Fearmonger

So now we know how Rudy Giuliani will run his presidential campaign. He's not just playing the 9/11 card (his only card, IMHO), but picking up the Bush/Cheney fearmongering approach.

This week, Mr. G. (I refuse to be so familiar with politicians as to call them by their first names) flat out said that if a Democrat is elected in 2008, we'll have another 9/11. If a Republican is elected (Mr. G., in particular), there won't be any attacks. So whom would you choose?

The proper response to this is one word: "Bullshit." This sort of fearmongering worked in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but it doesn't play anymore. Vote for a Democrat and we'll get attacked? No one's buying that.

Of course, it would be nice if the leading Democratic contenders responded in this kind of plain language. Instead, we get typical politician-speak, where the point (if it is one) is buried in copious amounts of cover-your-ass verbiage, sure to inspire the average American to tune out and turn off.

For example, here's how Senator Clinton responded to Mr. G's outrageous claim:

"There are people right now in the world, not just wishing us harm but actively planning and plotting to cause us harm. If the last six years of the Bush Administration have taught us anything, it's that political rhetoric won't do anything to quell those threats. And that America is ready for a change.

"One of the great tragedies of this Administration is that the President failed to keep this country unified after 9/11. We have to protect our country from terrorism -- it shouldn't be a Democratic fight or a Republican fight. The plain truth is that this Administration has done too little to protect our ports, make our mass transit safer, and protect our cities. They have isolated us in the world and have let Al Qaeda regroup. The next President is going to be left with these problems and will have to do what it takes to make us safer and bring Democrats and Republicans together around this common mission of protecting our nation. That is exactly what has to be done and what I am ready to do."

Two paragraphs where one word ("bullshit") would do. This is why I don't like Ms. C. -- too much business-as-usual politics, not enough straight talk. Where's the beef? If it's there (and I'm not sure it is), it's well-buried.

Senator Obama's response was a little more direct:

"Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low and I believe Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics. America's mayor should know that when it comes to 9-11 and fighting terrorists, America is united. We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure."

And, just in, here's how former Senator Edwards responded:

"Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that there is some superior 'Republican' way to fight terrorism is both divisive and plain wrong. He knows better. That's not the kind of leadership he offered in the days immediately after 9/11, and it's not the kind of leadership any American should be offering now.

"As far as the facts are concerned, the current Republican administration led us into a war in Iraq that has made us less safe and undermined the fight against al Qaeda. If that's the 'Republican' way to fight terror, Giuliani should know that the American people are looking for a better plan. That's just one more reason why this election is so important; we need to elect a Democratic president who will end the disastrous diversion of the war in Iraq."

I like Edwards' response better than Clinton's or Obama's (Mr. G. is "both divisive and plain wrong"), even if it could be a tad more concise. That said, I'm longing for that aspiring public servant to give the appropriate one-word response, and put the fearmongering to rest.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Service Update

A quick update on the Best Buy customer service situation. Turns out they weren't as good as they initially appeared.

If you recall, I had purchased a Philips DVD player that crapped out within the month. When my girlfriend went to exchange it, BB was out of that model and instead upgraded her, for free, to the "next highest" model.

Turns out, however, that the "next highest" model wasn't really. We had purchased the first Philips player because it offered upconversion to HD resolution. The "next highest" model, while a DVD recorder (nice bonus), was actually last year's model and didn't offer upconversion. The lady at BB who offered the swap, no surprise, didn't even know what upconversion was.

End of story, my girlfriend took the non-upconverting DVD recorder back and paid the difference to get an LG upconverting combination VCR/DVD recorder, the better to dub her old VHS tapes to DVDs. BB tried to be helpful, but ultimately failed because their staff was poorly educated. Lesson learned.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Service

A couple of notes about customer service.

First, a good story. I recently purchased a new 32" LCD TV and companion DVD player for my girlfriend. We bought them at Best Buy, even though I haven't always been a fan. I run hot and cold on BB; sometimes I get good service, sometimes I don't. In any case, less than a month after purchasing these items, the Philips DVD player crapped out. My girlfriend returned the DVD player to the Apple Valley, MN, Best Buy, where we had purchased it. Unfortunately, they didn't have any of the same unit to replace it with, so they sent her down the road to the Burnsville BB. This store also didn't have any replacements, so they just gave her the "upgraded" model instead. The upgraded model is actually a DVD recorder that sells for twice as much as the original unit, so we got a much better unit for the same price, very little hassle. Good job, Best Buy. You have two very satisfied customers. (And the cheapie Westinghouse flat screen we purchased is a surprisingly good performer, considering the $699 price.)

Now, a bad story. Best Buy's competitor, Circuit City, had a bad year last year and is now in the process of cutting costs. The way they're doing that is to fire their highest-paid store employees. (Not management, of course, just the in-store guys.) So they're taking their most experienced, best trained, and presumably best performing employees and giving them the old heave-ho. This tells their remaining employees that there's no point in sticking around or improving their performance, as this just leads to getting canned. And it tells their customers that they'll be getting worse service from now on. I used to like CC, thought they had better service and better-trained personnel overall than BB, but no longer. Apparently Circuit City thinks their customers don't deserve good service.

As a customer who appreciates and demands quality service, I say "fuck you, Circuit City." The quality of service at retail has declined significantly since I was in the retail business twenty years ago. It's apparently what the consumer wants; lower prices take precedence over quality service. That's too bad.

So the next time you go into Circuit City or some similar big box retailer and get served by a disinterested, uninformed, incompetent salesperson, know this -- you get what you pay for. And for the American consumer, poor service is exactly what you deserve. (But the prices are so cheap!)

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Four

Four years ago, George Bush's army invaded the sovereign state of Iraq, supposedly in search of what were actually non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." Four years later, the country of Iraq is in much worse shape than it was before, the country is embroiled in the midst of a bloody civil war, and America has become hated the world over.

Four years ago,

• Iraqis had a fully functioning electric grid, with 24/7 power
• Iraqis lived in one of the most modern societies in the Middle East
• Iraqi women saw a level of independence and acceptance similar to that in Western societies
• Iraqis felt safe to walk their streets at night
• There was no sectarian violence in Iraq
• Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were still alive
• 3208 Americans were still alive
• 32,000 Americans were unwounded

Today, four years after the invasion, here's how the world looks:

• Iraqis have only spotty electricity, with other utilities similarly demolished and barely functioning; living conditions are much worse than under the previous regime
• Iraqi society has devolved significantly; the upper class has fled, the middle class faces massive unemployment, and modernity has been replaced with near-feudal living conditions
• Iraqi women have been forced to adhere to hard line religious rule and restrictions; freedom and independence are a thing of the past
• Iraqis not only can't walk the streets at night, they can't walk the streets in the daytime without fear of being bombed, shot at, or kidnapped
• The country is in the midst of a violent sectarian civil war
• Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed, either by U.S. troops or by sectarian violence
• 3208 American troops have been killed in combat
• More than 32,000 Americans have suffered combat-related injuries, many of them horrific and unrecoverable.

In other words, and no one in power wants to admit this, things were much better under Saddam Hussein -- for both Iraqis and Americans. Since Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (or even of everyday type destruction), he posed no threat to the United States. The Iraqi populace, while somewhat repressed, were at least alive. They had electricity and running water and no one was shooting at them every time they opened their front doors. Life under Hussein wasn't perfect, but it wasn't deadly.

Today, life in Iraq is deadly -- for Iraqis and Americans alike. The Iraq invasion has proven to be perhaps the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history. And yet the Bush administration shows no sign of ending our long international embarrassment. The incursion that was supposed to last weeks, not months, has instead lasted four years, with no end in sight.

Still, the president pleads for our patience in seeing it through to whatever end might await. "Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult but it can be won," Bush said. "It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through."

He is wrong. He has consistently been wrong. The "fight" cannot be won. Courage and resolve have nothing to do with it. At this point, Bush's "resolve" is nothing more than suicidal stubbornness. Facts are facts; Bush and his cronies have made Iraq a much worse place than it was before we invaded. Iraq is in the midst of a bloody civil war, and it's America's fault.

We must own up to our mistakes and get the hell out of Iraq as fast as we can. The right-wing war hawks think it is a sign of weakness to admit and correct our mistakes. Instead, they'll stick to their wrong-headed ideas until there are no soldiers left to fight. I don't know what sort of psychological problems these people have, but our soldiers and the Iraqi populace are dying for the hawks' misplaced bravado. Fighting till the bitter end is seldom the best approach to any conflict, especially if you're fighting a losing battle.

Some war proponents argue that we have to stay in Iraq because the situation will get even worse if we leave. Maybe that's the case, but things are also getting worse the longer we stay. Four years is enough; each additional day only makes things worse.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Dynasty

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, I'll probably vote for her in the general election. But I hope she doesn't win; I don't want her to be president. Not that she wouldn't make a good president. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't. All I know is that a second President Clinton would be a very bad thing for our country.

If Senator Clinton becomes President Clinton, that will mean that two families will have ruled the United States for a quarter of a century. Our country has been run by someone named Bush or Clinton since 1988; that's the kind of sequential family dynasty that our forefathers rebelled against in 1776.

It doesn't matter whether this Bush or that Clinton was a good or a bad ruler; the idea of a ruling family (or two) is antithetical to a healthy democracy. America was not created as a monarchy. We are supposed to be a country of the people, for the people, not a kingdom ruled by the privileged few.

Think if the trends continue. Senator Clinton wins in 2008, and maybe gets re-elected in 2012. By that time, the Bush stench has subsided and brother Jeb wins the Republican nomination and the general election in 2016. If he gets re-elected in 2020, we're now looking at a dual-family dynasty from 1988 through 2024 -- 36 years of Bush and Clinton. That would have been unthinkable to our founding fathers, and should be unacceptable to us today.

Again, I'm not judging Senator Clinton's fitness for the job. Personally, I think she's both a shrill and canny political manipulator, skilled and intelligent yet two-faced and purely interested in her own political ambition. In that regard, she's not unlike the two-faced Republicans currently in the race, such as Giuliani and McCain, both of whom are selling their souls for the blessing of the religious right. All things said and done, I'll take a two-faced quasi-liberal over a two-faced quasi-conservative any day.

That said, I'd rather have a better choice, as would most Americans. That's where someone like Barack Obama or John Edwards has appeal; Obama for his freshness and lack of old-school political ties, and Edwards for his populist stance and positive message. I think either of these gentleman would make a fine candidate and a fine leader. We need new faces and new ideas, not the tired old political platitudes and certainly not another member of our two-family royal dynasty.

So that's why I'm anti-Clinton, and think she should be taken out of the race before the primaries are over. She should sacrifice her own ambition for the good of the country; the Bush-Clinton dynasty should end with King George II.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.