There's a website from Time Magazine (which has been up since before the primaries) called President Match (presidentmatch.com). A few readers have written to complain that this site claimed they best matched with Kerry, despite disagreeing with the majority of Kerry's positions. I myself took the test and was "told" to vote for Kerry too (though only by 5% over Bush.) But I expected it would be close, because my own beliefs are pretty equally spread between the Democratic and Republican positions.

And, I think I achieved a more accurate result by answering the questions based on what I thought they meant, rather than what they said.

This is an important point. Most online polls and quizzes use biased language which amounts to, essentially, push-polling (wherein the question contains information or language that pushes you to one side or the other). Look at the difference in language between "outlawing abortions" vs. "allowing gays to serve." Some of the questions themselves are even taken from Kerry literature, such as "Roll Back Cuts for People Making Over $100,000". The questions are clearly slanted towards making the logical, rational position seem to be on the Democratic side.

Also, take a question such as "Privatize Social Security". Of course, neither Bush nor Kerry support that, as written. But Social Security is in trouble. It's running out of money. Bush proposed allowing seniors the option -- the option, only for those who chose to -- of investing a small percentage (between 2%-6% depending on the proposal) of their funds into private accounts. To say that's the equivalent of "privatizing Social Security" is ludicrous; it would be like saying Kerry wants to ban all guns in the United States simply because he supports background checks. Yet on the "answer key", it has Kerry as "strongly opposing" and Bush "strongly favoring" this imaginary blanket privatization, and so logical people who answer the question as written would get another point in the Kerry column.

This reminds me of the popular and long-running "World's Smallest Political Quiz" and its imitators, some of which are many pages in length. They all have the same thing in common -- a plurality of people who take the quiz are defined as Libertarians. But of course they are; the quizzes are run from Libertarian websites! The goal of the quiz is to convince more people that they're Libertarians, and maybe should consider donating money or time to the Libertarian party.

This may or may not be a conscious choice on the part of the testmakers. When you're convinced in your own beliefs, it's sometimes difficult to understand how other rational, educated people could disagree. The bias in asking a question can change the outcome; for example, most polls which ask "are you pro-life or pro-choice" or "do you support or oppose abortion" tend to show a slim pro-life majority, or a statistical tie. But polls that ask "do you support or oppose a woman's constitutional right to an abortion" tend to show a pro-choice majority. Not surprisingly, polltakers are less likely to say they oppose a right, rather than a procedure. The wildly varying support of gay marriage in polls is also largely due to how the question is worded. "Do you support or oppose gay marriage" yields different numbers than "do you support the right of gays to marry."

Whether or not the Time magazine poll is actively trying to tip the scales in favor of Kerry is a debateable issue. But I'm willing to bet if a conservative magazine such as National Review or The American Spectator put out a differently worded quiz, most people would be shocked to find their "best match" was now George W. Bush.

Thanks for the emails regarding stop60minutes.com being over its bandwidth limit; after the controversy died down a notch I thought I could get away with a lower bandwidth allotment over there, but no such luck. :) Now that I know a lot of people are still visiting it, I guess I should finish the site after all, huh?

Just a quick note to say thank you to all who have been reading over the last few weeks, the wonderful emails and comments, the generous donations and purchasing of t-shirts and bumper stickers, and your continued support.

It is with a heavy heart that I, therefore, must admit I've decided to cast my vote this year for John Kerry after all.

Just kidding. :) Had ya there for a second.

I've received a few requests for a live chat following the first Presidential debate next week. If any of you out there think they might like to participate in this, send me a quick note at defeatjohnjohn@hotmail.com or comment on this post. If there's enough interest, I'll be happy to host a live chat-based discussion that night. Even if its just a few of us loyal readers, it could be fun to debate what we liked or hated. (This goes for you rabid anti-Bushers who fill my mailbox, too -- wouldn't be much of a debate without you.)

Thanks again! More coming soon.

As regular readers of this blog are aware (and yell at me regularly from both sides), I'm much more "anti-Kerry" than "pro-Bush". But I have to give our President credit where credit is due, and I thought his U.N. address yesterday was one of the best speeches he has ever delivered. I read parts of it earlier today and liked it, but it wasn't until I got to see C-Span's re-airing of it that I realized how much I liked it.

