The Florida of 2004 wasn't Ohio, it's the Ukraine

Ukraine May Revolt

A few weeks ago I would have bet money that we would be embroiled in multiple lawsuits over our own presidential election. It appears that I was wrong, although there are still people questioning the voting in Florida and Ohio. Some academic sociologists in California have proven statistically that Bush stole over 130,000 votes in Florida, or maybe it was over 260,000 - but they say they can't be sure which.

Now it appears the real post presidential election action this year is in Ukraine. There is a chance their supreme court will set aside the election. There may be a parliamentary move to do so. Several city councils have recognized Yushchenko as the winner and the council of Kiev the capital city has rejected the announced election results. There are crowds in the streets and talk of a general strike if Vladimir Putin's hand-picked candidate takes office. The Bush administration is being uncharacteristically firm on behalf of the Ukrainians of Ukraine who want an end to rule by Russians whether in the Kremlin or the eastern Ukraine. The OSCE and other observers have found evidence of massive fraud.

Prediction: Putin will get his stooge in office somehow.

Where's the ACLU now?

WorldNetDaily: City gives break to terror-related mosque?:
"'The City of Boston sold land to the mosque for $175,000,' real estate developer Steven Cohen explained to the network. 'This land was worth some place between $450,000 and $1 million. This is a religious group that can raise $22 million from contributors in the Middle East. Why do they need financial assistance?"

No word on the ACLU's position on this sweetheart deal for Boston taxpayers to subsidize the building of a mosque. I mention this because recently the ACLU objected to government land containing a war memorial with a cross in it being sold to a church in southern California even though the price was reasonable.

Stalin's revenge: another European country splits politically on ethnic lines

Ukraine in crisis as opposition leader declares himself president:
"The dispute has split this former Soviet republic down the middle, with the Ukrainian-speaking west mainly behind Yushchenko and the Russian-speaking east backing Yanukovich."

In an election which the OSCE and other foreign observers say was marked by fraud on the part of the ruling party of Leonid Kuchma which seeks to keep Ukraine in the Russian political orbit, the pro-Western candidate is reported to be losing by a three-point margin.

The alleged winner is from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. During the bad old days of the Soviet Union, an area like the Donetsk (heavy manufacturing, river and rail transport, access to year-round ports on the Black Sea) was considered too important to the empire to be left in the hands of colonial peoples. Great Russians were encouraged, as a matter of policy, to move there. You see a similar pattern in other areas of strategic importance to the old empire like Kaliningrad. In this way the dead hand of Stalin still reaches out from his grave to cause misery in his former dominions.

Inefficiency and Corruption: what makes Pennsylvania what it is

Rustbelt Economics

Ralph R. Reiland, writing at NewsMax.com points out two current stories about my state of permanent residence Pennsylvania. One is a report that places the state in the bottom six in the nation in terms of economic freedom. Those ranking lower are Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, California and New York - naturally all six were carried by Kerry. The six freest - Colorado, Virginia, Kansas, Idaho, Utah and Oklahoma - all went for Bush.

The other hot item has to do with pay received by members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Saying they are already the fourth highest paid, Reiland points out that they are trying to engineer a small pay raise. They want to boost their nominal salary from $66,204 to $79,000. Of course, legislators also receive a modest package of fringe benefits including health insurance ($13k/yr.), $650 monthly subsidy for rental of a luxury car available for personal as well as official travel, and per diem of $126 for up to 100 days of official activities (not just the legislative session) - a total of $33,400 per year over and above their nominal salaries.

Reiland doesn't mention it, but our legislature can be quite creative when it comes to slipping money from our pockets into theirs. One year they passed a blatantly illegal pay raise for themselves but put it into a bill containing a long-delayed pay raise for judges and a non-severability clause. With this poison pill, they assured that the judiciary would reject any attempt to overturn the illegal legislative pay raise in court. They also proved that the judges didn't deserve their pay raise after all. On another occasion, they gave themselves a large pay hike disguised as unvouchered "expense" money (taxable as ordinary income) so they could skip the procedures required for raising their salaries without bothering to buy off the judges.

Few, but interesting, surprises in CBS post-election poll

CBS News | Poll: America's Cultural Divide | November 22, 2004�21:46:35

Read the poll results for yourself, that's what the link is for. But here's my take on the interesting points.

Intolerance

The media and the pundits and the Democrats are near unanimous in labeling Republican voters as intolerant and we seldom hear any defense of the GOP. But the CBS poll has a pair of questions that bear rather directly on this issue independent of specific issue disagreements that we all know exist between voters for the two parties.

Supporters of both Bush and Kerry were asked it their opposite numbers shared non-political values and goals and whether they shared moral values. On the non-political values and goals question, Bush voters said "No" by a 10-point margin, while Kerry voters said "No" by a 16-point margin. Showing Bush voters to be slightly less suspicious of Kerry voters' motives than vice versa. More intriguing is the shared moral values question where Kerry voters said "Yes" by an insignificant 2-point margin while Bush voters answered "Yes" by a solid 11-point margin. So Bush voters are much more likely than Kerry voters to see common ground on moral values.

And, thanks to a question about moral standards and popular culture, we get an indication of one of the problems Democrats have in keeping even the voters they have. Asked whether Hollywood is contributing to a lowering or raising of standards, Bush voters chose "lowering" by a massive margin of 76 points, but even Kerry voters chose "lowering" by a 42-point margin (51% to 9%). So, even a majority of Kerry supporters think Hollywood is lowering moral standards and yet the Democrat Party is very much dependent on Hollywood stars and executives for a major share of its financing.

The Democrats also appear to be dependent on a weak economy to remain competitive. Sixty-three percent of Kerry voters said economic issues were most important in determining their vote, for Bush voters that figure was only sixteen percent.

A remarkably bad and unnecessary way to deal with the UN problem

WorldNetDaily: TV campaign urging: Kick U.N. out of U.S. :
"A new anti-United Nations television campaign is reversing the familiar refrain 'get the U.S. out of the U.N.,' and instead urges the global body be kicked out of the U.S."

Kicking the UN out of the US accomplishes nothing of value. Especially as the campaign is not geared toward getting the US to quit the nascent world government, but only advocates renegotiating the US share of UN expenses.

The important point is not what percentage of the bill we pay for a hopelessly flawed experiment, but that we pay anything at all. It is certainly possible to make a case for withdrawal from the UN and we ought to do so at every opportunity.

This new "anti-UN" campaign fails my test of fights conservatives should fight because it does not seize the moral high ground. Kicking the UN's personnel out of the US appears crudely xenophobic and quibbling about the US share of the budget is just a sordid squabble about money and not principal.

Actually, there is something to be said for having all those foreign diplomats in NYC. They help support some nice restaurants and clothing stores and a number of dry cleaners. It also provides opportunities for intelligence work.

On the other hand, we may not have the UN in NYC much longer unless we are prepared to pony up a large pile of dough. It seems to old building is literally falling apart and will be cheaper to replace than to fix. The only reason the Volcker investigation is going forward, rather than the usual UN whitewashing of past scandals, is to scrub up the UN's image in preparation of asking for the US taxpayer to fund a new headquarters. Maybe that's also behind the talk of Bill Clinton for Secretary General. Putting an American face on the enterprise might help open the tax dollar spigot. The only other American to serve in that role was the first one, Alger Hiss, a communist agent.

Air Force Academy fears Christian influence

WorldNetDaily: Air Force cracks down on Christian 'coercion' :
"Officials at the Colorado Springs military college have instituted a new training program, Respecting the Spiritual Values of People, to teach the cadets, 90% of whom are from Protestant or Catholic backgrounds, tolerance toward non-Christians. The program follows an August survey that found complaints of religious bias."

That sounds fairly reasonable until you look at the survey. Here is what the story reports about the results:
"Thirty percent of the survey's non-Christian respondents believe Christian cadets receive preferential treatment – a perception shared by only 10 percent of Christian respondents. More than half of the non-Christian participants indicated they had 'not felt pressure to be involved in religion.'"

So, a majority of non-Christians said they had not been pressured and that is evidence that there is such pressure that the academy needs a new program to combat an oppressively Christian atmosphere. Only a bureaucrat could follow that chain of reasoning. Fortunately, the Air Force has plenty of bureaucrats.

And, get this marvelous bit of reasoning:
"[AF Academy superintendent Lt. Gen. John] Rosa cited Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' as an example of the problem being caused by Christians at the academy. When the film was playing locally, some cadets emailed members of their squadron suggesting they see it as a group.
"'People felt they were being coerced,' Rosa says"

Presumably the general means they felt they were being coerced to be Christians. If they had been invited to see the movie "Dumb and Dumber," would they have felt coerced to be stupid? If they had been invited to see Gibson's "The Patriot" or "Braveheart" would they have felt compelled to kill Englishmen? If the academy caters to such weak-minded students, they have a very different sort of problem on their hands.

WorldNetDaily: Arafat successor al-Qaida sympathizer

WorldNetDaily: Arafat successor al-Qaida sympathizer:

"'We thank God that the oil begins to take a new position from which it will be possible to use in that war,' Qaddumi said. 'World demand for oil is increasing. Therefore it becomes possible to use oil to exert pressure.'

