Tom McMahon

Jon Carry Bumper Sticker

Jon Carry Bumper Sticker

Halp Us Jon Carry

Halp Us Jon Carry

The picture was first revealed yesterday on the blog Web site of Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes, who said he got it from a listener who had a buddy in the unit. Way to go, Charlie!

Congresswoman Gwen Moore's Tire Safety Tips!

Congresswoman Gwen Moore's Tire Safety Tips!

I ran this last fall, but now that it's spring you should probably check those tires again . . .

Congresswoman Gwen Moore's Tire Safety Tips!

Congresswoman Gwen Moore's Tire Safety Tips!

The John Kerry-esque Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusettts

The John Kerry-esque Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusettts

This is from the April 10, 1944 cover of Time magazine. Republican Governor and US Senator.

Facing Reality

From Daniel J. Flynn:

Leftists have invested so much in discrediting George W. Bush that their fervor has inhibited their abilities to think rationally. Pre-election taunts of "accidental president" and "re-defeat Bush" allowed the Bush haters to benefit from the illusion that they represented majority opinion. November 2, one might think, would have shattered that illusion. It didn’t.

Today's comforting myth is sure to deliver real pain in the future. If one fails to even accept defeat, how can one identify the problems that led to defeat? Since the problems that brought on John Kerry's Election Day loss are in no small part due to the Left, concluding that the Massachusetts senator was never in fact defeated relieves leftists of the necessity to look inward critically.

As psychologist Nathaniel Branden has said, "You can't leave a place you've never been."

Just 30 Feet

Just 30 Feet

From Jay Nordlinger:

The best line I heard uttered by a TV commentator yesterday was from a correspondent at Fox News. I forget who it was. He was noting that Senator Kerry was seated only 30 feet from where the president would speak, "And what a difference 30 feet makes."

The 2004 Joseph Goebbels Award

From Thomas Sowell

This year's Joseph Goebbels award goes by a narrow but decisive margin to CBS News anchorman Dan Rather for his planned broadcast on "60 Minutes" -- just days before the election -- to discredit President Bush's National Guard service 30 years earlier. Leave aside for the moment the fact that discrepancies in the documents he relied on have convinced experts and many others that they were forgeries. Why was what George W. Bush did or didn't do 30 years earlier "news" in 2004?

It was news by Dr. Goebbels' standard -- something that could lead to desired political reactions by the audience. Waiting until it would have been virtually impossible for an effective answer to be made before election day was in the same Goebbels spirit. Had the documents been real, Dan Rather would still have been a strong contender for the award. The fact that virtually everyone, with the notable exception of Mr. Rather, now regards those documents as fake -- instead of simply "not authenticated" -- makes Dan Rather the clear winner of the Joseph Goebbels award for 2004.

Dan Rather, another lying, cheating Democrat, richly deserves this award. Congrats, Dan! Now just go away . . .

L Is For Loser

New York Electors Vote For Someone Named John L. Kerry

From David Freddoso

Are Red Staters really the uneducated rubes that so many beautiful Blue people make them out to be? Maybe. But Oklahomans, Hoosiers, and Idahoans have at least one thing over their well-educated New York counterparts — they can at least spell their presidential candidate's name correctly.

The Best Of Jonah Goldberg, Volume 2

John Hawkins has compiled The Best Quotes From The Last 52 Jonah Goldberg Columns. Here's just one:

I'm not saying there are no good arguments against the war. I am saying that many of you don't care about the war. If Bill Clinton or Al Gore had conducted this war, you would be weeping joyously about Iraqi children going to school and women registering to vote. If this war had been successful rather than hard, John Kerry would be boasting today about how he supported it — much as he did every time it looked like the polls were moving in that direction. You may have forgotten Kerry's anti-Dean gloating when Saddam was captured, but many of us haven't. He would be saying the lack of WMDs are irrelevant and that Bush's lies were mistakes. And that's the point. I don't care if you hate George W. Bush; it's not like I love the guy. And I don't care if you opposed the war from day one. What disgusts me are those people who say toppling Saddam and fighting the terror war on their turf rather than ours is a mistake, not because these are bad ideas, but merely because your vanity cannot tolerate the notion that George W. Bush is right or that George W. Bush's rightness might cost John Kerry the election. I get e-mails from you people every day and I see your candidate on TV every night. Shame on you all.

Ken Jennings: Jeopardy Winner, Tax Loser

From Business Week

At least when it comes to this year's tax bite, there isn't much advice H&R Block, or any other financial professional, can give Jennings that will ease the sting. Tax professionals estimate that he'll owe nearly half of his winnings in taxes. Any savvy sheltering moves, such as setting up a 529 college savings account for his child or an individual retirement account for himself, would only help in future years.

