The Great Sort - marching toward extremes

Rising number of states seeing one-party rule

Excerpt:

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which tracks party representation in the country’s 50 state governments, Democrats now control all three bases of power – the governorship and both houses of the state legislature – in 14 states and Republicans in 23, with only 12 states sharing power. (Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is considered nonpartisan.)

Regional power bases are also emerging, with Democrats increasingly dominating state governments across New England. Conversely, after last week’s vote, the GOP for the first time since 1872 now controls the Arkansas House and Senate.

Just 20 years ago, Republicans didn’t have a majority in a single legislative house in the states of the old Confederacy – now they control all 11. The number of states with divided government is down from 31 just 16 years ago to 12 today, prompting speculation on the country’s evolving partisan geography.

... Bill Bishop, author of the book “The Big Sort” on the growing polarization of American politics, said, “There are mores states that have tipped either increasingly Republican or Democratic over time. Even in close elections you have a majority of voters who live in counties where the election wasn’t close at all. The world they see at their doorstep is different than the rest of the country.”

Comments:  A quote from the book (from Amazon site): "The lesson for politics and culture is pretty clear. It doesn't matter if you're a frat boy, a French high school student, a petty criminal, or a federal appeals court judge. Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward extremes"

So basically the blue states are getting bluer and the red states redder!

Image is the old IBM 82 Sorter. Anyone from the infancy of computing has used one including me! Thankfully not many times! Back when I did mainframe programming I was pretty handy at the IBM SORT utility.

Ancient negative political ad: "he disgraced himself by going down to the market and buying a girl to be his sex slave."

Campaign tips

Excerpts:

1. Promise everything to everyone. .... tell them what they want to hear
2. Call in all favors. If you have helped friends or associates in the past, let them know that it's payback time
3. Know your opponent's weaknesses—and exploit them.
4. Flatter voters shamelessly. ... A candidate must make voters believe that he thinks they're important. Shake their hands, look them in the eye, listen to their problems.
5. Give people hope.

Comment: BC political advice. Some things never change. Post title:

Quintus practically invented opposition research: "Consider Antonius, who once had his property confiscated for debt…then after he was elected as praetor, he disgraced himself by going down to the market and buying a girl to be his sex slave." A winning candidate calmly assesses his opponent and then focuses relentlessly on his weaknesses, all the while trying to distract voters from his strengths.

More on Cicero

Harsh but accurate

Is Hayworth ad mocking McCain offensive?

Excerpt:

Sen. John McCain's re-election campaign is decrying as insulting an online ad by GOP Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth that mocks McCain, R-Ariz., by defacing his picture with some sort of blue warpaint.

"Ads like this have no place in the Republican primary, and J.D. Hayworth should immediately take it down and apologize," said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a strong McCain ally.

The ad, which appeared on the widely read Internet news site the Drudge Report, apparently is a play on the science-fiction movie "Avatar," which is up for Best Picture in Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony. It shows McCain's photo defaced with blue stripes and says, "John McCain: Nominee for Best Conservative Actor."

“Ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth should immediately apologize and and take down his latest online ad, which is an outrageous offense to John McCain’s lifetime of honorable service to our state and nation, and insulting to Native Americans here in Arizona and across America," said Shiree Verdone, McCain's campaign manager. "Mr. Hayworth is welcome to debate the challenges facing our state and nation, but this kind of character assassination has no place in the Republican Party, and Mr. Hayworth should ashamed of his campaign for running it.”

When asked for a response to Kyl's complaint, Hayworth spokesman Jason Rose told AZ/DC: "We respectfully decline the request and would encourage Senator McCain to get a sense of humor. After all, if Sunday's show did have an award for best election year flip-flopping and transparent conservative conversion, the incumbent would surely win the Oscar."

Comment: I like John McCain, but I would vote for change in AZ!

Why Billy Sunday looks like a bad parody

Evangelical Politics: A Few More thoughts

Excerpt:

... individual Christians need to consider their priorities from a biblical perspective and make wise choices about the best use of time and resources. Which is ultimately the better long-term answer to sin—law, or gospel? Law certainly has a place, but it can never actually solve any of the social problems evangelicals are so agitated about nowadays. Even the individual Christian whose vocation is in politics or law enforcement needs to keep the gospel—not merely a message about morality or cultural reform—at the center of his testimony to unbelievers.

Our spiritual great-grandparents were even more exercised about the sin of drunkenness than Christians in this generation are about the slaughter of unborn children. They decided that a legal remedy—a constitutional amendment outlawing liquor—was the best solution. History has shown that they wasted their time and lots of resources, got sidetracked from their real message, and in the end accomplished exactly nothing.

...

In short, there's a reason Spurgeon's preaching is still relevant and powerful today, but Billy Sunday looks like a bad parody.

Comment: Further thoughts on political action by preachers.

Remembering the ‘Daisy Ad’

Man Who Helped Create ‘Daisy Ad’ Dies

Excerpt:

Tony Schwartz, a self-taught, sought-after and highly reclusive media consultant who helped create what is generally considered to be the most famous political ad to appear on television, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.


Comment: In my mind, this ad and the Willie Horton ad (honorable mention to Reagan's "Morning in America") are perhaps the most powerful polical ads ever aired.

Can government deliver something for nothing?

Hillary and Say's Law

Excerpt:

"But this stimulus shouldn't be paid for," Hillary Clinton said to Tim Russert in a recent interview, when he reminded her that she'd omitted a price tag somewhere. Shouldn't be?

Say hello to that old ghost from the past we thought banished by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. It's called "Keynesian Economics."

Ironically, even the brilliant John Maynard Keynes disowned it. After meeting with a group of Washington "Keynesians" in 1944, he said he was the only non-Keynesian in the room. His brainchild, government spending to stimulate demand, had been converted from its originally intended limited application to an all-purpose economic panacea by politicians, academics and journalists.

The fundamental principle of the Keynesians, one that Lord Keynes would have scoffed at, is that government can deliver something for nothing. To be sure, government does transfer income and wealth to favored constituencies, such as rice farmers or ethanol producers, from people who pay taxes. Washington calls that economic stimulus. The costless "stimulus" Sen. Clinton had in mind would be broader, although tilted toward low-income earners. The intent is to pump up consumer demand by showering "tax rebates" on people with a "greater propensity to spend."


Comment: Italized for emphasis!

Say's Law

Summary:

There can be no demand without supply. A central element of Say's Law is that recession does not occur because of failure in demand or lack of money. The more goods (for which there is demand) that are produced, the more those goods (supply) can constitute a demand for other goods. For this reason, prosperity should be increased by stimulating production, not consumption. In Say's view, creation of more money simply results in inflation; more money demanding the same quantity of goods does not represent an increase in real demand.

Comment: Government needs to get out of the way and free the markets with less regulation! Sending checks to citizens (there's a part of me that wants it for myself!), will just create more consumption, not more production. Since much of what is consumed is produced overseas, it will not even help U.S. factories!

Three deadly sins of rational budgeting

Presidential candidates are avoiding the hard choices about federal entitlements

Excerpt:

Because we're running a deficit of $244 billion, much of the spending increases are likely to be financed. Interest on the federal debt is running about $250 billion, or 9 percent of the total budget.

Solving the larger problem of entitlement spending, though, receives scant attention from the candidates vying to be Bush's successor.

"The campaign rhetoric hasn't made me feel any better about all of this," Bixby said.

Candidates from both parties have said little about the rising cost of entitlements because slowing the advance of the big money requires hard choices — saying no to good programs or popular tax breaks, for example.

That's not a message that plays well in an election year.

"Both sides are over-pandering to their base," Bixby said. "The implication is that Republicans won't ever raise taxes and Democrats won't ever cut benefits."

Actually, if we're going to bring the deficit under control and embrace fiscal discipline, we'll have to do both.

Instead, Congress and the administration opt to simply embrace what Bixby calls the "three deadly sins of rational budgeting": delay, denial and diversion.

Comment: We are close to the finacial tipping point. Politicians are studiously avoiding the giant elephant in the room!

Senator Craig listed in top 10 of corrupt politicians

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2007

# 3: Senator Larry Craig (R-ID): In one of the most shocking scandals of 2007, Senator Craig was caught by police attempting to solicit sex in a Minneapolis International Airport men’s bathroom during the summer. Senator Craig reportedly “sent signals” to a police officer in an adjacent stall that he wanted to engage in sexual activity. When the police officer showed Craig his police identification under the bathroom stall divider and pointed toward the exit, the senator reportedly exclaimed 'No!'” When asked to produce identification, Craig presented police his U.S. Senate business card and said, “What do you think of that?” The power play didn’t work. Craig was arrested, charged and entered a guilty plea. Despite enormous pressure from his Republican colleagues to resign from the Senate, Craig refused.

Comment: One may not agree with the entire list, but it is worth reading. This one in particular is an embarrassment to the Republican party and ought to resign!

Congressional politics 101

In case you are a starry-eyed naivete, you may actually think that Congress exists to pass laws the benefit Americans! Not so ... it's there to embarrass the other side and score points.

Illustration:

Kucinich Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Cheney

Score 1 for the Democrats!

Republicans keep Cheney impeachment bill alive

Comment: What's this? The Republicans vote to keep the impeachment bill alive? Makes no sense! Or does it!

Excerpt:

The vote to table the privileged resolution, offered by Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinch, began as a largely party-line vote to kill the measure, but Republicans developed a strategy to force Democrats to debate the resolution by supporting Kucinich. GOP leaders felt as though it was in their interest to debate the measure because it would make Democrats look bad.

After more than an hour of waiting for the vote to close, the motion to table the resolution failed by a vote of 162-251 after Democratic leaders failed to convince a group of liberal caucus members to side with them.

Republican lawmakers and aides credited Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) for coming up with the idea.

Comment: Score one for the Republicans who "felt as though it was in their interest to debate the measure because it would make Democrats look bad"!

House tied in knots over resolution to impeach Cheney

Comment: This childishness is reminiscent of when my children fought over Legos! Is it any wonder that Congressional approval ratings are so dismal! Want to understand Congressional politics? Look no further than this episode!

Mukasey and the Dem's political sideshow

Mukasey and the Democrats Their real target is antiterror interrogation

Excerpt:

Their immediate political figleaf is that the judge won't pre-emptively declare "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, to be illegal. Mr. Mukasey has declared that torture "violates the law and the Constitution, and the President may not authorize it as he is no less bound by constitutional restrictions than any other government official." But he refuses to say whether waterboarding meets the statutory definition of torture based only on "hypothetical facts and circumstances."

This seems fair enough given that he has not been briefed on any of the classified interrogation details (as top Congressional Democrats have been). It also seems wise given that, if confirmed, he will have to read and consider legal memoranda already approved by Justice Department officials on the same subject. How can he declare himself before he's read them?

Most important, his discretion serves the American people by helping to keep our enemies in some doubt about what they will face if they are captured. The reason that CIA interrogation methods are kept highly classified is so that enemy combatants can't use them as a resistance manual. If terrorists know what's coming, they can prepare for it beforehand and better resist.

What's really at stake here is whether U.S. officials are going to have the basic tools required to extract information from America's enemies. As CIA Director Michael Hayden pointed out in a speech this week, "the best sources of information on terrorists and their plans are the terrorists themselves."

Mr. Hayden added that fewer than 100 captives "have gone through the interrogation program since it began in 2002 with the capture of Abu Zubaydah," a top aide to Osama bin Laden and 9/11 plotter. Yet those interrogations have generated "thousands of intelligence reports." More than 70% of the human intelligence that makes it into formal U.S. intelligence estimates "is based on detainee information."

As for waterboarding, it is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA's view seems to be that some version of waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough cases quickly. Press reports say it has been used only against a few high-value al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Zubaydah. As former CIA Director George Tenet points out in his book "At the Center of the Storm," KSM and others never would have talked about "imminent threats against the American people" had they not been dealt with harshly. "I believe that none of these success would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal," he writes.