"Qaddumi sees Israel as on the verge of collapse and regards the election of Ariel Sharon as the last choice of the Jewish state, or as he put it, 'the last bullet in the Israeli rifle.' When that bullet is spent, he said, Israel would disintegrate a la the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia.

"Not surprising, Qaddumi has positive words for al-Qaida and its 9/11 suicide strikes on New York and Washington. After saying he condemned the attacks, Qaddumi discussed the benefits of the attacks.

"'These events will serve as a lesson to the United States,' Qaddumi said.

"'This was the first time that Arabic names were introduced to American households,' he added.

"'These incidents caused America to reexamine its foreign policy to find the causes of terrorism.'"

So says Farouq Qaddumi, Yasser Arafat's successor as head of al Fattah, the leading party in the coalition known as the Palestine Liberation Organization. His selection surprised some since he had not appeared to be close to Arafat for several years, but Qaddumi, like Arafat an engineer, had been involved with Arafat since the 1950s and became liaison between the PLO and foreign governments in the 1970s.

In addition to his new formal title, Qaddumi has the backing of Arafat's widow and much of the Palestinian security force which was recruited largely from the 300,000 Palestinians who accompanied Arafat on his return from exile. This will make him a key player in the new, much more fluid, political situation in the Middle East.

Three-way prisoner release to free new leader for Palestinians?

WorldNetDaily: Pollard: Israel groomed jailed terrorist to head PA :
"[Israeli PM Ariel] 'Sharon is apparently reserving me for a time that my release will be the fig leaf for some very, very dastardly initiative. Perhaps something as dastardly as enabling another mass murderer of Jews to become president of the PA, just as Israel once did for Yasser Arafat,' says [convicted spy Jonathan] Pollard."

It seems Pollard, despite his bitterness over not having been released as part of the deal for the Oslo Accords of 1993 or the Wye River conference on 1998, objects to being released by the US now as part of a deal in which Egypt would release Azzam Azzam, an Israeli engineer, and Israel would release covicted murderer, terrorist mastermind, and future Palestinian Authority head Marwan Barghouti.

This WND story is very pro-Pollard, claiming that the usual sentence for what he did, which the article refers to as "spying for an ally," should have been 2-4 years rather than life. My own opinion at the time of his trial almost 20 years ago is that Pollard should have been executed and his wife should have drawn the life sentence.

There is no such thing as spying for an ally. Once you go outside the approved channels no one knows where the information will end up. There were plenty of people at paygrades higher than Pollard's with the authority to flag information useful to Israel that we might be willing to share despite Soviet penetration of Israeli intel. By substituting his own judgment for that of the responsible superior officials, Pollard demonstrated that he didn't care how the information he passed might be passed to the Soviets or what it might reveal to them about our sources, methods and assessments.

Having said all that, I trust that he is motivated by Zionist zeal and is likely to still have excellent contacts in influential Israeli and US circles, even from his prison cell in Butner, NC. So, when he says this "three-way swap" is simply a matter of the US and our number two foreign aid client Egypt providing cover for Israel to do what it wants to do anyway, I am inclined to believe him.

It would seem that the Israeli government has decided it needs to replace terrorist murderer Yasser Arafat with terrorist murderer Marwan Barghouti. Why would that be? The article suggests this is needed for credibility with the Palestinian people. Perhaps it is necessary to maintain the game that both sides profit from. Oil-rich Arab states send money to the PA, the US sends money to Israel and Egypt. Peace could be very expensive. Cui bono?

Teen-age boy is killed by order of Iranian mullah

IranPressNews (English): A 14 year old boy is sentenced to 85 lashes for breaking his Ramadan fast!

The boy is reported to have died after receiving 85 lashes on the order of a local religious court for breaking the Ramadan fast. There will not be any expressions of international outrage over this, everyone has to make nice with the ayatollahs and mullahs of Iran to convince them to tell us soothing lies about their nuclear missile program.

Putin adviser says Kyoto 'smoke screen' for oppressive world government

WorldNetDaily: Putin adviser says Kyoto 'smoke screen':
"An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin warns the Kyoto protocol ratified by his country is a propaganda 'smoke screen' that will create a 'supranational bureaucratic monster' threatening human freedom, similar to the Soviet Union's.
"For most of the world, writes Andrei Illarionov in the Financial Times, the protocol, set to become an international treaty next year, is 'bad news.'
"'Like fascism and communism, Kyotoism is an attack on basic human freedoms behind a smokescreen of propaganda,' he said. 'Like those ideologies of human hatred, it will be exposed and defeated.'"

I wish this Russian were advising the Bush administration. I doubt that anyone on our president's team has such a clear understanding of what is at stake with Kyoto.

Chaldean archbishop deplores media slant on Iraqi news

WorldNetDaily: Iraqi archbishop: Media misinforming:
"But the [Chaldean] archbishop [of Kirkuk, Louis Sako] insisted 'there is no organized resistance' among Iraqis.
"'Those who commit such violence are resisting against Iraqis who want to build their country,' he said. 'Iraqis instead are resisting against terrorism and are not carrying out attacks, which instead are the work of foreign infiltrators.'
"Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians and Sudanese have entered Iraq to fight against coalition forces, he said."

The EU just don't get it

EU officials implore new immigrants to learn 'European values' :
"The EU ministers also set out a list of 11 nonbinding guidelines for governments and immigrant communities, including accepting basic European values, providing employment and education, knowledge of the local language, culture and history, and open access to local health care and other public services."

They couldn't agree on having a reference to Chrisitianity in the new European constitution even though without Christianity the idea of Europe would never have emerged at all. So, how are they going to integrate these mostly Muslim immigrant communities when they can't figure what they want to integrate them into.

And, look at that quote above - "access to local health care and other public services" - as if that had something to do with the utterly incompatible ideas which the Muslim immigrant communities have about the relation of religion and state, the status of women, free speech, and other aspects of human rights. As long as EU bureaucrats spout this sort of nonsense they will not make any progress in addressing the real problems they have with the growth of Muslim immigration.

No ads soliciting Oscar votes for "The Passion of the Christ"

News from Reuters via CNN.com:
"Academy President Frank Pierson praised Gibson for working to restore the Oscars as a 'celebration and appreciation of excellence' and resisting the 'crass commercialism that was threatening the integrity of the award.'"

Once again, Mel Gibson and his Icon Productions partner Bruce Davey have shown themselves once again to be "a class act." They will mail DVDs to Academy members and arrange some special theater screenings for them, but there will be no massive advertising blitz. They believe the work should speak for itself. This was the ideal when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established. Well done, Icon.

The usual suspects confirming what we should know about them

WorldNetDaily: North Korea hope for enviro activists?:
" ... the UK-based Television Trust for the Environment sponsored a meeting in Pyongyang for the international diplomatic corps in which participants shared about the successes of the Stalinist nation in the field of environmental protection, according to the Korean Central News Agency, the official voice of dictator Kim Jong-il."

This WND story is written from the perspective that there should be something surprising about a country with arguably the world's worst human rights record garnering praise for its efforts for animal rights and environmental protection. But this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on in the world.

The conference organizer, TVE, is an environmental lobby funded by the usual suspects, including "United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation and the World Wildlife Foundation." The featured speaker was primatologist and globetrotting leftist crank Jane Goodall who took time from her busy schedule to drop in on South Korea and condemn its record on animal rights before heading on to the capital of the Hermit Kingdom.

There is, however, no tension between advocacy of animal rights and concern for the environment on the one hand and approving a murderous police state on the other. In fact, if these folks were honest their slogan would be "Kill people, not animals."

This is spiritual warfare and must be discerned spiritually. The environmental movement, the animal rights movement, the last gasp Stalinist dictatorships like North Korea and Cuba, and the camouflaged communists of Russia and China are merely parts of a wide-ranging attack on Christendom. That is a rather archaic word nowadays, but using the right word helps to focus the argument. We have become accustomed to speaking of "the West" as if that was a concept which could be useful without its original religious connotation.

The Old Testament speaks of a refuge for the remnant being prepared in the West, and so it was. Many of the apostles and leading disciples went West, only a few went East (notably Thomas who took the Gospel to India) and South to preach to the Diaspora, the "Lost" Tribes of Israel, as well as the heathens. Paul went West - to Asia Minor, Italy and Spain. Joseph of Arimathea went to England. It is fashionable to scoff at this history, but it was well known and believed by our ancestors.

This gaggle of Red (communist), Green (environmentalist), and Black (anarchist) revolutionaries - whatever protective coloration they adopt to fool, if it were possible, the very elect - are the enemies of the permanent things, they are subverting God's laws, denying to Him due obedience. So, what does this have to do with animal rights and the environment?

Man was created in God's image, not the animals. Man was given dominion (the right and duty to rule) over the animals and permission to make food of some of them and to cover himself with their skins. Man was told to be fruitful and multiply. Man was given the stewardship of the land. The Biblical model is the garden, not the jungle. The garden represents intelligent planning, diligent labor, a consistent growth in productivity and prosperity. The jungle represents chaos, disorder, a constant alternation of plenty and poverty.

To the Greens, it is the animals who have the priority of rights over persons; human population is viewed as the enemy - not only is support for abortion near total in such circles, they carry on serious debates about what sort of catastrophe they might bring about to quickly and radically reduce the world's population; productive farmland and grazing ranges are to be returned to wilderness and jungle because that is more pleasing to their goddess whom they call Gaia, but is really just another clever deceit of our ancient foe Satan.