"He may have won on Jeopardy!, but from a tax point of view, he has lost," says Ed Zelinsky, a professor of tax law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. That's because one-time, earned income game-show winnings face some of the harshest taxation there is, he says. Twenty years ago, it would have been a different story. Prior to tax-law changes in 1986, prizes and awards were tax-free. But in 2004, the new era of regulatory scrutiny means tax-sheltering schemes are a clear no-no, Zelinsky says.

That leaves Jennings with one option: "Pay your taxes, and be happy with what's left over," advises Richard Upton, a tax attorney at New York firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. He can lessen his tax burden by giving some of his winnings to charity, but his taxable income would only be reduced only by the amount he gave away, which doesn't net him any more in the end.

What a raw deal! I think there should be one more addition to the tax code: That nobody be forced to pay a higher tax rate than that paid by Teresa Heinz Kerry.

How Bush Won Ohio

How Bush Won Ohio

One key: Bush was able to carry 12 of the 14 rural counties that had experienced more than a 10 percent job loss since 2000.

And from The New York Times

In the days that followed, theories circulated claiming that Republicans had stolen votes from Kerry by messing with the results from electronic voting machines. But the truth was that the Bush campaign had created an entirely new math in Ohio. It wouldn't have been possible eight years ago, or even four. But with so many white, conservative and religious voters now living in the brand-new town houses and McMansions in Ohio's growing ring counties, Republicans were able to mobilize a stunning turnout in areas where their support was more concentrated than it was in the past. Bush's operatives did precisely what they told me seven months ago they would do in these communities: they tapped into a volunteer network using local party organizations, union rolls, gun clubs and churches. They backed it up with a blizzard of targeted appeals; according to the preliminary results of a survey done by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, one representative home in Portage County, just outside Cleveland, received 11 pieces of mail from the Republican National Committee.

This effort wasn't visible to Democrats because it was taking place on an entirely new terrain, in counties that Democrats had some vague notion of, but which they never expected could generate so many votes. The 10 Ohio counties with the highest turnout percentages, many of them small and growing, all went for Bush, and none of them had a turnout rate of less than 75 percent.

Ashley's Story

Ashley's Story

This is the political ad that got George W. Bush re-elected; it was the largest ad buy of the election. Living in a swing state, we saw this as a few times each hour it seemed. If you haven't seen it, you should take a look. It's a terrific ad, and one that Kerry, being Kerry, couldn't match.

The Absolute Last 2004 Election Map You Will Ever Need

The Absolute Last 2004 Election Map You Will Ever Need

Since the election we have seen all sorts of election maps drawn by Kerry supporters and others in various shapes and in various shapes of purple. But here's a map that's much more useful. The areas in red will have a Republican President for the next four years, while the areas in blue (ooops, there aren't any!) will have a Democratic President for the next four years. And all the Photoshop purple in the world won't change that. Time to "move on", as the kids say nowadays.

America's Failure To Defer To Their Wisdom

From The Editors of National Review

The wrath of the losers is more than pique over a hotly contested election, even one contested in wartime. Bush haters feel affronted by America's failure to defer to their wisdom. Pundits, novelists, historians, movie stars, eminentoes, and glitterati of every kind told us that Bush was dumb, crooked, bigoted, bloodthirsty, incompetent, and unpopular the world over, yet 51 percent of the electorate ignored them. The election was worse than a defeat; it was a diss. All was lost, including honor.

America has had many frantic elections, some far worse: The election of 1860 led to the Civil War. But perhaps the closest analogue to the wrath of the Bush haters is the mentality of the Federalist party during the War of 1812. The Federalists had had great leaders (Washington, Hamilton) and great achievements (ratifying the Constitution). They thought of themselves as, and to a large extent were, the nation's elite. But as the 19th century dawned, this elite lost power, and lost its way. They could not accept defeat as a turn of the wheel, or a possible lesson to themselves. The nation, they thought, had become base (America was "infamous and contented," wrote Fisher Ames, prefiguring Jane Smiley). War maddened them, causing Federalist diehards to pray for defeat.

When peace returned, the Federalists collapsed — the first major American party to disappear. Democrats and liberals won't disappear. But they will prolong their stay in the wilderness if they give themselves over to frothing.

Like Wearing Your Star Trek Uniform Out In Public

From Varifrank:

I see the left today in a serious problem thats very similar to my Star Trek friends. It's fine to want to see the world in a different way, but there comes a point where you are not just wistful for another reality but actually wearing your Star Trek uniform out in public and to work, you’ve started down the road where even if you might have a good point or an idea, people are going to ignore you. We’ve seen political movements in America go the way of the Dodo before, The Free Land and Free Silver movements, the Mugwumps, and the Whig party. Go back not so long ago and you can even see when the Republicans became an utter irrelevancy. I am now beginning to think the Democrats have also jumped into the ashcan of history, with both feet.

