Kerry’s the One

By Scott McConnell

There is little in John Kerry’s persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge—the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry—seems overdone, as Kerry’s contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.

But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.

It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil—its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries’ budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been “anti-Americanism.” After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a “Third Way” between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe’s radicals embraced every ragged “anti-imperialist” cause that came along. In South America, defiance of “the Yanqui” always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It’s the same throughout the Middle East.

this is for the persons who wrote officemax sucks. as a manager in an officemax store, i can tell you, most of our stores do not have a motion alarm for toner cartridges, but i wish they did, do you realize how many dead beats come in a steal cartridges and toner. there is even a alert out for a ring of slime balls, who have made a career of this. as far as out of stock items don't blame the employees, two places to place blame, the coporate buyers, and the pigs who come into the stores on the day a sale breakes and just have to buy every sale item, in mass. forget the everyday people who come in, and if whe try to limit they cry to the coporate and get anyway. and the pull tags in puches are not there, for reflecting stock level they are fact tags, to provide information, to the bozo who don't know the rear end to a whole in the ground. and they only help if the nitwits know what kind of printer they have. do you know how many times i have had some one come up to me, and say i need a ink cartridge for my printer, ok, what kind of printer, it is a hp, and what kind of hp. i don't know don't they all take the same kind. no, they don't. well, let me see them i will know when i see it. at this point we take out 20+ diffrent cartridges, for hp. and the blank look comes up on the face that say how stupid you are "here's your sign"

Saw the Two Towers last night. It was a last minute call. We hadn't planned on it, but we drove past a theater that we hadn't been to in years, and said "what the heck". It is the closest one to our house, but another one has opened up that has much better seating and a killer sound system not much further away, so we've been hitting that one for the past three years. The show starts at 7:30 and we show up at 7:20, not holding out much hope that we would get a good seat, judging from our previous experiences at other theaters.

We walk in and the place is deserted. Not a soul around. I wasn't even sure the place was open. Went up to the ticket counter and asked if it was sold out and the girl kinda laughed and said "nope". Got the tickets, went in and there were maybe 20 people in this giant theater. I was blown away. We went to see the opening of Harry Potter 2 and had to get in line an hour before the show, just to get in the joint. You can really tell that the new "stadium seating" style theaters have put a hurtin' on this one. These guys used to be the best one in town, and I think we saw Star Wars Ep 1 there on opening night just a few years ago. Standing room only. Now in a desperate attempt to win back customers, they hacked up the old twill covered seats, removed the old wooden arm rests and replaced them with screwed on plastic ones with cup holders. The problem is, that the screws were backing out about a quarter inch and poking you in the arm. I pulled out my Leatherman tool and screwed mine and my wife's back in. You could look down the rows and see them all poking up. I'm surprised they haven't been sued because someone gashed their arm on one.

I soon realized why the place was deserted. The movie starts and the sound was fair but definitely not on par with the new theaters. After about two minutes I realized that they weren't going to turn the house lights down, and there were two giant hairs stretching across middle of the screen, and they weren't going to go away. The Two Towers is a dark movie, well played, with subtle music and a definite brooding feel. It loses its impact when the lights are on though. I started to boil after about 10 minutes into the movie, got up and went to see if I could find some management. Luckily I had recently read the books so I knew the story. I couldn't find anyone, so I had to go out to the popcorn stand and knock some heads. He said he'd fix it right away and picked up the phone. About 2 minutes later the lights finally went out, but the hairs were there until the second reel kicked in. Doesn't someone start the movie and make sure that everything is running OK? This is about the time the family with the two and three-year-olds started whining and crying. Why take your babies to the opening night of a three hour movie with decapitations and bloody Orcs running all over the place? They are scared by the movie, restless and whining after half an hour. After an hour they are bored witless and it makes things miserable for every other living being within earshot.

The movie: Excellent. If Saddam wants to see what the "Mother Of All Battles" looks like, he needs to see this movie. The story was blended well, and Gollum is so well done, you almost forget he's pure computer imagery. You can still tell, but he was so skillfully constructed and played that your focused on the character, not the animation. Now I can't wait for the third to come out. Then they can release the super duper box DVD edition of all three, with all the additional footage and scenes that they had to cut out to allow it to play in the theaters.