MarkDrago.com

So, there has been some talk about how blogs will be able to let average users report the news from their point of view. This will take a small part of the power away from big media – helping to make us all a little more free. Okay, maybe I have lofty goals for this whole blogging thing, but I’m going to try and do my part by sharing my views on the presidential debates here. I make no promise to be fair and balanced or anything like that, this is my blog and you’re going to get my point of view. Deal with it. Okay, here we go.

Update: I didn’t know that the topic for the debate was ‘foreign affairs’. So, I made a few comments about the lack of discussion about domestic issues. When you see one of these comments, know that I am double stupid. Thank You.
Update2: Look at the length of this post before you go ahead and try to read it. Are you sure you want to do this to yourself?
Okay – first off, President Bush seems to have a problem forming sentences. And, he definitely just made up a word. I’m not sure what he said, but I know it wasn’t English. John Kerry just called George Bush on some of the reasons for going to war. He said that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 and that we didn’t go to war to remove Saddam, but to remove WMDs. The president does keep changing his tune on the reason for war and I’m glad to see senator Kerry call him on it.
John Kerry has a few things that he things the President totally borked. He started by saying that the President didn’t get broad international support for the war. He then said that GW didn’t use going to war as a last resort. He’s now listing things that the war money could’ve helped like prescription drugs and education. He then stated that things in Afghanistan are not as rosey as they seem. There are 10x more troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden is. Bush responded by saying that he did try to go to the UN for international support and that they pussed out by allowing Saddam to pull the wool over their eyes. He is insisting that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein. I don’t think anyone disagrees with him here and it doesn’t seem to be a good rebuttal to Kerry’s response. He said that the worst disaster would be if we didn’t succeed in Iraq. He’s still talking about Iraq when that wasn’t really what the question was about. The moderator directly asked him about Saddam vs. Osama and he dodged it. Kerry just called Bush out by saying, “Iraq was not the center of the war on terror until the President invaded it.”
George Bush is going into flip-flop mode now. He’s talking about how Kerry voted for the use of force but is now talking about how Iraq was a mistake.
Kerry was asked about how he would help secure the homeland. He went into this laundry list of things that he thinks were mishandled during the President’s term. Some of the things he talked about were money going to Iraq for firefighting and police forces while we have shortages in those areas here and securing our nuclear power plants. George Bush stated that he is spending $30 billion on homeland security this year. He says that the FBI has been changed to have homeland security at its heart. He then stated that the patriot act must continue to allow our law enforcement to interrupt terrorist cells. He failed to mention that we need the patriot act in order to slowly pull freedoms out from underneath our citizenry.
At parts of this debate, in my opinion, George Bush has looked scared. He just seems nervous. I think he knows that this is going to be a close election and that his friends won’t be happy if he loses.
Bush just made a good point as he said that Kerry is telling our troops that ‘help is on the way’ and also saying that the Iraq war was the ‘wrong war at the wrong time.’ Kerry handled it well by saying that he fought in Vietnam and later on decided that it was wrong. He fought as hard as he could in Vietnam and also felt that it wasn’t the right thing to do. He used this as his rationale for changing his stance on the use of force in Iraq.
Kerry is talking about holding a ‘statesman-like summit’ on the war in Iraq. Kerry also just mentioned Haliburton. He said that disallowing companies who aren’t in one of the ‘nations of the willing’ to bid on rebuilding contracts isn’t the way to make countries want to help us.
This whole debate has been about Iraq. We’re 35 minutes in and we haven’t heard anything about domestic concerns. I understand that terrorism and homeland security is a big deal for the majority of this country, but I couldn’t give a crap about the conditions in Iraq. I think we need to fix up what has gone wrong, get out of there and be very concerned about ourselves and our domestic concerns.
Kerry was asked about how he thinks the President lied during his time in office. He mentioned nuclear material in Iraq, UN assistance in Iraq, careful planning in Iraq, and using war as a last resort. Bush went into flip-flop mode again. I want him to talk about how he didn’t really lie about anything. I want him to talk about nuclear material in Iraq. I want him to talk about his planning in Iraq. I don’t care about Kerry’s flip-flopping as much as I care about the reasons why we have over 1000 dead US troops in Iraq.
We’re 43 minutes into the debate and still no discussion about domestic issues. Maybe they decided to leave the United States out of this debate?
Kerry is going into his plan for Iraq. He thinks that if we follow the plan that he has laid out and we’re successful, we’ll be able to start pulling troops out in 6 months. I think that’s a pretty aggressive estimate. I’m not sure that that is possible, but I think he’ll do a better job than Bush will. Bush is talking about freeing the Iraqi people. It’s a shame that he had to fall back on that as a reason for being in the war. If he said to the American people, “Hey, we want to go into Iraq so we can free people,” he never would’ve gotten support from the American citizens. Never. It’s a real shame that all of the other reasons fell through.
When asked if he would ever take troops into another preemptive action Bush said, “I hope I never have to.” Well good. You still haven’t proven that you absolutely had to take our troops into Iraq. Kerry responded to Bush very firmly. He called President Bush on his confusion between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Bush stated that, “The enemy attacked us,” in reference to Iraq and Kerry made it very clear that Iraq has never attacked us. He also spoke about Bush’s inability to actually capture the real enemy, Osama bin Laden.
The first hour of this debate is now over. There was not one mention of domestic issues. Maybe that is what the second hour will be about? We’ll see. As a kind of intermission, I just want to say that I don’t think anyone is ever going to read this. Heck, I don’t think I’m going to read the damned thing. This has turned into a beast. I’m going to slow down in this second hour of the debate because I just don’t think I care enough to be this dilligent about this. Okay.
There was a bit of a flare up regarding North Korea. I think Kerry made a few good points during this exchange. He was direct and firm in his words that were directed at the president and his inability to keep North Korea from creating nuclear weapons while he was president.
The closing comments were both pretty good. I think senator Kerry did a very good job in this debate. I don’t know if the polls will show that, but I think he did a very good job.
If you read this far, you’re insane. Stop reading my lame ass blog and do something creative with your time. That’s all.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS