Teresa Heinz-Kerry does her part in the campaign cleanup by carrying a cardboard cutout of the politician formerly known as John Kerry off the stage… (an embellishment on Ann Althouse’s “cardboard cutout” phrase, photo by Stephen Crowley/NYT)
Spending Political Capital
Bush will not waste his. As he said explicitly during his news conference yesterday, “I earned capital on the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” After all, in his first term, with his political career at stake, he undertook Iraq, something that no one asked him to do and that promised only terrible political risk. He knew that he was wagering his presidency but did it nonetheless because he thought it necessary for the safety of the nation.
If he did not hoard his political capital then, he will not now. Knowing he will never again run for office, he is going to attempt several large things, most notably reforming Social Security and perhaps radically simplifying the tax code. He was careful to mention both in his speech on Wednesday when he claimed the election, and during his news conference yesterday when he claimed his mandate. These tasks carry such political risk that politicians rarely talk about them, let alone attempt them. In his first term Bush devoted no political capital to these domestic issues because he had spent it all on Afghanistan and Iraq. With a second term and a solid mandate, his account is replenished. He is not a man to sit on it, collecting coupons.
Exactly.
Michael Moore: Making it easy to mock the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade
1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.
That it would put Moore’s (and his LLM partners-in-crime’) Super-Sized Panties in a twist would be reason enough to campaign to repeal the XXII Amendment… The blown cerebral arteries in multiple moonbats’ skulls would be reward enough. A few strokes probably wouldn’t harm their ability to think rationally, but it’d at least be another minor “issue” for them to blame Bush for, which would have a little entertainment value.
2. Bush’s victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
Nu-uh. Just in recent memory, when Clinton was a sitting president, 50.8 didn’t want Clinton in 1996, although since there were three at least semi-major candidates, he did get about 49% of the vote (neither time he won office did Clinton win a majority of the popular vote). In fact, Bush is the first person to win election with a majority of the popular vote since his father won election in 1988. Narrowest win?
3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.
So? The age group may have gone for sKerry, but, once again, they turned out in dismally small numbers compared to the potential for “youth” vote. And, the number of young conservatives is growing, perhaps due to the Roe Effect.
4. In spite of Bush’s win, the majority of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn’t worth fighting (51%), and don’t approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%).
Maybe, but guess who the majority of Americans trust to steer the country in the Right direction? Hmmm… looks like… George Bush. And Moore-on, typically, cherrypicks his polls/poll numbers disingenuously.
5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won’t be able to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say “if the Democrats do their job?” Um, maybe better to scratch this one.
Maybe. Maybe not. The 60-vote rule is just a rule, and it’s been changed before.Did someone forget to tell Moore-on that the Senate Minority Leader went down in flames Tuesday? [heh] Nah, he heard, but it’s lost in his Big Fat Stupid White Guy head.
6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that’s a start. We’ve got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!
And he can’t read a map (see the “Bush Country” map, below. He can keep Broadway. (If it’s not supported by out-of-town tourists from Bush Country, it’ll wither away, anyway.) The fresh water and Mt St Helens are in Bush Country.)
7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any old nut — a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut. May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.
That’s the way to win Ohio: spew some vitriolic hatred their way. Works every time. Riiiight.
8. 88% of Bush’s support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn’t such a long time! If you’re ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.
And his support in the Latino community was up by 1/3; his support among blacks almost doubled; and etc., in other so-called “minority” and ethnic groups. (Again, no one’s expecting Moore-on to be able to do simple math.)
9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won’t have to buy now.
Well, at least I can agree with the sentiment expressed in the actual words (apart from te corrupt use of a perfectly good word that means “happy and carefree” to refer to a group that is characterized by much higher than normal neurosis and depression).
10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress, including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It’s always good to have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates can’t.
[heh] Notice the divide? Moore refers to blacks as not in the group “our candidates”–the bigotted racist rat bastard. hows his true colors as a Big Fat Stupid White Guy.
11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!
Now, this baffles me. Is he saying his readers ought to support Coors with their spending by “Drink[ing] up”?
