When did sacrifice for a cause greater than ourselves, once a supreme fundamental strength of these United States, fall to the wayside? When did we start thinking that the solutions to difficult problems would come easily, without pain and sacrifice?

You look at Reagan’s inaugural and Kennedy’s oratory, they do not say that it will be easy, but that these things must be done now and not later, that we must do them together, that we will do them together, that we will sacrifice as one, and that we will triumph as one.

I wonder how accurate this is. If only they had a weighting for how good of a leader do you think they’ll be.

65% Bill Richardson
64% John McCain
60% Chris Dodd
60% Tom Tancredo
58% Mike Huckabee
57% Mitt Romney
56% Fred Thompson
55% Ron Paul
54% Barack Obama
54% John Edwards
53% Hillary Clinton
52% Joe Biden
45% Mike Gravel
44% Rudy Giuliani
39% Dennis Kucinich

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Mr/Mrs. Presidential Candidate:

What is the single greatest action the United States should do tomorrow to directly reduce the United States’ contribution to the global warming crisis?

If your foreign policy were to return the United States to a time when we were respected around the world, how do you propose to mend ties to our allies, to rebuild old bridges and build new ones, and to reach out at a time when our friends are few and far between?

I wonder would Al Gore take another shot at the Vice Presidency to further his global warming message? Surely the second highest office in the land would be the best place to further his cause…

Which is the greatest folly, that the electorate imposes the expectation that one person can solve all of the United States problems, or that all of the politicians’ opiate laden bullet points, detailing their nine-point plans, can save us all from impending doom?

Other major policy issues in the upcoming presidential race that I’m to lazy to postulate questions about:
privacy, war on drugs, healthcare, social security, education, war in iraq, foreign policy, energy policy, nuclear energy, terrorism, fear

And, to top it off, what we really need:
unification of the two halves of our country; a leader to unite the people, to bring a sense of nationalism back to the masses, a single common goal, worthy of a national charge, benefiting the United States and the world

This is the terrorism stance I would use if I were running for president:

“It’s time to chill the f*ck out. To quote some old dude, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’. Enough said, next question.”

I’ve felt of late that over the weekend I tend to post several short, disjointed posts, so I figured I’d save up and just post once this time.

Hilary and Barack and who knows who else have formed presidential exploratory committees.

“You pick the smartest, most capable, most honorable individual you can think of…”
— Leo McGarry

I think that sentiment will be driving my decision. A person who is honorable, trustworthy, dare I say patriotic, who would adhere to a more strict interpretation of the Constitution. Actually, I don’t think I can use patriot as a criteria. It has been twisted. I don’t mean it in its current connotation, but that connotation from the Colonial era. A statesman, a patriot, a federalist, a contitutionalist.

I finally just put 2 and 2 together. For the past day or so, I’ve noticed a severe slowness in the responsiveness of one of my shells in a screen session. I had also noticed in a “ps axf” that there was an ssh session open to wesley. Neither of these things were adding up. I just realized that most likely I had ssh’ed to wesley, then back again to argento. The reason for the slowness wasn’t due to high load or low memory, but simply network lag and overhead of going to Texas and back again. Oops…

I have spent a good deal of this weekend again working on the home network. I installed a new Xen image for my database machine, figured out that Samba can’t do straight Kerberos authentication (only with real AD :(), packaged Resin for Debian for real this time (yay! finally!), watched a bunch of Scrubs, watched a bunch of movies over again, got Azureus working headless on my new shell server (compute0), did some laundry, stayed up too late, got up too late, found out my internet connection can push 15Mbps+, setup cricket for snmp monitoring of all of my new machines, hmmm, that’s all I can think of right now…

I haven’t fixed the car door and it’s been too cold to ride or finish the table.

I’m out of photos now. Must take more.

If you would have told me any number of years ago that I would be in favor of impeachment of a president, I wouldn’t have believed you. I no longer hold that President Bush is a steward of these many states and their people. I am of firm belief that he has in his own mind perverted and twisted his purpose and authority as Commander in Chief and is in fact subverting and eroding those freedoms and liberties he himself believes he is protecting.

I have recently read some of the surrounding commentary given by the founding fathers on the subject of the second amendment, in regard to the right to bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

I ran across a web page listing a dearth of quotes to the effect (as I perceived it) that the right was not granted out of the need for self defense by individuals or whatever tripe gun toter spout as legal grounds for their ability keep their weapons. I believe this right was granted as a guarantee of liberty. It was further proof that government is not to be trusted. The framers had just been screwed by their previous government and when a long train of abuses and usurpations … evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. This is the meaning. This is the reason. We are the government; We, the People. I believe our right of arms stems from this, that as a final and last resort, that the people would be equipped to take back what is rightfully theirs.

Things like this. Arguments given without context infuriate me. And these arguments of government seem very similar to many arguments of religion in my mind. The Bible is the written word of God. It is a Book, I dare say merely a book. What it represents is much greater than the sum of its many words. No one passage or phrase sums up its meaning. Yet so many arguments by ecclesiastical zealots hang solely upon one passage, one verse of Scripture. All too often the letter of the law becomes more important than its spirit. The Bible isn’t God, just as the passages together are not God. Only God is God. The Book exists to convey the concept, the proof that was and is, the relationship, the reasons.

I do not know if Bush should be impeached or not. For all my words here, I am not a lawyer. Perhaps he has lied to further his foreign policy agenda. I wouldn’t doubt that other Presidents have done the same. And other Presidents have undoubtedly ordered terrible things against their own people over these many years, but I doubt that any has done so with the brazen and blatant abandonment of personal freedoms and liberties as this President. Maybe I am wrong, but I hope that the Presidents before buckled to treason with more introspect than I believe this President has.

Give me liberty or give me death.