A strange sense of values pervades UN staff

Herald Sun: UN workers to condemn chief [20nov04]:
"The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the UN's history, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing its support for the embattled Secretary-General and UN management."

For years, the UN staff has happily taken its marching orders from a man widely known to have actively assisted in one of the deadliest campaigns of genocide in the post WW2 period. Now that there are mere allegations of mismanagement and graft by his son, they suddenly get an attack of conscience.

A custom humidor for "the big him" and an $8,000 necklace for her

WorldNetDaily: Will 2000 fund-raiser scam bite Hillary?:
"'I believed that once she knew the facts, she would see how valuable I was to her and welcome me into her inner circle. The whole thing was intended to be solely for my benefit. I never wanted to hurt her. I could tell she wasn't entirely comfortable with this conversation, and yet I couldn't stop. It wasn't until much later that I fully realized what I had done. Whatever protection her staff had built around her, however much in the dark they had kept her, that was over.
"'Now she knew.'"

So says Aaron Tonken in his new book King of Cons: Exposing the Dirty, Rotten Secrets of the Washington Elite and Hollywood Celebrities. Doing a 63 month sentence for fraud, Tonken cooperated in an investigation, still ongoing, of irregularities in the fundraising for Hillary Clinton's 2000 senate race in New York.

As Captain Reynaud said of the gambling at Rick's Cafe in the movie Casablanca, "I am shocked, shocked ..."

McCain among worst demagogues on 'Global Warming'

Climatologists Blast McCain's Hearings on 'Global Warming':
"[Marlo] Lewis of the CEI added, 'The embrace of government and government funding corrupts whatever it touches, and that is certainly the case of the scientific process.'"

Sen. John McCain (RINO-AZ), outgoing chairman of the senate committee on commerce, science and tranportation, has held hearings on anthropogenic global warming that are among the most biased on record according to a story CNSNews.com and rehashed here on NewsMax.com. Among the senator's critics are Sallie Baliunas of Harvard and Patrick Michaels of my alma mater UVa.

If you are interested in this issue, take a look at the website of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (oism.org) and read the materials on the Petition Project. There you will find several thousands of persons with advanced degrees in science, statistics and other relevant fields who question the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and the data and computer models on which it rests.

Another lesson in race relations from "enlightened Europeans"

The Sun Newspaper Online - UK's biggest selling newspaper:
"From NICK PARKER, Chief Foreign Correspondent in Madrid -
"DECENT soccer fans fired a broadside at the sick senors of Spain last night over disgraceful racist taunts aimed at black England players."

It is indeed regrettable that racist epithets were shouted by Spanish fans at England during a recent "friendly" match in Madrid. But, it should also remind us not to take European criticism of US race relations as if they were somehow superior in that regard and had solved all such problems in their own back yard. Unfortunately, every country has its own unique problems of racial or ethnic antagonisms and ought to put their own house in order before presuming to speak too self-righteously to others on the subject.

One has to wonder, especially, at the capacity of England for righteous indignation when it wasn't so long ago that there were race riots in Britain and some countries on the continent were taking steps to keep British soccer fans from crossing the Channel because of rampant hooliganism in the stands.

Sen. and Mrs. Santorum denied use of public school for their children

Santorum told kids ineligible for school:

"Santorum has come under criticism from officials in Penn Hills, where he owns a house, who say the school district should not have to foot the $38,000 annual bill to educate his children."
...
"'The school district has just informed us that after reviewing our situation, only children who live in a community on a full-time basis are eligible to be educated in a public cyber charter school program,' Santorum said."
...
"The cyber school is based in Midland and serves some 3,100 pupils from nearly 400 school districts statewide who attend via computer."

This is a remarkable bit of bureaucratic hubris. The senator may only live in his house in Penn Hills (a fairly upscale suburb of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County) part of the year, but he pays school taxes there for the whole year. And he pays state income tax for the full year and part of those funds go to the school district. I'll admit that $7,600 per year per student seems a bit high for a school running classes over the net, but Santorum doesn't set the tuition rates.

A new brew for breakfast in Britain

NEWS.com.au | Finally - a beer to drink at breakfast (November 19, 2004):

"Coffee beans from the central African country of Rwanda are mixed with barley grown in Britain, creating a beer with the same amount of caffeine in one bottle as in a cup of coffee."
...
" ... 'it seemed natural to have a more warming, mellow taste for winter,' the [Sainsbury's] supermarket said."

In my college days, our slogan was "Beer, it isn't just for breakfast anymore." We thought it was funny. Now, one beer in Britain is brewed just for breakfast.

Dick Morris on a second term strategy for Bush

Thoughts on a second term=The Hill.com=:
"This election was not won over abortion. It was won over the war on terror primarily and gay marriage secondarily. If the right attempts to twist its meaning to suit its purposes and use it to defang the checks-and-balances system, it will be guilty of its own form of imperial overreach. A three-percentage-point win will not sustain such an overturning of the system on which people of both parties rely to assure moderation."

Thus Dick Morris calls for continuation of the present de facto requirement that judges be confirmed by a supermajority of 60 senate votes and warns the president not to tamper with Roe v. Wade. He goes on to say that moving Clarence Thomas to chief justice would be acceptable to America, but filling the resulting associate justice vacancy with a justice of similar philosophy to Thomas and Rehnquist would not be acceptable.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: If Bush relents on the judicial front, especially with regard to the supreme court, a lot of those despised Christians who turned out in droves this year will stay home next time or cast a protest vote for some third party unless, and highly unlikely it is, the 2008 nominee is a red hot conservative. We've been burned on so many fronts, we need to see something good come out of this election.

Moreover, Morris overlooks two key facts. One is that a judge who reads the constitution for guidance rather than tea leaves, a judge who understands that the people have a right to let their religious views rather than the UN convention on human rights determine a question like homosexual marriage, will also be likely to substantially defer to state legislatures and congress on abortion restrictions, displaying the Ten Commandments and other issues. Second is that the pull of tradition, the disinclination to substantially disrupt settled law, is so strong among our sort of judges that an outright overturning of Roe is highly unlikely. And, people forget that at the time Roe was decided abortion was already legal in 16 states.

The view from the "Loser's Lounge"

FrontPage magazine.com :: The Loss that Keeps on Giving by Ann Coulter:
"Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?
"It can only be false consciousness. If liberals think the Bush vote was composed of illiterate homophobes who fear women in the workplace, perhaps the Democrats should start demanding literacy tests to vote."

Not vintage Coulter because so much of the article consists of remarkably stupid quotes from disappointed Kerry supporters, but an interesting article nevertheless.

British vs. American Values

British vs. American Values:
“Iraq is not a war about freedom, but about oil,” said Blake [a student at Oxford University].

What a ridiculous canard that is. I'm old enough to remember an earlier generation of students spouting the line that the US was only in Vietnam to steal their oil. Well, we've been gone from Vietnam for three decades and there still hasn't been any rush to develop its alleged oil.

There's more to this story, in fact the oil reference is tangential to the larger point that the Brits resent our role in ending their once-great empire. Things weren't even that cordial in WW2. The Brits had a saying, "There's three things wrong with the Yanks. They're overpaid; they're oversexed; and they're over here." I guess they would have preferred German houseguests who would not have left when the war ended.

Britain Outlaws Fox Hunting

Britain Outlaws Fox Hunting:
"Opponents of hunting with hounds say it is unacceptably cruel because the dogs kill foxes by tearing them apart. They also deride it as a mainly aristocratic pastime; Prince Charles and other royals are among the most prominent participants."

What a waste of time for one of the world's oldest deliberative bodies. The foxes are a nuisance. It will still be legal to shoot them, but that's not very sporting from the dog's point of view.

I admit that I hage never seen a dog kill a fox. But I have seen dogs on the farm where I live kill groundhogs and they really enjoy it. Give the dogs a break. Just because some folks object to other folks they disapprove of for political reasons riding horses in hopes of watching the kill is no reason to deny the dogs their proper role in rural life, the environmentally benign control of vermin.

All this proves is inflation

Some of Bush Fund-Raisers Got Appointments:
"For some, the chance to mingle with the world's power brokers came in the form of diplomatic appointments. At least two dozen of the 2000 pioneers or their spouses became ambassadors, mostly to Europe."

My reaction to the news that the 246 Bush "Pioneers Club" members from the 2000 race, people who raised at least $100,000 for the campaign, got subsequent chances to rub elbows with the president socially or were appointed to boards and commissions and few cabinet and diplomatic posts? Inflation sure is taking a toll. When I was a lad in DC, five or ten grand could get you ambassador to Luxembourg or some other second rank diplomatic post.

You would expect most of these high profile posts, both unpaid advisory posts and actual full-time jobs, to be filled by successful people. Since the GOP bench is a little thin on relatively low-paid academics, union leaders and foundation types, our successful people tend to be high earners. Now, would you expect that the people who would want to help the president, and cared enough to help get him elected, would get such jobs or people who didn't have that sort of commitment and spent the campaign on the sidelines?

A double standard about collateral damage?

Haaretz - Israel News - Don t learn from the Americans:
"The strong do not generally torment themselves with moral quandaries during wartime, apparently because they do not feel that they have to gain the legitimization of the international public opinion."

