Political stuff

While I was waiting for my laundry to finish washing, a guy saw my Gun Owners of America shirt and asked me about them, and then started on the election. His wife likes Kerry, he doesn't like Kerry but doesn't much like Bush either. So far so good. Then came a couple of things:
Bush is going to destroy our civil rights
The war was about OIL!!!
No wmd
and the crowning bit, "I'm still afraid he's going to find some excuse to cancel the election!"

Ok, people. Bush is not my favorite guy. He's done things I'm not happy about, he hasn't done some things I think he should. But the choice is between him and Kerry, and for me that's not a choice.

A lot of the Patriot act is BS wish-list stuff that some agencies had been trying to get for years, and no, I'm not happy about it. Far as I know of hasn't been abused at this time; doesn't mean it won't be. But some things were inevitable after 9/11, and some of it, like profiling bad guys, needs to be done. (by 'profiling' I do not mean all middle-easterners are terrorists; I do mean that there are certain things that should cause someone to be looked at more closely)

Shut up about the OIL. All we had to do to turn on the spigots was say, "Ok, Saddam, you're good. Sanctions removed." And he'd have happily sold us oil while he built up his wmd programs.

They've found binary chemical shells containing sarin, they've found mustard gas, they've found reference strains of bacteria and viruses. There's still many square miles of ammo dumps to search, the the Iraqis didn't specifically mark their chemical munitions. This doesn't even count the testimony of scientists about stuff smuggled to Syria.

Barring a massive, hugely disrupting attack the day before or day of, the elections are not going to be cancelled. If the bad guys put out word they were going to attack random polling places, lots of people would think "Screw them", load up a sidearm, and go vote. And in that circumstance, it would be interesting to know how many people would be sitting in their car near a polling place, rifle or shotgun handy, just reading a book and waiting, just in case.

I don't like this political crap in general, but the level of - not necessarily stupidity, let's say credulity- right now is amazing.