Saturday, October 02, 2004

brow"The Debate Post" Kerry Rebounds

Neither party knocked one out of the park last night. However, John Kerry certainly rebounded from his fake sun tan gone awry and his disastrous Good Morning America outing. Most talking heads are saying that Kerry flat out won. I didn't see that at all. However if I had to declare a winner, I would have only given Kerry an victory by a tiny margin. Kerry needed that bad though, in fact I tried to call Drew earlier that day to tell him if Kerry had were to loss the debate that I would have figured the wheels to offically have come off his campaign.

I am told Bush was out heavily campaigning in the roasting sun, and perhaps that sucked some of his energy as the debate wore on. Bush, did seem some what annoyed, and reminded me of Al Gore in 2000. Not nearly as bad, but he sighed heavily and mad frowns as John Kerry gabbed on. Whatever the reason Bush had the tendency to sigh before he made a point or do an impression of Pork Pig and stumble over his words. Both parties repeated themselves too many times (although I guess they might be trying to drill certain points home) and Bush was more guilty of that then his democrat counter part.

Well if anyone is still reading this blog (Price is away, and Ed is God knows where) this is likely your last stop on your list of sources for your political news and view. Not to mention the fact that if your home reading this on a Friday night lame enough, so instead of dissecting it anymore (although I will mention some things I didn't like) I would like to try to make heads or tails out of the two candidacy stance on Iraq. Seriously this is how I am taking their takes on what they think of Iraq.

Bush:

Listen right after 9/11 I made it fairly clear that we were going to be in a long war that would involve many different battle grounds and challenges. Okay, so we didn't get Osama and people think that I veered off in Iraq, but I got a list of people who would most likely to catch us sleeping and Saddam's Iraq was on the top of the list. Our intelligence said Iraq had WMDs and since Saddam isn't the most honest guy in the world I assumed the intelligence was right so rolled the nice and sent the troops in. It turns out we were wrong, but at least now this guy who killed lots of people and didn't like us is gone now. We would rather fight the terrorists there so if they want to come out of the woodworks, better to blow them up in the desert then on the streets of America. So, now things are messy over there but we can't just leave. Seeing as where at this point it would be even worse to leave it a total mess and make us look dumb and apathetic to whether or not Iraq gets their act together. Yeah people are pissed at us right now, but we will fix the bad Iraqis will eventually give up.

Kerry

Well Saddam was a bad guy, and although I looked at the same intelligence I would have slept on the whole invasion thing for awhile longer. Yeah I considered him a threat at the time,but I don't think I could have really made my mind up that soon. Just a wait and see policy. Now look its a mess and Bush rolled the dice and lost. If I knew what I know now how messy it would have been and that there weren't any winds I wouldn't have even bothered. Then again at the time I thought there were winds,but now I know that there aren't so obviously I wouldn't have gone to war. So, basically now its the wrong war at the wrong time, unless their were WMDs which may or may not have made a difference in my mind. I mean now that I think of it there are lots of other bad guys like Saddam that we leave alone. Of course now I want more troops in there to stop the WMDS from getting into the country throughout he borders. So, I am going to send them. However, if things settle down I can start to settle down we are going to have troops starting to leave Iraq by July. Well, if you want to know anymore I am afraid you are going to have to go to www.johnkerry.com.

What I didnt like:

Out of all the countries that have nuclear capabilities that Kerry listed how many of them are our friends? Like England..etc.

Kerry plugging his website

The fact that Bush acting silly when Kerry talked and got miffed easily. Also that fact that the last 30 mins seemed like he just wanted to get the hell out of there. Like, come on Mr. Questions Guy isn't it time to go home yet? Still with the questions? Lets see...um...something something ...bring them to justices....Liberty....yada yada yada...


I dunno maybe he forgot to tape Joey or something.

Final Thought:
Both sides seem a little let down. Both Kerry and Bush fans think their man fumbled chances to nail the other speaker. I agree with that, the both missed chances to got for the gut. Doubt their teams will let them make the same mistake in round 2.

One question:

Who was right about the Iran question about when sanctions were put on Iran?

