Just a precious few of the things congress is spending your money on as of last week:

1. $1 million for the Missouri Pork Producers Federation (to convert hog poop into energy)

2. $225,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina (drinking joke withheld)

3. $1,593 to store potatoes in Madison, Wisconsin

4. $800,000 for "soybean rust" research in Ames, Iowa

5. $250,000 for "asparagus technology"

6. $25,000 for a "banana factory arts program" in Bethany, Pennsylvania

7. $25,000 for mariachi music in Nevada

8. $100,000 for a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kansas

9. $306,000 to repair an outhouse in Indiana

10. $1 million for a "world birding center" in Texas (offensive gesture joke withheld)

11. $150,000 to pay for "beaver management" in Wisconsin (Gillette Mach III joke withheld)

12. $1.5 million quietly spent for the Richard Gephardt Archive at the Missouri Historical Society -- "demonstrating that politicians never forget their favorite special interest: themselves."

There's unfortunately much more. Read here.

A Must Read: Paul Beston at the American Spectator on Marine Lance Corporal Dimitri Gavriel. A great story.

UPDATE: Bringing this terrific comment up:

"I guess this dispels the asinine notion that only those of us from middle to lower income join the military. The US Marines/Devil Dogs are the baddest and best on the planet. I hope his family can find peace in knowing that he, as well as all those others who have made the ultimate sacrifice protecting this great country, are true American heroes and won’t ever be forgotten. God Bless America and brave our troops."

Posted by Theresa, MSgt, ORANG at December 2, 2004 05:33 PM

Amen, Theresa, and God bless you too.

Tony Snow is back at the keyboard with some thoughts on the decline of the major network news departments.

Network news since the Cronkite era has thrived on snob appeal. People watched the evening news broadcasts so they could learn how adopt a posture of suave boredom. Networks dispensed a steady stream of fashionable opinions and factoids, which viewers could save up for use in a debate at the company cafeteria: “Yes, but Cronkite said…” That sort of thing worked for many years...

...but it doesn't anymore. Maybe it's because company cafeterias are pretty much history, too. Read the whole thing.

Americans are staying away from Oliver Stone's Thanksgiving Turkey "Alexander the Great" in droves.

The Independent has found us all out, too. They know that we wouldn't even go see it if it were not a terrible movie.

Or something.

"My family is truly sorry that we live in a great country, that we have an abundance of food, and that George Bush beat John Kerry like a rented mule. So, in solidarity with all those sorry individuals, here are five sympathetic head tilts and two very weak power fists."

Hat Tip to Tim Blair. Click here right now (I mean it, dammit!) to visit his site to help alleviate my guilt for having lifted the entire post from him, picture and all.

More Blue State blues from our betters:

"Conservatives have been extremely effective at using semantics to promote their politics: 'prolife, family values, the death tax, partial-birth abortion.' Such verbiage puts opponents instantly on the defensive. Lakoff says that Democrats have to come up with their own arsenal of phrases that have simplistic, inherent appeal. They have to dump their tendency toward wonkish policy-speak.

The better educated of the electorate already trends Democratic, the trick is to capture the imagination of those Americans with a more casual attachment to complex public policy."

[Snip]

"Each group's world view is a natural outgrowth of varying family models, Lakoff says. Conservatives hold the 'strict father' model and progressives hold to the 'nurturant parent' model."

It's the semantics, stupid!

Clue Time: It is not that you (Dems) are immediately put on the defensive by Rovian semantics. It is that voters are not sure that you are at all put on the defensive even by attacks on American soil.

Or put another way: There is a burglar in the house and you will just have to forgive us ignorant, drooling red-staters for wanting to send out the strict father to deal with him rather than Mom.....er....the "nurturant parent".

UPDATE: Upon the completion of each additional reading of this article you will become more convinced that it was either cut and pasted from The Onion or Karl Rove is paying Dave Barry to impersonate a columnist named Robyn E. Blumner.

The City is about to spend money on a study that will come back in support of expanding the local convention center. This is a foregone conclusion. Truly, when was the last time the city/county/chamber had a notion to do something and paid for a study that came back recommending against it? Anyone? Anyone? These studies are not information. They are cover. And these cover stories provided by out of town experts will always trump any real life experience or results.

Today's example: San Antonio (from the San Antonio Express-News):

"But in November 1990, months after San Antonians voted to tax themselves to pay for the Alamodome that gets little use since the Spurs left, the City Council received a study of the feasibility of enlarging our Convention Center.