Ze'ev Schiff writes an interesting article analyzing varying reactions to collateral damage and civilian casualties in anti-terror operations of France, Israel, Russia and the US.

Something to stew about

Diary of a Flight Attendant ;-):
"Queen of Sky was just FIRED from Anonymous Airlines for posting the following pics on her blog (back by popular demand)"

You'll have to follow the link to see the photos. But let me warn you, if you are expecting to find a scantily clad woman in erotic poses, don't bother. That kind of cheesecake is the province of tool and auto parts calendars at the back of your mechanic's shop. Queen of Sky's "inappropriate" pics are no more risque than the typical 20-something's vacation snapshots.

It's a shame that a sense of humor has been one of the casualties inflicted on us by our politically correct culture. Corporate America dare not laugh this off as an employee merely enjoying herself on her own time and dime. Fear of offending some humorless authority or interest group pervades everything nowadays.

This may all work out for the best. Q of S is lovely as a rose and may emerge from all this smelling as sweetly. There is talk of a book deal. Our queen is a tall girl, with a well scrubbed, girl next door kind of look; so, I suggest Leelee Sobieski to play Queen of Sky in the movie version of her story.

Ed Koch shocked by Bill Moyers' 'Coup' Comment on PBS

Shocked by Bill Moyers' 'Coup' Comment and Radical Media:
George F. Will’s November 9 New York Post column contained a reference to the incident. He wrote:
“On election night on public television - your tax dollars at work - Bill Moyers said: 'I think if Kerry were to win this in a - in a tight race, I think there’d be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. ... I mean that the right wing is not going to accept it.' Moyers, the emblematic face of public television, is an intellectual icon in the sort of deep blue precincts that think red America is paranoid.”

Ed Koch, one of New York's three most colorful mayors of the 20th century (the others being Walker and LaGuardia), notes in a column on NewsMax.com that this is the only discussion of the incident he saw other than his own. He quotes Moyer as subsequently explaining he didn't mean a military coup, just one like 2000.

Well, as I have said before, resort to the Supreme Court was constitutionally inappropriate, but it didn't change the result. The Florida legislature had been prepared to do its duty under the constitution and settle the question by choosing the electors themselves - and that is what should have been done. But, any way you slice it, Bush was going to win Florida and, with it, the election.

Several investigations by the main stream media (no fans of George Bush) after the election showed that recounting by the standards proposed by Gore in the counties contested by Gore would still have resulted in a Bush victory. Ironically, it does appear that if the entire state had been recounted (which Gore opposed), but according to the standards advocated by the Bush camp (which Gore also opposed), Gore probably would have won Florida and the election.

Now, if he wanted an example of a coup d'etat in an American presidential election, Moyers should have pointed to the election of 1876 between Samuel J. Tilden (D-NY) and Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH). That was a coup worthy of the name.

Prescription for statism

spiked-health | debate | chemicalreactions | A question of fear, not chemistry:
"But the real driver behind our growing insecurities has more to do with the political disconnection that now dominates contemporary life. As ordinary people no longer form part of active networks as they did in the past, so their tolerance and trust in all forms of authority, whether political, corporate or scientific, has waned. Subjective impressions of reality go unmoderated and grow into all-consuming worldviews not open to reasoned interrogation.
"This process has been facilitated by the political, corporate and scientific elites who, lacking any vision or direction of their own, have willingly repackaged themselves as societal risk-managers. Sensing their growing isolation from those they depend upon for authority, leaders now offer to protect us from our fears. An alienated and fearful public is the flipside of an isolated and purposeless elite.
"Accordingly, the specifics of any particular issue are only a small part of what shapes the debate. Campaigners' complaints about minute traces of persistent chemicals found inside their bodies are driven more by their sense of alienation from the decision-making process than by any real grasp of chemistry. They extrapolate from experiments upon rodents, which not only have different metabolisms, but which are also subjected to huge doses of chemicals for protracted periods of time, precisely to see the worst that might happen."

A remarkably sensible critique of the "precautionary principle" and the danger it represents. I disagree about motivations, however. Durodie is correct as far as he goes, but I firmly believe that at the higher levels of the hysteria industry is a cold blooded calculation that this is, for the reasons Durodie sets forth, an excellent way to stampede the great unwashed to demand more control over their lives by a state bureaucracy in thrall to the elites.

Now I don't feel guilty about not buying that exercise gadget

ABC News: Bowflex Recalls Nearly 800,000 Machines

Word comes that Bowflex is recalling 782,000 fitness machines which have been linked to a few dozen injuries due to breakage of seats or backboards. This follows a recall of 420,000 units for similar problems earlier this year.

So, I wasn't just being lazy when I watched those infomercials and failed to order a Bowflex. I must be psychic. I must have sensed the injury potential. But, I'm still an overstuffed couch potato. It just proves the old saying, "No pain, no gain."

Screenwriter Bruce Feirstein's humorous take on the morning after

The Seattle Times: Opinion: Six degrees of recrimination:

"In the aftermath, the Democrats will form their ritual circular firing squad of recriminations."
— Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the Guardian, Nov. 4

Only in America!

Janitor Leaves University a Record $2.3 Million:
"A part-time janitor who worked at the University of Great Falls has left the college $2.3 million, the largest gift the school has ever received."

An Italian immigrant with only a third-grade education, Genesio Morlacci had run a dry cleaning business for many years. Later, he sold the business and went to work as a janitor at the university. He died a month ago at the are of 102. America, what a country!

Boycott Abercrombie & Fitch

Yahoo! News - Abercrombie & Fitch to Pay to Settle Suit :
"We have, and always have had, no tolerance for discrimination. We decided to settle this suit because we felt that a long, drawn out dispute would have been harmful to the company and distracting to management,' chairman and CEO Mike Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday."

If the first part of that statement is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, why give in to blackmail? It just encourages more of the same. I understand that companies facing such suits are always considered guilty and that there are significant barriers to proving innocence (the "disparate impact test," for example). But these cases have almost nothing to do with any actual employees, but everything to do with enriching the treasuries of leftist political causes.

"The settlement, approved Tuesday morning by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, requires the company to adhere to a consent decree that calls for the implementation of new policies and programs to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in its workforce. Abercrombie & Fitch also must pay about $10 million to monitor compliance and cover attorneys' fees, although the agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing by the company."

"... Abercrombie & Fitch had said it would pay $50 million to resolve the litigation."

"The consent decree calls for Abercrombie & Fitch to hire a vice president of diversity and hire up to 25 diversity recruiters. The company also promised that its marketing materials would reflect diversity."

Thus capitalism grovels before its enemies, pumping millions of dollars to outfits like MALDEF. And no longer will they create marketing materials based on what will sell their products (which is the duty owed to the owners, as well as the employees, of the corporation), they have to keep looking over their shoulders to see if the unspoken political message of their casual clothes will please the censors. I personally own nothing by A&F, I think their marketing in the past has been politically suspect, that's what makes this case so interesting. If a trendy lefty outfit like A&F can take a hit like this, no one is safe.

Florida Democrats start soul searching. Can they find one?

State Democrats look ahead with trepidation, hope:

"'You can see the Cuban-American community move forward in the Republican Party,' says [Democrat consultant James] Harris, who notes that Miami lawyer Al Cardenas was chairman of the state party and that Bush named Mel Martinez to his Cabinet as Housing and Urban Development secretary before urging him to run for the U.S. Senate.

"'They have power. They have juice,' Harris says. 'Black folks look around here and start asking: What are Democrats doing for them? When Democrats are in power, we get nothing.'

"He says the state party has done a poor job of bringing black leaders up through the ranks and preparing them for statewide campaigns. 'There is no mentoring going on,' he says. 'Some black voters are going to start looking at the Republicans where they see Condoleezza Rice (Bush's national security adviser) and Secretary of State Colin Powell.'

"And Harris wonders how the party lost its way on issues such as parental notification when a child wants an abortion.

"'How did we get on the side of 'No' on parental notification?' he asks. 'How did Democrats get on that side based on the obscure notion that some fathers might harm their daughters? Republicans wind up on the 'right' side of the issue, and we wind up on the other side.'

"He notes that an amendment to Florida's constitution requiring parental notification was approved by 65 percent of voters this year."

Maybe in a southern state like Florida this strategy will work, but it will be hard to get the national Democrat party to get on the right side of the voters on abortion-related issues because the abortion provider industry (it's a multi-billion dollar business) and the hard left feminists are key elements of the national Democrat power structure in terms of both personnel and money.

If the Democrats would embrace parental notification, banning partial birth abortion, restricting late term abortions generally, propose more funding for pregnancy and adoption and less for abortions, they could seize the middle ground on the issue without repudiating the basic thrust of Roe v. Wade. But, I am confident they will not be able to do so. Because nationally they run the risk of the ultra-feminists going out to join the greens and other Marxist crazies on the far left and still losing the presidency, even though they would do better in lower level races in many states.

Mom demands college tuition for 14-year old son

WorldNetDaily: Case could pave way for school vouchers :
"Having the state pay for his tuition at UCLA is the only possible remedy, insists Ackerman, who notes that if the boy is not in school, he is regarded as truant.
"'You can't send him back to public school, because they don't have the means to educate a kid this gifted,' he told WND. 'The only way his intellectual needs can be met is if he goes to a high-level, four-year college.'"

