Absense makes the heart grow...

Appologies for not posting in many moons. My blogging seems to have turned extremely personal as I tend to read the news less and less. Kerry-Edwards seems to be off to a good start and Bush-Cheney seems to be spinning their wheels (despite throwing all the mud they can scrape up) until the GOP convention in late August.

We seemed to have settled on an apartment and are looking forward to moving in soon. It is one of the more expensive ones in SLC but very nice and three blocks from the law school. You can't beat that. Maybe next year, we can get a condo and all that, but for now, we will live it up in this luxury apartment.

Just went golfing with the folks at the Country Club. I didn't play the "sport" but I love driving the cart around, it is so much fun. Dinner was standard WASP fare. The wife-to-be is off seeing "Anchorman"...barf. I hate how they promo these movies now.

Off to watch Tivo-ed Washington Week. This is my family.

How sad for you

Bush and his hatchet men are at it again. Only this time, everyone is starting to notice how inept they are. Ruy Teixeira compares what Bush claims on the economy vs. reality and then what the public believes via polls. The result? People know that the economy still sucks, and the White House can't spin its way out of that one.

Meanwhile, Mark Schmidt takes apart Bush's latest ineffectual (and, of course, negative) Ads. Here's the meat:

"These ads all aggressively fail the most basic test of any political ad: What do you hear when you're watching it out of the corner of an eye, doing dishes, talking on the phone, trying to stop one kid from taking the other one's Power Rangers, etc. I look at the "Yakuza" ad that way and all I hear is 'Kerry had a plan to fight terrorism [blah, blah, some Japanese thing I never heard of, blah blah], 'plan to fight crime [blah, blah]'. OK, sounds good, Kerry's against terrorism and crime. I watch the ad called "Patriot Act" like that, and the only thing I notice is the middle frames: 'Wire Taps' [Clang!] 'Subpoena powers' [Clang!] 'Surveillance' [Clang!] Bad things, scary mean government. But the point of the ad is supposed to be that those are good things, and Kerry is against them, except he sort of isn't ... Getting the point of this ad requires a logic even more nuanced than Kerry's own position, which begins to seem quite reasonable."

National Review's Jim Geraghty tries to task.

"Hope those New Hampshire dairy farmers were paying attention. The senator's explanation:

'I plead guilty. I did vote for it, because I represented Massachusetts,' Kerry said. 'I was a United States senator, and I was working in a context that we were living in a number of years ago, and that's the way we saw the world.

'We don't see the world that way now,' he told the crowd at the Dejno farm. 'I guarantee you that as president, I'm not going to be president of New England, or president of Massachusetts; I'm running to be president of the United States of America. And I'm going to stand up for farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa and other parts of the country just as hard as I did before.'

But Senator, the point is that you weren't standing up for farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa before, you were sticking it to them to benefit farmers in your home state." I dunno, sounds to me like those are two different things, what you did in congress as a representative of Massachusetts and what you would do as President of the USA.

On some issues, that line of reasoning is sound. For example, how one voted on the war, or No Child Left Behind, the PATRIOT Act (alas, Kerry voted for all of them), or the $87 billion (Kerry voted no). But others are purely local issues. The Northeast Dairy Compact is one that pits New England (and upstate NY/Rural PA) against the Midwest.

After a while, they just start to get pathetic.

crossed off my list

Sorry for not writing in a couple days. Since I last blogged, I have joined CostCo, opened a absolutely free joint checking/saving account with the University of Utah Credit Union, taken my fiance to two job interviews, gotten a gift for my now ex-boss, and purchased an automobile. (see below for pictures and details)

I haddn't needed a car for the 6 years I was out on the East Coast (DC to Boston region) but out here in the Salt Lake Valley it is must that between the two of us, we have at least a car of our own.

Oh, by the way, happy birthday America. True patriots question authority and work to make the USA live up to the founder's ideals (or our ideals of them, since they were also slave-holding elitists).

It is an automatic, which is a must for the wife-to-be. I actually prefer manual, but this car still has nice power. 

Not a bad booty either. This car's trunk (or if I were to use the British terminology, the boot) is very large. The rear seats fold down easily for skis and what not. Overall, very practical and sturdy car for the next 5 years or so. 

Here is the car we bought, I think it fits our combined personality. 

It has a cloth interior. My future father-in-law says we should get seat covers to prevent stains which will hurt resale value. I wonder how long a "no food or drink in the car" order will last.