A Question That Might Usefully Be Asked

From normblog:

One of the questions, then, that might usefully be asked on the liberal-left is why people struggling for democracy in their country, and others who were the victims of a genocidal assault in theirs, should hope for and be happy about the victory of a man who is so reviled  by all 'right-thinking' - i.e. most left-thinking - folk. Just ponder this a little. Try and digest it fully. The victims of a terrible, murderous oppression in the Kurdish area of Iraq, and those now yearning for a democratic breakthrough against theocratic tyranny in Iran, do not look for solidarity and support to the massed ranks of the marching left, the 'peace' movement, as it flatters itself to be; no, they look to a right-wing Republican president.

The Reputation Of Historian Douglas Brinkley Is Shattered Forever

The salient excerpt from the Newsweek post-election article:

Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry's diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. "Let me get this straight," the senator said. "He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good."

So Douglas Brinkley knew this, wrote his biography of Kerry, and left this out? Serious people will never take him seriously ever again.

And Newsweek ain't looking so great, either . . .

Perceived Hypocrisy

From Victor Davis Hanson:

This election also involved perceived hypocrisy. No one in Bakersfield or Fresno thinks that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld espouses views at odds with the privileged lives that they live; they, of course, unabashedly celebrate and benefit from free enterprise and corporate capitalism. In contrast, Teresa Heinz Kerry and John Kerry, George Soros or John Edwards even more so enjoy the fruits of the very system they at times seem to question.

Thus, concern for two Americas is not discernable in John Edwards' multimillion-dollar legal fees, the Kerry jet, or Soros Inc.'s global financial speculation. It is easy for a Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore to trash Halliburton, but Red America wonders about the source of university contracts that subsidize privileged professors' sermons or why corporate recording, cinema and advertising conglomerates that enrich celebrities are exempt from Hollywood's Pavlovian censure of big business. That the man who nearly destroyed the small depositors of Great Britain also fueled MoveOn.org seemed to say it all.

A Perfect, Shining Example Of Why You Lost

From Right Thoughts:

I’ll give you a perfect, shining example of why you lost.  His name is Michael Moore.

Before Moore burst forth with his theories of 9/11 conspiracies, “seven minutes,” blood for oil, Taliban pipelines etc., very little actual criticism was levied at Bush beyond the misguided notion that something errant happened in Florida.  If Moore did not exist, I believe that cooler heads would have realized that a never-ending flow of recounts all proved one thing: Bush won.  Period.  And we would have moved forward.  9/11 would still have happened and we might have had a chance at keeping some of that unity we all felt, but along came Moore, and in tow came the most extreme elements of the American left.  Bolstered by the Hollywood liberal, the MoveOn/Democratic Underground lunatic, the darkest fringes of radical American liberalism were given credence simply by being a market share.  Fine…free markets are great.  Moore has a message, you provided an audience, money was exchanged.

But then you started taking those messages into the political arena as though they had validity.  And most of America looked at you like you just grew a third eye right in front of them.  And still you persisted, getting more and more hateful, telling more lies, spinning out-of-context elements and juxtaposing any and every situation in order to try to hammer home your talking points.  No matter what the discussion, you brought it back to one of Moore’s talking points.  If the topic did not fit your need, you forced it, or just ignored it altogether and ranted away.

You never stopped for a minute to consider the fact that you might be wrong.  And yet that very behavior is one of the greatest criticisms of Bush by the new radical left.  Ironic, I think.

How You Could Have Had My Vote

From A Sad American:

I tried so hard to give you guys a chance. I'm young, I'm not extremely religious, and I'm supportive of liberal ideals like fighting for higher wages, stopping outsourcing of jobs, and standing up for the little guy. I wanted to vote Democratic this time, more than I can possibly put into words. You just didn't give me the option.

President Bush won on values, yes, but not hatred of gays or any other stereotype you have in your head about Bush voters like me.

He won because he has values, clearly defined values, and even though I agree with little of what he believes, at least I know what he believes. At least I know that he really does believe in something. At least I know that he will do what he says he will do.

That's disgustingly little, but unbelievably – you offered me less.

So, if you want my vote next time, and the vote of all my close friends, and the millions more like us that you refuse to believe exists, it's pretty simple: take positions and don't waffle on them. Stand up for America, especially with regard to terrorism. Shut up about what Germany and France think. Stop pretending that the only way to become wealthy in America is to cheat, for the sake of those of us who still want to get there. Treat the President with at least as much civility, if not respect, as you would've wanted right-wingers to give a President Kerry. Most importantly, please, please please, please, please, please stop abusing me. No more verbal and psychological and emotional savagery. Treat me like a voter whose vote you would actually appreciate getting, and you will get it.

Why Kerry Lost

Excerpts from John Ellis:

Five reasons, I think. In no particular order: Culture, Lifestyle, Rationale, Strategy, War.

