Archive for October, 2004
Oct
29
Posted by Arianne
Well I am MIA and will continue to be for a few more days. We’ve moved the family to a new bungalow and have to wait another few days before we get our internet set up. I’ve been going through blog reading and writing withdrawls, but hopefully all will be well again next week.
While I’m getting all set up you all can tawk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic. INCOMPETENT DSL COMPANIES THAT HOLD YOU HOSTAGE BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONLY AFFORDABLE INTERNET OPTION IN YOUR AREA SO THEY CAN TOTALLY SUCK AND GET AWAY WITH IT. BYOTCHES.
Discuss.
Oct
14
Posted by Arianne
I am officially in love with Craigs List. It all started with a little fling…finding a place to rent. Now its a full blown, plates, couches, dining room chairs, scandalous love affair.
I mean, dude…you can buy a file folder for $10! Used! And where else could you buy this butt ugly piece of bleep for $50 dollars?? I have actually found some cool stuff, but the absolute trash that people are trying to sell is freakin hilarious.
And if that wasn’t enough, they also have a “Free” category. A place to find free sand, free porn, or even get people to come take your crap for free. What’s really funny about that last one…instead of coming to take their crap for free, they kindly give you the option of paying for it instead.
Oct
14
Posted by Arianne
A post not having to do with politics! Yay!
Sorry to be all about the men in the suits lately…but a girl just has to get some shizzle out sometimes. And during election season? There’s LOADS of shizzle going around.
Coming soon will be ramblings about speech therapy, occupational therapy, moving [blech] and drinking pina coladas while nursing.
Woooo.
Sexy, exciting stuff here, people.
Oct
14
Posted by Arianne
Just a quick post this time.
My opinion is that Bush lost the first debate on style, the second had Bush winning with a slight edge, and this third one Bush blew Kerry away.
All the bible quoting Kerry did will lose him votes from those people that complain that Bush talks too much about God [but who will they vote for? Nader I guess.]. I can’t BELIEVE he brought up Cheney’s lesbian daughter. Bad form. More lost votes.
Also, “married up”? This probably won’t sway votes but it was nice to see Kerry eating some crow. It seemed like he initially said it to be funny, that all three of them had married up since their women are so much better then they are…but it turned into a really big funny since Kerry has gotten a lot of flack for marrying rich women.
All in all I found the debate rather boring…in fact I’m already bored with this post.
Oh, and by the way? Plan, plan, plan.
Plan.
Oct
09
Posted by Arianne
How long can a 2 year old live on fruit snacks and fishy crackers? I’ll let you know…
Oct
09
Posted by Arianne
Ok, I know so many people are going to be commenting on these tidbits from the debate…but I just HAVE to add my $.02.
1. The line from Kerry:
“I’m pledging I will not raise taxes; I’m giving a tax cut to the people earning less than $200,000 a year. Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you’re going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.
And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I’m sorry, you too…”
Unbelievably pompous and rude. He assumes everyone-BY THE WAY THEY LOOK-are either not small business owners, or are not making all that much money. We don’t make that much money, but I was offended by this statement. It really reminded me of Mr. Patronizing himself, Al Gore, in the 2000 town hall-style debate. I remember him talking down to us like we were in kindergarden. Kerry’s statement tonight was so condescending! I hope they could hear the sound of my jaw dropping agape on the floor all the way from Los Angeles. Wank.
2. That last question was so bad…it was just shocking [but then again...not really] that it was allowed. The woman basically asked Bush to list 3 of his presidential decisions that were mistakes. Um…first of all, I hate those kinds of questions. No one can honestly answer them without shooting themselves in the foot. Whenever I was asked that kind of question in a job interview, I never could figure out how to answer, so I just said what I thought the interviewer wanted to hear. Secondly, how fair is it to have the debate end on a “Let’s All Talk About Bush’s Mistakes And Not Kerry’s” party? Bush talked [sorta, again...what could he do?] about his mistakes and Kerry rebutted with talk about Bush’s mistakes. Hey ABC, or whoever…planting questions like that in the “undecided” audience just makes the plant that much more obvious, K?
