Don't Americans understand that the Left is entitled to power?
That's why it's OK to do selective recounts in Florida and try to disenfranchise American soldiers and sailors -- all the while claiming that it's the Republicans who are disenfranchising people.
That's why it's OK to filibuster in the Senate in order to block the president from appointing perfectly qualified judges -- and why it's OK to make ridiculously false attacks on those judicial appointees.
That's why it's fine for John Kerry to pretend that he'll be tough on defense even though everybody on the Left is counting on him doing just the opposite in office -- because any lie that restores the proper order of things is a good lie.
That's why Kerry and Edwards can lie about Bush's record on stem cell research and make hilarious and offensive claims that if they are elected, the crippled will rise up and walk. A Republican making such a claim would become a complete laughingstock in the media; but if it might sway a single voter to restore the proper order of things, then the Leftist media dare not to discredit the claim.
That's why CBS throws journalistic ethics to the wind and runs with a story about Bush's National Guard service that is based on obviously fabricated documents. That's why ABC News has no problem with exposing only "distortions" by Bush and ignoring outright lies by Kerry.
That's why the New York Times prints a story claiming that Bush said, in a closed meeting, that he plans to "privatize" Social Security -- even though the word privatize is actually the Left's term, which Bush would never utter, and Bush's openly stated plan has always been to allow young workers the option of investing a portion of their Social Security contribution.
There was no news story there at all -- but anything that might scare senior citizens into panicking and voting for Kerry is worth printing.
That's why lawyers and politicians are already gearing up to attempt to steal the election after the fact by making false claims about intimidation of minority voters by evil Republicans -- when they know perfectly well that it's the Left that is openly using tactics of intimidation.
Like when they sent mobs of union workers to "demonstrate" inside the small local offices of the Bush campaign in Florida, terrifying a handful of Bush campaign workers with a Brown-shirt tactic that, if it had been carried out by, say, NRA members against Kerry headquarters, would now be the biggest story of the campaign season.
#2
mojo, thanks for posting this. I had no idea that Card thought this way. this is a rather comprehensive statement of the problem with the body politic, a badly inflamed Democrat appendage about to rupture.
#3
I reread Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game this past week. Still a great novel.
Considering that it was finished in 1986, it's interesting how one subplot foreshadows the rise of the blogosphere: Ender's brother and sister go online under pseudonyms and become the Wretchard and the Lileks of their day
Posted by: Mike ||
10/29/2004 17:36 Comments ||
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EFL - much more at the link
Let's make this simple. John Kerry is the candidate for those who wish we hadn't gone to war in Iraq. But John Kerry can't admit that, even though everyone knows it is true.
Kerry has been at such pains to keep this basic point as fuzzy as possible because an honestly antiwar candidate couldn't win the presidency in 2004. Sometimes he offers arcane explanations containing paragraphs like Rube Goldberg contraptions. Sometimes he speaks in a unique Kerry grammar one could call the future-past perfect. When asked if we were right to invade Iraq, he has responded that it depends on what happens in the future. And other times he's said we were right. And other times he's said we were wrong.
But my favorite response was when he was asked if we'd have gone to war with Iraq if he'd been president, and he shot back confidently, "You bet we might have." Jeebus Cripes in a pogo stick! Wotta useless nuanced maroon.
Yeah, Dems, let's give this clown a country! How about Phwrance?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/29/2004 9:31:33 AM ||
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#1
Amazing what you can do with Photoshop. The girl in the picture looks more like Moira Kelly than TH-K. Hopefully as close to the West Wing as Kerry ever gets.
#2
tereza's a walking ad for Botox. Are there any publicly-traded companies that get the lion's share of their revenues from botox production or botox treatments?
One week from today, we may or may not know the result of the U.S. presidential election. Tens of thousands of lawyers, employed by both parties, stand waiting to contest results, Florida-style, in each swing state. The polls indicate it is exceedingly close, both in popular vote and in the electoral college, and different polls show different trendlines. The number of swing states appears to be increasing. Voter turnout is itself less predictable for this election than for any recent one in the U.S. -- the people are far from indifferent about the result. Advance polls show an extraordinary climb in voter participation.
