, the rails that made this country great would grow rusty and disappear into the murky fog of the past.

In a time of heightened security, we should have a strong transportation infrastructure beyond just air traffic. A healthy, revitalized Amtrak could, I believe, turn a profit eventually and would allow us to have a redundant high-speed transportation network. Think about the days after 9/11 when we were forced to shut down air traffic — such a high speed train system would have allowed for far more efficient traveling. We have no reason to believe 9/11 was the last time this could happen, and next time we could be ready (and that is just one of the many advantages to having more than one long distance mass transit system).

Moreover, if we implemented the improved Amtrak using electric trains, we would insure that no matter what future fuel technology eventually allows us to eliminate dependence on the Middle East, we would be able to convert it to work with trains. I don't think you can necessarily say that about our existing planes.

Each of these agencies needs major reform, I agree. I do not agree however that they should be ended or privatized. In the long run, I think everyone would benefit from improving these agencies and it is reasonable to expect that a serious upfront investment could yield a rosy financial situation for these agencies in the future.

A Sign of the Times?

Last night, I finally put out my Bush-Cheney yard sign, and this morning, it was gone. Considering that the area has lots of Bush signs it was rather disheartening to see that mine had been stolen and a nearby Kerry-Edwards sign had been left untouched.

Undeterred, I went back to the Bush-Cheney HQ and got a replacement. Oddly enough, shortly after putting up the new sign, I went to answer the door and my neighbor was there asking why I had a Bush-Cheney sign laying in front of the door. When it was returned is beyond me — I had not been out that door today, but apparently the sign thief brought back the sign. I'm curious if it was a guilty conscience or a desire to avoid getting caught and charged with theft and trespassing, but at least the sign is back in my care.

The new sign's frame remains up tonight, but the actual sign is in the great indoors until tomorrow morning when I will put it back up again. The local campaign volunteer suggested this measure as a good way to avoid having it damaged or stolen. Apparently a lot of Bush signs have been slashed and otherwise vandalized in the last few days (including one owned by a gentleman who was ahead of me in the line to pickup a sign). It seems to be another case of the vitriolic Bush haters that have been raiding Bush-Cheney offices and stealing signs across the country.

The Writing in the Shadows

I often set goals that I'd like to accomplish that I know I likely will not. Other goals are long lasting and may not be reached for some time, but hopefully will be reached sometime over the course of months and years. I've written somewhat about this before, but one of those goals is to accomplish a few things with the written word that would be far more meaningful than small articles and commentaries. I mentioned these writings in passing in the last post, but what kind was I referring to? I am glad you asked.

In particular:

• A novel — yes, I'd like to write a great American novel. I've actually started on one, but never had time to take it very far. I have three chapters written as it stands — the first and second chapters of the story are in place, so the basic framework that sets everything in motion is done. I also have one chapter that might be toward the middle of the book, right before the climax of the story.
• A play — I've started one of these too (can you see I have a hard time sticking to one project at a time?). I'd like to write a good tragedy in the tradition of those of past times. A tragedy has a unique and powerful emotional impact and I have some ideas on how I'd like to harness that impact.
• A non-fiction book — I like fiction, although my speciality has been and continues to be non-fiction. I'm just not sure what I'd write here. I know I'm a bit odd for wanting to write a non-fiction book but not knowing what it would be about… but, hey, you already knew I was odd, did you not?
• A collection of sonnets — this is something that needs to accumulate over time, not be done quickly. So, I've started writing them when something occurs that seems like it could be captured well in this form. The sonnet form is challenging, yet its iambic pentameter seems to flow quite naturally for many thoughts. What will I do with these sonnets? I don't know. Maybe they will stay on my hard disk forever, maybe I'll post them online… who knows.

As I said, these are long term goals I cannot begin to complete anytime soon, but inch by inch I come closer to eventually realizing them and I think the process — almost as much as the end result — will make it worthwhile.

Why the title? Well, for one thing, the play and the novel both have a dark tone to them, so they are most definitely on the shadowy side (that also explains why the events I've been whining about this week would be helpful). Also, as I noted, I'm not sure any of these things will ever come off my hard disk, so they are, indeed, in the shadows. If you want to know plots… well, you are just going to have to live with a cliffhanger here — I don't want to spoil the plots!

Moving Forward

The bad day that I cannot really talk about continued on through the rest of the week. One component of that day has to do with a problem that I talked about earlier this year (but won't bring up specifically here because there will be nothing gained by it), which has grown and a new set of back stabbing — as Ed perceptively picked up — has ensued.

The far worse part, the one I was directly referring to in the other post is totally unrelated and doesn't have anything to do with backstabbing or the like. The impact of it will reverberate for sometime, although I have come much more to terms with it over the past few days. God will have His timing to wind things back up for me, and I am confident that He will. That is sometimes hard to tell one's self, but I believe it to be true. In the mean time, I'm attempting to use some of the resulting meloncholy as a “muse” for writing — so far, it has helped, albeit not on any writing of any real use at this time.

Go Crazy!

Yes, the Cards trounced the Astros and St. Louis has become flooded in red. It was a nervous night even for those of us who happen to be people who usually do not follow sports. The team did great and the town, as always, showed itself to be a truly good sports town: we don't wreck our town when our team wins. Even people from Houston had to admit our city is a friendly one.

Watch out Boston, you are going down next!

Bad Day

Nothing serious… I'm sure in a few weeks it will seem trivial. But today, it seemed bad — its one of those aching, raw, in the pit of your stomach feelings that just moves in for awhile. Unusual for me — I'm usually the kind that bounces back from undesirable occurrences pretty quickly. But for now, I'll just have to deal with it without even being able to post on what led to it. sigh You know, it strikes me how important blogging has become to me — now I feel lost when I run into something important I can't “chew on” by writing a posting about.

Sorry to be depressing. It was a mostly good day, in actuality, just overridden by one disappointing event. I was going to go back on the blog-based campaign trail tonight, but I just don't feel up to it.

Oh, in happier news, GO CARDS! I was worried when it got into the twelfth inning tonight — we couldn't be defeated by those “nasty Texans.” I may not be a sports guy, but even I can't help but root for the home team.

Just In Case You Were Wondering...

…the case I am using now for my iPod is a the WaterField Designs Super Dooper ipod case. I'll be reviewing it in more detail once I've tried it out awhile longer, but overall, it seems really nice. It fits nice and snug around the iPod and provides easy access to all the stuff you need to be able to get to. It also doesn't leave any part of the iPod, that is likely to bump into things, open and able to be scratched.