This is the sort of legal case I really hate to see. WND is touting it as somehow paving the way for education vouchers in California, but I think this case would be hard to twist into a rationale for vouchers in other than the special circumstance here of a child who has qualified for college well before 18 and without going through the usual years of public instruction. On the other hand it threatens to open the floodgates to all sorts of parents to claim that their child needs something special - Olympic class gymnastics coaching or fine arts or music - that is not on offer in the public schools.

I don't know what argument the government will make in reply, but how about this: The public schools don't meet any other students' educational needs very well, why should this boy be treated differently? The most important functions served by secondary education are to keep young people off the streets during the day while their parents are working, to delay entry into the workforce and to foster a sense of dependence upon government. These functions the government is prepared to provide to this plaintiff in an age-appropriate social setting through the existing public school facilities. The government has already made a significant accommodation in this case by not sending truant officers to the university to arrest the boy for not being in middle school, even though his failure to attend causes the school district financial harm, nothing more should be required.

Satire is punished harshly at UNH

WorldNetDaily: Student evicted for satirical flier :
"He was sentenced to expulsion from student housing, given extended disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor to discuss his 'decisions, actions, and reflections' and made to write a 3000-word reflection paper about the counseling session."

This was the punishment meted out to sophomore Timothy Garneau who "was charged with offensiveness including 'acts of dishonesty,' violation of 'affirmative action' policies, 'harassment' and 'conduct which is disorderly, lewd.'"

The male student in question suggested in a satirical flier posted in his highrise dormitory that overcrowding on elevators could be alleviated and the "Freshman 15" [the alleged typical weight gain of freshman women at UNH; at Kutztown (PA) U they say it's 20 pounds] avoided if women would use the stairs.

Thus the modern, progressive university in America deals with a budding Jonathan Swift while trampling on the First Amendment.

A rightwing civil rights group stepped in to help and the punishment was substantially reduced - Mr. Garneau will not have to finish his education living out of his car, for example - but the conviction was upheld in principle.

A victory in the cause of good government

Nevada Controller Impeached Over Campaign:
"Nevada Controller Kathy Augustine was impeached by the state Assembly Thursday for using her state-paid office workers and equipment to help run her 2002 re-election campaign.
"In a series of 42-0 voice votes, the Assembly sent three articles of impeachment to the state Senate, where a trial will be held to determine whether Augustine will be removed from office."

For the US, there is no national security apart from the Constitution

Ashcroft says judges threaten national security by questioning Bush decisions:
"... Ashcroft criticized rulings he said found 'expansive private rights in treaties where they never existed' that run counter to the broad discretionary powers given the president by the Constitution."

But there are no broad discretionary presidential powers under the US Constitution. General Achcroft must have been reading some other document, maybe Russia's constitution.

Every president, being a fallen human being and subject to greater temptations than most of us have to face, is lured by the siren of unaccountable power. Some resist it well, others less so. Some succumb against their better judgment and others embrace the opportunity to be a petty tyrant.

Bush has by no means been the worst. He hasn't ordered the arrest of legislators who oppose his policies as Lincoln did. But there is no reason why he could not do so under the authority he has unilaterally claimed for himself. And he has displayed a Lincolnian affection for the erroneous proposition that a wartime president can suspend habeas corpus to suit his whims. That is why judicial review of his decisions is essential.

Even this president's most devoted fans ought to realize that the question is not what has this president done with such power, but what might some other president do with it? Would you have trusted such power to Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton? Would you feel confident in trusting such power in future to John Kerry, Hillary Clinton or John Edwards?

Keeping down the crime rate on the border

NBC 4 - News - Border Inspectors Find Girl Sealed In Pinata:
"They [a woman and two children] were voluntarily deported to Mexico and the driver plus a passenger of the car -- both American citizens -- were not arrested.
'Bond says the sheer volume of immigrant-smuggling cases far exceeds the government's ability to prosecute all smugglers."

A reminder, if any were needed, that there are two reasons why arrest rates may be lower. Law-breaking could be declining or the enforcers of the law may have become complicit in the crimes. I don't fault the individual officers on the border - they take their orders from the criminals in office above them. Blame Secretary Ridge and the rest of the chain of command. If making arrests is a budget problem, the honorable thing to do is to strain the system to the breaking point and force the Congress to confront their obligation to provide the needed level of funding, not to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

Shades of Atlas Shrugged

The American Thinker:
"You might have a vague memory of five Western engineers killed last May in Saudi Arabia. They were shot dead in cold blood outside a vast ExxonMobil petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia by al-Qaeda. The killers then ghoulishly dragged one of their bodies through the streets. After that, an exodus of expatriates from the Kingdom followed, including 90 Western petrochemical engineers from their company who were working on the same project. The project was shut down."
...
"The day after the engineers were killed, the price of oil shot up four dollars from $34 a barrel to $38."
...
"The five chemical engineers were doing a critical capacity expansion in Saudi Arabia in one of the world’s largest polyethylene plants, which already produced 1.36 million metric tons a year, and the world was depending on it. ... this expansion project was shut down after the attack ... It’s not been started up since. As a result, polyethylene prices shot up, going from about 30 cents a unit in May to 65 cents today. And analysts say it was a direct result of the attack."

A cheeky perspective on fashion

Big-Bottomed Mannequins Boost Profile in New York:
"The recent pop culture fixation on large bottoms has been around since at least 1992, when rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot scored a hit with 'Baby Got Back.'
"But some credit the recent booty shakin' efforts of shapely stars Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce for the fresh emphasis on bigger and rounder posteriors, coupled with the fashion explosion of the Brazilian-style low-rise jeans.
"'J.Lo was the first to stress that women shouldn't be afraid to show their curves, and the popularity of rap made that shape more acceptable,' said Critchfield. 'And it is about these low-riding jeans looking good on a sexy, tight fit.'"

I think the modern origin of this might be traced to the classic rock song "Big Bottom" from the 1970 album Brainhammer and re-released on the soundtrack album This Is Spinal Tap in 1984.

Perhaps, rather than looking for reasons why the popularity of "heroin chic" is declining, we ought to ask how fashion ever got to that point in the first place. From supposed fertility figures found in all sorts of ancient archaeological digs to at least Marilyn Monroe. A woman with hips was the more often the ideal than otherwise. Look at all sorts of film stars, chorus lines in musicals, Miss America contestants and so on all through the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s - they didn't look like skinny boys in dresses.

I have read speculation that there was a rather misogynist bent to a lot of fashion designers, especially in America in recent decades. Perhaps so. Part of the return to womanly shapes might then be the result of women taking a more leading role as designers (Donna Karan) and as the signature on various store labels (Jaclyn Smith).

Shortly after the film Titanic (which might have been a decent movie if it was at least an hour shorter), I read about some discussion in Hollywood about whether there ought to be more opportunities given to fat women in leading roles. But, they weren't talking about Camryn Mannheim or Rosie O'Donnell, they meant Kate Winslet and Drew Barrymore. Yikes! How perverse to label a woman fat just because she doesn't look like a boy from a block away.

Anything that allows women to be women is good news in my book. Now if we can get the culture to return to appreciate real men with hair on their chests instead of what I call "perfect, hairless boys" we might get this culture back on a more productive track.

On my books-to-read list: Bad Trip by Joel Miller

ShopNetDaily.com - A WorldNetDaily Exclusive!:
"A tough, uncompromising look at how America's controversial war on drugs is punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty, and what citizens can do to stop our country's drug war abuse."

The Judge says it best:
"If you are interested in our freedoms or fearful of the government destroying human lives and wasting tax dollars on another American Prohibition, read this book and send a copy to every lawmaker and judge you know."
~JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
Fox News senior judicial analyst

Keeping Oklahoma City Beautiful

WorldNetDaily: $185 fine for dropping sunflower seed:
"It could be called a case for the birds, but an Oklahoma woman is crying fowl over a $185 fine for dropping a sunflower seed in public."

This lady got off easy, where I come from, the fine for littering is $300.

It's "deja vu all over again" - Leftist mob threatens CRs at SFSU

WorldNetDaily: Arab students rage at College Republicans :
"According to the report, the Arab protesters have called for the Republican club to be banned from campus. Flyers were even distributed at the university that said: 'Don't Let the College Republicans Commit Racism and Bigotry Against Arab Women.'"

Reminds me of my time in the College Republicans (1967-75) at UVa when concerned, tolerant progressives who saw us just driving down the street would shout "Fascists!" and wave their fists. Those were the good old days.

Arizona prepares to implement wishes of its citizens, Mexican government objects

Arizona Wrestles With Anti-Alien Initiative:
"Opposition to Prop. 200 extends into Mexico. In a written statement, the Mexican foreign ministry said, 'The Mexican government regrets that the proposition passed and expresses its complete opposition to the measure, as it discriminates against individuals based on their ethnic profile and limits their access to basic health and education services.'"

This is absurd. The category "not a US citizen" has no ethnic content. We don't care whether the illegals are from Mexico or somewhere else. We don't care what their racial background is. We just want to control our borders. Mexico doesn't let US citizens just move in and take jobs from Mexicans and vote in their elections and become a burden to their public services, so who are they to talk. Ask the Mexican government how they treat Guatemalans coming into Mexico.