An expansion was needed, the experts said, because most of the meetings we draw can’t use a place as big as the Alamodome.

The expert consultants — who later acquired a global reputation — advised City Hall that by doubling our Convention Center, 'the potential (convention) delegate demand' would grow proportionally.

'(If) in 1989 there were 336,966 delegates who attended the center,' the big-name experts wrote, the number of conventioneers visiting here in 2000 would grow to “between 500,000 and 874,000,” though “660,000 attendees represents a reasonable solution consistent with the projections.”

The big-name consultants fine-tuned their forecast 13 months later and reported that a double-sized Convention Center — for which we spent $200 million — would “bring the attendee capacity … to 728,000” in 2000. In 2001, it might drop to 511,000, they cautioned, but it would rebound to 546,800 in 2002; 585,000 in 2003; and 628,000 in 2004.

But City Hall’s official delegate count for 2000 was 213,102; 261,386 in 2001; 341,095 in 2002 (including 40,000 'convention delegates' who attended the Women’s Final Four); 257,335 in 2003 and a projected 313,849 in 2004, which is fewer than the 336,966 delegates we got in 1989.

That only shows, proponents admonish today, the need for a hotel subsidized with $130 million in Empowerment Zone bonds guaranteed by city and state tax revenues.

'We’re talking about using $130 million of Empowerment Zone bonds that we could use for any other job-creation efforts in the inner city,' UTSA prof Heywood Sanders says. 'We’re back to helping low-income people in the inner city by creating jobs in hotels.'"

The whole idea of commisioning the expansion study as cover reminds me of the 'nationwide search' (after the ED sales tax passed) for the group that would administer the local ED program....as if there was ever the slightest possibility that someone besides the local chamber would get to stand astride of that particular cash stream.

The convention center expansion study will come back affirming everything those who commissioned the study desire to see affirmed. Does anyone doubt that? That is what these firms do. That is their function. That is their craft.

Otherwise they don't get hired by anybody.

(Hat Tip to Bob in the Comments)

For some unexplainable reason, I thought I'd hit KWEL's website and look through the message board today. The board is a largely-abandoned ghosttown, but I did find one interesting item. On the index page, KWEL's Craig Anderson has placed a link to an organization called CLOUT (an acronym for "Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes").

How hilarious is it that Craig Anderson, a supposedly conservative talk radio guy who has supported virtually every major local tax increase over the last 5 years (the sports complex tax, the E.D. tax, the Sheriff's referendum, all the school bond issues, etc.) has the gall to link CLOUT to his station's website? I wonder if the CLOUT people know he has linked them, and if so, are aware of his largely socialist position on taxes in general.

Boy, does this look familiar...but bigger. Add up all of the extra tax burden that has been laid on local taxpayers by local Chamber driven Economic Development initiatives across the state so that we can all "level the playing field" and create economic development by expanding...well...by expanding local Chambers across the state, apparently. All of the local intitiatives have to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now throw on top of that pile the $475 million that the State of Texas spends for this same nonsense. (And who is actually footing the bill for Ray Perryman's studies?)

From The Dallas Morning News:

"AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry pressed for creation of the Texas Enterprise Fund nearly two years ago with the promise that it would improve the state's economy, increase tax receipts and generate jobs.

Gov. Rick Perry recently announced a new nationwide advertising campaign to promote the state. His Texas Enterprise Fund aims to bring more jobs to the state.

"'The Colorado Railcar that Capital Metro is considering for use in the commuter rail plan may be clean compared to other trains, but is still extremely dirty," he [Steve Ravet] said. 'Even with a full passenger load, it emits more pollution per passenger mile than a Chevrolet H2 Hummer. The Colorado Railcar will emit around .836 grams of NOx per passenger mile when fully loaded with 92 passengers. NOx is a smog precursor; when NOx and hydrocarbons cook in the summer afternoon sun they produce ozone and smog. By comparison, a Chevrolet H2 Hummer with a single occupant emits .7 grams of NOx per passenger mile.'

Besides the environmental impact, the proposed train wouldn't be a bargain monetarily, either.

'With a retail price of around $55,000 apiece, Capital Metro could buy each of the estimated 1,000 initial train riders a brand-new, fully loaded H2 for slightly less than the cost of the rail construction,' Ravet said."

