Democratic National Convention

I've been watching most of it since 7:00 on C-SPAN. Nothing terribly remarkable thus far. Al Gore had a few humorous barbs aimed at Bush that were pretty good, I'll admit. “You win some, you lose some. And then there is that third type,” Gore remarked.

That was the only thing that's really stuck out so far, I think. Not surprisingly, all of the speakers have attacked Bush a lot. Sen. Clinton is coming up right now.

The Old Gray Lady Admits Stance

Well, not really, but almost. The reader advocate for the New York Times finally has admitted that the paper is unabashedly liberal. And not just on the opinion page or the op-ed page, but in its news coverage. In an insightful piece, Daniel Okrent, the “Public Editor” of the Times even notes that the paper's characture of the gay marriage issue makes things look so great that they “would make a very effective ad campaign for the gay marriage cause.”

Okrent, who seems to enjoy this self-examination, continues, saying that “You wouldn't even need the articles: run the headlines over the invariably sunny pictures of invariably happy people that ran with most of these pieces, and you'd have the makings of a life insurance commercial.” So what will the liberal media do now?

That's going to be difficult. It was relatively easy for the media elites to black list Bernard Goldberg, a long time CBS News reporter who they could argue was obviously crazy. After all, he published his harsh criticism of bias in the media in the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. What will they do now that the Old Gray Lady has said the same thing?

They'll probably ignore it. First, a disclaimer at the bottom of the article makes it clear that the Times isn't officially saying this. And, even if they are, the likelihood most people will hear about it is rather slim. Despite its impressive size, the New York Times still isn't read by most Americans, and I can't see Dan Rather coming on and saying “In other news, we at CBS News admit today that we're a bunch of liberals. All that stuff I said about us being all across the spectrum was hogwash.”

So maybe this article will do some good. For once the mainstream media won't be able to just mindlessly copy all the stories from the Times.

Reflections on the Rally

Well, I know I keep promising, so here are some thoughts — scattered as they may be at one o'clock — about the rally on Tuesday.

I've already said it was great. The speakers, who hit on a lot of important issues, including the Missouri Marriage Amendment, where interesting. Save for MO GOP chairwoman Ann Wagner, it was a mostly positive set of remarks too. Ms. Wagner did do a bit of mud slinging, on the other hand, comparing a Kerry Speech to a root canal and doing an obligatory slam of President Clinton. Other than that, though, most of the presentations were purposeful statements of what the politicians hoped to do.

With an estimated 11,000 people in attendance, the arena was almost full and and certainly was full of anticipation. There was a definite sense of anticipation back in November of 2000 at the Family Arena when the then-Gov. Bush came in for one of the last pre-election rallies, but that excitement was far larger now that Dubya is the most powerful man in the free world.

The UMC Church of the Shepherd worship team did a great job. I can't imagine what their Sunday services are like, but they were very good at doing different styles of music including rock, CCM and traditional patriotic. The second group to sing was a bit too rap-like for my taste, but they did get everyone going chanting “B-U-S-H.” I need to look up their name, but I think they might be a Christian rap band.

Then, the speakers quit as did the music groups and we had canned music for a few minutes. After awhile, a man in a black suit came out and placed the presidential seal on the podium. He's arrived! Sure enough, a few moments later, the room grew dark and as dramatic music echoed through the arena, lights made to project “W's” floated around the room and the ceiling turned red, white and blue. “Ladies and gentlemen… please welcome the President of the United States!” Then the spotlight found its subject and President Bush was on stage.

At that point, the president took to the podium and spoke for probably about 45 minutes. In 2000 he presented a great vision and message. Yet his tone and message were far more purposeful and eloquent this time, showing how the events of the last three years had transformed Bush from someone apparently destined for a lukewarm presidency to certainly one of the most determined, interesting presidents in some time.

Negativity was kept to a minimum, with only a few pokes at Kerry. The big poke (and one well earned by Kerry) was about Kerry's ringing praise of the vulgar Hollywood elites and their comments made at a fundraiser earlier this month. How Kerry could listen to people like Whoopi Goldberg make obscene remarks and then say they were the “heart and soul” of America is beyond me. President Bush noted that he thought the “heart and soul” of America was “in placed like St. Charles, Missouri.”

At an earlier, more lighthearted moment, he also pointed to Kerry's flip-flopping. “Sen. Kerry has been in Washington a long time. Long enough to hold both sides on just about every issue.” Later, he joked that if you ran into Sen. Kerry and found you disagreed with his views, you clearly just ran into him on the wrong day.