If Democrats want to strip the CIA of this tool, then they ought to legislate it openly, not make law under the table through the confirmation process. Congress has twice had the chance to ban or criminalize waterboarding, but it declined to do so in both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. And not for lack of trying: In debating the Military Commissions Act, Ted Kennedy offered a detailed amendment that specifically prohibited waterboarding, as well as other coercive interrogation methods; it lost on the Senate floor, 46-53.

Comment: Follup to The Democrats hypocrisy on waterboarding

Schumer and Feinstein Back Mukasey

U.S. / Politics
Schumer and Feinstein Back Mukasey
By DAVID STOUT and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 2, 2007
The attorney general nomination seemed all but assured when two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced their support.

Excerpt:

Mr. Schumer announced his support after meeting with Mr. Mukasey this afternoon. “Judge Mukasey is not my ideal choice,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement afterward. “However, Judge Mukasey, whose integrity and independence is respected even by those who oppose him, is far better than anyone could expect from this administration.”

The statement from Mr. Schumer of New York, and late word from the office of Senator Feinstein of California that she too would endorse Mr. Mukasey, virtually assured that he would win the backing of the Judiciary Committee when it meets on Tuesday, and in all probability confirmation by the full Senate.

There are nine Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, versus 10 Democrats. So with the support of Mr. Schumer and Ms. Feinstein, the numbers are on Mr. Mukasey’s side, even though Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermonter who heads the Judiciary Committee, this afternoon became the fifth Democrat on the panel to announce that he would vote against the nominee.

Mr. Schumer said his decision had been “extremely difficult,” and that a big factor was Mr. Mukasey’s opinion, conveyed to him this afternoon, that “were Congress to pass a law banning certain interrogation techniques, we would clearly be acting within our constitutional authority.”

Comment: Note the last sentence!

Blame it on global warming

Have you noticed how easy it is for politicians (many Democrats) to blame most anything on "global warming"?!

Global warming to blame for fires, says Harry Reid

Excerpt:

"One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming," the Nevada Democrat told reporters, emphasizing the need to pass the Democrats' comprehensive energy package.

Pressed by astonished reporters on whether he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.

Perhaps in the case of the California wildfires, there is a failure of policy. Read more below:

Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone

National
Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone
By KIRK JOHNSON and JESSE McKINLEY
Published: October 28, 2007
Many California residents are ruggedly obstinate about the choice they have made to live with the constant threat of fire.

Excerpt:

Fire-management experts like Professor Minnich, who has compared fire histories in San Diego County and Baja California in Mexico, say the message is clear: Mexico has smaller fires that burn out naturally, regularly clearing out combustible underbrush and causing relatively little destruction because the cycle is still natural. California has giant ones because its longtime policies of fire suppression — in which the government has kept fires from their normal cycle — has created huge pockets of fuel that erupt into conflagrations that must be fought.

“We’re on all year round,” said Brett Chapman, a firefighter with the United States Forest Service who worked 15-hour shifts this week in the Lake Arrowhead area east of Los Angeles.

The main problem is that many in California are ruggedly obstinate about the choice they have made to live with the constant threat of fire. Even state officials who are interested in change concede it could take a decade — and more catastrophic wildfires — before it happens.

“If you’re going to live in paradise,” said Randall Holloman, a bar and restaurant owner in Cedar Glen, which is in an area that has burned twice in four years, “you’re going to have to deal.”

In San Diego County, which has borne the brunt of the recent fires, three out of four homes built since 1990 are in the dangerous zone where open spaces and housing meet. These are the most vulnerable and exposed places in fire season because wildfires by and large start in national forests, recreation areas and other publicly owned lands. About half of the land in San Diego County is publicly owned, much of it in the Cleveland National Forest.

Had this week’s fires burned in the same locations in 1980, about 61,000 homes would have been within a mile of a fire. By 2000, the number would have grown to 106,000 homes, and this year it was 125,000, according to an analysis by the University of Wisconsin.

Comments: Hurricanes are going to happen and actually are beneficial to the environment, replenishing water supplies. The problem is that the US has a policy (in the case of New Orleans) of building below sea level. And in the coastal areas, federal flood policy supports rebuilding on beach front properties. In the case of California, its a failure of fire policy! Politicians capitalize on these events of nature to leverage their own political agenda. In the case of Harry Reid, to "pass the Democrats' comprehensive energy package".

