Obligatory Politics Post

So… the Iowa Caucus, eh?

Huh.

Wake me when they nominate someone. This is like watching the first weekend of the NFL season: “ZOMG!?! The Lions beat the Bears!?! SuperBowl bound!!!!”

Remember President Tom Harkin? No? Didn’t fucking think so.

I mean, it is shaping up to be an interesting race, all things considered. And it sounded like they had a pretty good turn-out, which is encouraging. Personally, I think Fred Thompson is going to come out of nowehere (well, third) to punch the rest of the GOP in the mouth, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to get a GOP win in the fall; they’ve got a lot of negativity to overcome, and The Gipper II probably won’t be able to beat it unless he comes up with a crazy-appealing campaign after securing the nomination. Nothing that would be that appealing would actually convince the Republican core, of course.

And then there’s the question of who the big money is behind. In 2000 the answer was obvious, and McCain got left out in the cold as a result.

But that’s about the extent of my analysis for now. I’m definitely looking forward to all of this being over, since it will also mean the Bush presidency will be over and we might have a shot at rebuilding rational political discourse. Crazy, I know, but I have this dream…

And actually, in that vein, I’m kind-of pulling for the Democrats to win the White House. Since the “blogosphere” (man I can’t even type that with a straight face) really came into its own with Bush in power, I’m curious to see how many of the dynamics that seem set in concrete would be shaken up with a Democrat in the White House.

But, at the same time, on a practical level, I would really like to see someone in the White House who is going to take defense seriously; someone who is going to take the lessons of Iraq in terms of troop rotation, supply, and training levels, and really start to give the military what it needs to function at a high level from “go.” Though that could be the inevitable downside to the military performing well in Iraq–politicians deciding they don’t need any more money for gear or training because they obviously did so well with what they had. That’s when we’ll see politicians trotting out casualty counts and pointing to how amazingly low they were.

Not saying we need to boost numbers back toward 10 million in uniform or anything outlandish like that, but a few more Army brigades or Marine regiments would make a big difference (seeing the 3MARDIV fleshed out beyond just the 3rd Marine Regiment would be a nice start), and doing simple things like stockpiling enough of the highest-performance body armor so that there’s two complete sets for everyone who could ever be boots-dry in a combat zone.

Gah. Didn’t want to write that much.

Oh well. Treasure it. I don’t plan on writing on politics too much, unless I’m just. that. bored.

Crossposted with klech.net

Yeah, Right

Man, speaking of cynicism…

I saw today that there’s going to be a Firefly MMORPG, and my first thought was the title of this post. I wish I could get excited about this stuff, but after I’d been jerked around by Stargate SG-1: The Alliance and the Stargate MMORPG that always seems to be just over the horizon, well…

Gets to be tough to swallow after a while. Not that I’d likely have the time for any of them, much less just one, but it would be cool to see them live on in some way.

Crossposted with klech.net