If you can't catch the speech on TV (C-Span has a schedule, or they have the speech in Real format on their main page), at least read the transcript. The part that really sold me, which helped clarify and underscore the differences between our choices this election, was this:

For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach.

Kerry and his supporters still seem to live in this bizarre, convenient little fantasy world in which the policies of non-interference and ignoring those who torture and murder their religious enemies was working just peachy, for they'd surely never come after us unless we came after them. Which not only ignores 9/11, but also the dozens of escalating terrorist attacks on our soil and on our foreign embassies during the decade prior.

As Jonah Goldberg put it (brilliantly) yesterday, yes Bush has created "more extremists and terrorists by fighting on their home turf", but the goal is "to rationalize the Middle East so that, while it may still produce enemies, they will be ones we can deal with around a table, not a crater." What Bush and his advisers seem to understand is that there's a larger picture here. Repeatedly whining "but Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11!" makes about as much sense in a global context as "but Germany didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor!"

But it was more than just the content of the address that struck me. There's something about listening to Kerry that's reminiscent of an empty suit -- of someone reading what others told him to say, because it polled better. Kerry has the exact same expression and delivery and speaking style now speaking against the war as he did last year speaking in favor of it. Listen to him give an address on any issue -- it's far too easy to imagine his same words and gestures and cadences saying the opposite.

Luckilly with Kerry, on almost every issue, you can find a video recording of him saying the exact opposite, so maybe that's why.

With Bush, even his detractors sense genuine conviction, which I respect -- even on the issues I think he's flat-out 100% wrong on. When it comes to a leader, I guess I'd rather have someone I disagree with but who means it, over someone I agree with (this week) but only because a poll tells him to.

To be fair, if Kerry's fault is "flip-flopping" to say whatever he thinks the electorate wants to hear, Bush's fault is stubbornly and loyally sticking to a position or person or course of action even after proven inadequate or incorrect. But on issues of foreign policy, I still find Bush's worldview more persuasive. His U.N. address was quite candid, admitting that things will get worse before they get better, but urging all to see forward, the wider angle. "The advance of freedom always carries a cost paid by the bravest among us," Bush acknowledged. "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat; it is to prevail." I don't know if Bush understood these things when he was elected originally, or if he even understood them when he made the decision to invade Iraq. But he seems to understand it now, and Kerry doesn't.

We just witnessed two major foreign policy addresses this week by two very different men, one of whom will be the President for the next four years. Which speech sounded more "Presidential" to you?

Tracking Electoral College math has become an obsessive hobby for online political junkies, not to mention major news organizations and both political campaigns. The new C-Span numbers have Bush with 294 electoral votes (270 are needed to win), Kerry with 181, and 63 in the undecided/toss-up category. (Some right-leaning sites have Bush with well over 300, but C-Span seems more balanced.) Recent polls showing that New Jersey has become a tie (or Bush ahead by as many as 4 points), and New York (!) now only a 5-point race, are understandably making some Kerry backers very, very nervous. Kerry's last stand will be the upcoming debates, but as even he himself has admitted, he's not much of a debater, and Bush has matured greatly as a speaker since 2000 (and most pundits agree he beat Gore even then.)

So what does Kerry have to hope for in the next six weeks before the election? Unfortunately, he'll have to stake his hope of election on something catasrophically bad happening in Iraq (or here). But even that could backfire, as the conventional wisdom generally favors Bush as the candidate who would "benefit" from such a tragedy, as Americans wouldn't have time to blame, but only to want revenge, and stick with the more "hawkish" of the two choices as the guy to "fight back". Economic news continues to improve, so no help for Kerry there, and their policies on other domestic issues aren't radically different enough to be noticeable. Even on major social debates, Kerry has muted any sting he could offer by coming out pro-guns, against gay marriage, and hell, even saying life begins at conception (though doesn't think government should ban it too much.) And I and others have already discussed his bizarre me-too/not-me insanity with regards to his Iraq "position".

Hate to jinx it, or write myself into a corner when so much could still happen. But barring anything earth-shattering, I believe I can now state with reasonable confidence that this blog, as fun as its been, will cease to exist come November 3rd. (Hope some of you continue to follow me back to ludicrosity.com, of course!)

"If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win!" -- Michael Moore, in a "Pep Talk" letter to his fellow Democrats yesterday.