The Return of the Thought Police

The Return of the Thought Police: "Hate crime" legislation is an assault on civil liberties

Excerpt:

Is it necessary or fair to expand federal criminal jurisdiction to allow for dual federal and state prosecutions of alleged hate crimes? Arguably--if strong empirical evidence demonstrates that states are generally unwilling or unable to prosecute these crimes. Otherwise federal hate-crime legislation addresses an illusory threat to civil rights, while it exacerbates an actual crisis for civil liberty.


The continuing expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction has given federal law enforcement officials unprecedented power over each of us. As Gene Healy of the Cato Institute has observed, the federal criminal code is so vast and comprehensive that it enables prosecutors to "pick targets they think they should get rather than offenses that need to be prosecuted." Mr. Healy estimates that about 4,000 crimes are "scattered throughout the tens of thousands of pages of the United States code," stressing that the exact increase in federal crimes has been difficult to track. One frequently cited 1999 study by the American Bar Association noted that 40% of all federal criminal laws enacted after the Civil War dated back only to 1970.


Comment: Consider early CFG comments on "hate crime" legislation: Should 'Hate Crimes' bill be vetoed? and Don't muzzel free speech

Conservative wins LA gubernatorial

Louisiana elects first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction

Excerpt:

U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation's youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents.

Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday's election outright and avoid a November 17 runoff.

...

When he takes office in January, Jindal will become the nation's youngest governor in office. He pledged to fight corruption and rid the state of those "feeding at the public trough," revisiting a campaign theme.

"They can either go quietly or they can go loudly, but either way, they will go," he said, adding that he would call the Legislature into special session to address ethics reform.

bobbyjindal.com

Meet the Next Governor of Louisiana

Biography

List of Governors of Louisiana

Comments: The news is not that he is "non-white" ... but that he is a conservative Republican. And the lesson is this: consistent conservatives who stand for values and against corruption and waste are very electable!

Does anyone believe Larry Craig?

Larry Craig's story is getting harder to believe all the time

Excerpt:

Every time Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, discusses his arrest in a sex sting at an airport bathroom it gets harder and harder to believe his story.

Craig was arrested in June and plead guilty to disorderly conduct after he was accused of soliciting sex from a male undercover police officer in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He’s now trying to withdraw his guilty plea. So far, a judge in Minnesota has refused, saying Craig’s plea was “accurate, voluntary and intelligent and supported by the evidence.”

After reading several accounts of the arrest and after listening to the senator during a lengthy television interview, we have plenty of questions.

If, as the senator maintains, the incident was a misunderstanding or a bizarre set of coincidences, why would the senator plead guilty and leave Minneapolis so quickly? If he was truly completely innocent as he maintains now, why plead guilty? Craig said he plead guilty in hopes of avoiding a media circus. Again, a senator should know that any time they’re arrested, it’s going to be a story, especially when a senator is accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom.

It’s hard to imagine a senator not having enough common sense or enough backbone to stand up for himself and shout “I’m innocent” to anyone who will listen. Pleading guilty quickly, leaving town and not telling your wife, your children or your lawyer seems like the behavior of a guilty man.

Comment: Nothing of his story makes sense: the "wide stance", the picking up of the TP off the floor, the hand gestures, the peaking into the toilet stall!

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation


Op-Ed Contributor
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation
By JON MEACHAM
Published: October 7, 2007
The founders wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

Conclusion:

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.

The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.

Comment: A very good read!

John 18:36: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.”

A responsibility to the Iraqi people

Baird sees need for longer U.S. role in Iraq

Excerpt:

"I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against them, and I still think they were the right votes," Baird said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"But we're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work."

Baird, a five-term Democrat, voted against President Bush ordering the Iraq invasion — at a time when he was in a minority in Congress and at risk of alienating voters. He returned late Tuesday from a trip that included stops in Israel, Jordan and Iraq, where he met troops, U.S. advisers and Iraqis, whose stories have convinced him that U.S. troops must stay longer.