I'd be interested to see the same set of calculations for our own EZRider system. The way I have it figured, the handful of regular public transit riders here in town each has his/her own bus and personal driver. What a deal.

A 9 year-old Midland boy thought the Christmas decorations downtown needed to be replaced and decided to do something. Did he start a fundraising drive, you ask? Approach a local philanthropist, perhaps?

Uh, no.

He went to the government and asked them to buy all new lights and doo-dads. Which they did, with a little direction from -- you guessed it -- Councilman Dingus, who was more than happy to offer up the city funds.

"Weather permitting, the new decorations, which cost a little more than $35,000 [emphasis mine], should be in place by Wednesday of this week, city officials said."

Leave it to Bill Dingus to facilitate yet another waste of public monies. Sure, we Midland taxpayers are being robbed at every turn, but at least we have pretty, new Christmas lights to distract entertain us.

The disheartening story then goes on to report how proud the young boy's father was of him. Here's what would've made me proud:

"At first, young Bryce thought of asking the city to purchase the new decorations, but said he realized deep down that it is not the function of government to spend taxpayer money on non-essential operations.

'The government should only be building roads, maintaining infrastructure, and providing for our defense,' the youngster remarked. 'My father taught me well that to squander 35,000 dollars in taxpayer funds for Christmas lights would've been fundamentally wrong.'

That's when he got the idea to remove the decorations altogether, which should result in a net savings of over $7,000 in labor and electric costs in 2005."

Enjoy your new decorations, comrades! A chicken in every pot!

Tony Snow posts a great take on Thanksgiving including some rarely stated historical and religous perspective. Read it here.

We need to be thankful for a lot. I am even (a little) thankful for Ralph! Because of him, I know at least one person reads the blog.

The original design was to be true to the Clintonian theme of choice, "Building a Bridge To The 21st Century" and resembles...well...a bridge that gets a few feet over the water and ends. (Insert E.M. "Ted" Kennedy Presidential Library joke here).

My concept for the Clinton Presidential Library is very similar but I have substituted for the "Bridge" theme the more proper "Holiday from History" theme.

What better way to illustrate the September 10th Clinton worldview than two towers still standing?

Update: This is not an attack on Clinton per se, nor is it an attempt to blame 9/11 on him. It is just that 9/11 changed some people and not others. This graphic could have just as easily accompanied a story about the Albert Gore, Jr. Vice Presidential Library.

Great reading in the current offerings at NRO. I haven't read everything on the site in weeks, but I have today. Here is a sample, Victor Davis Hanson, outstanding as ever:

Just as the breakdown of a few Communist Eastern European states led to a general collapse of Marxism in the east, or the military humiliation in colonial Africa and the Falklands led to democratic renaissance in Iberia and Argentina, or American military efforts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama City brought consensual government to Central America, a reformed Afghanistan and Iraq may prompt what decades of billions of dollars in wasted aid to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians, the 1991 Gulf War, and 60 years of appeasement of Gulf petrol-sheiks could not: the end of the old sick calculus of Middle East tyrannies blackmailing the United States through past intrigue with the Soviet Union, then threats of oil embargos and rigged prices, and, most recently, both overt and stealthy support for fundamentalist killers.

Get another cup of coffee (or Dr. Pepper) and read the whole thing. Then peruse the rest of the NRO columns. You won't be sorry.

Yo. Nat! I have found Ralph. If this isn't him, we can replace him with a plugin on the site. New slogan: "Get coherent or get replaced." via Politboro Diktat.

Washington state gubernatorial candidate Gregoire celebrating the automatic recount required by the fact that only 261 votes separate her from her opponent, Rossi. She trails. Read about it here. Quote heard on AP radio this morning while driving to work. I nearly ran off the road laughing.

UPDATE: An experiment indirectly suggested by commenter "a&mgrad": I will modify the post to remove the party affiliation, and see if it makes any difference. It was not pertinent to the post or to my amusement at the story in the first place. Hint: R is an R, while G is a D. But in this case it really doesn't matter.

"It's just a flesh wound!" Hat tip to A Likely Story.

Another plug for The Commissar. He's been really good lately.

But now they have a problem. George W. Bush is an irrational, "non reality-based," war-mongering, Crusader who ignores public opinion and thinks he has a direct line to God. That's a problem for them.

Who is he talking about? Go read the whole outstanding thing.

According to the MR-T, unless Ector County Independent School District administrators find someone willing to take over the KOCV-TV license by August, "...the Permian Basin might lose its only public broadcasting television service."

Good.

First of all, good riddance to KOCV and any other publicly funded radio/television stations we can possibly get rid of in this country. The fact that my tax dollars subsidize the broadcast efforts of multi-million dollar companies such as the one that produces the highly profitable "Barney" franchise is ridiculous and unfair. I don't see the Barney people paying me any dividends on my investment in their enterprise, and furthermore, they don't need it. Let public broadcasting fall. If it is a valuable product, it'll survive as a private sector entity.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the empire that is Sesame Street. The way I've got it figured, Joan Borucki is lurking within that Big Bird costume.

Secondly, what on God's Green Earth® is the ECISD doing propping the station up? Aren't they supposedly "educating" Ector County's youth in ancient, substandard ruins that could implode any moment? Why divert funds to such an effort?

The whole thing is indicative of how socialism pervades even the most seemingly mundane aspects of the modern American existence, and of how it drags us down to the tune of C is for Cookie.

Who are the people in your neighborhood? They're the people that you subsidize each day.

"I would have shot the insurgent, too. Two shots to the head," said Sgt. Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh. "You can't trust these people. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong."

I agree.

Furthermore, I'm a bit confused by the continued controversy surrounding this shoot. Anyone who has ever been in the military (and especially anyone who's ever seen combat) knows that on the primary sweep of an objective, it's boots up for every combatant you make contact with, whether they be armed, unarmed, wounded, whatever. It is not the job of a soldier to protect life on an initial sweep -- he is to destroy it.

Interestingly, according to this report, the marine in question had been shot in the face the day before by just such a terrorist as the one he killed, and was fighting wounded. Put yourself in his position. I'd be smoking every insurgent MF I came across, too.

This was a clean shoot. Leave the poor kid alone.

Uh, Nat....are you checking out the comments? And maybe your e-mail?

Might be a good idea.

Scott Chaffin writes down Bono and U2:

"Enough with the freaking U2 / iPod commercials, too. Vertigo is a not-that-great pop song that nobody would have noticed 30 years ago. Alice Cooper, the 2004 Alice, could kick this Bono's ass. The Van Zandt boys would make him their #5 stage roadie, in charge of keeping fresh bottles of Jack close to hand on the Marshall stacks."

We're getting just a little touchy aren't we? What can be boycotted next? Maybe that'll push 'em over the edge.

The incident of the filming of a Marine shooting one of the enemy is getting a lot of attention. A take that is right on the mark is given by The Commissar at The Poltiboro Diktat. Go read it. (I'll also point out that the Marine in question was also protecting the life of the guy with the camera and microphone.)

I was going to post multiple links to multiple posts on multiple blogs to cover recent developments on topics that I have been interested in recently. After some further reading I realized that the topics have been covered very well on one blog in the last few days.

Go to Powerline and read about:

1. the UN Oil for (a little) Food and (lots of) Weapons and Palaces Program and the investigation being led by Sen. Norm Coleman (he being the beneficiary of the outrage over the Paul Wellstone Memorial and Pep Rally four years ago),
2. the recent bad election for the Has Been Media,
3. Arafat and the old KGB (yep!) disinformation campaign that is behind his "success" as well as the success of subsequent Islamofascist terrorists,
4. Arlen Specter and the Judiciary Committee, and,
5. Marilyn Monroe for lagniappe.

Lots of great stuff in one blog: clear thinking and good writing. Take the time to read the whole thing. (Blogroll, Nat?)

In your spare time, Comrades, visit Wells-burg. Da! Hat tipski to The Commissar.

Gee, I feel...dismissed. Again. That's twice in one week.

Dear Dogbert,

Lots of people write blogs, but I've never heard of anyone who actually reads them. What's up with that?

Kurt

Dear Skirt,

Blogs exist to fill the important market niche of writing that is so dull that your eyes will burrow out of the back of your head to escape. People do read blogs, usually by accident, sometimes on a dare, but those readers are later mistaken for Mafia victims with what appears to be two holes in the back of their heads. On closer inspection, you might find their eyeballs clinging to the drapes directly behind them. Unless the cat gets them first.

Sincerely,
Dogbert

From Scott Adams. Also a contribution from an Adams/Dilbert reader:

We were chatting about the latest high price of crude oil, when a friend of ours piped up: "I don't understand the big deal about the price of oil. I mean, I only put oil in my car every now and then, but I put gas in my car every day!"