Made me laugh out loud at work. :)

Yesterday, Kerry began his new strategy (which aides say is, essentially, "Iraq Iraq Iraq Iraq Iraq, Iraq Iraq") with a foreign policy address at New York University. Comparing his statements in the past year with excerpts from this speech:

Before:		Yesterday:
Kerry defending his (then) pro-war stance: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president." - December 17, 2003		"The satisfaction we take in [Saddam's] downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." - Kerry's speech yesterday in which he says he wouldn't have overthrown Saddam.
Bush: ''My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq." Kerry: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority." - August 10, 2004		"Is [Bush] really saying to Americans that if we had known there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is resoundingly no."
Kerry promising not to criticize the President once fighting began: "It's what you owe the troops. I remember being one of those guys and reading news reports from home. If America is at war, I won't speak a word without measuring how it'll sound to the guys doing the fighting when they're listening to their radios in the desert." - March 11, 2003		"This [Iraq] policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence . . . Let me put it plainly: The President's policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security.  It has weakened it."

With regards to the first example, let's not forget Kerry won the Democratic nomination over Howard Dean in part because he supported the ousting of Saddam, and convinced voters that a candidate who disagreed didn't have, in his own words, "the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president." Campaigning now that it was wrong to overthrow Saddam is insulting, especially the way he's going about it: remember, what Kerry is saying is not: "I would have done the same thing, but now realize that would have been the wrong choice", but rather: "ignore everything I said last year on the topic and pretend I was anti-war all along and would have had this hindsight 20/20 judgment then, too, if I had been President."

To be fair, later in the speech Kerry did say the following: "Two years ago, Congress was right to give the President the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable." At least this is better than Kerry's previous (and ridiculous) claims that his vote was just to "threaten" the use of force. But it still glosses over the fundamental part of the authorization bill, in that: "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" with regards to Iraq. Bush at the time (hell, even before 9-11) had been pretty clear about what he intended to do, so if Kerry really disagreed with it or didn't trust him, he shouldn't have voted for it.

I'll be honest: it bothers me when Bush doesn't take responsibility for mistakes made in Iraq. But it bothers me equally that Kerry doesn't take responsibility for his votes, either.

After all, if Iraq had gone better, is anyone doubting that Kerry would be basing his campaign bragging how his vote was so prescient and brave and presidential, unlike the Democrats who voted against it? Isn't there something a little sick about the gleeful look the Kerry campaign gets whenever something goes bad in Iraq, because -- goody -- it will help them politically? This, from the candidate who promised not to make the war an issue, because it gave aid and comfort to our enemies abroad, and because it would demoralize our troops and put them in greater danger?

Don't misunderstand me. I too have complaints and concerns about our actions in Iraq, as would anyone following the events closely. But the above contradictions aren't fundamentally about Bush, or even Iraq. They're about Kerry. As I've said repeatedly, this site is not about defending or supporting Bush, but about whether Kerry, independently of Bush, is fit for the Presidency of the United States, especially at a time of war. Based on his speech yesterday, his votes in the past, and his decision to now make opposition to the Iraq war the fundamental issue of his campaign (ignoring all other social and economic differences), he doesn't seem to belong in the office he's seeking.

The New York Times headline this morning: "CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos."

Yes, as many networks and newspapers and document experts and anyone with a copy of Microsoft Word found out for themselves over a week ago, the documents were not created in 1972, and were, as we and other blogs pointed out days before the networks even acknowledged the problem, childish forgeries. I only hope that those who blindly followed the word of Big Media despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary will finally concede that, gee, maybe those complaining about an anti-Bush news slant might have a point after all.

Incidentally, it means my "Biasphere" article from only a few hours ago just gained more support!

Earlier in the week, Dan Rather brushed aside critics of the Killian memos as "partisan political operatives". Yesterday, CBS News gleefully reported that one of the first individuals to accuse the memos of being forgeries had "strong ties to Republican causes." Some newspapers syndicating a Sunday Chicago Tribune piece (which was actually pretty fair) retitled it "Critics of CBS turn out to have Republican ties", referring specifically to the blog rathergate.com.

The implication: because some of the critics of CBS are Republicans, obviously their arguments cannot be credible.