Culture. Senator Kerry was never going to be credible as a faith-based candidate. It’s not who he is and it’s not what he’s about. He didn’t need to be. What he needed to do was let a vast swath of Americans (particularly in the middle of the country) know that he shared their cultural concerns. Chief among these are the porno-ization of American media, the sexualization of children and the “pimp and ho” Rap culture. Kerry never uttered a critical word of the media sewer. He aligned himself with Hollywood, the music industry and Big New York media. He paid the price in exurbia.

Lifestyle. Pick your poison: wind-surfing, wind-surfing outfits, snow-boarding outfits, $8000 bicycles, the daughter’s dress at Cannes, Teresa, Nantucket. A veritable Robin Leach smorgasbord. Teresa especially was emblematic of the Kerry disconnect.

Dear Mr. Soros

From Clayton Cramer:

Dear Mr. Soros:

I hope that this resounding rebuke to your attempt to remove President Bush causes you to sit and contemplate why the American people ignored the news media and their clear preference for John Kerry. Don't you think that your comparison of George Bush to Hitler was way over the top? Especially since, until Hitler, Bush's mission in Iraq and Afghanistan has been to create democracy, not crush it?

I understand that you spent $18 million trying to defeat George Bush. I spent about $300 to counterbalance your efforts; of course, there were thousands of others like myself, people for whom $300 is a lot more money than $18 million is for you. I want you to think long and hard about finding more constructive uses of your $18 million, and the millions that us "little people" spent to neutralize your efforts.

How many students could have gone to college on that $18 million? I've spent about $7000 a year for tuition and living expenses for my daughter off at school. You could have sent 642 students through a four year degree with that money. You could have set up a scholarship endowment that would allow 45 students each year to get a college degree--forever.

Do you want to make the world a better place? Spending money on politics is about the least productive way to spend money. I would prefer not to have to do it. I would far rather give money to World Vision for its relief and development efforts in the Third World or to the Boise Rescue Mission, helping the down and out here.

Very Truly Yours,

Clayton E. Cramer

How You Win Elections In America

From Varifrank:

Here's how you win elections in America.

1. Shop at Wal-Mart. Get to know the people who shop there.
2. Follow Nascar racing. Learn to like it.
3. Buy and drive a pickup.
4. Visit Home Depot on Saturday morning. Buy Lumber. Make something.
5. Have Children.
6. Raise them yourself.
7. Find a Church that you like, visit frequently.
8. Buy an American Flag, Attach it to your house.
9. Learn to operate a gun. Consider buying one.
10. Start your own Business. Hire someone. Make a Profit.

And most important, in a time of war, never ever go against the family.

I've Been Living In Deep Purple

Campaign Advertising

Part of a terrific slideshow. I think those of us in the Deep Purple areas are relieved that the election is over in ways you folks in California will never understand. (via Left Coast Conservative)

With The Kerry Campaign on Tuesday Afternoon

A fascinating look at the exit poll giddiness by Ryan Lizza:

The expectations had gotten so out of control that, on Tuesday afternoon, we reporters gathered in the ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza had already moved on to the second-, third-, and fourth-day stories. The exit polls seemed to show such a clear sweep of the battleground states for John Kerry that the news of his victory already seemed stale. What would the more solidly Republican Senate mean for Kerry's ambitious health care plan? Who would he appoint to replace ailing Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist? Most important, how could Kerry co-opt John McCain, a Republican frontrunner for the 2008 presidential election? Yep, it's true. We were already speculating about the dynamics of Kerry's reelection campaign. Some got to work on pieces about the transition. A newspaper reporter at a major daily polished an article about George W. Bush's concession speech. Now that we "knew" the winner, the whole campaign seemed so obvious. The Swift Boat attacks had come too early to do any real damage. The Clintonites added late in the campaign were geniuses. Karl Rove's base strategy was delusional.

Thanks Where Thanks Is Due

Excerpts from Ann Coulter:

The Democrats threw everything they had at this election. They ran a phony Vietnam War hero and a phony Southerner. They had middle-aged women executives at MTV hawking "Rock the Vote" to entice the most uninformed young people to vote for Kerry. They had Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and New York Times darling Eminem. They had documentaries, books, the universities, Hollywood (and the French!) on their side.

They had liberal thugs ransacking Bush-Cheney headquarters, stealing Bush-Cheney signs and slashing the tires of Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. In Colorado, they traded voter registrations for crack cocaine. In Ohio, they registered Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy. In South Carolina, Emily's List called Republican households and gave them incorrect information about the location of polling places. ...

But for all their chicanery, vote-stealing, Hollywood starlets, fake polls and faux patriotism, the Democrats were wiped out on Election Day. ...

To Michael Moore, George Soros, Terry McAuliffe, Dan Rather, Al Franken and the whole gang at Air America Radio – you were great, guys! Thanks for the help! We couldn't have done it without you!