Bush covered his standard stump fair, including stopping frivolous lawsuits, keeping the U.S. independent of other nations (more specifically, not to trust national security decisions to other world leaders), keeping taxes low, a pitch for “No Child Left Behind” and, of course, lots of talk about Iraq. He pledged to do all he could to keep the country safe and never allow the government to take measures that would make the country less secure “during his watch.”

He also did a small pitch for gubernatorial hopeful Matt Blunt. After making one statement he looked back at Blunt and quipped, “isn't that right, governor.”

Overall, his message came across extremely sincere and assuring of his positions. It was probably one of the best speeches I've heard him give. Being there definitely made it just that much better. After the end of the speech, he took a long time to shake hands, going deep into the crowd, picking up babies, and even — right before leaving — jumping up in the air to touch the hand of someone leaning down from a high row of seats over the doorway.

All I can say is this: if you get the chance to go see the President during this election season, do it. It was an experience that can't be exactly explained by putting a few words together on a screen. You won't regret it, but I think you will regret missing out on the opportunity.

The Bush Rally Photos

Here are the promised photos from yesterday's event. I had hoped to post a bit more about the event, but time got away from me. Tomorrow, hopefully…

For now, just enjoy the photo tour. The 38 photos I've posted are the best of the bunch I got. I also recorded most of the speech using my camera's video recording functionality, but I doubt the campaign would want me to post that (copyright issues and the like).

Wow.

I went to the rally for President Bush today. It was amazing. I have lots of photos, I'll post some tomorrow.

Politics by the Numbers

The political compass divides views into a four way map with coordinates rather than just a two way spectrum in the following manner.

My “score” is:
Economic Left/Right: 1.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.97

That makes me just slightly below the middle on the up/down social scale between Libertarian and Authoritarian views and just a bit more skewed from center to the right on the economic scale. I guess that makes me a “compassionate conservative.”

Okay, one more way to look at this, courtesy of Christopher:

“32 percent liberal, 68 percent conservative - compared to 73 percent liberal, 27 percent conservative” You can click the link to view my full results and take the quiz for yourself. (The comparison part is based on the poll's ability to compare your views with someone else's. I chose to enter my father's views, as best I understand them, as the second person.)

Interesting. So I took three polls. The first puts me far the right, the second puts me just right of center and the third puts me somewhat in the middle of the right (half way between ultra-conservative and centrist). The latter two are closer together and I think they my corroborate what I generally held to be true: I'm a conservative, but not an ultra-conservative. Furthermore, I generally am slightly more liberal economically than socially (mostly due to less conviction about the issues there, I suspect), although I lean to the right on both.

Finally, the last quiz also includes a personality segment:
There has been much research on how people describe others, and five major dimensions of human personality have been found. They are often referred to as the OCEAN model of personality, because of the acronym from the names of the five dimensions. Your specific personality indicates that the following attributes will most likely describe you well:
You enjoy having novel experiences and seeing things in new ways.
You are neither organized or disorganized.
You tend to shy away from social situations.
You tend to consider the feelings of others.
You are generally relaxed.

President Comes to Town

I was in downtown St. Charles, a quaint little area of historic buildings along our river front, this afternoon, when I noticed something unusual: a bunch of “Bush-Cheney” signs on the street. I decided to investigate and noticed underneath it said “Tickets” with an arrow pointing up the street. Following the arrows to the side a building, I found a door with another campaign sign on it. By this time, I was intrigued, so I went inside.

As it turned out, this was the Bush-Cheney campaign office for the area and they were giving away tickets to go see the President at the nearby Family Arena on Tuesday. Needless to say, I jumped on the offer and got a ticket. I was at the family arena four years ago when the then-governor of Texas came into town just a few days before the election. This time, I get to see the President of the United States. Pretty exciting!

I guess it pays to look at signs… you just never know what surprise might arise from them.

Kerry Makes a Firm Indecision

Thoughts on Bush's Economic Track Record

The problem: Putting a price ceiling on a market doesn't work. Additionally, by limiting revenues that drug companies can make,  it will encourage less innovation and thus medical research could stagnate.

Tax Cuts
Before Bush was even became president, there was talk that the Bush tax cut would only benefit the wealthy. But it just isn't true. Everyone who pays taxes got a tax cut, some just got larger tax cuts. But, isn't a $200 tax cut still good? That's like half a week's pay for a lower middle class worker — not shabby by any means.