Never mind the fact that many, many people noticed the CBS documents were forgeries at around the same time. Never mind the fact that rathergate.com came many days after the first websites posted research on the disputed documents. Never mind that the source of the now-debunked CBS memos was Kerry activist Bill Burkett. Never mind the fact that some of the most persuasive evidence has come from anti-Bush individuals such as Joseph Newcomer. (In fact, in the interests of full disclosure, even I'm a registered independent who voted for more Democrats last election than Republicans.)

But even if all of us had been right-wing gun-toting Limbaugh-loving Keyes-backing uber-conservatives... so what? Would our findings have been any more or less accurate based on political persuasion alone?

This debate comes up a lot when discussing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The mainstream press can't even say their name without mentioning the fact that many of their biggest financial donors are Republicans. But, again, so what? The Swift Vets are a registered non-partisan 527 group made up of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, who had disagreements with Kerry's actions and positions on Vietnam. Naturally, they asked for funding, and naturally, opponents of Kerry were more likely to give. Well, duh. Conversely, moveon.org is funded by opponents of Bush, which are mostly liberal activists and Kerry fundraisers. What else would you expect? That doesn't mean what either group has to say must be false because of those who support them. Would all the people dismissive of the Swift Vets because of Republican contributions be equally as dismissive of anti-Bush groups because of Democratic ties?

And what of movies like Fahrenheit 9/11, which creator Michael Moore has repeatedly said was created with the express purpose of taking down the Bush presidency? (Oh, I forgot -- that's just a "documentary.")

I'm not saying we shouldn't take a source's political bent into account when determining the truth and believability of a story or accusation. But we must acknowledge that supporters of Kerry aren't going to be the ones digging around for information against their candidate, any more than Bush supporters are going to be the ones digging for dirt on theirs. That negative information on a candidate or position will come from the opposition, not the supporters, is simple logic; you can't dismiss complaints about the left that come from the right any more than you can dismiss complaints about the right that happen to come from the left.

This is all indicative of a larger trend in the mainstream media, which is so unwilling to acknowledge a country evenly divided that conscious efforts are made to marginalize the conservative half. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are regularly described as right-leaning, but CNN and Time Magazine are never accurately described as slanting left. Bill O'Reilly is always a "conservative commentator" whereas Aaron Brown is simply, a commentator. Leftist viewpoints are considered mainstream, while conservative viewpoints must be labeled as such.

Even on issues such as abortion, in which the country remains evenly divided according to Gallup, the pro-life position is always considered the extreme view. The term "moderate Republican", for example, almost exclusively refers to a Republican with a pro-choice position. But if a Democrat is pro-life, are they called a moderate Democrat? Of course not. They are called a conservative Democrat. Every time.

This may or may not be a conscious case of bias. If everyone you surround yourself with believes a certain view, then naturally those who don't share that view must logically be in the fringe. Yet Fox News outranks CNN 2 to 1 in the ratings, Rush Limbaugh remains the highest rated radio broadcaster in history, and all three branches of government are currently run by conservatives. How can you be "in the fringe" when you're in the majority?

When vacationing in London last year, I was in a large bookstore trying to find Ambling Into History, about President Bush. Unable to locate it on the shelves, I asked a manager, who seemed intrigued by the unfamiliar title. Upon looking it up in the computer, his face turned sour, and he eyed me with disgust. "Ah," he explained condescendingly, "we try not to carry any books from Harper Collins; that's part of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing empire." Contempt and impatience growing, he grudgingly said I could special order the book if I "really wanted it," though recommended I just get it online from someone else instead. Never mind that this particular book, by Frank Bruni of the New York Times, was hardly a glowing pro-Bush treatise by anyone's definition. It was published by Harper Collins, which is owned by a right-winger, and therefore must all be 100% unworthy and false and evil and wrong.

Bottom line: for the same people who used to claim that liberal activist Ted Turner's CNN network was completely neutral despite the positions of its founder, to now claim that any source biased against Kerry must be suspect to the point of knee-jerk doubt and disbelief, is an incalculable idiocy. Of course it's important to observe whether the source of a story has a political ax to grind. But if you happen to be a Democrat, and a Republican points out that 2+2=4, you're not on intellectual high ground by claming 2+2 must therefore equal 5 instead.

(also posted to ludicrosity.com)