Presidential Election Results County-By-County

Presidential Election Results County-By-County

I think we should scrap the Electoral College and elect presidents by the acre. See the PDF file here. (via VodkaPundit)

The Kerry States Are Blue, The Bush States Are Undecided

From Generic Confusion:

As of now, three states that have supported President Bush are still not listed as wins for him: New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio. Yet five other states that closely supported Senator Kerry are listed as "blue." Why is Ohio's 51-49 victory not official, while Wisconsin's narrower 50-49 Kerry victory official? Aren't there enough uncounted votes in Wisconsin that we shouldn't be making this call? According to the AP map at this moment, some of these close Kerry states don't even have all the precincts reported! ...

Close Kerry states:
Michigan: 51-48, 135K margin of 4589K (2.9%)
Pennsylvania: 51-49, 122K margin of 5615K (2.2%)
Minnesota: 51-48, 98K margin of 2741K (3.6%)
Wisconsin: 50-49, 13K margin of 2963K (0.4%)
New Hampshire: 50-49, 10K margin of 641K (1.6%)

Close Bush states:
Ohio: 51-49, 136K margin of 5452K (2.5%)
Iowa: 50-49, 16K margin of 1473K (1.1%)
New Mexico: 50-49, 12K margin of 663K (1.8%)

The Last Scandal Of This Election

From Dick Morris:

That an exit poll is always right is an axiom of politics. It is easier to assume that a compass is not pointing north than to assume that an exit poll is incorrect. It takes a deliberate act of fraud and bias to get an exit poll wrong. Since the variables of whether or not a person will actually vote are eliminated in exit polling, it is like peeking at the answer before taking the test.

But these exit polls were wrong. And the fact that they were so totally, disastrously wrong is a national scandal. There should be a national investigation to unearth the story behind the bias.

In this election, we have seen CBS go with a story on Bush's National Guard service based on forged documents. We have seen the New York Times and CBS report 377 missing tons of explosives that were not missing, not that many tons and confiscated by American troops. And now we have seen exit polls that were wrong, quite possibly deliberately biased.

Some Ideas For Post-Election Healing

Here's just one of several good ideas from Thomas Lindaman:

Dodgeball. It’s the hottest sport since…well, the last sport involving people flinging balls at each other. And it can be played by common people as well as the rich. The concept is very simple. We get the Bush supporters and the Kerry supporters in a big place with a lot of open territory, like Montana or South Dakota, give them all red rubber balls, and have the country’s first post-election game of dodgeball. There will be two referees, and they will be the two people I know who don’t take crap from anyone: my mom and dad. Try crying and whining about a bad call to them and see what they do. Having had three boys with varying degrees of mischief-making skills, I know they’ll laugh at any excuse either side gives for not being out.

How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy

From George Will:

In 2000, in heavily Democratic St. Louis, at 6:30 p.m., a judge, responding to a Democratic complaint filed in the name of a man the judge did not actually hear from (the man was dead), ordered polls to remain open until 10 p.m., three hours longer than the law allows, and ordered one voting place downtown to be open until midnight.

Before 7 p.m., all over the city, persons were receiving automated, prerecorded phone messages from Jesse Jackson saying, "Tonight the polls in St. Louis are staying open late until 10 p.m. in your neighborhood and until midnight downtown.'' Between 7 and 7:30 p.m., Al Gore was calling radio stations to announce the later voting hours. Apparently the entire episode was orchestrated by the Democrats well in advance.

We'll be seeing a greater level of vote fraud in Milwaukee this time. It will be ugly.

The Scariest Thing About This Election

From Fred Barnes:

THE SCARIEST THING about this election is not the prospect of a contested outcome with no winner declared for weeks, just as in 2000. No, the most scary thing is the sense of entitlement that many Democrats and their allies have about tomorrow's election. It goes like this: Bush stole the presidency four years ago, then proceeded to act as if he had a mandate, so now we're entitled to do whatever it takes to defeat him, to say whatever we want.

You see it in the bumper stickers that call for the "re-defeat" of President Bush. You see it in the destruction of Bush yard signs and posters all across the country. You see it in the harassment, at least in blue states, of anyone wearing a Bush pin or button. You see it in the hatred of Bush by his opponents, who think they're only venting righteous indignation.

You see it in the religious bigotry against the president, a born-again Christian, and against his conservative Christian supporters. Without any evidence, Bush's opponents accuse him of believing that he has a direct line to God and that God gives him instructions, such as when to invade Iraq, and that any criticism of him is illegitimate. You see the bigotry as well in the belittling of Christians who support Bush as if their political views have no standing or worth because they may have been influenced by their religious faith.

You see it in the now exposed plans of Democrats to claim intimidation of minority voters even if no intimidation actually occurs. You see it in the voter registration efforts by Democrats that have made the number of people on the voting rolls in some jurisdictions larger than the voting age population. You see it in the plans of Democratic lawyers to file lawsuits all over the country, challenging the outcome unless Bush is defeated.

