A few quick thoughts

Training is progressing nicely, though it has stalled in recent days with rain, and school, and general not wanting to run.  I’ve been DREADING the running portion because, as you can see from the address of this blog, I hate running.  Seriously, I hate it.

But I’ll get out tonight, probably, and certainly tomorrow, and run. 

 

Reluctantly.

I watched the DNC last night.  Hillary’s speech was rather good and shed more light on the mystery of how the dems are going to screw this one up.

 

Nonetheless, a few quick thoughts: 

Words hold meaning, but body language often times speaks much, much louder than words.

Based on that knowledge, Michelle Obama clearly doesn’t like Hillary Clinton much at all.

Wow.

 

Hillary said during her speech that “we’re not big on quitting!” when she was discussing fighting on as a party or some such.

Am I the ONLY person in the country that reflexively tacks on to that statement “Except in Iraq” every time I hear them say it?

The other best part was when she, rather adroitly, reminded her voters that it wasn’t about her, it was about the ideals she was trying to put forward.  That was clever, and very important.

Other than that there was very little substance, but it was still a very good rally-type speech.

 

I’m also reminded of something that has haunted me from the 2004 election.  Some guy was introducing Al Gore to speak on behalf of John Kerry.  His son had died in combat in Afghanistan, I believe.  He made a comment that was something along the lines of “if he had been elected President, we wouldn’t have even been there in the first place!”

Yea, and that’s a little bit of the problem.

The whole point of involving ourselves in Afghanistan was in response to a heinous attack on our infrastructure here.  Had Al Gore been elected, maybe we wouldn’t have been in Afghanistan.  Which would mean there would have been no response.  Which would have meant…  well, there’s a whole world of possibilities that runs from that point forward. 

Truth be told, we may never know.  We may have already had the henchmen killed and buried under rubble by now.  After all, shooting fish is much easier to do if you keep them in the barrel to start with and don’t dump it out before you open fire.  A very good argument can be made that it is better for Al Queda to reconstitute its operative apparatus so that it WILL have a central bureaucracy.  You can bomb a headquarters, you can’t bomb a secret cave.

But that’s what could have been…  we’re now considering what could be.

 

And the question I keep asking myself is “change to what?” and “change how?” and most importantly, “change from what?”  Because if there is a fundamental disagreement in what we are changing FROM, there can be no agreement on how change will come about no matter whether we agree on what we’re changing to or not.  And if what we are changing FROM is simply the current incumbent, anyone will fit the bill.  But if the future matters, if who’s going to be driving matters, then the choice matters.