(no subject)

[sethrak]

After a long and convoluted web-crawl that originally had no intention of going anywhere near the presidential campaign I ran across this article. According to Snopes, Kerry's "questionably" awarded medals are less the fault of him being a gloryhound shamelessly pimping for medals every time he got a scrap of shrapnel or a hangnail, and more a product of Navy regs at the time combined with the high rate of injury in Vietnam making it awfully easier to get a Purple Heart than it was supposed to be. Easier to get a PH than it's supposed to be now, for that matter.

I'm still not voting for him. Partly because of his decision to throw away medals that may or may not have been his, as part of his anti-war demonstrations. I want to find some third party candidate who I can vote for with a reasonably clear conscience.

But it makes me feel a bit better to know that the charges Kerry was *trying* for unearned extra medals, which he later disrespected, and that he pulled strings to get out of the war when he'd barely been scratched, are not the rock-solid truth that FoxNews and the Republican party like to say it is. Snopes has a good solid reputation, and is simply out there to debunk all sorts of rumors and scandals and urban legends that hang on perniciously despite having no basis in truth. As far as I can tell, they don't have any partisan leanings.


Now to try and find somebody to vote for from a third party, who's managed to get on the Nebraskan ticket.... Hmmmmm. I wonder how you find that out....

Comments

[xfraserx.livejournal.com]

"are not the rock-solid truth that FoxNews and the Republican party like to say it is"

You say those like they're two different entities ;)

[sethrak.livejournal.com]

::rolls her eyes::

Fraser, I do realize you're only a Brit, but does that require complete ignorance of things over here? Or a complete inability to be even mildly objective?

Also, I find that image you stuck into your comment to be both offensive, and irrelevant to the comment itself.

[sethrak.livejournal.com]

Right then. Now that my initial urge to gnaw on things has ebbed a tad, I shall write a more reasoned response.

I consider myself to be, first and foremost, a liberal moderate.

On social issues, I an most definitely a liberal. So much so that I think Dav-chan is mildly deluding himself, in the way people in relationships tend to do to keep things running smoothly, when he insists I'm "Not really a liberal". ^_^ I am all in favor of the wealthy paying a higher percentage of taxes than the poor and lower-middle class. I believe in using tax dollars to feed the poor; provide basic health care to *everyone* who needs it, not just people who can jump through the fiery hoops of the current Medicare/aid bureaucracy; to force industries to take care of their own wastes, not just trust them to regulate themselves; and all sorts of other causes that tend to make conservatives and Republicans fall to the ground foaming at the mouth.

On fiscal issues, I tend to be a conservative. This is for two reasons. You cannot feed, clothe, and heal everyone who needs it, and run a country, without some basic fiscal responsibility and restraint. Tax dollars are not limitless. They are usually rather less than the funds we would like or need to have. We have to be careful how we apportion them, and we have to stop massive deficit spending. It will eventually come back and bite us on our collective ass if we don't fix that. The second reason is because it is horribly irresponsible and *wrong* to waste the hard-earned money which the American people provide in taxes.

Getting to the heart of Fraser's comment, I feel that Fox News' commentators tend to say things in a manner sufficiently close to the official Republican Party line, sufficiently often, to make their claim of being "Fair and Balanced" completely groundless.

But Fox News and the Republican Party are *not* interchangeable. They do not *always* act this way. They just do so often enough to be aggravating to someone who's liberal and watches it on anything like a regular basis, as I do.

Furthermore, anyone who claims that conservatives and the Republican Party are interchangeable is completely full of it.

The Republican Party *is* the more conservative of the two major American political parties.

But not *all* its members are hardcore conservatives.

And not all hardcore conservatives, or moderate conservatives, or independents with conservative leanings, are Republicans.

That's like saying all liberals are part of the Democrat Party.

Some of us are Greens. Some run as Independents. Some like even more obscure third parties. Some of us vote for conservatives on occasion because we feel they'll do a good job - such conservatives do exist.

Some of us are scrambling helplessly to find a decent candidate to vote for because the Dems, the only liberal-leaning party who stands a chance in today's political climate of taking the White House, couldn't manage to give us a halfway decent candidate. We'd *love* to vote for someone, anyone, who truly espouses our views and has a fighting chance. Instead they gave us Kerry.

>_<

Why, oh why, couldn't it have been Dean or Edwards who won the Pres. nomination? Why did it have to be someone who comes up with nonsense like "I voted for it before I voted against it" in response to an issue he *had* to know he'd be grilled on? Why did someone who *threw away* the medals he was awarded in Vietnam think he ought to go anywhere near the race for President? Why did a man with a major political liability like Mrs. Kerry think he should even try to risk exposing her mental imbalances in the fishbowl that is national media coverage of the major party Presidential candidates? Doesn't he at least love her enough to keep her from that kind of embarrassment? >_<

Damn it. I'm back to desiring to gnaw on things. I'm going to stop now, and read webcomics til I feel better.