Angry White Men

From Mark Steyn:

Out on the street, meanwhile, angry white men have burgled Republican offices in Spokane, Washington; lobbed cinder blocks through Republican offices in Flagstaff, Arizona; shot up Republican offices in Knoxville, Tennessee; assaulted female Republican students handing out flyers at the Gophers football game in Minnesota; and are currently bullying early voting Republicans at polling booths in Florida. If this campaign went on another two months, they’d be seizing GOP county chairmen and beheading them on video. As it is, if Bush wins by a few hundred in Ohio or New Mexico, these fellows don’t seem inclined to take it lying down.

I say ‘angry white men’ because it’s not clear that the Democrats’ ethnic constituencies — blacks and Hispanics — have the Bush Derangement Syndrome to quite the same degree. In 2000, Bush got just 9 per cent of the black vote. Recent polls show he’s pulling about 18 per cent. If that holds up on election day, John Kerry’s finished.

An Even Deadlier Denial

From Jonah Goldberg:

If you live in a house infested by rats, you may think it's OK to tolerate them for a while. They're just a "nuisance," as John Kerry might say. You might, if you're Bill Clinton, tolerate a series of "minor" rat attacks. But when one of your children dies from a bite, you do everything you can to kill the rats and plug up all the rat holes to protect your family. You don't care which specific rat was responsible for the death. You simply do everything necessary to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. In the post-9/11 world George Bush faced a world with a lot of rat holes. The most obvious, urgent and "doable" rat hole was in Baghdad.

Those who opposed the war insisted there was no link between Saddam and 9/11. There probably wasn't in the sense they meant. But there was an ironclad link in the minds of many of us. In the world ushered in by 9/11, in a world where threats need to be taken seriously and terrorism cannot be seen as a mere nuisance, letting Saddam Hussein - the only world leader to praise the 9/11 attacks - stay in Baghdad simply made no sense.

It would be silly to re-argue the whole war again. But the salient point is that Kerry is the candidate of those who disagree with all that. He's the candidate for those who think America was wrong in Iraq and too gung-ho on the war on terror. Indeed, in a recent New York Times profile, Kerry admitted that 9/11 hadn't changed his thinking about foreign policy "much at all." And that his aim was to return to the way it was in the 1990s, when terrorism was a "nuisance." The problem is that many Americans believe that treating terrorism like a nuisance is precisely why 9/11 happened. For all the talk about Bush's denial, a vote for Kerry is a vote for an even deadlier denial.

(via John Hawkins)

Election Predictions

Electoral Map By Varifrank

Myself, I'm not so optimistic: I think the election will be decided by the House of Representatives. Of course, on the morning of Election Day 2000, I said, "I don't think this election will be as close as everybody thinks it will be." Big Grain o' Salt . . .

John Kerry's Position on Iraq

From Discriminations:

FINALLY, I now understand John Kerry's position on Iraq:

Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, but George Bush carelessly and incompetently lost them.

Kerry As Dewey

Kerry As Dewey

An excerpt of a fascinating article by William J. Stuntz:

An incumbent President from the heartland faces a strong, experienced challenger from the Northeast. The challenger is strong in part because the incumbent seems weak -- inarticulate and gaffe-prone. But not too weak: Insiders make jokes about him, but he seems to connect with ordinary voters outside the Boston-New York-Washington, D.C. corridor. (Within that corridor he is plainly unpopular, and the Northeastern media overwhelmingly oppose his reelection.) When he came to office, the incumbent had only modest experience. No one had thought of him as a major player in American government during the decade before he moved to the White House, and what experience he had prepared him for domestic policymaking, not foreign affairs. But foreign policy has dominated his presidency -- especially a shadowy not-quite-war, not-quite-peace with an adversary who has agents scattered across the globe. Within the administration, cabinet officers have openly battled over the country's foreign policy. One cabinet member has already been fired; after his dismissal the ex-cabinet member went public with scathing criticism of the President. The Secretary of Defense has not been fired -- yet -- but is a source of major controversy.

Cory Doctorow Now In Full Meltdown Mode!

Cory Doctorow, Mr. Boing Boing, reports that that the Richland Center, Wisconsin schools threatened students with expulsion for wearing a Kerry pin during a recent visit by George W. Bush. No details given, and no names back up his claim. And his source? The Daily Kos, you know, the "Screw them" guy.

After George W. Bush stealing the election, causing Global Warming, and having a secret plan to bring back the Draft, we're supposed to get upset about this?

Disease-Ridden Canadian Hospitals

From Canadian Mark Steyn:

So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.

Boing Boing Blindly Backs Boston Brahmin

From Symbolic Order:

As the election season has trudged through its soon to be over tedium, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the lack of real thought demonstrated by otherwise thoughtful and smart people. An example of particular interest is Boing Boing, a fun and useful site of links to random internet sites. Nearly every day I find something there that brings at least a few minutes of enjoyment. This is a site run by hardcore techies and net culture junkies, people who publish novels under the Creative Commons license and fight for the rights of the digital consumer.

