The parade

Today was the Red Sox parade. It's amazing how cool 5 minutes could be. I wandered down the street to Tremont to catch them. Man, how I love living on the Hill.

So, anyway, the duck boats passed by with the Sox on board. I've been to a couple of games, some just 10 rows back from the dugout, but I've never really seen any of the Sox in the flesh. Seeing them on those boats was so cool. Seeing Damon, Pedro, and most especially Manny and Trot really made my day.

It was mindblowing just how many people were in town. The people going down Charles flooded it. Red Sox Nation is certainly one of the best group of fans I've ever seen.

In other news, Yasser Arafat may be on death's door. Good riddance, and I hope the door hits you on the way out. Yasser Arafat is nothing more than a mob boss, and it wil be interesting to see what happens to the Palestinians after he is gone. The Palestinian leadership are composed mostly by criminal thugs, and the situation after Arafat may very well develop into internecine warfare. That does not bode well for the innocent Palestinians, but it's something that may need to happen. Peace with the current Palestinian leadership is next to impossible, with the leadership simultaneously inciting its people to hate and commit terrorist acts against Israelis and angling for Israeli concessions. With any luck, after the dust has settled, the Palestinians will have no choice but to come to the table with the Israelis in good faith.

The weekend!

Ahhh, the weekend. Blessed weekend. Tomorrow is the parade for the Red Sox. I hope to be there, but this entire place is going to be packed. However, the weather tomorrow isn't promising.

Tomorrow evening, I'm off to the Hong Kong with my buddy Matt to drink myself close to stupid. Should be fun, regardless of who goes else goes. The Kong has always been a good time.

It's been a long week. What with the series and all, I haven't had nearly enough sleep and too much alcohol for not enough sleep.

Anyway, in today's latest Kerryism with Tom Brokaw, John Kerry stated very definitively that if he had been President he positively maybe would have removed Saddam Hussein from power. Good grief. This guy is absolutely amazing.

Sox win!

No burning of cars, but the Sox win!

Well, kiss my grits!

So I was talking about how I think that voting laws can be reformed, and I think that the gist of it is to have a national voter database for federal elections. Implementing the database wouldn't be too difficult, and the initial investment in IT would far outweigh the cost of lawyering and bureaucratic red tape we have now. The database itself would be easy: you would need only a person's full name, Social Security number (all citizens are issued this unique number), present address, and birth date. The registrant wouldn't even have to register in person. If all pertinent information is submitted to city hall, for example, a quick check of the information would ensure that there are no duplicate names and SSNs registered. Of course, this database would have to be tied into the Social Security Administration to ensure that the names are crosschecked against the SSNs uniquely and that the name and SSN are actually associated with each other. This would also eliminate the chance of voters being registered in multiple locations. I'm sure that this was thought of before and was probably shot down primarily for privacy reasons, but I think that, in this case, another look should be in order. The 2000 election, as well as the 2004 election and onward, demand such reforms.

In other news, Andrew Sullivan continues to win the award for The Most Breathless Conservative Blogger on the 'Net in his persecution of the Bush administration. I don't know if his disillusionment is a factor in this, but recently, he's really been laying into the Bush administration with an eagerness more attributable to Kos. His most recent blog about Bush's incompetence in guarding weapon sites such as Al-Qaqaa has already been debunked by NBC News even before the day was out. It turns out that the U.S. military, along with embedded NBC News reporters, was at the site on April 10, 2003 and found no caches of HDX and RDX. And really, folks, the irony of the New York Times touting the dual uses of HDX and RDX only reinforces the Duelfer report's findings that Saddam actively sought WMDs.

Now, I admire Andrew a lot. I've got a lot in common with him politically. His analysis of the news has often been trenchant and insightful, but recently, and especially with the Bush administration, his remarks in my opinion have become shriller and shriller by the minute. And maybe it's just me, but Andrew seems to have been linking more and more often to the New York Times for his posts. Take that how you will, but don't mind me, I'm just one ant in the anthill.

Also today, Mickey Kaus notes that Kerry himself didn't think that Iraq was a diversion all the way back in November, 2001!

