Pocket Universe

It is always good to hear news stories like this one about what George W. Bush has done for Africa.

I think this picture says it all:

Some call it Mardi Gras. Others call it Super Tuesday. I have a different name for it: my birthday.

Another year has gone by, and I am still walking the earth. To celebrate, I decided to cast my vote on an important national issue, one that will shape our country for years to come. This is perhaps the preeminent concern of our generation, and I thought it was time to take a stand and make my position known:

I bought my first Blu-ray Disc.

After the shocking announcement by Warner Bros. at CES that they would be dropping HD-DVD support (after which the HD-DVD consortium cancelled their press conference), Blu-ray now has support from 80% of the major motion picture studios, with Paramount and Universal being the remaining holdouts. There are rumors that even they will commit to Blu-ray by June. Combined with plummeting HD-DVD sales, it looks like Blu-ray finally has the marketshare and the mindshare to become the new high-definition standard for home video. But the reason I decided to make my first purchase today is out of nostalgia: It was on this day ten years ago that I bought my first DVD. I think it is only fitting that I make the switch to HD on the same day. (For the curious, my first DVD was Little Shop of Horrors, which had just been recalled, and the Blu-ray Disc I bought today was The Fifth Element.)

In other election news, I continued my celebration by doing what all good Americans should do: voting for Mitt Romney. Hopefully he can pull the Republican nomination out. In any case, it’s nice to vote in a national election where my vote actually counts, since California is not a winner-take-all state. Most of the time, my voice is drowned out among all the liberals around here. I guess we’ll know later tonight if my birthday truly is a day for celebration, or a day of mourning.

In the �give credit where credit is due” department, I need to point out some of Bill Maher�s statements when he appeared with Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

MAHER: And I said, that�s not fair, because, first of all, I�m not a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. I have a lot of positions that are conservative. And I�ve also been supportive of President Bush now that I think Iraq is turning around.

I�m one of those liberals who said, you know what? You can�t work backwards from, I hate Bush, from everything he does, says and smirks, to, here is another bad thing he did. I said, you know what? This is turning out OK in Iraq. He had a bigger and better idea than the most of us. And you have to give up credit for that.

…

…but, on the other hand, this plan with the Middle East, I do think it is taking root. I do think that we may have reached the tipping point and there�s no turning back.

And this is the guy who nobody else was looking to do this. Not one other person in America was saying, you know what? After 9/11, we have got to go into Iraq. It�s just that he lied to get us there.

Of course, he spends a lot of time hedging his statements, compliementing Bush and then suddenly acting like it�s sarcasm, stuff like that. And he spends a lot of time with the whole �Bush lied” canard that has been beaten to death by now. But however he may try to disguise it, he does admit that things are turning out all right in Iraq, and that Bush had a vision for the future that many other people lacked. Of course, maybe he�s just covering his own hide for when things turn out all right in Iraq, so he can say, �No, no, I supported Bush!” But I do think that he is giving Bush a fair amount of credit for the good things that have happened with Iraq, and I think it is worth pointing that out.

I really enjoyed reading this article from Yahoo! News about Nancy Pelosi. In particular, I enjoyed her last line in the article: �‘We have lost just about everything that we can lose,� she said. ”

Yes Nancy. Yes you have.

At this point in time, we�re on the cusp of four more years of the Bush presidency. In addition, the Republicans got the votes to control both the House and the Senate, just like they did in 2002 (even though the Congress usually shifts the other way after a new President is elected). Florida looks like it�s not even close, and even Ohio seems to have a comfortable margin.

The most common responses I�ve heard from my liberal friends run somewhere along the lines of, �I don�t understand how this could happen!” �I can�t believe that half of the country thinks like you do!” They are just shocked and amazed, because it seems so obvious to them what a horrible person George W. Bush is, and they have no idea how he could possible get reelected (or, indeed, have gotten elected in the first place).

Now, let�s examine what we�ve gone through in the last four years: �Selected Not Elected”; �Like Father, Like Son, One Term, and Then You�re Done”; Fahrenheit 9/11 and the Oscars; weapons of mass destruction; manufactured evidence against Bush; an inherited recession, followed by the largest domestic terrorist attack in American history; performances in three debates that were at the very least underwhelming; and 11th-hour fears about missing weapons in Iraq.

Yet, with all that, Bush still looks like he�s going to win this election. And that�s not even considering the events of the 2000 election, where you had Bush running against the incumbent Vice President, coming off of eight years of a successful, highly popular President, along with the greatest period of economic growth in recent memory. And even with all that, Bush still managed to squeak out a win, when it shouldn�t have even been close.

So for my liberal friends: How you can explain that? Are that many people in the country that much stupider than you? Or maybe, just maybe, are you wrong about some very basic assumptions that you are making about the President?

Just something to think about.

I love our governor!

Chris has recommend that I read this article from the New York Times (free registration required), as it explains his concerns with President Bush as a world leader. I will post it here without comment, in hopes that it will spark some discussion. I�ll share my thoughts on the article after everyone has had a chance to read it. Be warned, though: It is a little long.

William F. Buckley talks about the value of oil.