More dueling studies in the global warming debate

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Climate change claims flawed, says study:
"Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Future Studies and colleagues from Stockholm, Canada, Iceland and Britain say in their report that predictions of 'extreme impacts' based on greenhouse emissions employed 'faulty science, faulty logic and faulty economics'."

The Guardian balances this with news in the same of the impending release in Reykjavik of another doom and gloom report on the Arctic. That's a great way to give short shrift to the report they don't like.

Bon Voyage!

Blue states buzz over secession - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - November 09, 2004:
"In 1839, former President John Quincy Adams defended the right of secession in a speech in New York, saying, 'Far better will it be ... to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint.'"

It seems that some folks are talking about the Kerry states seceding and forming a new country or federating with Canada. I am inclined to say go, and good riddance. But I think it would be better to look at the map by county and say let the Kerry counties go, that way my home in PA (Berks Co.) and my other home in SC (Greenville Co.) would still both be in the same country. If you look at the county level map, you notice that most of Pennsylvania and a large swath of New York State are Republican territory. For that matter, even on the West Coast, most of Washington and Oregon and a large swath of California voted Republican as well.

On a more serious note, I don't expect this effort to get near as far as the Hartford Convention did when New England was upset over the War of 1812. But, it sure is nice for us unreconstructed southrons to see them Yankees squirm a bit.

Another new category for the DSM?

BocaNews.com:
"Boca Raton trauma specialist Douglas Schooler said he has treated 15 clients and friends with “intense hypnotherapy” since the Democratic nominee conceded last Wednesday.
“I had one friend tell me he’s never been so depressed and angry in his life,” Schooler said. “I observed patients threatening to leave the country or staring listlessly into space. They were emotionally paralyzed, shocked and devastated.”
Schooler’s disclosure comes after the weekend discovery of a Kerry volunteer’s corpse at Ground Zero in New York City. Georgia resident Andrew Veal, 25, reportedly killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head due to Kerry’s loss and a girlfriend problem.
Some mental health professionals in South Florida said Monday they have already developed a new category for the Kerry-related stress reactions. Because Palm Beach County voted heavily for Kerry, the therapists said, many residents hurt themselves by so anxiously expecting the Massachusetts senator to win – especially those who maintained unrealistic recount hopes after their candidate’s concession.
“We’re calling it ‘post-election selection trauma’ and we’re working to develop a counseling program for it,” said Rob Gordon, the Boca-based executive director of the American Health Association. “It’s like post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it’s a short-term shock rather than a childhood trauma.”
Gordon, the first American Red Cross psychotherapist sent to Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, said therapists’ main concern is to prevent the recurrence of Kerry-related suicides like the one in New York City."

Follow the link for the full story. As far as I'm concerned, these people already had a screw loose if they thought there was no chance that Kerry might actually lose. In fact, it reminds me of the speech by Libby Holden (brilliantly played by Kathy Bates), the former mental patient and long-time political associate of Governor and Mrs. Stanton (John Travolta and Emma Thompson), in the movie Primary Colors where she recalls what she thought when she learned that Sen. Tom Eagleton, Sen. George McGovern's first running mate, had experienced a breakdown years earlier and received electro-convulsive therapy and had to resign from the race. She blamed it on President Richard Nixon, it had to be a Republican plot, she actually thought the Democrats could win in 1972, she couldn't believe that McGovern was so incompetent he could lose to such an awful man as Nixon.

BocaNews.com

Vandalism for class credit at Pomona College

Pasadena Star-News - News:
"CLAREMONT -- Vandals may have just been doing their homework when they painted anti-SUV messages on windows of dozens of sport utility vehicles parked at Pomona College early last week.
"Two students who used white washable paint to write environmental slogans like 'My SUV wastes 33% more gas than a car' and 'Is your image a good reason for people to die' on 40 to 50 vehicles last Monday did so as part of a class assignment, college officials said."

I thought things were bad enough on American campuses with yesterday's story about protesting for class credit at Ball State which I linked on this blog. Today, courtesy of NewsMax.com, comes a new outrage reported by the Pasadena (CA) Star News.

What amazes me is that the story mentions "possible" college disciplinary action with no indication of any law enforcement action. This is a conspiracy. In law, a conspiracy is generally a major crime even when the criminal acts anticipated or committed as a result of the conspiracy are relatively minor. Moreover, not only the students involved, but even their instructor, remain unnamed although they clearly are known to college administrators.

Powell: Bush will join Fox in opposing interests of American people

Powell: Bush Wants Legal Status for Millions of Illegal Aliens

The honeymoon is officially over, fellow conservatives, it is time to lay off the Democrats and direct our rhetorical fire back at the administration we just re-elected. Polls consistently show that by a very large margin, much larger than Bush's margin over Kerry, Americans want control of immigration and control of borders.

We conservatives have been burned by one of our own. Ronald Reagan put his considerable influence behind a plan to regularize the status of millions of illegal aliens already here with a pledge to get control of the borders. The law-breakers got their amnesty, but we never took control of our borders.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

This time, let's tell our president and the congress, get control of our borders first, then we can talk about an immigration reform program.

Those who speak of amnesty now (and I include President Bush and Secretary Powell, whatever euphemisms cloak the administration proposal it is an amnesty) know full well from the experience of the Reagan amnesty that it will only encourage more people to come here illegally to be in position for the next amnesty.

Is the GOP afraid that some of it's upper middle class constituents will be upset that they might lose their low-paid maids, gardeners and pool boys? It's time for our party to stand up for the American workers whose wages and benefits are constantly being eroded by competition from illegal immigrants. This is especially tragic in our minority communities where unemployment rates for young single men - the people most directly competing with illegal immigrant labor - seems perpetually stuck at double-digit rates. If the Republicans were serious about seeking minority votes, they would pay more attention to minority employment - it's good politics and, what is more, it's the right thing to do.

Democracy in Belgium: If you can't out argue the opposition, outlaw it

Top court brands Belgian far-right party racist:
"'What happened in Brussels today is unique in the Western world: never has a so-called democratic regime outlawed the country's largest political party,' Vlaams Blok leader Frank Vanhecke said in a statement.
"'Today, our party has been killed, not by the electorate but by the judges.
"'We will establish a new party. This one Belgium will not be able to bury; it will bury Belgium,' he said.
"The Vlaams Blok wants the richer, Dutch-speaking region of Flanders to secede from Belgium, whose other main community is French-speaking. The two populations co-exist in an uneasy federal partnership."

An atheist figures it out: the religious group endangering America is the Islamic totalitarians, not Bush and the Christians who voted for him

Bush's Secularist Triumph - The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them. By Christopher Hitchens:
"Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda?"

Dream girl

New York Post Online Edition: news:
"A bad dream that her father had lost his bid for re-election pushed privacy-conscious First Daughter Jenna Bush out on the campaign trial, Laura Bush reveals in a new interview.
"The University of Texas graduate had the premonition at some point during her senior year and decided she couldn't just stand by as her father ran for a second term, the first lady told Newsweek magazine. "It was very moving to George," Laura said.
"Soon after her nightmare, Jenna and her sister, Barbara, came along on one of Bush's campaign bus trips and contributed some much-needed humor to their dad's grueling re-election bid.
"To Bush's delight, his daughters would read aloud signs criticizing him. Passing a sign that read "You suck," the three could barely control their laughter, Newsweek reports."

Nice they could share a laugh over that. Not like the reaction of Nixon (played by Dan Hedaya) at the end of the movie Dick as his chopper passes over a residential neighborhood on his way into exile and the teen girls (played by the always stunning Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) who walked his dog and fed incriminating info to Woodward and Bernstein hold up a red, white and blue banner saying "You Suck, Dick! Love, Deep Throat." (It's not a great movie, but any movie in which you can see Kirsten Dunst is worth seeing more than once. Much better is Get Over It in which her singing almost matches her beauty.)

As for Jenna's dream, I don't set too much stock in dreams. Most of mine, the few I can remember at all, make absolutely no sense. But, in a way, I'm glad she had it. Whether it helped win the race or not, and it couldn't hurt, anything that gives us more opportunities to see more of Jenna is a good thing in my book. Hope her dad has those magic cufflinks ready for the Inaugural Ball. Where can I get a ticket?

Racing News: Frogs by a nose over ChiComs for second place in the arms for Saddam Hussein sweepstakes, Russia winner by 4-1/2 lengths, US an also ran

Bush Re-Election 2004: Armageddon Redux:
"The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that France provided 13 percent of imported weapons to Iraq, with the other two "peace-loving" members of the United Nations Security Council – Russia and China – handing Saddam 57 percent and 12 percent of his weapons, respectively, between 1973 and 2002.
"What about those warmongering, interventionist, hypocritical American presidents, which include spawn-of-Satan Dubya, his daddy and that 'moron' Ronnie Reagan, who loaded up Saddam with all those weapons to fight Iran? Their total contributions amounted to a whopping 1 percent of Saddam's cache."

So reports Rachel Marsden in a commentary on NewsMax.com Monday. You would never have known this by listening to the leftists the media love to quote putting the blame on America for Saddam Hussein's atrocities.

Health-Seekers Bathe in the Glow of Radon

Health-Seekers Bathe in the Glow of Radon: "Radon, produced by the decay of radium, is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates radon in indoor air causes about 21,000 deaths each year in the United States alone, and is the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking."