And the stakes keep rising. Several appalling terror strikes in Iraq -- given detailed, saturation coverage by media which overwhelmingly oppose George W. Bush, and believe a torrent of bad news could still defeat him -- have probably helped to tighten the race, together with bad news from other fronts (oil price up, stock market down), given similarly loving attention. Good news -- e.g. the successful conclusion of Afghanistan's first election, and the reclaiming of towns that had fallen to the Jihadis in Iraq, is being consciously spiked.
Indeed, the whole business of news-gathering is being transformed before our eyes. In one sense, we are returning to the habits of another era, when local dailies flourished their rival partisanships as much on front as on editorial pages. But as competition between railway companies gave way to competition instead between trains, buses, and then planes for the same passengers, so is media competition developing. The medium has become the message, though not quite in the way our Canadian sage Marshall McLuhan observed.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
10/29/2004 2:01:59 AM ||
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Are things really as ghastly as they appear this election year? President Bush is derided as a liar, brain-dead and a coward, not just by fringe groups but by prominent members of the Democratic establishment. Major intellectuals and artists lament that John Kerry won all three debates by skilled debating — and yet gained little ground.
Even the wives and children are involved now. Kerry and his running mate John Edwards gratuitously broached the sexuality of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter; his wife fired back that Kerry is not "a good man." And just when we got a brief respite, Teresa Heinz Kerry derided Laura Bush as never having a real job — before apologizing that, yes, a decade at work in public school counts as real employment.
Third-party ads, fueled by the money of multimillionaires, imply that Kerry was also a coward and traitor and that Bush was AWOL. CBS News anchor Dan Rather is caught promulgating clearly forged documents, an ABC memo warns against the chimera of objectivity, and Sinclair Broadcast Group agrees to air only portions of a clearly partisan film after Democrats howled. There is no need to mention the conspiracy theories of "Fahrenheit 911," Teresa Heinz Kerry's "scumbag" and "shove it," or Dick Cheney's use of the F-word.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
10/29/2004 1:55:35 AM ||
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#1
Hear, hear!
"People like you preach tolerance and open-mindedness all the time, but when it comes to Middle America, you think we're all evil and stupid country yokels who need your political enlightenment. Well, just because you're on TV doesn't mean you know crap about the government. Now get your ass back on First Class and respect this class' right to make up their own mind."
-- Mr. Garrison, Southpark
#2
When self-important, self-absorbed, douche-bags like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackoff, Mikey Moore, Cameron Diaz, Seany Pennis, and every other hollywood loser starts pontificating on how us stoopid middle-Uhmerikans need ta vote, I automatically vote for the other guy. These people are so full of themselves, like they know more then any other cross section of the population. I could go to any factory or farm accross this nation and get a more informed opinion then from these morons.
#3
On 95% of the issues there is no major "red-blue" divide. Most Americans are a shade of purple, and the parties recognize this.
Republicans will not challenge the absurdity that is affirmative action. Democrats will not challenge the pointless side show that is the death penalty. Neither party will challenge the catastrophe of illegal immigration. And neither party will talk sense on reining in entitlement spending.
What galls the Hollywood-Manhattan-academic axis is the fact that they no longer have commanding social status as cultural avatars.
Who cares what the New York Times' bestseller list, or their top book critic, says anymore? Everyone pays more attention to that online bookseller from Seattle.
Who cares what the Times' OpEd writers or the major networks' talking heads say anymore? I can get better informed, and far more interesting and thoughtful commentary from a professor sitting in the San Joaquin valley or a part-time defense analyst writing a weblog from Australia. Wretchard and VDH have nearly as much influence today as any NYT OpEd writer, and much mroe credibility.
There are no cultural elites anymore. The web has accomplished what 100 years of radical agitation could not: it has smashed cultural and social hierarchies and let "a thousand schoold of thought contend."
Posted by: Dave D. ||
10/29/2004 1:49 Comments ||
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#2
Hawaii suffered through very tough economic times in the 90s as investment there slowed due to the recession in Japan. There's a strong perception (even among my liberal friends there) that the Bush tax cuts are are at least partly responsible for them having (IIRC) the lowest unemployment rate of any state and economic growth of the sort they've not experienced since the late 80s. This is good news but I don't think that in and of itself it can be interpreted as an indicator of a larger blue state trend.