Comment: As unpopular as this war has become, my own view about early pullout mirrors Congressman Baird's.

How to be a good liberal

Things to remember in order to become a good Liberal.

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
   
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
   
3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.
   
4. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.
   
5. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial, but being homosexual is natural.
   
6. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
   
7. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
   
8. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but PETA activists do.
   
9. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
   
10. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ" for financial gain only.
    
11. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports
    certain parts of the Constitution.
    
12. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
    
13. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Edison.
    
14. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
    
15. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in
    charge.
    
16. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag queens and transvestites should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
    
17. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.
    

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!

ooops.... can't say that either

Comment: Sent to me from a relative. Image from bpaul.com

Gorged on politics?

Charles Colson: Promises, Promises

Excerpt:

The campaign is all some people can think about. Everywhere I go, people seem almost frantic to know who I'm for and who I think will win. When I say, "It's too early to tell," they're crestfallen, as if desperate to attach themselves to a candidate.
---------
Perhaps, after this exhausting, multimillion-dollar presidential campaign, Americans may be so gorged on politics that we will finally say "enough!" Then we, like our neighbors to the south, will reject the promises of political messiahs in favor of building up the crumbling cultural infrastructure: our families, our churches, and our communities.



Comments: I am following the 2008 elections from a distance: not watching debates on TV. Like the "Youtube" debate - wasn't that a stupid idea!

These issues are forefront in my mind:

1. Security: Protection of our country and our interests. I know the phrase "global war on terrorism" has fallen out of favor, but the danger is real no matter what one would call it. I call it "The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism". (A book to be published next month. Order it from Amazon!)
   
2. Fiscal responsibility: A sane tax policy. Fix the AMT mess!
   
3. Social Security and Medicare reform (in the fiscal responsibiliy vein of thought!)
   
4. Immigration reform: Our de-facto immigration policy is to do nothing about the 12-20 Million illegal immigrants.
   
5. Infrastructure funding: The Federal Highways need fixing too! Let's skip the so called "Bridge to No-Where" (Alaska) and adequately fund our highways and bridges.
   
6. Iraq: A plan to wrap things up in Iraq. There is no way we will just "pull out" no matter who is elected. But we have to have a phase out plan.
   
7. Heath care: I'm opposed to a universal, single-payer, government run health care system. But reform is needed throttle health care cost increases enable more to be insured. Tort reform would be a part of this.
   
8. Energy: Policies that promote energy independence. I doubt that Ethanol is a long term solution. Anything that encourages people to buy smaller cars (tax credit?) would be positive.
   

Things I don't care about:

1. Hillary's cleavage
   
2. John Edward's "blackness" (his wife raised the issue!)
   
3. The candidate's wives. Or in the case of Hillary - Bill!
   

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism

Propaganda Redux: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.

Excerpt:

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.
----------
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America's commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O'Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a "deserter." And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, "Give Bush the Boot."

Comment: The author, Lt. Gen. Pacepa (the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc), knows of which he speaks! Consider Anti-Bush Majority: The Internet abounds with Bush-bashing websites. Image is from this article.

Uncluttering the Primary Calendar

Joe Lieberman, Amy Klobuchar, Lamar Alexander

Lawmakers look to revolutionize primary plan


Excerpt:

Three senators — one Republican, one Democrat and one Independent — are proposing a plan that would revolutionize the nation’s presidential primary system.

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) announced Tuesday they are proposing legislation that would institute a new primary structure that divides the country into four regions, with each region’s states voting in a different month.

The Regional Presidential Primary and Caucus Act, which would take effect in the 2012 elections, is a result of this year’s rush by states to the front of the line, with big states like California, New York and New Jersey moving to Feb. 5 and Florida jumping to Jan. 29.

A document outlining the plan that was obtained by The Hill said it would “encourage the greatest number of good candidates to enter the race, allow voters an opportunity to hear all candidates’ ideas [and] ensure more Americans a chance to cast a meaningful vote.”

The proposal calls for a rotating schedule of the four regions, while still protecting the “traditional” first states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Comments: Good idea. One thing that bothers me about the primaries is that by the time my state votes, it's "all over but the shouting".