For some perspective that will not be forthcoming in the Has Been Media: Here is a little light reading on Arafat here and here. The respect that is being accorded this evil sub-human is incredible. Maybe he should have been pushed off a ship in the Mediterranean.

Hat tip to Powerline and CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).

UPDATE: More here. From Aaron Mannes at NRO. Hat tip to Profiles in Terror.

This is pretty interesting data! "Jesusland" turns out to be "Tithe Land." Hat tip to Michele Malkin.

Belmont Club is the place to go to understand what is happening in Fallujah, Iraq right now. The reading is horrifying and heartening at the same time. The end is near. For the "insurgents," that is.

But it does mean that terrorism has unleashed a terrible engine upon itself. Capabilities which didn't exist on September 11 have now been deployed in combat. It isn't that American forces have become inconceivably lethal that is scary; it is that the process has just started.

"These business owners have discovered that the MDC has a much greater need to provide these incentives than the businesses themselves have to receive them."

So did you ever imagine way back when, when the proponents of the economic development sales tax initiative were weaving starry-eyed tales of bringing into Midland all manner of new industry, once the playing field was leveled, that within two years the Midland Development Corporation would be funding the startup of companies owned by Midland residents?

Latest to the trough is W Power and Light, a company that will generate no Power nor Light, will not be building power plants, or adding capacity to any power grids anywhere. They are a Power retailing company, which means that their capital investments go not into plants and powerlines, but rather into computer terminals that list the names of potential customers, telephones to call them with, and a mailroom with which to solicit and later bill them with.

The headline says "MDC to vote on incentive for electric retailer."

Really. Everyone involved calls it that and does it with a straight face as though it was all non-starter until the MDC forked over $210,000 of the taxpayer's money to revive what, presumably, was a dead idea. Of course, it wasn't a dead idea brought back to life with taxpayer dollars, but for a $210,000 'investment' the MDC gets the PR value of being able to again claim (wrongly) responsibility for every job that is created.

Further reading of the article reveals that, not only are we finding it necessary to provide incentives to Midlanders to start their new companies in their own hometown, we have discovered that the case for locating in downtown Midland to be so weak that we have to 'incent' these business owners to locate their new startups in their own newly acquired and largely empty building.

To review: The MDC is providing an incentive to the owners of a new startup business (whose only infrastructure requirement is empty office space) to locate the business here in Midland in their own largely empty downtown office building.

Compare this with what was described in the campaign ads and literature for the ED Sales Tax initiative just three short years ago.

Here is a proposal: A new initiative to take the $4 million dollars per that is taken by the Midland Development Corporation and split it evenly to pay off early the obligations incurred by the most recent school bond issue and the stadium complex. Can this be done, legally?

(Update: Headline brought up from Comments.)

When was the last time anyone heard anything out of the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility?

From Jonah Goldberg:

"Take the two leading liberal columnists at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. As we all know, one's a whining self-parody of a hysterical liberal who lets feminine emotion and fear defeat reason and fact in almost every column. The other used to date Michael Douglas."

No real post here. I just wish that I had posted this when they finally called Ohio for Bush last week.

Eric Engberg, newly retired from CBS news, bags on the blogosphere as just a modern day version of CB Radios (Break 19! Break 19! Instaman, you got your ears on?).

This article is telling for many reasons. First, one reading of the article shows both the resentment these guys feel and the threat they sense from the "New Media".

Most damning, though, is the whole subject matter of the article. It complains about the new competition, it compares the New Media unfavorably with the Old using a story (the spread of bad exit poll data) de-bunked days ago by the New Media, and it finishes with something that was once considered ironic until it became so commonplace that it is now cliche': The news organization that tried to give us obviously forged TANG documents to smear George Bush, and also tried to pull a November surprise with a Sunday night before the election airing of a story about the missing explosives "scandal", lectures us on the unprofessionalism of the New Media.

In short, it is the emanations from an echo chamber that arrives six and a half days late. The whole thing just screams "Old Media".

Enjoy your retirement, Mr. Engberg.

Update: Whoa! A near simultaneous posting!

Update: Looking again at Mr. Enberg's byline photo, I can't help but be reminded of Herbert Lom's portrayal of Jacques Clouseau's boss in the Pink Panther movies. He may be more bothered by this new media thing that originally thought.

