apple juice

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Howard Dean from friends, relatives, and even random people that see the sticker on my car. Most of the questions boil down to one of two things. Why is Dean so angry? and Why is the media so mean to Dean?

Question #1 is a direct result of Question #2. The media, the established party insiders and his opponents have all drummed up this angle that he’s all about anger, veins popping out of his neck, etc.

If you believe this, you need to start doing a little more of your own research. Watch a speech given by Dean, watch one of his TV appearances yourself. They’re on the Dean For America website. Make your own decision, don’t let the media do it for you. It’s lazy, and if you let them do it for you, we’ll end up with another 4 years of the downward spiral our current administration has set us on.

Salon.com has written an excellent article about this whole phenomenom, entitled The media vs. Howard Dean. I would love it if you’d check it out. You’ll have to click the “Free Day Pass link on the first page and watch a quick ad. It’s worth it.

By some measures, Dean’s media troubles began with his June 22 appearance on “Meet the Press.” During the hour-long sit-down, Dean faced off against a clearly combative host, Tim Russert, who prepared for the interview, in part, by asking the Bush Treasury Department to produce what the Washington Post called a “highly selective” analysis of the Democratic tax program, including rolling back scheduled tax cuts. Later in the program came a pop-quiz question about how many men and women currently serve in the military. When Dean said he didn’t know the exact number and complained it was like asking him “who the ambassador to Rwanda is,” Russert shot back: “As commander in chief, you should know that.” Dean estimated there were between 1 and 2 million men and women in active duty; according to the Pentagon, there are 1.4 million.

What a sharp contrast to ’99, when Russert had a warm, respectful one-on-one with then-candidate Bush. When the host sprang a specific policy question on Bush about how many missiles would still be in place if a new START II nuclear weapons treaty were signed, Bush answered: “I can’t remember the exact number.” But unlike his session with Dean, Russert dropped the topic without lecturing Bush that “as commander in chief, you should know that.”

Beltway insiders clucked over Dean’s June appearance on NBC’s mighty “Meet the Press,” labeling him evasive and unprepared. But lots of party faithful saw something else — a candidate who would stand up to biased, big-foot pundits — and flooded the campaign with contributions that day. Instead of marking Dean’s leveling-off point, “Meet the Press” marked the beginning of his ascent to undisputed front-runner status.

An op-ed in the boston globe, Powell’s shrinking credibility on Iraq

At one point Powell said: “This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well documented.”

But no stockpiles of either chemical or biological weapons have been found. There was no effective nuclear program. The United States still invaded Iraq.

This was taken on the way out, somewhere in North Dakota. You can see Sonja’s orange sweater, she’s sleeping in the back.

Since I haven’t come up with any resolutions yet this year, I thought I could go back to last year’s and see how I did:

• Cook a more diverse lineup of food (buy cookbooks)
• Play more video games
• Get a reasonable workout program and stick to it (for more than a week)
• Play golf at least twice a month (in the summer)
• Don’t buy crap
• Sell extraneous computers and equipment on eBay
• Keep the desk and office clean
• Ride bike at least once a week in the summer

Okay first off, Cook a more diverse lineup of food (buy cookbooks), we did fairly well on this one. I can’t say we bought any new cookbooks, but we did at least go through the cookbooks and pick out new things to make. So on the whole, you could say I stuck to this one.

#2, Play more video games, easy one. Check!

#3, Get a reasonable workout program and stick to it (for more than a week). Failed miserably. With the exception of getting my arm in shape for softball last spring, I barely visted the gym. Like the Cubs, I will try again this year.

#4 Play golf at least twice a month (in the summer) I had my best golfing year ever, and I played a lot more than in the past. Which also cost more money, but what are you going to do? I even acheived my goal of scoring under 95 (92) and was pretty consistently hitting the mid-90’s by the end of the year. I hope to continue that this summer, and maybe even score under 90? The way things usually go with golf, I’ll be back up in the 120’s

#5 Don’t buy crap, #6 Sell extraneous computers and equipment on eBay, and #7 Keep the desk and office clean were all intimately related. For the most part things went well. I sold off two computers, threw away a bunch of other junk, bought a paper shredder, and for the most part kept the office clean. It’s a work in progress and I still tend to hang on to paper way longer than I need to, but on the whole, things are looking good.

And the last one on my list, Ride bike at least once a week in the summer failed pretty miserably as well. I won’t make excuses. It just didn’t happen.

Well looking back things went very well over the past year. This year I’m going to work on some of the things that didn’t go so well from last year, namely working out more since I was just absolutely beat when we were skiing last week!

Excellent speech by Senator Kennedy

An excerpt:

Despite the obvious Al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan, the White House had now made Iraq our highest national security priority. The steamroller of war was moving into high gear. The politics of the timing is obvious. September 2002. The hotly contested 2002 election campaigns were entering the home stretch. Control of Congress was clearly at stake. Republicans were still furious over the conversion of Senator Jim Jeffords that had cost them control of the Senate in 2001. Election politics prevailed, but they should not have prevailed over foreign policy and national security.

The decision on Iraq could have been announced earlier. Why time it for September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained on September 7th, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

That was the bottom line. War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they were methodically rolling out. There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative, and no compelling reason for war.

After trekking across a good portion of the country, we are back in rochester. We travelled at least 3600 miles over the course of the journey, and it feels good to be back home again.

I will have some little pictures up soon, we did lots of fun stuff!