Assorted randomness follows.

So we got our DSL modem replaced today, which should hopefully cut down on the instances of being randomly disconnected from the ‘net at inconvenient times, such as when Whir is in my crosshairs. We can but hope, anyway. If you were one of the like 2 people on the planet who didn’t know that my ‘net connection sucks, well, it does. It always has. It’s Monroe, what do you want?

That aside, I woke up at 8am this morning. Now, while I realize that there are quite a few of you who actually do this sort of thing on a fairly regular basis, there are others of us for whom it’s like being an Apollo 11 astronaut or something. One small step for man, and all that. Boldly going where no sane human has gone before. That sort of thing.

And just to go for some political bloggage, because it’s been a while, I finally feel caught up enough to say things, and oh by the way the Democratic National Convention is going on, I’ll note a couple of speeches from said convention.

Bill Clinton, for whatever you might think of the guy, is if nothing else a good orator, and even in the transcript he delivers what I think is a pretty good speech. Much the same can be said for Jimmy Carter, not to mention Al Gore.

I could, I suppose, just leave you with those, but I think I won’t. I think most of you pretty much realize that I’m going to vote for Kerry come Election Day, and that even if the Democrats weren’t running Kerry, and were running, say, Satan instead, I’d still probably vote for Satan over George W. Bush. Or maybe not, but you get the idea. Not that I’m rampantly thrilled with either of my choices, because to quote my mother, “Kerry waffles, and Bush lies.”

I haven’t made up my mind on the Kerry waffling issue yet. I haven’t exactly been in the country for half the time it’s been an issue, and I haven’t really had the energy to go dig up all the quotes I need to dig up. And to be honest, I don’t really care that much if he went back and forth on some random vote or another, because every politician alive has done the same, and I expect it of them.

Bush, on the other hand, and I wince slightly here because I feel SO cliche here doing the standard “Our guy might not be so hot, but you should see the other guy!” thing, but whatever. I think that Bush is pretty much a symbol of everything I think is wrong with the Republican Party, and I’ve been disenchanted with the Republicans since about ‘96 or so when they REALLY got vicious on Clinton. The straw here is that I think Bush has pretty well lied to me, or at the very least been very very dishonest with me, and not just in the way that every politician does at election time, I mean he REALLY freakin lied to me, and yes Mr. War In Iraq, I mean about you.

But since I think the speeches did a pretty good job of categorizing everything, let’s just work off those. So let’s hear it for Mr. Al “Dammit Florida, What Were You THINKING?” Gore.

“And let’s make sure that this time every vote is counted.”

Now, not as a jab at either of the 2k candidates, because when it was all said and done Bush probably DID win Florida, but Christ election people, get it the hell together, would you? Insert a plug for Oregon’s sweet vote by mail system here.

“It is in that spirit, that I sincerely ask those watching at home who supported President Bush four years ago: Did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for?”

“Is our country more united today?

Or more divided?”

To give some credit, the whole “uniter not a divider” thing Bush did in 2k was pretty good, especially considering the bad bad blood between Republicans and Democrats over Clinton. But given the results of the whole Bush program pretty much since he took office, thinking he gets an F for effort on that one. Granted that my political lifespan has been pretty short, but it seems to me that if we’re not at an all time high in disunity, we’re working real real hard on it.

“Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled?

Or do those words now ring hollow?”

Well, no. And with things like the faith-based charities stuff, attempt at a constitutional amendment on marriage, stem cell research, and whatever else I’ve forgotten, and essentially Bush’s extreme religiosity which I for one find exceedingly abhorrent, what do you expect?

Which says nothing about his whole economic program, but:

“For that matter, are the economic policies really conservative at all?

Did you expect, for example, the largest deficits in history? One after another? And the loss of more than a million jobs?”

Now, to be fair, there’s a fair amount of our economic woes that Bush isn’t responsible for. But then there’s the screwy tax cuts. And the spending increases. And the deficits. Now, I’m not an economist at all, but it would appear to me that Bush and his team did about as well in math as I did, which is to say not well at all. And this is rather disturbing.

And to jump over to President Bill “Speaking of Uniting and Dividing” Clinton:

“On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that American should be run by the right people — their people — in a world in which America acts unilaterally when we can and cooperates when we have to.”

Yeah, ok. So everyone’s already quoted this one, but what the hell. It’s a good line. And while I think Bush was actually right in the case of Iraq to tell the UN to shove it, still. And to quote from a bit later on:

“And, secondly, we live in an interdependent world in which we cannot possibly kill, jail or occupy all of our potential adversaries. So we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists.”

And Clinton, of all people, would know this.

“They believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important matters like health care and retirement security.”

Yeah. Like, ouch. He’s also managed to sum up something I’ve always thought about the Republican Party, too, and Bush in particular.

“Now, now at a time when we’re trying to get other people to give up nuclear and biological and chemical weapons, they are trying to develop two new nuclear weapons which they say we might use first.”

I actually didn’t know that, but it doesn’t particularly surprise me. Because, as we all know, America is really hurting for nuclear weapons.

And just to beat on the economics horse some more:

“For the first time when America was in a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us.”

Yeah, I thought that was a bit screwy myself. I mean, I’m not necessarily against tax cuts, but it sort of costs money to fund wars, here. That took me about 2 seconds to figure out, because hey, I’m tired today. Mind’s working a bit slow.

There’s a bunch more stuff in there I could quote, and while I do so like the bit about the assault weapons, much less the bit about the containers, I’ll make do with this fun bit of numeric goodness:

“These policies have turned a projected $5.8 trillion surplus that we left, enough to pay for the baby boomer retirement, into a projected debt of almost $5 trillion, with over $400 billion in deficit this year and for years to come.”

And leaving the rest of Clinton’s speech aside, I’d quote Carter for you, too, but I don’t think I will, because it’s not really that sort of speech. So just read it.

And as a final note, let me just say how intensely amusing I find it that Ronald Reagan’s son, who’s conveniently named Ron Reagan, is a Democrat.

Anyway. Back to your regularly scheduled shooting of communists with assault rifles.