I am uncertain that this article on Iron Monkey is completely accurate. And I have no evidence that it is relevant to our society of implicit blame.

According to Department of Transportation highway fatality data, our national highways are getting more dangerous every day. Did you realize that 42,643 people died in traffic accidents in 2003? That is an increase of 1032 deaths compared to 1999. In the District of Columbia alone, traffic fatalies increased by nearly 50% over the previous year. And SUV rollover fatalies increased 6.8 percent, from 2,471 to 2,639.

In a related topic, you may want to read this article on Iron Monkey about how to scare people with statistics.

From an article in the 10/11/04 issue of the Wall Street Journal, �A Wild and Crazy Guy”:

THAT�S RICH
Who�s Not Paying Their Fair Share?
2003 EFFECTIVE TAX RATE
George and Laura Bush: 30.4%
Typical Middle Class Families: 20%
John and Teresa Kerry: 12.8%

The Kerrys have unwittingly made the case for what George W. Bush says he wants to do: radically simplify and flatten out the tax code. Dick Armey and Steve Forbes have persuasively argued over the years that America should have a flat tax with a rate of 17% to 19%. John Kerry has consistently opposed a flat tax, because he says it would be a tax break for the rich. But the truth is with a 19% flat tax, some rich people with lavish tax shelters, like John Kerry, would pay more taxes. I calculate that the Kerrys would pay another $500,000 of taxes if we had a flat tax.

In preparation for tonight�s debate, here are some facts on the current state of the economy. It is good to see the economic numbers with a little historical perspective, such as the fact that this recession had the shortest recovery time, unemployment numbers about about where they were during the �80s and �90s, and some information about long-term effects of rolling back Bush�s tax cuts. Hopefully Bush will bring up some of these points tonight. I wish, for once, that he would mention the unemployment rate, instead of just the number of jobs lost, which is always going to look bad.

In a move that surprised nearly no one, CBS and Dan Rather have finally apologized for using the forged National Guard memos as the basis for their story…well, sort of. Instead of admitting that the documents are forgeries, Rather said, �I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.” And instead of admitting that they didn�t research the authenticity well enough, they claim that they were �misled” about where the documents came from. (You can read more about the actual source of the documents in this story.) I�ll stop giving you the blow-by-blow, since I�m just sick of listen to Rather and CBS trying to spin this story to make it look not as bad for them. It�s just desperate and sad.

My good friend Mike also sent me a link to a side-by-side comparison between the forged National Guard memos and similar memos which are verified as authentic. With all the discussions about what typewriters or typesetting devices could possibly have produced the memos in question, it�s important to see exactly how inaccurate the forged memos actually were, and how the source in question could have done a much better job using just a 1970s typewriter.

�You don�t support Democrats. Why should your ketchup?”

The Shape of Days has another good article about the forged memos, including some interesting points about automatic centering. Be careful though: You could probably spend several days just reading the comments.

In case you hadn’t heard all the controversy about the alleged National Guard memos, the short version is that 60 Minutes did a piece last Wednesday about Bush’s National Guard service, and as part of their evidence that Bush shirked his duties, they presented four newly-obtained memos from Jerry Killian, Bush’s commanding officer at the time. You can read the whole article here, but basically, the memos said things like, “I’ve been pressured to sugar-coat Bush’s military record,” and other testimony that makes Bush look really bad.

The problem is, a bunch of people on the internet got together and found that if you typed the memo in Microsoft Word with the default font (Times New Roman) and settings (margin, spacing, etc.), it matches exactly with the memo from 1972. But since most typewriters in 1972 did not use proportionally-spaced fonts, or superscripting, or curly quotes, it seems extremely unlikely that these documents were from 1972, and more likely that they were poor forgeries by someone using Microsoft Word, who wasn’t even smart enough to use a monospaced font and turn off curly quotes.

So CBS is standing by their report, despite the preponderance of evidence that the documents were forged. I found a very convincing argument here, from someone with vast amounts of knowledge about desktop publishing, that seems to prove conclusively that they were forged. Interesting reading.

Even better than Rudy Giulianis speech at the Republican National Convention was Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggers speech. Really, it was just brilliant. Schwarzenegger is known for being one of the more moderate members of the Republican party, but he focused on all the key conservative elements of being a Republican. He talked about coming to America as an immigrant (a legal immigrant, I should point out), and of the career he made for himself through hard work, perseverance, and the American Dream. He was firm in his beliefs and strong in his faith in America.

And he also used humor to underscore his beliefs. When talking about the strength of the U.S. economy, he addressed the naysayers by saying, And for those people who say that the U.S. economy is weak, I say to them, ‘STOP BEING ECONOMIC GIRLY-MEN!” Fantastic! The audience loved him! Remember, you can download the speech for free on the iTunes Music Store, so you can put it in your playlist along with Cake and Sir Mix-A-Lot. Thats what Ill be doing.

For those who are interested in what makes our country great, the iTunes Music Store has the 2004 Republican National Convention Speeches available for free download. I can�t link directly to the page of all the speeches, but there is a link on the iTumes Music Store home page. In particular, I really enjoyed Rudy Giuliani�s speech, and I think you will too.