Yet it continues to strike me as profoundly odd that people as bright as this would not only blindly endorse Kerry, but also include a link to that bastion of left wing silliness and hate, MoveOn.org, in their masthead. Here’s a taste of how out of it Boing Boing has become:

For us, the choice for Kerry involves simple things. Justice, liberty, privacy, transparency. Freedom of speech, thought, and technological expression. A woman’s right to choose. Equal access to health care, education, and economic opportunity for all. The rule of law, at home and abroad. Peace. The enduring value of the American Constitution.

Clearly the folks at Boing Boing know nothing of Kerry’s horrible record on civil liberties, a record that includes being for restrictions in encryption schemes, something I’m sure these techies are against. That they can simply throw out the “woman’s right to choose” line so easily also demonstrates the shallowness of their thinking on a fantastically complex topic. Equal access to health care means socialized medicine, which will do nothing but limit everyone’s health care.

And "transparency" seems an odd description for a candidate who refuses to release his family's financial records or his own military records.

A Meltdown In Defeat?

From Best Of The Web:

Then there's Lawrence O'Donnell, "senior political analyst" for MSNBC, who suffered a complete crackup on the air Friday night. O'Donnell appeared on "Scarborough Country" along with John O'Neill, co-author of "Unfit for Command." (Pat Buchanan was guest-hosting.) Blogress Michelle Malkin has a nice roundup on the incident, and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have MP3 audio clips, here and here.

We've transcribed a portion of O'Donnell's comments to give you the flavor:

It's one of the many lies that the book advances. To me the most interesting lie, John O'Neill, that I would submit to you that you should answer, is, you make a lying claim that John Kerry's antiwar activity prolonged the amount of time that prisoners of war were held in Vietnam. . . . That's a lie, John O'Neill! Keep lying, it's all you do! . . . Lies! . . . Which is not in John O'Neill's book, 'cause it's a lie! . . . That's a lie! It's another lie! That's a lie! Absolute lie! You lie in that book endlessly! . . . You lie about documents endlessly! . . . You're just lying about it! And you lied about Thurlow's Bronze Star! You lied about it as long as you could until the New York Times found the wording of what was on the citation that you as a lying writer refused to put in your pack of lies! . . . Disgusting, lying book! . . . You have no standards, John O'Neill, as an author, and you know it! It's a pack of lies! You are unfit to publish! . . . He just lied to you! He spews out this filth! Point to his name on the report, you liar! Point to his name, you liar! . . . You just spew lies! . . .

I just hate the lies of John O'Neill. I hate lies. It's not an argument; they're proven lies. . . . O'Neill's a liar, he's been a liar for 35 years about this, and he's found other liars [unintelligible]. . . . They lied! . . . They're lying somewhere! . . . Lies! Just tell me the initials, you liar! Creepy liar! . . . You are a liar who makes things up! . . . You want the lies! That's how you make your living, on lies!

Wow, we can sure see how Larry O'Donnell got his job as a senior political analyst with MSNBC. The guy is nothing if not sagelike. But does he sound as though he thinks his man is going to win the election?

Everybody! Everybody! Go Buy Yourself An Election Day Present!

The Casio TV I Got For 59 Bucks At Aldi

I'm absolutely serious about this. And it doesn't matter if you support Bush or Kerry. In a little over a week, Lord willing, we'll be done with all this election stuff, and you'll be going through political withdrawl cold turkey. So why not plan ahead and buy yourself a nice little gadget you've had your eye on. A Tivo, iPod, MP3 player, whatever. If your man wins, it'll be a nice reward. And if your man loses, it'll be a nice consolation prize to help you get through the Dark Days of Defeat. I mean, after 2 years of all this campaigning, don't you deserve it?

Pass on this idea to everyone you know. If you have a blog, please include it there. If everybody in the USA follows this advice, then maybe by Thanksgiving we all won't be so grumpy, eh?

Turning Us Into A Banana Republic

From Stephen Green:

If Drudge has it right, then the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to do its damnedest to turn our fine nation into a banana republic.

To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.

I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrats' successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?

The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.

Kerry As Carter

From Glenn Reynolds:

I think it's fair to say that if Kerry wins, he'll win based on anti-Bush sentiment among Democrats and swing voters. But although the anybody-but-Bush vote might be good enough to get him into office, once he's elected it will evaporate: the dump-Bush voters will have gotten what they wanted, and they won't have any special reason to support any particular policy of Kerry's -- or even Kerry himself.

