Kerry Calls Bush to Concede

FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004 - Kerry Calls Bush to Concede

Frankly I was expecting a much longer "litigation" phase of the election. I was also curious how a Democratic victory in the electoral college without a victory in the popular vote would sit with the far-left opponants of the electoral college system. I was also curious to see if Republicans would start screaming that Kerry "stole" the election. That would have kept me entertained for months!

So we have four more years of George W. Bush... The second terms are always more interesting than the first terms for presidents because they do not have to worry about being re-elected in 4 years. So Bush can stop beating the conservative war drum if he wants to. Or he can kick it up a notch. The country on the whole is leaning to the right slightly, so maybe he'll ride that momentum.

I was a Gore supporter in 2000 because of technology and I was a Bush supporter this year because of the economy and the need for a much tougher international stance. Michael Moore, Soros & Co., and the people who support "anybody but Bush" also helped give Bush my vote this year. Maybe more than anything else. I disagree with Bush a LOT of the time, but he has a reasonable position that can be debated on the facts. The Anti-Bush camp does not exhibit that quality. I'm more inclined to support someone I disagree with but whose position I understand than someone who's position is so convoluted and exagerated that I can't decide whether I agree with them or not. So, no one cares what I think Bush needs to do over the next four years, but I'm going to tell you anyway... :)

1. Get a defensible position on stem cell research. Clearly the field needs to be regulated but it needs encouraging regulation not discouraging regulation. Aborted babies are not the only source of research material and fetuses are aborted for lots of reasons. The potential benefits of the research far outweigh the arch-conservatives fears of a Brave New World.

2. Become more active on the environment, hydrogen fuel was a good push but we need more proactive effort and less of a reactive effort. The U.S. ends up dragging its feet on environmental issues and always gets backed into unfavorable political corners by more proactive countries. We need to be out there developing concepts that everyone can live with, not just the rest of the world. I'm not chicken little on global warming, but resources are finite and there's a whole lot more hydrogen than crude.

3. Push harder on the Mars mission idea. The 400 Trillion dollar figures have been debunked and every successful culture needs a frontier to keep novel ideas flowing in. NASA needs a KIA anyway, moral over there is tough for manned missions.

4. Find some innovative Supreme Court candidates. The us vs. then issues are so deadlocked that nothing will ever get done. Since neither side is right or completely wrong, Some enterprising policy people need to bite the bullet and start coming up with third and fourth options.

5. Forget about the Patriot Act. No one likes snoops. Controlling the borders with the same energy he wants to control our airspace (a la missle defense) is a better strategy than checking up on our reading habits or bypassing judicial review for search warrants. Fortunately, John Ashcroft has resigned. Gonzales is pretty conservative, but hopefully he'll end up being more sensible than Ashcroft or at least more innovative.

6. Make the tax cuts permanent. To hell with the liberal drivel about tax breaks for the rich... according to the Democrats anyone actually paying taxes is too rich. The economy is steadily improving inspite of Iraq and the massive slump following the WTC attacks on September 11th, 2001. There may be a gap in jobs creation but no one is going to start hiring again until they are sure there will be work for new employees to do. As long as the economy keeps improving, those jobs will manifest of their own accord.

7. Toughen up on education. Our public schools are insane. Abusive students need to be dealt with so they don't keep their classmates from making the most of their time in school. Teachers need legal back-up to enforce a learning environment. So long as lawyers are successfully suing school boards, cities and teachers for "abuse" then our classrooms are held hostage. Additionally, there must be regular testing of teachers to ensure they are qualified to teach their classes. A degree in making kids feel better does not qualify you to teach history or english or even art. Teachers should have to pass the same kinds of tests they give. A teacher not smart or educated enough to pass high school english classes has no business teaching those classes. The hell with the teacher's unions. I say a teacher who excells ought to be elegible for pay increases based on their effort, not collective extortion.

8. Gay Marriage? Nope. Marriage shoould be taken out of the government's hands all together. The only thing the government ought to regulate is civil unions. A marriage is essentially a civil union between a man and a woman. Let the churches decide who is married and who is simply unioned civilly. It has no bearing on the functioning of the government at all. It also keeps revisionists from altering the english language and our thoughts through legal channels. Marriage IS defined as the legal union of a man and a woman. Homosexuals cannot change that. They are welcomed to be legally united all day long, but it will never be a "marriage". As long as the federal and state governments insist on regulating marriages as a distinct and specific institution it will be fair game for liberals and further divide the country. If it's left up to the churches, then a gay or lesbian has as much right to demand to be married as I have to demand a Bar Mitzvah.

