As if I weren’t depressed enough already

Joe Klein in Time this week:

There is only one significant question left in this presidential election year: Can John Kerry hold George Bush accountable for this mess? My guess is, probably not. The Republicans, with a strong assist from Kerry, have successfully painted the Democrat as a flip-flopping incompetent when it comes to national security. It will be hard for Kerry to change that impression. In fact, he has only one chance remaining, in the presidential debates.

And that won’t be easy: I’ve never seen George Bush lose a debate. He is a brilliant minimalist. Kerry by contrast is all oratorical flab

Worse than writer’s block

I haven’t posted in a couple of days… the holiday, a general feeling of malaise, and bad news from a friend have all got me off my game. But mostly, it’s a feeling of impotence. I confess to the creeping feeling Kerry is not running a good campaign and that Bush is going to win in November. So why does it matter that I record what’s going on?

I’ve been thinking more and more lately that if you aspire to have a blog which does something beyond recording the antics of your kids or how you repainted your living room, you ultimately need the belief that what you say matters. And right now I don’t feel like anything I can say or do will actually have an impact on the world at large. The Bushies are going to do whatever the hell they want to do and I can’t stop them. I can’t persuade the Kerry campaign to get off its ass and start being more aggressive. The people who find their way to this blog are already likely Kerry voters. And I’m not timely, eloquent or well-connected enough to offer any unique insights into the world at large.

I’m not stopping blogging, but I think I’ll be dialing it down for a bit until I find a way to believe that what I say is actually going to make any kind of difference. Call it ego, but I don’t want to have just another mundane personal blog that nobody reads except my husband and my sister. I would like to think that I have something to say that at least a few people who don’t actually know me are going to enjoy hearing. But maybe I don’t.

How Many Are Not Coming Home?

Interesting factoid from this WaPo article … 40% of the troops in Iraq are from the National Guard and Reserves. There is not a doubt in my mind that if Bush is reelected that this will only get worse.

The rest of the article is also interesting, looking at the stresses a Guard unit faces as it prepares to deploy, but I don’t have much to say about it. More on that in another entry.