Gee, I feel...dismissed:

The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous "information superhighway." But the ability to transmit words, we learned during the Citizens Band radio fad of the 70’s, does not mean that any knowledge is being passed along. One of the verdicts rendered by election night 2004 is that, given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility, the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on.

The lead dog on the Has Been Media sled barks. Or maybe that was a whimper.

Knowledge is gained by learning. Information is passed along. Information does not become knowledge unless it is listened to, internalized, learned. "I can explain it to you until I am blue in the face, but I can't understand it for you." Perhaps CBS has been confusing the information/knowledge thing for a while.

via Drudge.

Forget the mainstream media. The label no longer works. There's a new mainstream in town, and you're reading a poor representative of it. The old order merits a new label: The Has Been Media.

The HBM once ruled supreme in the councils of American opinion, but it has been slipping of late -- and absolutely jumped the shark with the presidential campaign of 2004.

I am now going to be seeing a leather-jacket-clad Dan Rather on waterskis in my dreams. Thanks, Tony.

UPDATE BY SITE ADMIN: Why depend on your dreams? Here it is now! Let this be my official application to become the Photoshop Monkey for Tony Snow's Blog.

This is what Iowahawk calls a really bad attack of "The Wednesdays".

The Hollywood Elite want so badly to believe that they are major players on the World Stage. As it turns out, they are just players on the major stages of the world. Quite a different thing.

This article also contains a reagent grade example of Bush hatred:

"'I don't see any way to write 'The West Wing' for current Bush voters,' he [West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell] said. 'I couldn't possibly write a heroic president who goes to war for an announced reason that turns out to be false and changes his story about how he went to war. There's nothing in the Bush presidency that holds up for a West Wing-style presidency, which is a fundamentally honest and honorable administration. That's the notion of it. Tony Blair's administration would hold up much better.'"

Note to Mr. O'Donnell: Write your little stories however you want. Maybe I will watch and maybe I won't. If I do watch, perhaps I'll even purchase the toothpaste or dog food that is advertised alongside.

And when you cash your fat royalty checks please remember that it was made possible by my need for dog food from Purina rather than any need of "culture" from you.

Salvation as per The American Left: Baby-killing kill-bots are redeemed, forgiven, and honored.

When they die.

Michael Moore has a post up on his website titled "My first thoughts after the election".

The post then goes on to list the names of soldiers killed in Iraq.

This from the same great moralist that the day after September 11, 2001 complained that Al Qaeda had made the unforgivable error of unleashing their madness on.......America? No.

On civilians?

No.

Moore was upset because Al Qaeda attacked a state that went for Gore in 2000.

And now we get this latest post from him professing great sorrow for "the troops".

Bull****.

He can count the tens of millions he made from his "documentaries" and he has no doubt forever secured his ability to glide through cocktail receptions and dinner parties on both coasts, but he is no friend of the honorable dead of Iraq and is even less of a friend to those still fighting...the ones who actually do think of their missing comrades but still overhwhelmingly support the war and the President.

As large as he is, he is so much less than a man.

Ken "Jesusland" Layne and Jane "Unteachable Ignorance" Smiley, meet David Brooks:

"Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong."

If this is true...then why are the only religious symbols in America being dismantled are copies of the Ten Commandments and "offensive" crosses.

Truly, of the three things shown above (and assuming all three were located on, say, a courthouse lawn) which of the three would be the safest from attack, political or otherwise?

But his predictions for Tuesday proved to have been as absurdly wrong as near everything else he has written in his Times column over the last four years.

The Truth Squad at NRO (Donald Luskin in this case) on Paul Krugman's NYT columns from Tuesday and today. Read the whole thing. Maybe we can get a chance to help proofread Krugman's forthcoming "economics" textbook, too.

Jane Smiley....(the author of many novels and essays!)..a women so intellectually gifted that she is able to talk herself into anything.

UPDATE: More from Roger Simon and comments following his post on the ironically named Ms. Smiley.

...about why Bush won:

The Has-Been Media (formerly known as the Main Stream Media) never caught onto the issue because it doesn’t fit the geist of their zeit (the 1960s), but most Americans do.

Go read the whole thing here.

Tony used Our Natalie's 1946 Life Magazine article on Fox News Sunday last fall and properly acknowledged Jessica's Well as the source (something that Rush Limbaugh has yet to do). Natalie and the rest of us really appreciated it, both as both a classy thing to do and a great example of how to use the information blogs provide.

We can do no less than acknowledge Mr. Snow's new blog. Welcome to The Blogosphere, Tony!