12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don’t want them to go away.
Yeh. But what do the Bush twins think of you? Do they need to get a restraining order against you, you letch?
13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3 chambers in Tuesday’s elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the 2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53 chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47 chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber (Montana House) is still undecided.
[YAWN] Democratic State governments rarely reflect the loony left moonbattery of Moore-on and his ilk to any great degree. They can’t cos they’re too close to their constituents, in many cases.
14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than the one he’s having this week. It’s all downhill for him from here on out — and, more significantly, he’s just not going to want to do all the hard work that will be expected of him. It’ll be like everyone’s last month in 12th grade — you’ve already made it, so it’s party time! Perhaps he’ll treat the next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn’t he? He’s already proved his point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.
Shows 1.) how little he knows Bush. Bush came out just yesterday with a strong agenda for his second term—far more ambitious than his first term agenda—and is already hard at work implementing it. 2.) shows he lacks any comprehension of the ethic driving Bush. (Well, of course: Moore-on is so ethically challenged, you’d see his picture right there beside Jean Fraud sKerry’s under the definition of “sociopath” or “pathological liar”.)
15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn’t ever need to pander to the Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear that he should spend these last four years building “a legacy” so that history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and arrogant — and thus, reckless — that he will commit a blunder of such major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from office.
Only someone so driven by a Moore-onic egocentric personality disorder (it’s been proposed for a new edition of the DSM, I hear: Planetary-Proportioned-Egocentric Disorder, caused in part by the gravitational field generated by a Big Stupid White Guy Fathead) would project such personality flaws.
16. There are nearly 300 million Americans — 200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That’s not a landslide — it means we’re almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying — especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!
Population of counties in which Bush won all the precints: 150,9 million. Population of counties in which sKerry won all the precincts: 103.6 million. Now, you tell me where the demographics are trending (Bush won more counties this year than in 2000). Total population (US Census figures): 281.4 million. There are currently about 27 million in the counties that split Bush/sKerry. So, where are Moore-ons’s numbers going to come from, especially remembering the Roe Effect ? Ummm… nowhere, that’s where.
17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed “The #1 Liberal in the Senate.” That’s more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this — that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals — that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that’s BIG news. Which means, don’t expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it’s better that they don’t. We’ll need the element of surprise in 2008.
Yep, “dubbed ‘the #1 Liberal'”… and he ran as far away from it as he could. Because he knew it was the kiss of death to anyone except Big Fat Stupid White Guys and their “blondes” (blondes” in behavior if not in coloration [heh]). In fact, “so many people… shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal” that he won fewer votes in Massachusetts (his home state) than Algore did in 2000. I’ll cede Moore-on the element of surprise, cos I’ll enjoy seeing him surprised in 2006 and 2008 all over again. I sincerely hope his fat-laden heart and arteries can take it, cos he’s so easy to take pokes at. In some ways, it’s kinda nice to have a big soft (headed) target handy for those days when I just don’t want to hassle with the hard targets.
Keep it up, Moore-on. Inspre the troops of the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade. You are your own worst enemy (and the Right’s best saboteur on the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade).
**fiskatorial, from “fisk, fisking”
[blogosphere; very common] A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.
My fisk of Moore’s easily mocked “17 points” does not, of course, meet the “witty” standard for a truly stylish fisk (I’m givin’ it all she’s got, Cap’n’ but I’m only half way up the “wit” scale), but then, Moore’s so very easy to mock that he’s a good one to pick on when I’m feeling a little sluggish and/or decaffeinated.
Choosing candidates
Jerry Pournelle has some observations about the process of choosing presidential candidates that are typically Pournelle: thoughtful, infused with some wisdom (not just “smarts”) and mostly on-target, IMO. While I disagree with him as to his characterization of Bush for my own reasons (while mostly agreeing—with a few differences—with him about the Iraq War), his observations about the process and its implications for the Republic (as opposed simply to any single political party) are serious and worth some discussion.