So Kerry might find himself elected, but with support that rapidly fades away, leaving him subject to Washington crosswinds and a slave to his party's interest groups. That's pretty much what happened to President Jimmy Carter. He owed his election to backlash over Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, and the lingering residue of Watergate. But that turned out to be an insufficient base on which to govern. Carter's own party (especially, though not only, rivals like Ted Kennedy) cut him to ribbons. We lost ground both at home and abroad as a result.

Why Is Kerry In Such A Panic Over The Stolen Honor Documentary?

From Brent Bozell:

Liberals are positively panicked at the idea that somewhere, on some station, at some late date, someone will say something negative about John Kerry without a moment for balance on the other side. Let's be blunt: Welcome to our world, liberals. You're all for propaganda and brainwashing when it's Dan, Peter, Tom & Co. spinning wildly in your direction. In your world, a free press is defined as what happens when so-called "news" professionals sell liberalism relentlessly like a kitchen gizmo on a late-night infomercial. ...

For most of this year, these left-wing journalists have portrayed John Kerry's war years as if he were a combination of Private Ryan, Sergeant York and G.I. Joe. They have touted his "chestful of medals" and swooned over every replay of his military home movies (yes, the ones he vowed he'd never use for political gain). Those who remember him differently -- as a man who went to battle to polish his political resume and then returned home to smear his comrades in the war effort as vandals, rapists and murderers -- are not to be defined as "newsworthy." Their views are sometimes questioned, usually condemned, parceled out in half-teaspoons of Swift Vet ad clips. They are never invited to sit for extended interviews with Ted Koppel or Dan Rather.

The film Sinclair has ordered its stations to air, "Stolen Honor," interviews Vietnam prisoners of war and their wives at length about the wounds they feel over Kerry's infamous 1971 Senate testimony. It is a powerful film. It's a devastating story. It's no wonder the liberals want it blacklisted before it can be located on television.

A Consolation Prize For Wisconsin Republicans

From GeekPress:

The last Washington Redskins home football game prior to a presidential election has correctly predicted the election winner going back to 1936. (The Redskins did not exist as a franchise prior to 1936.) This year, the critical game will be on October 31, against the Green Bay Packers. If the pattern holds true for 2004, then a Redskins victory = Bush, Packer victory = Kerry. (Of course, I think it's all a coincidence, since there are any number of possible "predictive" sports streaks, and sooner or later one is bound to match this pattern of 17 straight election results. But I still find it interesting nonetheless...)

With the way the Packers have been playing lately, it should be a Bush landslide!

Why Do Kerry Supporters Keep Recycling The Same Old Discredited Fairy Tales?

Case in point: The Poor Man, which misquotes an old Washington Post article about George W. Bush spending 250 days on vacation during his presidency, which is summarily debunked here.

The tale has an odd "out of touch" quality to it, as if the person writing it had never heard of air travel, tele-conferencing, the internet, or the 1,001 other ways ordinary people get their work done away from the office these days. Very much a punch-the-clock-and go-to-your-desk mentality.

A Few PJ Points Of Light For GWB

PJ O'Rourke has sixteen obvious points that George W. Bush should make during the Wednesday night debate. Here are a few:

• Speaking of jobs, Senator, how come every illegal immigrant who wades the Rio is able to find one in about 10 minutes? Meanwhile, your Democratic core constituency has been unemployed for years. Are your supporters lazy, Senator Kerry? Or are they stupid? Back when Clinton was president, did your supporters think they got their jobs at Burger King because Bill was sleeping with the cow?
• You say that we won the war, but we're losing the peace because Iraq is so unstable. When Iraq was stable, it attacked Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wants a stable Iraq?
• No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, "Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim." And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no . . .
• Saddam Hussein was reduced to the Unabomber--Ted Kaczynski--a nutcase hiding in the sticks. Sure, the terrorism by his supporters is frightening. Hence, its name, "terrorism." Killing innocent people by surprise is not called "a thousand points of light." But, as frightening as terrorism is, it's the weapon of losers. The minute somebody sets off a suicide bomb, you can be sure that person doesn't have "career prospects." And no matter how horrendous a terrorist attack is, it's still conducted by losers. Winners don't need to hijack airplanes. Winners have an Air Force.

The Gender Gap This Year

From Steven E. Rhoads:

Women want to feel that their families are safe. They hate risk. Men are three times more likely than women to drown, four times more likely to suffer a serious spinal-cord injury and five times more likely to be killed by lightning. In one Harvard study, men and women were asked to evaluate 25 health risks, and the women ranked all 25 as riskier than did the men.

In a typical year, risk aversion makes women focus on domestic policy: They want assured access to good health care and a safety net with no holes.

But this year we have terrorism to worry about, and the most frightening risks are more elemental. Among men, only those in big cities say they worry about being a victim of terrorism. But women everywhere say they worry. Married women with children have leaned Republican for years, but this year the moms are even more solidly Republican. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the New York Times that the "the images from Russia were particularly vivid to moms," who were unnerved to see childre