avocado8

Look Away, Look Away!

I upgraded the blogs at lori-and-al.com to Movable Type 3.0D weeks ago (though I've yet to rebuild the completely hosed about_town databases, which accounts for why I haven't added to them in forever), but I've been procrastinating when it comes to upgrading over here at avocado8. Well, today's the day I take the plunge. Things might look broken or weird for a while, so please bear with me while I get things organized. Thanks!

In the meantime, for your ranting pleasure, I give you this quote from our country's lead fear-monger:

It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.
— VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY

Update: Since there's been some controversy surrounding this quote (see the comments), here it is in context, from the transcript. See if reading the surrounding text changes your impression of the original quote's meaning. (I have to say, it doesn't change mine.)

We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election.