Tucker's Pick: John Kerry is the winner by a hair or two.

Friday, October 01, 2004

About Last Night...

Well after the reherseal for DAn K's wedding a bunch of us went back to Jessica's aunts house for an after party. Much to my surprise I actually did get to see some of the debate. I got to see the first 30 mins, and roughly the last 30 mins of the debate last night.

First off this was the best house to be in to watch a debate at least.

1. Rick who registed just to help vote Bush out off office, so was obviously rooting for John Kerry.

2. Dan K who could thinks they are both duds, but tends to favor Bush for the most part. HOwever, he refuses to vote since he feels its all BS, and we are all just basically pawns. Of course the two of us shot of one liners and used our dry sense of humor to mock the debate. We were keeping track of flubs, for the two candidates but the game was eventaually tracked when Jessica got annoyed that Dan K was not mingling enough.

3. Bush, supporters. Very rarely do I actually surrond myself with Bush supporters(non-family members anway), most if not all my friends LOATH Bush. So, to meet people that hated Kerry and wanted to vote for Bush was a refreshing change. Nice to get a different angle on it. Some of them were young even! As far as I know they didnt want destroy the world, kill minorities, or suppress anyone's vote.

4. A group of a few, that didn't know what a Presidental debate actually was let alone that there was one that night. These people seemed utterly confused why we had an interest in going to the other room to watch any of it.

Of course it was party so we had to soicalize and stuff so I missed that start of it. I have to watch the middle portion.

I tell you one thing though when we went upstairs and people asked us how it was going it was fairly agreed that Bush had the upper hand fairly clearly. In fact I thought if Bush is just warming up he is going to mop the floor with him.

Then we return and it was like flipping back to a hockey...er um baseball game to find that the Phillies who were leading by 8 runs are in danger of losing the ball game.

I have no idea what happened half way through that changed the tides. I would declare it a draw at this point given how well Bush did at the start of the debate, but I have to go back to the tape and come back on here and write my final thoughts.


Where did everyone else watch the debates?


come back and check it out.


ps Lima Beanz I miss you

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

"Goodenow to Fans: YOU ARE JUST JEALOUS!

The candian press recently got NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow and NHL commish Gary Bettman together and a fight didn't break out. Of course there won't be any pucks being dropped anytime soon either.

The people running were certaily harsher on Goodenow than Bettman.

Here are some of the highlights: (I put my thoughts in Italics)

``We've tried to find a common ground and tried to find a fair solution but the only response we've got from Gary Bettman and the owners so far is that it has to be a cap, it has to be a cap, and as long as that's the stance,unfortunately, this lockout is going to continue,'' said Goodenow.

HMMM...what about the NFL, they have a cap with tons more money coming in and they aren't starving on the streets.


Andrew Stelmack, in the studio audience, said he had no empathy for theplayers, who make $1.8 million US on average now and who would still get $1.3million US on average if the NHL had its way.``Hockey players are highly paid and they deserve to be highly paid,'' saidGoodenow. ``It is a marketplace and it has worked for many, many decades and webelieve that some type of marketplace going forward is the ultimate fair kind of system for fans, players and owners.

Um...the markeplace has worked terribly in the last few years. Over half a dozen teams have almost gone belly up in front of our eyes. Small market teams have had to give away star players for buckets of pucks.

Rob Van Wallegham, speaking from Calgary, said ``the union appears to beperpetuating the greed of the players.''

Goodenow didn't like that.

``The players are not greedy, not at all,'' he said. Some people might be jealous of their wealth, he suggested.``Sometimes people say, `I'm mad at the players,''' he said. `

`The reality is,what we're trying to do is to make sure the public knows: one, the players arelocked out; two, that they want to play; three, that their salaries have beenset by the owners, and salaries go up and down based on their performance.``

It's not the players triggering these problems. The problems are complex and dynamic. It's important for the public to understand . . . that the players are not asking for more. The players are asking for just a fair share and a marketplace system.''