#3
Steyn is not blowing smoke. He'll make good on his pledge and quit if the president isn't returned to office. If Mr. Kerry is elected that's bad. If Steyn is gone that can only make it worse.
Posted by: Mark Z. ||
10/29/2004 7:34 Comments ||
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#4
"This is the 9/11 election, a choice between pushing on or retreating to the polite fictions of September 10." Great summary.
Posted by: Tom ||
10/29/2004 7:48 Comments ||
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#5
I would miss Steyn - too much. Not a girly-man, we need Mark on the job, maybe even more if Skeery does win.
I'm afraid this election is going to be a shambles. Decided in the courts - and that means politicized to the bloody end. Ugly and stupid.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/29/2004 13:50 Comments ||
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#8
.com-
Clear as in 5% or more? Then me, but I don't see anything past that.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/29/2004 14:00 Comments ||
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#9
I'm confident of a clear Bush win, it's not going to be close enough to give the lawyers a chance to interfere.
Consider: Bush's team has done a masterful job of organizing the GOP, specifically the shiny new nationwide 72-hour "get out the vote" campaign (don't underestimate the magnitude & impact of this effort); Bush's support among black voters has doubled since 2000; Bush appears to be splitting the Jewish vote nearly down the middle rather than lagging far behind as would normally be expected; the traditional gender gap favoring the Dems has evaporated; Bush's "culture of life" will turn out the evangelical vote that stayed home in 2000 (if it doesn't Kerry's radical stances likely will); etc., etc., etc. No matter what the (heavily spun) poll numbers du jour might say the views of the underlying demographic groups seem to have shifted strongly in Bush's favor since 2000.
Further, states that shouldn't be in play (MN, WI, IA, HI, NJ, etc.) are and the Bush team has spent the last couple of weeks campaigning in areas where, by rights, they shouldn't really be wasting their time because they should have little or no chance of victory. Unless, of course, they know something we don't. With Kerry pulling out of battleground state after battleground state this smells like at least a very solid win for Bush in the electoral college and perhaps a landslide.
The Dem's pet 527s may have registered a ton of voters but lots of those groups were paying the folks doing the registering for each newly registered head thus giving them a strong incentive to cheat. Most of the newly registered fake voters will turn out to have been the Dem's paid 527 stooges opportunistically lining their own pockets (i.e., they're not going to show up and vote) rather than folks trying to vote multiple times. OTOH the GOP registered 3,000,000 new voters and has a nationwide effort that will encourage & assist them in getting out to vote. No matter what the numbers might appear to be today, after the election we'll be reading story after story about how effective the GOP effort was and how ineffective the donk's effort was which stands to reason as one side bothered to register voters that actually exist while the other side created a huge incentive for their stooges to invent voters.
And then there's Kerry himself. Latching onto this missing explosive story was simply moronic and to me is utterly inexplicable. First we go from 378 tons to 3 tons, then we learn that Mohammad el-Baradei is behind the story, next we learn that whatever was missing was missing before we arrived, and now we have soldiers who were there removing & destroying the stuff speaking out. Take your pick on the fallout here: a UN stooge trying to interfere in the US election, Kerry looking (no pun intended) very bush-league ... at best, Kerry taking shots at the military during wartime, etc., etc., etc. No matter how you spin this it doesn't play well for Kerry anywhere except on the LLL and their votes are already in the bag. If someone here told me that Karl Rove handed this story to Mohammad el-Baradei I'd believe it.
I could go on but suffice it to say that this election will be just like the last midterm election: the trend will be strongly Republican and the talking heads will spend election evening scratching their heads and wondering how they missed it. The fat lady will have finished warming up by the time the polls close in Florida.
#10
Turnout? That's the pivot point, the crux of this biscuit, right?
The voter registration fraud, the insane laws which rely upon honor ("Wily E Coyote, yep, that's me. No, no ID with me, but it's not required - gimme my ballot!"), the intimidation already in place at early voting - I dunno. When you're the only one who's abiding by the rules, things can get a little dicey.
I hate to dis such a fine post, AzCat - you put me in a tight spot here, lol! I'll offer that logic seems to be playing less of a role in this election that I would prefer - and that means excellent arguments are falling on deaf ears. Sad.