It all comes down to percentages. If you pay more taxes, there are more taxes that you may not have to pay any longer. There's no way someone can give me a million dollar tax cut, because I don't pay a million dollars. Does that mean I should say no one should get a million dollar tax cut? No.  Why should someone not get a tax cut simply because they make more than I do?

Imagine if the Bush tax cut said "everyone gets half a weeks wages/salary off their normal taxes owed." While the person I mentioned above might only get $200, a CEO might get $50,000. There is no way the former could ever get that much off because that is more than they make all year and certainly more than they pay in taxes. Yet, giving $1,000 or $2,000 off to the CEO wouldn't really be meaningful. So, tax cuts are almost always bound to be cases where the rich get a larger reduction, but that's only because taxes are based on what you make.

Personally I still advocate a flat tax system where everyone would pay the same rate across the board (except maybe the very lowest income tax payers). The thing is, not only do the rich pay more taxes if they were taxed at the same percentage rate, they actually are taxes at a higher rate making the tax burden higher than it should be.

Kerry, as David points out, talks about giving "average American" tax cuts and raising taxes on the richer Americans. The best system is to cut everyone's taxes, which is what the president has done. The economy is a big circle (getting bigger with globalization) — if you  allow those on top to keep more cash, they will invest in new businesses. If you  allow those on the bottom to keep more cash, they will buy more and also start businesses. The key is not to penalize anyone. If you penalize those who earn a lot for earning a lot, you lower the motivation to work hard and create the new businesses that provide for more jobs.

Price Inflation and Consumer Buying Power
Most of the universities in my area are charging little or nothing more than what they were in 2000. Some tuition fees are bound to rise as inflation occurs, but this is unavoidable. Here's the key idea, however: It is not the President's job, nor should it be the President's job, to regulate prices.

Why not prevent prices from going up? Because of what I mentioned earlier, a price ceiling doesn't work. It didn't work with oil in the 70's, it won't work with tuition now. If costs are going up (which they almost always will, again due to normal inflation), tuition must go up. Tuition might have gone up, but so have earnings. I know professor who teaches at the very same university he went to thirty years ago. At the time, his book cost just $10 for the class, but he was also only able to earn $1 an hour working. Today the book costs over $100 for his course, but college students can also get a job earning $10 or more an hour. For the most part, inflation moves everything up at a very similar rate (thus why a minimum wage will never accomplish much — when you raise that everything else goes up, thus never really increasing buying power, but that's another story…).

What we really should ask is how much buying power do we have now compared to four years ago before President Bush. The cost of living, according to reliable statistics, has been fairly stable for quite awhile. Sure, a pair of shoes that cost $19.99 in 1990 might go for $29.99 now — but you are also making more than you did in 1990.

Overall, our economy is very healthy and unemployment is at around 5.5%, the last I heard. This is a very good number to be at — you will never reach 0% unless you hire people to do nothing (like the Soviets did). There will always be unemployment as people look for new jobs, take of for a sabbatical or to spend time with family, etc. Maybe the economy isn't as good as it was in the 1990's, but I would point out that the recent decline started before President Bush gave up the title "Governor." Let me note that again, the recent decline started before President Bush gave up the title "Governor." The economic downturn occurred in 2000, while President Clinton was still in office.

What we have hear is a reverse of the effect of the 1990's. Presidents Reagen and Bush (the father) pursued various policies to strengthen the economy. In 1990 and 1991, there were some economic problems, but the economy was starting to improve by the time Bush lost. Thus we have a case that one Bush doesn't get credit for the economic improvements he did make and the other Bush gets blamed for economic problems he didn't make. But, I'm using the word "make" very loosely anyway, because the economic power of the president by himself is very dubious indeed.

Not So Victorious

Well, my votes didn't go so well today. Mayor Tom Brown, who has been considered virtually invincible in the past, lost by over 10% of the vote. Two tax hikes passed, one for $.86 per $100 going to the Francis Howell School district (who has had money “disappear” — as accounting fraud and the like — in recent years and was claiming the hike was necessary to save extracirricular activities such as sports). FH School District really should learn how to manage the money it has before getting yet another tax hike.

Depressing. I'm especially disappointed to see our long-time mayor lose. The new guy (Shawn Brown, no relation to Tom Brown) made his big campaign issue the fact that the new mayor's salary increases by $3,000 a year, and thus Mayor Brown would have been paid $100,000 this year ($40,000 base + $3,000 for each of his twenty years of service as mayor). On the other hand the new Brown only gets the $40,000 for his first year. It is too bad, Mayor Brown has been good for the area.

In lighter news, here's the latest quiz (thanks go to Kevin):

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!