Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

>IF he wins there are going to be a lot of republicans that will be quite pissed off. Good.<

Honestly I think the defeat of Bush will in all likelihood be the best thing that could happen to the Republican party right now. It might also cause the Republican party to get back to its conservative roots. The segment of libertarian-influenced members has no party now. Those who espouse more freedom, smaller government, and the fiscal conservatives, deficit hawks have all been abandoned utterly, left for dead by the political roadside. What remains is a party of authoritarian militaristic hegemonists with a wacked religious social agenda who spend public money like drunken sailors. True conservativism is, for the moment, dead.

It may enjoy a renaissance under a Kerry administration much as occurred under Clinton. As the opposition party, the Republicans tend to be the voice of reason, second-guessing everything the President does. As the party in power, however, they tend to lose their minds and just give the president whatever he asks for.

Let's try to keep our posts mature please

LOL that was a tough call. CNN called that one already too.

What do you do if you're going down the wrong road, the driver is drunk, and you're tied up in the back seat?

All you have to do is look at the geography. All the Bible-intensive states joined the oil industry states and formed a massive voting bloc. That's tough to beat. The religion factor also figures big into Bush's rural support which was decisive in some swing states. I know rural republicans who vote that way just because Bush makes a big show of his religion and they've been convinced God is a republican

Not just the blood of Iraqis.

Oil is the root of all evil. Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda are spawned by it. Were it not for our addiction to this gooey black stuff, there would have been no lure for Iraq to invade Kuwait, there would not have been a U.S. presence in the Gulf to speak of, terrorists would have no funding to speak of, and so Al-Qaeda would not have 'rid the holy land of the infidels' as its rallying cry against us and in fact without money not even exist.

With no motivation and no funding, the attacks of September 11th never would have happened. The blood of 3,000 Americans (well, 4000+ now) are already a product of this dependency as well as 100,000+ Iraqis.

And of course there's the ongoing war(s). All the major parties -- the Bush, Cheney, Hussein, Osama and the Bin Laden dynasty -- oil men are at the center of it on all sides. The oil fields are the battlefields. It cannot possibly be more obvious, or more unfortunate, how political and historical cause-and-effect now hinges completely on oil.

I continue to avoid the gas pump as much as possible. Am continuing to commute by bike and am pushing it farther into the season than ever before due to unprecedented motivation.

I have fingers crossed but expectations low. Arafat was their leader for a reason -- the Palestinian cause is an emotionally charged one, in the extreme. A more moderate leader who renounces suicide bombings and such might appear 'weak' to the Palestinians.

I have a 25mm Rini 'modified plossl' 60 deg that's been a nice low-power workhorse eyepiece for me, but not threaded for filters, and also a 25mm 'modified ortho' with a whopping 80 degree field (?!) that cost me 15 bucks and has that great 'spacewalk' immersive feel although edge sharpness is horrible in that one.

Very satisfying playthings when you're using them and remembering what they cost. And you don't scream when you drop it.

If all the frustrated voters left all we'd have left are a huge number of Christian white conservative heterosexual males, and a small handful of conservative wives to share among them. Statistically men are more conservative and women more liberal.

...I suppose some of the conservative men would have to start marrying each other to eliminate the imbalance

...Another possible option to relieve the tension of lonely male conservatives would be to muster the troops for periodic panty raids into Canada 8O ...Life in the US could be just one big frat party!

When politicians will not exercise restraint, the international currency market becomes the enforcer. If politicians refuse the keep their government's revenues in line with its expenditures and vice-versa, the currency will suffer. This is basic fiscal economics. It was somewhat amusing to watch how the dollar rallied on the international markets when it appeared Kerry had won a debate, and how it plunged through support levels to new lows against the Euro almost immediately after the election.

The effects are not all bad. A weak dollar has beneficial effects in the form of improved price competitiveness of American-made goods vs. imports, and it can also lead to increased retention (or even possibly repatriation) of some 'outsourced' American jobs. Yes it's true, much as I hate to say it, Bush's fiscal/economic policy is ironically the best thing for retaining American jobs that Kerry was so carrying on about.

However, as a rule this is generally inflationary and also risky. We can expect higher interest rates in the future as well as a general rise in prices of things. The bond market appears to be signaling its agreement with the end of its 23+ year bull market and is slowly reversing course. Energy and precious metals markets are also in apparent agreement.