We will see if America deserves to be the bastion of individual Jacksonian Freedom - or not. I am sincerely hoping for a 8+ point blowout. Less than 5 is big trouble.
#11
.com, Bush will win handily. For moreorless the same reasons Howard won a few weeks ago here in Australia. The most noteworthy reason is one the media can not speak, but is obvious to an outsider. Kerry is unelectable. He has no redeeming characteristic. Only hardline partisans will vote for him. The kind that in Ulster would ' vote for a donkey as long as it was the right shade of orange.'
#12
Could be academic discussion IF SBVT has former SecNav saying Lt. Kerry's discharge was less than honourable. Story on page 2.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
10/29/2004 15:05 Comments ||
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#13
As a rantburg reader I am confident that the final popular vote is 52:47:1 (Bush:Kerry:other) and that Bush picks up ca. 322 EVs. C-ya in a few days about this
#14
Chemist - I think you might be dead right... But that's definitely close enough for court, IMHO. Anything near the normal Margin of Error will end up there - so it might be more than a few days -- damnit!
Oh, please let there be a "silent majority" that decides to come out of the woodwork and send this scam artist packing...
#15
Guys I think the early voting is playing out this very scenario. Not one poll shows Kerry with a significant lead over Bush. Now the Bush team is shagging votes in Hawaii? Clearly he is on the offensive and Kerry keeps circling around four states trying to shore up a slipping lead. All this and a certain Senator from South Dakota is fighting for his life! I may be drunk for the entire week!
#16
Due to my recent frailty I have been watching Born again tv and they have been very agressive on get out the vote and do the right thing. OBLs down on Bush I guess too. But, damn, my mom voted for Kerry. Said Bush was awol and his dad paid for his HonD. When I told her the story was bogus she said that the Secretary confirmed it.
Mom!? I asked her how much it cost for the fake HD. I said it was prolly about $500 but since his dad was president it should have been alot more. Boy was I pissed.
#18
I'm 90% confident of a clear Bush win by 5%+ in popular vote and 300+ electoral votes. Here's why:
Assume you have roughly 30% registered Dems, 30% registered Repubs and the rest independent. Assume also that the independent vote splits 50-50. Then the race becomes in all probability a race of crossover votes. But 90% of Repubs support Bush whereas only 70% of Dems support Kerry. Now, assume that half of the dissidents in each party end up crossing over on Nov 2. That means Bush loses 5% of the 30% who are Repubs and Kerry loses 15% of the 30% who are Dems.
In other words, perhaps ~1.5% of the voters will be Repubs for Kerry and ~4.5% of the voters will be Dems for Bush, which means a net gain for Bush of +3%.
This is magnified by the fact that Repub affiliation is growing and that Repub turnout has traditionally been higher than Dem turnout. So it may be the case that the Repub share of the vote is closer to 32%, say, and the Dem share more like 28%. So add another 2-3% to Bush's lead. And any Dem defectors to Nader are gravy.
Not hard to see Bush winning by at least 5%, probably closer to 6%.
#19
I am going to print this thread of comments out and sit on it until after the election, then we can either have an orgy of self-congradulation or drink Kool-Aid, heh heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/29/2004 16:47 Comments ||
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#20
Folks, the polls are BS. They don't capture the voting preferences of millions of crucial swing voters who happen to be busy professionals and businesspeople who are reachable only through their cell phones. Many, perhaps most, of these voters are registered Democrats, but I guarantee you that many many more of these Dems will split their tickets this year than their Republican counterparts will. (This is esp true of the jewish liberals and lib-to-moderates who supported Lieberman). And these people turn out in much higher percentages than the population overeall.
This is how Arnold received some 60% of the Dem vote in the most liberal state in the Union. But don't expect these crossover liberal voters to ever admit publicly that they tapped the "R" button in the voting booth.
These Closet Bush supporters represent at least 20% of the jewish vote nationally (ie about 1% of the popular vote) and another 10-15% of the non-jewish registered Democratic vote (ie about 3% of the popular vote). That's at least a 4% popular vote shift to Bush from usually-reliable Dem votes.