P.S. The Life article is still available, over there in the left hand column. It is still relevant to Iraq and Afghanistan a year later.

UPDATE FROM SITE ADMIN: Good find, Shep. And for his major network Hat Tip I would be honored to be the first blog to permanently blogroll his new site. See left. Welcome, Mr. Snow!

I wanted John Edwards to have a bad day yesterday.

May he and Elizabeth have many, many, many good ones from this point forward.

From Peggy Noonan:

"But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief--CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election--the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt."

There is more.

Two things I would very much like to bury this week: The Sixties and Yasser Arafat.

Here's hoping.

Look for "Diebold" to become the single word code for "stolen election" among the moonbat left.

One of these days I am going to update the blogroll. And when I do I will make sure and include two wonderful sites that have been sorely undermentioned by this blog.

Namely:

Wonkette liveblogs Bush's victory speech:

"3:09PM 'Historic victory.' Well, yes: His first."

And judging from the results of the past two national elections the number of people who agree with her assinine statement are roughly equal to the number of trackback pings to her post. Minus this one.

He has become Fred Phelps.......just on the other side of the equation.

UPDATE: Here is another gem from the quivering Layne. "Jesusland" is coming for him. And is coming for you if you agree with him. And then later, Jesusland is coming for you if you just look like you might agree with him.

Jesus H. Christ.

Uh, oh. Now they will be coming for me!

Iowahawk creates the first twelve-step program for the Moonbat community.

Um...good reading today at the DemUnderground blog. Two excerpts:

1. I cannot possibly put into words how disappointed, angry, and perplexed I am right now. The reported results coming out of Florida and Ohio simply make no sense to me. I cannot comprehend how we could have such a massive increase in turnout and not win the election. To paraphrase that little weasel Tucker Carlson: You don't wait in line for five hours to vote for more of the same. Who knows, maybe some people really would wait in line for more of the same. But my impression is that something just stinks here. As EarlG told me this morning: The result is either massively fraudulent or deeply disturbing.

Tony Snow (just now on the radio):

"John Kerry called the race for Bush before CBS did."

Part of me wants it to be over and for Kerry to concede graciously.

The bigger part of me knows that it is, in fact, already over and (thinking strategically) wants Kerry to drag out his lost cause indefinately...throwing legion after legion of lawyers at Ohio.

Think about it. Gore couldn't find 700 votes in Florida....but he at least had the popular vote by half a mil.

Kerry is down 3.5 million in the popular vote. Then look at the Senate pickups. Then look at the House pickups. Then look at the national turnout.

He really doesn't want to lawyer up on this one.

But I hope he does.

2 items lifted from The Corner:

THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH... [Rob Long]
...the Democratic party: there's no grownup, no headmaster, to place the call to the Kerry folks and say, "it's over" and protect the party's long term reputation. A proper adult response to a (probable) 3 million popular vote discrepancy is, "it's over, John. You did good; you fought well; don't embarrass us." Who's going to do that? Terry McAulliffe? Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton?
Imagine that call.
Posted at 02:41 AM

MY GUESS [John Podhoretz]
If Kerry keeps this up and does not concede by 10 am, polls tomorrow will show 75 percent of the country thinks he ought to. There will not be a single serious Democratic politician who will take a stand on behalf of an 11-day provisional-ballot count process. And then Kerry will concede, in a genuinely humiliating display of ill grace.
Posted at 03:19 AM

I sense a conspiracy here.

Advice of the Day from Michael Totten (guest blogging at Instapundit):

"If, by some chance, everyone you know votes for the loser it won’t mean the election was stolen. It will only show that you live in a bubble."

Problems with voting have already been reported.

Which is unsurprising to say the least, since the offical DNC distributed handbooks instructed party operatives to claim problems before they even witnessed any as a "pre-emptive strike".

Interesting how this was missed in the MSM's rush to paint the Bin Laden tape as an aid to President Bush's reelection. The devil is (almost literally here) in the details. A better translation up today at the NY Post (via Drudge):

"It means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president, it means that it chose to fight us and we will consider it an enemy to us, and any state that will vote against Bush, it means that it chose to make peace with us and we will not characterize it as an enemy."

No red state voter should allow themselves to be intimidated by this! It is reasonably certain that OBL no longer has the capability of touching us due to the United States led coalition's resolute pursuit of his henchmen. For more, go to this post at Belmont Club.