Daniel SwartzArchive for October, 2004
October 31st, 2004 Finished!!
I have finished the redesign of my site, although I will spend some time cleaning up a few places in my CSS, to streamline it a little bit. The portfolio portion of my site is finished, which includes plenty of screenshots of projects I have worked on over the years. It is not all of it, of course, but a good sampling.
Meanwhile, I await the election on Tuesday night. I do not plan to sleep at all that night, as even if I tried, I certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep. Hopefully the first returns will begin to filter in at around 2 am early Wednesday morning here (more…)
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October 29th, 2004 Pre-Debate Thoughts…
Tonight is the final debate between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. It is rare for a third debate to carry such weight in an election, as elections are “usually” decided this late in the election season, and viewership drops drastically from that of the first and second debates. Hopefully that trend will be bucked tonight and television viewership hits all-time records for a third debate. The more people that see Kerry in action, the more chances he has at winning the election. Watching Kerry in the debates wipes out the more than $100 million in Republican advertising that has attempted to create a false caricature of Kerry in the eyes of the electorate. It could be the pivotal moment in the campaign (more…)
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October 20th, 2004 Madeleine Albright
I was fortunate enough today to hear former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speak here in Munich. With the perfect seat in which to witness the event, Ms. Albright reeled off a series of comments and attacks on the current Bush administration and its policies. As she stated at the beginning of her question and answer session at the end of her talk, “now that I am no longer Secretary of State, I can answer your questions”, and that she did. With no holding back, she talked of the stolen 2000 election, called supporters of Bush “stupid” and that if America re-elects Bush to a second term as president, America would be culpable of its country’s actions in the world, considering that America knows full well Bush’s attitude and intentions (more…)
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October 17th, 2004 The Endorsements
The endorsements for president are coming in from all quarters now. While it seems that most of the endorsements are going Kerry’s way, there are some going Bush’s way too.
Reading through some of the quotes of the endorsements given to Bush gives the impressions that despite four years of extreme administration policies both at home and abroad, there are some that think Bush will show a softer side (more…)
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October 12th, 2004 Low Points
With the announcement today that the Sinclair Broadcast Group will air an anti-Kerry film just days before the election on its network of 62 nationwide local television channels that include Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, WB and UPN, presidential politics has hit a new low. Unless Kerry confronts Bush directly at the final debate tomorrow, Bush is unlikely to acknowledge or denounce this group of Pennsylvania veterans who are financing the broadcast. He may make the usual remark of respecting Kerry’s service in Vietnam, but unless the Democratic Party’s official complaint is not accepted with the Federal Election Commission (more…)
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October 11th, 2004 New Registrations
Almost all of the polls that we read about daily in the newspaper or hear about on the network news take data from ‘registered voters’ and ‘likely voters’. The ‘likely voter’ is usually defined as someone who has voted in the past and is considered likely to vote again. This category has tended to favor President Bush, although recently Kerry has pulled pretty much even in many polls. The ‘registered voter’ is someone who indicates that they are registered to vote, but has not indicated one way or another of their intention to vote. However one result that is usually not inlcuded in poll results is the number of newly registered voters. These tend to be young people or people that have never voted before (ie. immigrants, students, newly interested voteres). Not much is written about this third demographic of voters (more…)
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October 10th, 2004 Supreme Makeover
‘If there is one issue that has been below the radar in this year’s election, it is that up to three seats on the Supreme Court could be vacated during the next presidential term. A seat has not open up in close to ten years, and with three justices between the ages of 74 and 84, it is likely that either Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O’Conner or John Paul Stevens will decide to step down from the bench. The next president will be able to leave a legacy that could last for decades with such issues as abortion and civil rights making their way through the judicial system to the high court. A Bush win would most certainly scale back abortion and civil rights (more…)
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October 10th, 2004 Public Persona
Four years ago, when George W. Bush was engaged in three televised debates with vice-president Al Gore, voters saw a man portraying himself as a compassionate conservative, a uniter and not a divider, one who could bring the bitter divide of America together. Viewers saw a man who appeared calm, composed and supposedly “presidential”, that all-important adjective candidates seek to become when running for the most powerful office in the world. Bush sought to allay fears voters may have had for a politician with a relatively short resume. As hollow as they seem now from our vantage point in time (more…)
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