3. “Need some wood?” HILARIOUS! Even if Bush HAD a timber company, why would we care if he made a whopping $84 from it????
4. Bush: “we need to promote a culture of life”. Word.
5. Kerry: “Halliburton blah blah blah your kids are dying in Iraq blah blah I have a plan blah blah blah your kids blah plan plan plan blah blah Vietnam. Blah.”
At first I thought the debate tonight was basically a draw, with Bush doing really well compared to last week. Now, after watching the debate a second time I think that Bush blew Kerry out of the water. We shall see how many agree…
Oct
06
Posted by Arianne
When Edwards kept interrupting Cheney and getting all “peevish” [to use Brit Hume's favorite word of late], he looked like a teenage kid arguing with his Dad about curfew or loud music. Made me think of this quote:
“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
-Ronald Reagan, Reagan/Mondale 2nd Debate, October 21, 1984
Edwards got his few digs in, but over-all Cheney really scored. We shall see if it had any effect on voters’ decisions.
Update: Hey! She agrees.
Oct
04
Posted by Arianne
In Mark Steyn’s latest piece, he perfectly points out that Kerry STILL. HAS. NO. POSITION. ON. IRAQ:
“If John Kerry is so polished and eloquent and forceful and mellifluous, how come nobody has a clue what his policy on Iraq is? As he made clear on Thursday, Saddam was a growing threat so he had to be disarmed so Kerry voted for war in order to authorize Bush to go to the U.N. but Bush failed to pass ”the global test” so we shouldn’t have disarmed Saddam because he wasn’t a threat so the war was a mistake so Kerry will bring the troops home by persuading France and Germany to send their troops instead because he’s so much better at building alliances so he’ll have no trouble talking France and Germany into sending their boys to be the last men to die for Bush’s mistake.”
And:
“Oh, and he’ll call a summit. ””I have a plan to have a summit. . . . I’m going to hold that summit … we can be successful in Iraq with a summit . . . the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together …”” Summit old, summit new, summit borrowed, summit blue, he’s got summit for everyone. Summit-chanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. But, in John Kerry’s world, there are no strangers, just EU deputy defense ministers who haven’t yet contributed 10,000 troops because they haven’t been invited to a summit. And once John Kerry holds that summit all our troubles are over. Summit time and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’ … No, hang on, your wife is rich and your manicure’s good-lookin’ …”
Summit, summit, summit-time. Summit-time. Time to sit back and unwind…
“”Talking about’”‘ stuff is all Kerry’s got. He’s no executive experience, he’s never run a state, never founded a company, built a business, made payroll. Post-Vietnam, all he’s done is talk and vote. For 20 years in the U.S. Senate: talk, vote, talk, vote. So, if his talking and voting are wrong, what else is there?”
And, he thought Bush won:
“I’d say that as a general rule articulacy is greatly over-rated. It’s not what it’s about: Noel Coward would run rings round Mike Tyson in the prematch press conference, but then what? But, if articulacy is the measure, how come Kerry can’t articulate an Iraq policy any of us can understand?…….A majority of the American people — albeit not as big a majority as it ought to be — get this. John Kerry still does not. Which means he lost the debate. “
Oct
03
Posted by Arianne
Bush was definitely not on his game during the debate, something that’s hard to admit. It is true that it seemed as if his mind wasn’t in it, however there are also other things that happened that make it impossible for anyone to say hands down which one of the candidates won. One of these things is Kerry talking about things in first person as if he was there and witnessed the whole thing himself. His ramblings about things that happened behind closed doors drove me nuts…how does he know what was said and what wasn’t when he wasn’t even there?
Kerry:
“…I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn’t use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That’s wrong.”
