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Hello all.

I have been horribly remiss in blogging. I will make it more of a priority. The main reason is I have a tendency to get a bee in my bonnet over something and want to rant about it a little, but in most cases I have no expert or even amateur knowledge/experience with the issue on which I would rant. Also, most of the things I get really upset about are political "like what I perceive to be Republican hypocrisy/betrayal of conservative values (for purposes of disclosure I consider myself liberal, but if conservatism was actually believed in by the GOP I would almost be torn between the two ideologies, but that is for another rant session), or the things that interest me are not all that interesting to most people, like the fact that a lot of Irish people pronounce terminal "t" in words more "th" than "t" (i.e. "whath").

Anyway, part of the reason I have been bad about blogging is I am a lazy sack. Another reason is the fact that I have been occupied with a couple of online classes this summer at Weber State University. For those who actually care, I hate online courses, although things are evidently going well for me, at least from a grade perspective.

As part of my POLS 1100 class (which is one of those lame generals that I probably didn't have to take but wanted to because I am still a little torn between English and Poly Sci for my BA but has been actually fairly enjoyable and informative, though it would have been much more fun to attend lectures) I am required to do some "Get involved" projects, among which are book reviews and essays and all sorts of wonderful activities. I have put this off to the last few weeks of the course and am getting cracking on it. So basically I am going to be posting that stuff on my blog as well as turning it in.

Right now I am reading a book called The Dark Side: The Inside Story of how the War on Terror turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer. I will be posting my review in about a week or so I would imagine. So far I am pretty impresses. I figured it would be fairly biased against the previous administration (though I prefer the term regime). While the purpose of the book is definitely to point out actions and misteps taken by the Bush government, it also focuses, at least initially, on general administrative failures across the board, both by the Bush and Clinton administrations. Also, so far the information is essentially factual. Many of the key decisions and steps the Bush administration took in prosecuting their "Global War on Terror" are presented as being the wrong ones. Those who think Bush and his people crossed some lines and are truly responsible for weakening the US politically, economically, and diplomatically in the cause of fighting terror will likely be shocked by much of the information presented in the book. On the other hand, those who think the administration was completely justified and successful in all the things it did will be disappointed by the presentation of the information, in that the conclusions of the author are definitely that things went terribly wrong. However, I believe they would have a hard time arguing the facts. They would simply argue that the steps the administration took were well-intentioned and necessary. Overall it has been an incredibly interesting read, although as an idealist, and stauncher believer in American ideals and values, it has made me very angry at times reading some of the stuff that was done. My bottom line is that those who are willing to sacrifice democratic values and institutions in the name of security are letting terrorists win. My actual review will be less biased, but I think I will probably have a lot to say in later blogs about this. Granted, this also probably shines a light on my own hypocrisy in that I feel economic regulation and such are long-overdue and there are a lot of conservatives out there that feel that is a betrayal of key American values. I guess that is why I am a liberal. I care more about protecting human dignity and civil liberties than I do about security and corporate autonomy. Invisible hand be damned.

Anyway, this was just a heads up. I hope the stuff I have to say will be at least informative. My intent is not to spew diatribes in order to achieve high ratings among the grazing masses, just to get my thoughts out there and hopefully provoke introspection.

Joe