Wow. Just wow. I did not know that, and I'm stunned. This actually says two things to me. First, John Kerry cannot run from his record of saying one thing, then saying the complete opposite. But second, and perhaps most significantly, Kerry perhaps really did get it after 2001, which mitigates the first. If so, all he has to do is prove to me that he really will take the fight on the GWOT to the terrorists and use all of America's power to transform the Muslim world. Nah, don't think it will happen.

And still following today's theme, George Bush, in an interview with Charlie Gibson on Good Morning, America, said that he supports civil unions between gay couples and all the rights associated with those trappings. Wow, I'm glad that I'm sitting down right now.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan responds by saying that the news crew and the 101st would not have been able to determine whether the HDX and RDX were missing and sticks to the New York Times's account until the facts change. Who is he kidding? Exactly what facts are there to be had? The only facts are that until March 8th, 2003, the explosives were there. Afterwards, there is no evidence as to what happened to them save one thing: that the U.S. military on April 4th, 2003 and April 10th (this time with an NBC crew) reported no HDX nor RDX. There are no other facts to this matter save supposition and conjecture. The New York Times story is nothing more than sensationalism.

Ah, well. For some great local news, the Sox win again! It's 3-0, and I hope that they learned their lessons from the Sox/Yankees series and put the last nail in the coffin.

Night all.

Ahh, Monday.

Back to work today. Man, I'm beat. I'm glad that there isn't a game tonight. I'm going to be able to catch some Z's (yeah, right). Anyway, I'm doing the same ol', same ol' today. Man, this computer drudgery is brutal. If it weren't for the Punch You In The Face™ coffee, I'd be dead on my feet.

Listening to sports radio. Not too much about the Sox, which is surprising. In fact, most of the news is about the Pats. During the middle of this are DNC commercials bashing Kerry. What's laughable is the part where they say that Bush is giving handouts to the oil company, then complaining about the high oil prices, then criticizing Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Just one minute, here. I thought Bush's invasion of Iraq was supposed to be about oil! Wouldn't that lower oil prices and silence one of the complaints of the DNC? That's the problem with liberals; they don't know what they want. They point in every which direction, which necessitates conflicting goals, much like the problem here in Massachusetts with the wind farm off the Cape. Here we are with environmentalists calling for renewable energy and less polluting forms of energy than, say, coal. So what happens? An idea for putting a wind farm off the Cape is proposed. Sounds good right? But no, other environmentalists say that the wind farm ruins the picturesque view of the area! Amazing! It's a classic case of NIMBY and prominently displays the inherent hypocrisy of liberals. They want everything to be easy, quick, and painless. That's why they support higher taxes to pay for Social Security, welfare, Medicare, and every other entitlement. Ask them to roll up their sleeves and actually do something about it, and the vast majority quickly turn into heartless Republicans. "Oh, I don't have time." or "Oh, somebody will take care of it." are the usual responses. It's always "Somebody Else's Problem". They play the bleeding heart, but once push comes to shove, they're bastards just like Republicans, only Republicans don't make any bones about it.

On another note, Arthur Chrenkoff notes John Kerry's real feelings about "the so-called coalition of the bribed,the coerced, the bought and the extorted". The blatant hypocrisy is almost too much to bear. Kerry can't help but talk out of both sides of his mouth, which is why I cannot support him. I'm a single-issue voter in this election, and for someone who was the son of a diplomat, he shows no real diplomatic ability other than kow-towing to France and Germany.

Politics. This race has got to be one of the most divisive in history, and definitely the most since I've been around. And it's this way because people have lost faith in the system. The vote was supposed to be the final arbiter of who wins and who loses. Sports is a lot like the election race. You have rules and referees, just like in sports. In football, say, you may disagree with the call of the referee, but ultimately, the call is accepted simply because people believe in the system and the rules. Where everything breaks down is when the system isn't clearly defined and the rules are called into question. With voting, just like in football, there should be very little room in making a judgment call in who wins and who loses. The most mangled rule is the federal "motor-voter" law. Registering to vote never was so easy...and so easy to cheat. Because the rules became gray (and broken), it allowed more and more judgment by referees. And we all hate the refs. When we don't have enough trust in who wins and who loses, what we get is ways to take advantage the system in a self-catalytic exponential growth of distrust and rancor.