9. Massive reform for oversight of spending in government. There out to be a branch of the FBI specifically devoted to hunting down government waste and proposing changes to policy and structure to rectify the situation. Abuse of the government is rampant. We pay a ton of money in taxes each year for good causes and programs only to have our money frittered away on incompetance and inefficiency. I'd feel a hell of a lot better about paying taxes if that money were going to the people who needed it rather than some self important bureaucrat. I won't suipport another spending bill until somethingis done!

10. Get aggressive in Iraq. We cannot finish the war there if we are on teh defensive. I understand the Iraqi government is in charge and we are backing them up, but we need to fight to win. The fact that Falujah has resisted for months while insurgents there snipe at US troops and Iraqi security forces is a major fault. The retaking of that city with full force gives me hope that we're done pussyfooting around there. Bush can do what needs to be done without worrying about election year blowback. The Islamic fundamentalists are streaming into Iraq to fight the great Satan so we fight them there and we fight to win.

Since I started this list President Bush has already initiated a few of my ideas. Ashcroft is gone and Flujah is under siege. I'm curious as to how he'll handle the other issues.

Stephen Hawking says Iraq war was based on 'lies'

HoustonChronicle.com - Stephen Hawking says Iraq war was based on 'lies'

Fortunately I have little faith in the political acumen of scientists. However, it'd be nice if Hawking were at least a little bit informed when he issues his political opinions. Or maybe his political blackhole is obliterating all information that falls into it?

Hawkings position (augmented by the media) rests on two perceived "lies". The first that there was a threat from weapons of mass destruction. The leap to "lie" on that one is popular in the far-left echo-chamber, but doesn't hold water. The CIA may have been WRONG about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but it did not "lie". The lies originated inside Iraq. Saddam Hussein's obfuscation of weapons programs, lack of records for allegedly destroyed materials, and general disregard for the authority of the UN inspectors gave rise to the CIA's misconceptions about what was and was not present in Iraq. Hawking's other point is that someone said Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 9/11/2001. I keep hearing that accusation but I don't know where people are getting it from. Iraq had a clear relationship of some sort with Al Qaida, Iraq was definitely funding terrorist activities in the middle east, and they have definitely been on the list of nations supporting terrorism for years. Certainly Iraq has been complicit with regard to attacks on the US. No one, however, has said they were responsible for it. We know who was responsible for the 9/11/2001 attacks already.

The real reason for an invasion in Iraq was the lack of evidence provided by the Iraqi government with regard to disarmament as REQUIRED by the UN and the 1991 cease fire agreement after the annexation of the independent nation of Kuwait by Iraq. The concern regarding weapons of mass destruction was that after 12 years of disarmament, Iraq was unable or unwilling to provide proof of it. By all accounts this was suspicious and needed to have been dealt with years ago. Additionally, Iraq's continuing involvement with international terrorists when coupled with a dubious disarmament record was deeply troubling given Hussein's record in the past. So what is Hawking talking about?

Well, Hawking, as a scientist is an idealist. Scientists deal with ideal situations based on observed evidence. To Hawking, the 100,000 lives lost in Iraq, are the issue. Loss of life is a terrible thing. It must be avoided and anything that leads to loss of life is wrong. No one will disagree with that. I don't. On the other hand, the opinion is simply based on incomplete data. No one is considering the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq. The estimated millions dead due to the fact that no one has interfered in Iraqi domestic policy for 20 years. No one is considering the potential loss of life that could have been caused by Iraqi funded terrorists if Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction. No one is considering that these weapons could have long ago been shipped to irrational zealots.

Sherman said, "War is Hell," and he was right. Real people die. The question is how many real people must die in peace-time before the world takes notice? It's an unknown quantity. In some cases, a variable. But if Hawking had done the math, he might have realized that the unknowns in the equation left the possibility for a truly cataclismic event to occur. Not every quantum event results in an atomic explosion. Sometimes the danger can leak undetected for years detroying something from the inside out. The war in Iraq may have been wrong in retrospect, but it was not based on lies.