Any More Intelligent and Discerning Republicans Out There?

Arrgh.  My Linux project is stalled, because I installed Linux on an old hard drive, and it won't recognize the VIA VT6410 chip that has controls my other hard drives, and it won't recognize Windows-formatted ZIP disks.  These problems can be fixed, but it means I'm going to be going back and forth between Windows XP and Linux for a while yet. 

I do not have the patience right now to write a meaningful essay.  So, taking the easy way out, I link-skipped around and found the weblog, Kalilily Time.  The author, "Elaine of Kalilily," came up with the line I used as the title of this post, the graphic to the right, and points to an article by the conservative/libertarian columnist, Charley Reese:

Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet
by Charley Reese

Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.

It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.

This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration. Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace. 

[...] I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to Kerry's Web site and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.

Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.

Frankly, I was a bit shocked by the statement, "It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face."  But in context, it makes sense. 

If we can't have a Linux geek in the White House, let's have a windsurfer.