Shouldn't the accept the good with the bad? They are sharing a shrinking market. There will be no market if players aren't back on the ice ASAP. Americans have short attention spans. I think more people are jealous of their talent then their wealth. We are mad at the players because many of them don't seem to give a damn about the game. Goodenow I guess forgets who pays their salary. How cocky of him to boil the anger down to simple jealousy. Clearly, his side doesn't give a damn about the fans or was in a coma during the baseball lockout which damaged the game for years.


Cut to a youngster in Ottawa saying he can't understand why players arecomplaining.``The players aren't complaining,'' said Goodenow. ``They want to play but they've been locked out.

Very cute there Bob-o. They like to call it a lockout so it looks like the players are sobbing shaking locks on the doors of the rinks. In reality when asked if they could just work under the previous agreement while they worked out their differences.


``What Gary Bettman and the owners have done is that they want a fight with the players and that's what a lockout is all about - to put pressure on the playersto succumb to a salary cap, which they've known all along is a type of systemthe players aren't at all interested in considering.''

Wait, hasn't he said several times they did everything they could to avoid a lockout? Well, they didn't even consider the main point of the agreement. They keep talking about the players deserve to get the money they want. Well, the owners deserve to make a profit. The owners own the league not the players. Players don't even have to live up to their salary, they get paid are bought our either way. Almost all their other demands the NHL was likely going to bow to. Less games..etc

Goodenow said "there is no correlation between ticket prices andplayers' salaries. Supply and demand determines ticket prices and not teampayrolls, he said".

Supply and Demand?!!?!? WOW. Is he that out of touch? The Flyers who have one of the biggest fanbases in the NHL had to beg people to fill the seats last season. The Stanley Cup Champs last year tried an all you can drink night (wisely it was nixed) to sell out seats during the Flyers/bolts Series last season. Who could he actually think that is true? So, many rinks were simply not selling out last season. WOW.

I can't imagine that all the NHL players buy into this mindset. PLease won't someone break the union line. PLease.

NOTE TO READERS:
If you want a complete verision of the article I was using drop me an email!

"Tucker to TERMINUS"

Well it's fairly clear that my friend and author of TERMINUS dislikes President Bush. So, I can only imagine that he is voting for John Kerry. In fact, most people that I bump into on the street seem to be ready to make Kerry our next president.

So, Drew has been kind enough to list everyday for the last several years of why Bush sucks, and why he is the worse president ever. Thats great that Drew dedicates lots and lots of time to spreading the word to give Dubbya the boot. Of course I am not nearly as liberal as Drew so I don't always agree with him.

however, looking all through TERMINUS I see a common theme among Kerry supporters. All reasons why we shouldn't vote for Bush, and little or no reasons why we should vote for Kerry. Now don't you think you should have a decent reason to vote for the man?

I am not trying to start a fight or anything here. It's just I would imagine that if Drew reads so much about such things that he should have a list of reasons why Kerry is going to be a good leader.

So, I am asking DREW to have a John Kerry Week on TERMINUS. Of course, the idea of asking someone else to have a theme for his blog for an entire week is sort of strange, but he seems to be bored over there. Sure, he will have plenty so say about the debate but since Drew blogs like twice a day I would like to think he could find time to tell our readers why we should vote for him.

So, Drew please let us know why John Kerry would make a good president. Honestly, when I ask most people when the vote for Kerry, they just start quoting Michael Moore, and the majority of them can't tell me one single thing they like about Kerry. No one can tell me what they like about his Senate record (that's a hard once since he never talks about it really) or why he would be a good leader and what he would actually do to make US, a better America.

So, Drew Why not make the Week of Oct 4th the week of John Kerry. I would love to see it. You clearly love the man. That will give you ample time to prepare your notes and iron out JOHN KERRY WEEK! If you choice to take me up on the offer.

I plan to cover the debates on here, but the write up on the first one might be a tad late. I have Dan K's wedding this weekend and actually have rehearsal when the debate is on..So I need to tape it and watch it later. I look forward to having people comment on the debates, and I will break down who I think won. I will also comment on who wore a cooler tie.

****note to readers anyone who uses this blog as their official source of election shouldn't vote**.