How does he know that Osama isn’t dead? Was he there and he saw him crawl out of his cave and scurry over the hill?
Kerry:
“First of all, he made the misjudgment of saying to America that he was going to build a true alliance, that he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through the inspections. In fact, he first didn’t even want to do that. And it wasn’t until former Secretary of State Jim Baker and General Scowcroft and others pushed publicly and said you’ve got to go to the U.N., that the president finally changed his mind — his campaign has a word for that — and went to the United Nations.”
How in the world does he know all this went on? How does he know that Bush didn’t want to do it, was “pushed” by Baker, et. al. and that they “said you’ve got to go to the U.N.”??
In talking about Bush’s plan for war, Kerry:
“He didn’t do any of those things. They didn’t do the planning. They left the planning of the State Department in the State Department desks. They avoided even the advice of their own general. General Shinsheki, the Army chief of staff, said you’re going to need several hundred thousand troops. Instead of listening to him, they retired him.”
Again, how does he know these things? He knows that they didn’t do any planning, that they “avoided” advice, that they didn’t listen and this is the reason the General retired?? Please.
Kerry:
“…the president of South Korea went back to South Korea bewildered and embarrassed because it went against his policy. And for two years, this administration didn’t talk at all to North Korea.”
So now he is a mind reader and knows what the South Korean president was thinking and feeling. How does he know that administration never talked to North Korea??? Tell me, is he a fly on the wall at the White House at all times?
Not only was he NOT THERE to know first hand about these things (instead of saying “according to reports…” or “based on military records…”), but he also was WRONG about these things. Loads of bloggers have been debunking so many of Kerry’s comments that I’ve lost count by now. One place you can read more about it is at Hugh’s blog.
The debate transcripts can be found here. I must say, reading the debate Bush did much better. I guess it was his annoyed face and exasperated tone that made it seem like he was letting Kerry get to him so much.
Oct
03
Posted by Arianne
Last night on Saturday Night Live they did a spoof of last week’s debate. They had Dubya saying over and over “its hard…this job…so hard…” and Kerry saying “When I said I was against the war in Iraq, I was speaking to an anti-war group. When I said I was for the war, I was speaking to a pro-war group. That’s not flip-flopping, that’s pandering”. [SNL's site is painfully not up to date...if they ever get a vid clip, I'll post it here]
SNL has such a great way of breaking things down to the lowest denominator, and they did it again last night.
They also had a very short Dubya behind a tall podium, reenacting how off balance the two candidates looked (Kerry looked tall and more visually confident in comparison) in the spilt screen shots. While watching this skit here at the beach (where we are “getting away” this weekend, hilarity ensued.
SNL is always much more funny after some wine and a few homemade margaritas with little miniature limes on the rim.
Update-Here’s the transcript of the portion of the skit I was referring to:
“Lehrer”: “With that, this debate comes to a close. Each candidate will now make a brief closing statement. Senator Kerry?”
“Kerry”: “You know, this president likes to talk about how I called Iraq the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. That a few days later, how I said that anyone who doesn’t think the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein isn’t fit to be commander in chief. But what he doesn’t tell you is that when I denounce the war in Iraq, I was speaking to an anti-war group. And when I endorsed the war, I was addressing to a pro-war delegation from the UGA. The fact of the matter is, I have consistently supported the war in front of pro-war audiences, and condemned it when speaking to groups that oppose it. That is not flip-flopping, that is pandering, and Americans deserve a president who knows the difference! Thank you.”
“Lehrer”: “President Bush?”
“Bush”: “September 11 changed how America must look at the world. I wake up everyday and work hard, thinking about how to protect America. That’s my job. And it’s hard. It’s hard work. Frankly, I don’t know why my opponent even wants this job. Cause it’s hard. A lot of people, working at meetings, it’s hard work.”
Heh.
Hat tip: Unconventional Wisdom [where you can read the whole skit]