On the lighter side…
Go figure. In Springdale, AR, right down the road from us, a guy won a local race after backing out and not campaigning. He “withdrew” too late, so his name was on the ballots. He won the race and has decided he’ll serve, anyway.
In Nevada, tied races can be settled by drawing cards, and that’s exactly what happened in one county commissioner race this year.
At least it wasn’t settled by a game of “Texas Hold ’em” poker…
[heh]
Bush Country
Here’s a graphic (courtesy of USA Today) of the number of counties that went for each candidate for president in this year’s election. Solid red means the ALL the county’s precincts went for Bush; the Blue, for sKerry.
When the loony left moonbats talk about Bush winning in “flyover country” they apparently mean almost the entire country… Gee. Maybe they ought to be required to “connect the dots” to obtain a route through the foreign land they deride. It’d sure stop them flying coast-to-coast. [heh]
From the USAToday page:
Square miles of
counties won
Bush 2.51 million
Kerry 511,700
Population (2003) of
counties won
Bush 150,9 million
Kerry 103.6 million
Funding the “Evil Party”
A correspondent named “Jim” quoted on Jerry Pournelle’s MAIL page observed, today:
“… the Republican Party is the party of the societally secure and the Democratic Party is the party of the societally insecure. Other than its thin crust of anti-American liberal elitists, the hard core of the Evil Party are “dependents”–“lifetime-net-tax-users”, while the hard core of the Republican Party are “lifetime-net-tax-payers”. Taxing the latter to buy the votes of the former has been the strategy of the Democratic Party since the days of the Great Society, and it was affordable due to the huge bulge of Baby Boomers of the Productive Classes entering America’s labor force just when LBJ launched that initiative.”
And the “Evil Party” suckers the “Stupid Party” to fund votes for the “Evil Party” year in and year out… No wonder the “Stupid Party” is the classic insiders’ nickname for the GOP.
Note to President Bush: no compromise. You won; they lost. Make the “Evil party” comply with the will of the people.
The Eye of the Beholder
This is—obviously—a picture, a mosaic, of President Bush, composed of “pixels” made up of faces of service personnel who have died (supposedly in combat) in Iraq. Although there are a few more than 1,000 who have died in Iraq, total, since not all those are combat-related and the composer of the pic used nearly 1,500 faces, we can assume that more than a few were used more than once.
Nevertheless, depending upon the eye of the beholder, it is either a moving tribute to the heroic actions of our troops or (as the artist, “American Leftist” intended) a scathing criticism of Bush’s policies. I saw it as a moving tribute to the troops…
CLICK here to go to a page where you can download a large sized copy of the pic, if you wish.
(h.t. to Michelle Malkin for the link.)
Reflections on the recent campaign
It’s been attributed to Sun Tsu, Lee, Grant, Clausewitz and many others. I really don’t know the source, but that it’s attributed to so many military minds is a measure of this truism’s… uh, truth. [heh]
“No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.”
While I would have preferred Bush to have run a different campaign—better explanation of the War on Terrorism (and a use of that, or better terms in preference to the stupid “War on Terror”), including reasons for Iraq’s place in that war; a more complete exposure of sKerry’s record of faux liberal perfidy; a smarter decision re: Fallujah #1 (let the citizens leave, then level the place would have worked), etc—I think almost no one could have predicted the absolute stupidity of sKerry—and sKerry himself—supporters that was crucial to victory in the campaign. As Ann Coulter said,
“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!”
And that may explain the virtual bye Bush handed sKerry on his record. Sure, in October the Bush campaign laid bare the skeleton of that record, but they never really fleshed it out. Absent the irrational hate and obvious dirty tricks by the Dems and their loyal mouthpieces in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, I’m not sure the electorate would have been as motivated as it was to deny these loony left moonbats the victory they craved.
Next campaign in the war to save civilization? Dismantle and demolish the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army of loony left moonbats. That’s a job for the blogosphere and right-thinking talk radio.
Oh, and a reminder to just Go. Read.
Pournelle‘s chart of Political Axes. It may help as you think through your own political stances.