This article from NewsMax.com describes how various hot springs health spas in Japan tout naturally occurring or artificially introduced radon in the air as a general purpose curative and restorative, but goes on to rugurgitate the EPA line as shown in the quote above.

The trouble with the government's radon exposure limit standards and the estimated contribution to lung cancer deaths is that there is no reason to believe those figures are accurate. That radon, inhaled at high concentrations over long periods, is capable of inducing lung cancer is not in dispute. Miners working underground can be subjected to very high exposures and develop lung cancers. But there is a serious problem in trying to extend this experience which is well-understood to low level exposure in residences or other buildings.

EPA uses, in this and other contexts, something called the linear no threshhold hypothesis (LNTH). This assumes that there is no safe dose and extrapolates from data about lifetime exposure and lung cancer incidence from the well-documented experience of underground miners to assume that one-tenth the exposure must result in one-tenth the cancer risk, one-hundredth of the exposure must result in one-hundredth of the cancer risk, and so on until the exposure level is zero.

This flies in the face of a fundamental principle of pharmacology that it is the dose that makes the poison. Many things are safe, even beneficial, in small doses that are damaging or fatal in large doses. It also flies in the face of actual studies which show a hormetic response when low-level radon exposure is compared to actual health effects. Hormesis is the process by which exposures at low levels to some dangerous substances are actually beneficial to health.

So what do the residential radon studies actually show? A Congressionally-mandated review of the relevant peer-reviewed literature by the National Academy of Sciences states: "The ecologic study of Cohen (1995) is the most comprehensive. It encompasses about 300,000 radon measurements in 1,601 counties in the U.S. The trend of county lung cancer mortality with increasing home radon concentration is strikingly negative, even when attempts are made to adjust for smoking prevalence, and 54 socioeconomic factors....This finding contradicts the existing risk estimates at low exposure, and a sound reason for the significant negative trend should be sought.''

In fact, the exposure limits set by the EPA for residences are substantially below the level at which radon exposure has neither benefits nor adverse consequences for acquiring cancer; that is, meeting the EPA standards should make us just a bit less healthy. And the costs of this are not trivial. Annual compliance costs nationally were estimated by EPA at $180 million in 1991. The American Water Works Association (there can be radon gas dissolved in water) made an estimate of $2.5 billions. Given even the EPA's estimate of the number of cancers averted, the cost is $1 to $15 millions per potential victim. There ought to be more effective ways to spend that much money even if the EPA were correct.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, here is a good place to start: http://www.oism.org/cdp/jan2000.htm

Trouble in the Heartland - Anti-American protesting for class credit at Ball State

FrontPage magazine.com :: Recruiting for Terror at Ball State by Thomas Ryan:
"Demonstrations, protests, and “social activism” are a large part of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies’ curriculum. In Wolfe’s “Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution” class, participation in such anti-war demonstrations counts as one of three options by which students are graded. Mock states that students were recruited from his class to attend anti-war rallies, and that students “received extra academic credit as an incentive to go.” These academically-credited protests were specifically organized by Wolfe’s activist group, PeaceWorkers, whose agendas are leftwing and anti-American military."

It saddens me more than a little to read of such leftist subversion permeating Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. That was my mother's home state and at least three relatives on my mother's side trained there to be teachers, a great aunt who taught in Ohio for half a century and two second cousins whose father served in WW2.

Of course this is just a tip of the iceberg thing. This sort of fashionable leftism is ascendant at colleges and universities all across America. All the usual suspects from the anti-freedom coalition of the 60s - communists of various tendencies (Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyite, etc.), anarchists. social gospel preachers, democratic socialsists and other "progressive" elements - who went to grad school as an excuse to keep the movement alive on campuses are, by now, in senior faculty and administrative positions and have been grooming their successors for a generation.

These people should be preaching on soapboxes in the parks, objects of derision for passersby, not subverting our youth at public expense until the country rots from within and falls to the ground like over-ripe fruit as Lenin, I believe it was, predicted.

Court and ACLU say this is a statement of religious faith

Evolution Case Opens in Georgia Court:

"'This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.'"

Doesn't sound like anything I've ever read in the Bible, the Thirty-nine Articles of Church of England, the Heidelberg Catechism, nor the Westminster Catechism. Just what religion is this supposed to promote?

It doesn't promote any religion. But it does serve to undercut a key element of anti-religious propaganda. This is very important to the ACLU since it is concerned with seeing that the constitution be enforced. Do you remember the section of the constitution that guarantees the freedom of anti-religious propaganda? You should, it was placed in the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the bloodiest pack of murderers and sadists the world has ever known.

Mexico sees opportunity for further opening of US border

Mexico Seeks U.S. Immigration Changes:
"Mexico acknowledged it suffered a setback in the Nov. 2 elections, when Arizona voters approved Proposition 200, a ballot initiative aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from voting and obtaining some government services.
"The Arizona initiative would 'foment racial discrimination and limit (migrants') access to basic services like health and education,' Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said in a news statement."

What's race got to do with it? I don't care if they're white Mexicans like Fox, Amerindian Mexicans, or mestizos - if they came here illegally, send them back. And, Mexicans, even Latin Americans in general, are not the whole problem. There are plenty of other people here illegally and more crossing both borders, but mostly the southern one, every day; they include Chinese, Arabs and Russians, among others.

Illegal immigration harms America in many ways:
Depresses wages and contributes to stubbornly high unemployment, especially among African Americans and Native Americans.
Reduces the educational and literacy level of the workforce at a time when nearly all experts agree we need to raise education and literacy levels to compete in the global economy.
Puts a massive strain on medical and social services in many states, not just on the southern border.
Promotes an outlaw underclass which facillitates both ordinary criminal activity and the activities of potential terrorists.
Raises auto insurance rates.

It's not about race, it's about legal status and what's good for America. Those who broke the law to get in must leave regardless of race, color, creed or country of origin. If that doesn't fit in with President Fox's political agenda, or President Bush's, it's still the law and it's what the people of this country want. When we have some control over the border and send most of the illegals home again, there will be an appropriate time to consider what immigration limits, regional quotas, or other policies we want for the future.

Hollywood blames Bush for boxoffice disappointment

The New York Times > Movies > Movies News and Features > Disney and Pixar Score Again as 'The Incredibles' Opens Big:
"Wayne Llewellyn, the president of distribution at Paramount, said that the conservative ethos reflected in last week's election results might have hurt the film [Alfie. remake of a 60s classic that opened to a mere $6.5 million on 2,000 screeens].
"'It could be the mood of the country right now,' he said. 'It seems to be the result of the election. Maybe they didn't want to see a guy that slept around.'"

Look closely at the studio exec's actual quote above. Why can't they see that the election result itself is a reflection, in part, of the culture war in which a majority of Americans are on one side and a larger majority of his peers are on the other. This also shows itself in the difficulty Hollywood has in producing serious movies that appeal to large numbers of adults and Tinseltown's total surprise at the Mel Gibson's ability to produce just such a film. Another indicator, while the movies rely on sex and bathroom jokes to cater to a teen and young adult audience, many of the really big box office hits of recent years have been more family friendly fare - children's animated films which draw in parents with them or old-fashioned adventure stories (you know, good guys and bad guys, and the good guys win) like The Lord of The Rings.

Yet we still don't see much of this more moral material coming out of Hollywood. So, if money doesn't explain the bias, what are the other options? One may be a lack of genuine talent. I see lots of movies made that are based on Shakespeare's plays, but very few others that show his talent for telling a story. The other cause, and I think the greater, is that the generation that is now in control in Hollywood - producers, directors, distributors - came out of a leftwing cultural milieu that views traditional America as the enemy. This is why modern Hollywood admires pushing the envelope and seems embarassed by the classic Hollywood's respect for social conventions.

WARNING: Depression ahead

FT.com / Markets / Currencies - Dollar expected to fall amid China's rumoured selling :
"Many currency traders were taken aback on Friday when the greenback fell in spite of bullish data showing the US economy created 337,000 jobs in October.
"'If this can't cause the dollar to strengthen you have to tell me what will. This is a big green light to sell the dollar,' said David Bloom, currency analyst at HSBC, as the greenback fell to a nine-year low in trade-weighted terms."

The dollar fell against the euro on the assumption by traders that Bush's re-election meant four more years of budget and current account deficits. It does, in a way. But, John Kerry could hardly have been counted on to reverse either of those tendencies.

Gold has reached a 16-year high. China is selling off some of its massive dollar reserves. Retailers and auto makers are struggling. The housing boom appears to have peaked. Where is the good news?

Add to all this woe the need to do something about Social Security. Some combination of tax rate increases, raising the income level to which taxes apply, benefit cuts (or at least computing COLAs more conservatively), delayed retirement age,
increased taxation of benefits, or means testing (this is the most highly charged option, even though it makes the most sense - what is the point of sending social security checks to Warren Buffett or Mrs. Heinz Kerry?). And Bush will try to slide in some partial shift to forced private pension savings (which, although it has worked relatively well in Britain and Chile is still a hot-button issue politically).

Bush is to be commended for pledging to actually tackle social security, but I fear the coming depression will be charged to his account and blot out the memory of whatever good he accomplishes. The economic outlook is so bad, in my view, that Bush had better put a maximum effort into putting some good judges on the courts, that may be his entire legacy.

