One of the reasons I’m glad James is my best friend is because he’s the most level-headed, least cynical, most reasonable, calm & optimistic person that I’ve ever known. Just the other day, we were driving to the gym, when a clip of Rudy Giuliani’s speech at the Republican National Convention was played over the radio.
James snorted and turned it off, dismissing it with a curt “we don’t need to listen to that”.
His even-handed nature balances out my rather zealous crusade against such ridiculous nit-wits! For example, take Arnold Shwarzenegger’s comments at the RNC about America being the fasted growing economy of the western developed world.
It was sheer lunacy, especially as a number of vital statistics were made known to me in the last few days:
(1) The Canadian economy grew by 4.3% in the second quarter…compared to a sluggish 2.8% in the United States;
(2) There has been a net loss of one million jobs since George W. Bush came to power;
(3) Canada has no deficit…but the current U.S. defecit is (insert astronomical, apocalyptic figure here);
(4) In 2003, 34 million Americans were listed as living below the poverty line. That’s more people than the entire population of Canada!
Is this performance on which to build a political stump speech? It is if you’re a crazy Republican (or, in Arnold’s case, blind). He also claimed that monetary & financial pessimists were nothing more than “economic girly men”. As one Democrat put it, that’s not exactly a phrase on which to build strong public policy…or offer a compassionate helping hand.
I’m going to take a pass on Vice President Dick Svengali Cheney’s day three speech….there’s a limit to how much hypocrisy and disinformation even I can digest. I’ll wait for the Prince of Lies (yes, that’s Bushie Junior, if you were wondering) to speak before pronouncing a final judgement.
Oh….there are other reasons James is my best friend….shared geeky pleasures, mostly…but that’s stuff for a future blog.