What to do? It's late, so I can't talk more about what I think should happen to ensure fair elections that restores our faith in the system. More tomorrow and g'night.

What a dreary day!

It's raining here on the Hill. How dreary. But, it's Sunday, and that's my take-it-easy day. I'm looking forward to the Sox game tonight. I don't plan on staying out too late tonight watching the game. I've been pretty zonked at work, and I'm developing a resistance to the caffeine. But who knows? More than likely, however, I probably will stay up for the entire game, unless the Sox are kicking so much butt.

In some good news today, it seems like Hamid Karzai is the winner in the Afghani elections. And the most significant thing is that he won by getting a little more than 50% of the vote. It means that the Afghan vote isn't subject to the fraud of, say, Iraq's election of 2002, and that can only be good news for Afghanistan.

And that's really the problem of John Kerry. Where Bush is accused (and rightfully so) of ignoring problems, John Kerry can be accused of ignoring good news and only remembering the negative. Maybe it's just election politics, but the fact of the matter is that in only a couple of years, Afghanistan is on the road to being a democracy, where before it was nothing more than a women-beating Taliban theocracy. That, in itself, is tremendous testimony of the transformative power of the United States and liberty.

Ah, well. On the best of notes, however, the Sox win again! They're up 2-0. Schilling was great, and all the guys are stepping up. I hope they get their errors under control, though. The Cards haven't lost at home in the playoffs, so if the Sox can get 1 or sweep, that would be great. I hope the Sox sweep. The series has been killer for my liver and wallet.

Night for now.

Whew!

It's been quite a day for me! Dropped my car off at the shop, went to the gym, went home, picked up my car, and then went to the Head of the Charles. It's pretty cold today. A three-layer day, in fact.

The Head of the Charles was its usual self. A lot of rowers, a lot of people hawking stuff, a lot of people buying it. There was the Kerry campaign begging for money. Apparently, the campaign is in so much trouble that they still have to ask for money 10 days before the election! Amazing. Maybe it's to pay off the mortgage Kerry took out on his house. You know, the one that he couldn't even pay the interest of with his income. I, of course, politely declined.

Not to be outdone, however, was the Bush/Cheney campaign desk, manned by a cold guy and girl, who asked me to help knock on doors in New Hampshire for $75/day. No offense, but if they're asking people from Massachusetts, much less Cambridge, to knock on doors in New Hampshire, that's really sad. In fact, the entire desk was sad. It was a small card table with a Bush/Cheney poster on it with a couple of forms. I don't think they had a single visitor today save me.

And now, I'm back in my studio on the Hill. Checking today's political news, it seems like The Guardian is advocating the assassination of George W. Bush! Amazing! But hey, the site's down (now I wonder why?), so check out Instapundit for the relevant graf.

Sickening. It's just sickening. To advocate the assassination of the leader of the free world is just about the lowest you can go. But, hey, it's okay, because it's George W. Bush. That, coupled with Lawrence O'Donnell's nuclear meltdown on MSNBC has shown me that the left have gone completely bonkers in their hatred of Bush. Hey, I'm no fan of his, but I'm less of a fan of Kerry, and I don't want Kerry dead.

It's not a good sign when the Dems get so desperate, so full of vitriol, that they have to stoop so low. I don't ever recall a major conservative newspaper advocating the death of a Democratic President. Granted, The Guardian is a British paper, but seriously folks, these guys are demented loons. What with their arrogant attempt to try to influence U.S. elections, what other conclusion is there to be had?

Sigh. Anyway, enough of that for now. I must prepare to drink heavily and cheer on the Sox. I fear for the future of Boston.

UPDATE: Sox win!

By the way, I hated the stupid political ad during the Sox game. I mean, can't we all have 3 (or 4 or 5 or 6) hours where we don't hear anything about politics and just bond over the Sox? For goodness's sake!