The fabled Kerry IQ

NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story:
"'I asked the question of John Kerry because the New York Times had reported that a man by the name of David Sailer had analyzed their military aptitude tests and then had had IQ experts do an analysis as well - or the Times did,' the NBC anchorman [Tom Brokaw] explained. 'And they concluded that George W. Bush might be a point or two higher than John Kerry in IQ.'"

As reported a few weeks ago here, Kerry's class ranks in two courses he took in the Navy were nothing to write home about either - 7th of 22 and 17th of 35.

UK airport adopts intrusion on private parts rejected, so far, in US

Times Online - Sunday Times - Plane passengers shocked by their x-ray scans:
"At Heathrow, passengers are picked to go through the body scanner on a random and voluntary basis. Those who refuse are subjected to an automatic hand search.
"The scanner, which resembles a tall, grey filing cabinet, operates in a curtained area and passengers are asked to stand in front of it, adopting several poses, for their “naked” image to be registered. Once checked, the images are immediately erased."

Note the odd use of the word "voluntary." You are selected at random, so they say; nothing voluntary about that. You are asked if you would like to pose for naked pictures of you to be viewed by total strangers; I think this must be the voluntary part, because you are allowed to refuse. But, if you balk at strangers looking at your naked body, you are immediately subjected to having strangers touch you in places and ways which, in most contexts, would get them arrested; that's not something normal people would accept voluntarily. Oh, and after all this we are expected to trust them not to keep an copies on the hard-drive.

So far, this voluntary program has not been rolled out here {after some negative reactions to a test in Orlando in 2002) but the bureaucrat in charge seems enamored of the technology:
"In America last year, Susan Hallowell, director of the US Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security laboratory, showed off her own x-ray image to demonstrate the technology to reporters.
“'It basically makes you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff,' said Hallowell, who had deliberately hidden a gun and a bomb under her clothes."

Gee whiz! Fat and Naked. Now that's a winner for sure. Or maybe it's Ms. Hallowell that's fat?

A wake-up call for Europe; the Netherlands hears it clearly, will France?

Netherlands braces for 'jihad' - The Washington Times: World - November 06, 2004:
" 'I know definitely that you, Oh America, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Netherlands, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go down,' it [the letter pinned to the body of slain filmmaker Theo van Gogh by his assassins] said.
" Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm agreed with comments by other politicians who called Mr. van Gogh's slaying a declaration of Islamic jihad, or 'holy war.'
" 'We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism,' he said. 'The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought.'"

It is now connect the dots time in Europe. Here are few recent ones:
The murderers of Theo van Gogh have declared war on, not only his collaborator on the film Subjection (she is a former Muslim from Africa and a member of the Dutch parliament), but also on America, the Netherlands and Europe in general.
Those same murderers are connected to Casablanca bombing last year.
Terrorists in Iraq, in addition to kidnappings and murders of various Americans, Brits, Poles and Japanese, have targeted an Irish-born relief worker who has lived peacably in their country for decades.
The Spanish authorities, even though the new government has complied with the demand of the Madrid train bombers to leave Iraq, have uncovered a new plot for an Islamofascist terrorist strike in Spain.

The picture should be getting clearer. Either you fight, which at least marginally improves your chance for survival; or you surrender, in which case you will be still be attacked at leisure after the allies you could have relied on are no longer able to succor you. Of course, the French may prefer a third way. The way of Marshal Petain and the Waffen SS. A total embrace of the enemy. What will it by Mr. Chirac?

The end of an era?

Reading the email journal of FederalistPatriot.US this week I came across a one-liner from Jay Leno's Monday night monologue that said with this election, the Vietnam War would finally be over. Of course, he was referring specifically to the re-hashing of the pros and cons of the war. But it got me to thinking in another way. How long does the influence of a war last in how it personally shapes our presidents, most of whom have seen some sort of military service.

Our first war as a nation on our own, the Revolutionary War of 1775-83 produced a military commander who became our first president under the present constitution in 1789. But the last president to serve in the Revolution was Andrew Jackson (1829-37) who had enlisted in the militia at the tender age of 13 already bearing a scar from a British officer's saber. That's a span of over fifty years from the end of the war to the end of the term of the last president to serve in it.

The War of 1812 (1812-15) was the war that made General Andrew Jackson a national hero by his brilliant victory over a superior British force near New Orleans. The Treaty of Ghent, ending that war, had already been negotiated by, among others, future president John Quincy Adams. The last president to serve in that war was James Buchanan (1857-61), who left office 45 years after its end.

The Mexican War (1846-48) was the war that made Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor (president 1849-50) a national hero for his exploits including the defeat of Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at Vera Cruz although the US forces were outnumbered 4-1. Brig. Gen. Franklin Pierce (president 1853-57) served under Winfield Scott in that war and went on the defeat his former commander in the presidential election of 1852. A young lieutenant who served under generals Taylor and Scott, would go on to command Union forces in the Civil War and become the last president to have served in the Mexican War, Ulysses Grant (president 1869-1877). That is thirty nine years after the war.

The Civil War produced a slew of presidents beginning with Andrew Johnson (president 1865-69) who served as military governor of Union-occupied Tennessee and ending with William McKinley (president 1897-1901) whose last term would have ended forty years after the end of the Civil War if he had not been assassinated by an anarchist early in his second term.

The Spanish-American War (1898), although it had far-reaching consequences in launching the US into the business of colonialism, was a very short affair involving relatively few troops. Of course, it did propel Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt (president 1901-09) into the governorship of NY which prompted the machine politicians to bump him up to vice president where they supposed he would never be heard from again. Barely more than a decade from end of war to end of term, although TR did come back for the most successful third party race in the 20th century forcing his one-time friend, trusted aide, veep and successor William Howard Taft (president 1909-1913) into third place.

There were two presidents who served in World War One (1917-18), Harry Truman (1945-53) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), even though over a million men were mobilized for the US war effort. Two other future presidents held significant civilian roles in support of the war effort - Franklin Roosevelt (1933-45) as assistant navy secretary and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) in charge of organizing food aid for the allies. Forty three years.

World War Two (1941-45) propelled Dwight Eisenhower into the White House. Naval service in that war provided a key element of experience that helped to launch the post-war political careers of John Kennedy (1961-63), Richard Nixon (1969-74) and Gerald Ford (1974-77) in the late 1940s. US Rep Lyndon Johnson (president 1963-69) took a leave of absence from Congress to join the Navy in the Pacific, but returned to Washington when Congress ordered all members to choose between service in Congress or the Armed Forces.

Jimmy Carter (1977-81) was still a student at the US Naval Academy at the end of WW2, he served as an aide to Admiral Rickover in the navy's then-new nuclear propulsion program and resigned his commission in 1953 to take over the family business. This makes Carter the only president with Korean War (1950-53) era service in the armed forces (a 28 year span), but he was not the last of the WW2 veterans. Ronald Reagan (1981-89), who had been a reserve cavalry officer in the 1930s, was in an Army unit in Hollywood producing training films. And he was succeeded by George H.W. Bush (1989-93) who was still in his teens when he flew planes off carriers in the Pacific Theater of Operations. That makes the reach of World War Two 48 years. It would have been longer if Bob Dole, a disabled veteran of the Italian campaign, had been successful in 1996.

In seven major conflicts prior to Vietnam (passing over the Spanish-American War which lasted less than a year), the range of time from the end of the war to the end of the term of the last president to serve in it runs from a low of 28 years (Korean War) to a high of 54 years (Revolutionary War). The average is about 42 years.

So, the odds are Jay Leno was a bit premature in announcing the end of Vietnam's influence on presidential politics. When George W. Bush's term ends in 2009, it will only be 36 years from the end of US combat in the Vietnam War (the war ended with the fall of Saigon two years later).

They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.

It is said that the French statesman Talleyrand thus summed up the stubbornness of the monarchs of the Bourbon dynasty in France. Maybe that's why they seem to have all had the same name - Louis XIII-XVIII, sandwiched between Henry IV and Charles X.

I was reminded of this famous phrase about a half-hour ago when Jim Miklaszewski was interviewing Karl Rove on Fox News. Rove, when asked a question about how President Bush's new mandate will be used to advance legislation, whether it would be a reaching across the aisle (compromise was implied) or (and here I can't recall quite the way it was phrased) something like the train is leaving the station and it's time to get on board. Rove immediately brought forward the example of the No Child Left Behind Act as an example of how the president would proceed with his second term legislative agenda. AAAGH!

NCLB (Nationalize Children for Liberal Benefit) is the model of what is wrong with this administration. A president re-elected with a substantial popular vote majority and making significant gains in both the House and Senate ought to be in a stronger position than to invite Ted Kennedy (the champion swimmer from Chappaquiddick) to shape his domestic legislation.

Bush popular in Boro Park, Brooklyn

Haaretz - Israel News - Article:
"'The vast majority of voters here are registered Democrats,' says Congressman Dov Hikind, who represent the borough. 'In 2000, more than 50 percent voted for Gore and Joseph Lieberman. I expect some 90 percent to vote Bush [this time]' he says.
"Hikind, a Democrat assemblyman, is also up for reelection. He tries not to stand near the polling booth but corners voters on their way to the school. 'Vote Bush,' he urges them. This is the third time Hikind is promoting a Republican. The other two were Rudolph Giuliani for New York mayoral race and George Pataki for governor."

Interesting report on ticket splitting in Brooklyn.