Any way you cut it, Kerry loses. As in the California guv fiasco, the Dems' candidate is incapable of holding his base. And nationally, that base is already a small minority and is shrinking further. Finally, the high-growth states in this country--ie, the ones that have gained and continue to gain electoral votes-- are almost without exception red states. Result: Bush wins, easily.
From Daniel Pipes' website, an article by him titled "Coddling a Terrorist Costs Votes," published in The New York Sun.
What is the issue the Palm Beach Post calls "almost the only topic" and the one that is "playing a pivotal" role in Florida's battle for the American Senate? It's not health care, taxes, education, the economy, or even Iraq. Rather, the two principal candidates are engaged in a ferocious argument over Sami Al-Arian, an accused Islamist terrorist. Their battle teaches lessons for the future.
Mr. Al-Arian, a Palestinian immigrant, was a professor of engineering at the University of South Florida when in 1994, investigative journalist Steven Emerson aired a documentary establishing that, as president of the Islamic Committee for Palestine, Mr. Al-Arian headed the "primary support group in the United States for [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad," a notorious terrorist group.
How did Mr. Al-Arian's employer respond to this news? Betty Castor, then-president of USF and now the Democratic candidate for Senate, neither took steps to fire Mr. Al-Arian nor criticize him. Instead, she ordered a review of his dossier and only in 1996 placed him on non-disciplinary administrative leave with full pay — a form of paid vacation. When the American government failed to indict him by 1998, she reinstated Mr. Al-Arian in his old teaching job and a year later she left USF. (It was only after passage of the USA PATRIOT act, giving law enforcement access to intelligence information, that Al-Arian was finally in February 2003 indicted and arrested on terrorism charges.)
Mel Martinez, Ms Castor's Republican opponent, argues that Ms Castor provided "weak leadership" in failing to protect her university from Islamic Jihad, that she fussed about academic freedom instead of grappling with a campus terrorist cell by firing the man he calls the "terrorism professor." Ms Castor replies that union and university rules tied her hands. She then went on the offensive, digging up a picture of George W. Bush campaigning at a strawberry festival in Florida in 2000 — and who should be there, grinning with the future president, but Mr. Al-Arian. Castor's ad charges that "As chair of George Bush's Florida campaign, Martinez allowed suspected terrorist Sami Al-Arian to campaign with Bush, years after Al-Arian was suspended by Betty Castor." This accusation looks powerful — except that three factual errors undermine it: Martinez was not chair but one of eight honorary co-chairmen; he did not "allow" the photograph to take place but had no knowledge of a spontaneous campaign event; and Ms Castor gave Mr. Al-Arian a long vacation rather than suspend him (which is a disciplinary action).
More broadly, the Martinez campaign rightly points out that the two candidates have hardly equivalent records. "Mel Martinez never allowed Sami Al-Arian to do anything, unlike Betty Castor, who allowed Al-Arian to operate on her campus for six years." Or in Rudy Giuliani's more pungent formulation, Castor "couldn't figure out how to fire an alleged terrorist." Lou Magill, the chairman of Mr. Martinez's campaign in Seminole County took it over the top in an e-mail to supporters: "You and I are the front line on the war on terror because if Castor succeeds, we lose that war."
Both candidates "are consumed with al-Arian," notes Marc Caputo in the Miami Herald. But there the symmetry stops, for the public so far has penalized Ms Castor and rewarded Mr. Martinez. It recognizes that for Mr. Martinez, Mr. Al-Arian was not an issue while Castor for six long years failed to handle the problem the professor presented. According to a Mason-Dixon poll, Ms Castor's soft treatment of Mr. Al-Arian ranks as her "chief weakness." A Martinez advisor reports that when asked, "Who do you think is better on terrorism?" voters favor Mr. Martinez 2-1. Mr. Martinez has also enjoyed a 20 percent increase since August of voters who view him favorably; Ms Castor won just a 4 percent increase. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
10/29/2004 11:42:20 PM ||
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Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
10/29/2004 02:36 ||
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#1
Arafat has charisma? Who'd a thunk it!
(Oops, I need to scrape some of that charisma stuff off the bottom of my shoe... you wouldn't believe how much charisma the grackles leave on the sidewalk under the trees where they roost...)
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
