Gone fishin'

I'm taking a bit of time off. Life is tough lately, and I need a breather.

I hope all of you had an enjoyable and restorative thanksgiving. Good thoughts are powerful things.

This ain't never gonna happen

John Kerry is reportedly considering suing John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," for libel.

Not only is this not going to happen, but I don't believe it's even being considered. If Kerry had answers to these charges he wouldn't have gone months without addressing them. He wouldn't have avoided any serious interviews coming into the home stretch of the election. He would have released his military records.

As it is there are other outstanding questions about his military record, like whether he received a dishonorable discharge. Regardless of whether he intends to run for public office again, he only stands to lose by wrestling with this tiger.

[via Boortz]

More of the same

In the months leading up to the election, the Democrat anthem was that re-electing President Bush would bring us “more of the same.” After the election, I noted with sadness that they were right--at least in terms of the hate and vitriol the Left continued to express for the President.

Jonah Goldberg takes up this theme in his recent column, giving examples of how the Left abandons all consistency as it continues to condemn Bush’s every decision.

The immortal fallacy of the unlimited enemy

Thomas Sowell: "The big question today -- and for our future -- is not whether our enemies have unlimited resources but whether we have an inexhaustible supply of immaturity in our media and among our politicians."

Still more of the right thing

Here's another example of how Congress can do the right thing, and this time Senate Democrats are the culprits.

I don't know much about the history and constitutionality of filibustering. I suppose the tactic can be put to honorable use—you're not the only one who saw "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"—but it's always struck me as a bit of a shady practice in most situations.

I mean, we live in something resembling democracy after all. Someone has an idea. We discuss it. We vote on it. Thumbs up; thumbs down. Majority rule and all that. The filibuster just runs right against that grain. But okay, whatever. I can live with a filibuster.

But not when it comes to confirming judges. The President has been doing his job, appointing judges to fill vacancies. The Senate's job is to "advise and consent" on these appointments, but they haven't been able to do their job because the Democrats have been filibustering the process.

This is wrong. It leaves judicial positions unfilled. It costs a lot of time and money. And it keeps a lot of fine people and their families hanging in limbo for months or years while they await confirmation. A nominee should be given a timely hearing and a vote. Senate Democrats have been using the filibuster to prevent this, and there is nothing to it except cheap, partisan politics.

The solution is to put a time limit on the confirmation process. When Congress sends a bill to the President's desk, he has ten days to act—to either sign or veto it. If he fails to act within ten days, the bill automatically becomes law. Judicial (and other) confirmations should be handled the same way. Once nominated, the Senate should be given a reasonable amount of time to act, after which the nominee is deemed confirmed.

This would in no way interfere with the Senate's duty to advise and consent. It would simply force them to actually perform that duty, and in a timely manner, instead of constipating the entire process for a political agenda that has nothing to do with a nominees qualifications.

Update: Carnival of Solutions (via Dean's World) addresses this issue. The focus there is on how to make the process more bipartisan. I'm really not interested in that. I just want nominees to get a thumbs up or down in a reasonable amount of time.

Any effort to create a commission or anything like that is going to complicate what should be a simple process. The Senate's role in this should be minimal, and they've already overstepped the bounds of advice and consent.

At some point, we have to trust that the Amercian people made decent choices when they elected their public officials. And we have to trust that those elected officials will be responsible enough to reject unqualified nominees. If the Senate can do that much, and do it in a timely manner, the problem is solved as far as I'm concerned. If the nominees act up after they are confirmed, well, that's what impeachment is for.

More of the right thing

While I'm on the subject of Congress and doing the right thing, I want to talk about gerrymandering. This is a bad practice, and everyone knows it's a bad practice. The only defense I've ever heard of it is that the other guy does it too.

By perpetually redrawing Congressional districts so as to give one party an advantage, we undermine our political system.

We constantly hear about how divided our country is. Gerrymandering is an effort to take that divisiveness and hard code it into the system.

We hear a lot of complaints about how poor our candidates are and how corrupt our government is. Gerrymandering reduces competition and balance. Candidates with weak ideas aren't challenged, debate is squelched, and poor and incumbent candidates aren't held accountable.

We hear talk about voter apathy and disenfranchisement. But what is more disheartening and disenfranchising than living in a "loaded" district where the outcome is a foregone conclusion?

Gerrymandering is a tough thing to stop because it’s a tool of the party in power. So here's my suggestion: pass a law that ends the practice and that goes into effect at some point in the future. We don't know who will be in power in 2025 or 2035, so just pick a date and live with it.

I realize that districts occasionally will need to be redrawn for non-political reasons. Let this be done by a bi-partisan panel, or a computer program, or in some other relatively balanced way. We don't need a perfect solution. We just need a reasonable alternative to the damage we're causing now.

Do the right thing... without DeLay

In 1993, House Republicans tried to make their Democrat colleagues look bad. Now they are paying the price.

At the time, a number of prominent Democrat House members were weathering ethical scandals. Republicans passed an in-party rule requiring that any indicted leader step down until the issue was resolved. The intent was to embarrass Democrats by boasting that Republicans hold themselves to higher ethical standards. It was a cheap, political tactic, and it received little notice.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. With House Majority Leader Tom DeLay facing possible indictment for questionable fundraising activities in Texas, his fellow Republicans have come to his rescue by reversing their 1993 rule.

Democrats, of course, are calling "gotcha" and pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republicans. I say more power to them. The Republicans deserve the bad press--first for playing such silly games to begin with, and second for not having the integrity to follow the standard they created to mock the Democrats.

Cheap politics aside, the rule was foolish from the onset. An indictment isn't evidence of wrongdoing. It's simply an unproved accusation. Anyone can make an accusation, and as the saying goes, a Grand Jury will indict a ham sandwich.

If Republicans are to be believed, the effort to indict DeLay wreaks itself of cheap politics. Which is precisely why Republicans should never have adopted such a rule in the first place. These situations should be addressed on a case by case basis, with the appropriate parties evaluating the merits and recommending a course of action.

In creating this rule, Republicans set wisdom aside in favor of immediate political traction. In overturning the rule on behalf of DeLay, they are compounding their poor judgment. The honorable way to deal with this is to both repeal the rule and have Tom DeLay step down if he is indicted. This would demonstrate that the party has both wisdom and integrity.

The best way to gain real political traction is to do the right thing.

Just the thing...

Peggy Noonan: "Ssssshhhhhhhh"

Waiting for another 9/11...

Terence Jeffrey says we should be connecting the dots now on the potential of WMD being smuggled across our border with Mexico. This is exactly right, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are taking the threat seriously.

We've been hearing about the threat of "nuclear suitcases" for some time. These are small, portable nuclear bombs that can relatively easily be transported into high population centers and detonated. We're also well aware that al Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, is very eager to attack again on our soil. Finally, we know that our border security is abysmal, with millions of illegals streaming across our southern border each year. A few weeks ago a fairly extensive tunnel was discovered under the Mexican border, which was used to transfer countless amounts of illegal drugs into the U.S.

It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that the threat of WMD being smuggled across our borders and used in a 9/11-style attack is very real. It's not at all difficult to envision a large scale attack in Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, or in any number of convenient cities. Apparently, some of the terrorists we have captured recently have hinted at just such plots.

The plan in the works is to double the number of border guards to 20,000, but this is far too inadequate. We need some type of comprehensive, long-term plan to seal our borders and reduce the risk to a level where we have a reasonable chance of thwarting an attack. I don't know if this means building a wall, a la Israel, or perhaps stationing National Guard troops along the border. But something other than lip service needs to take place soon or we just may end up paying for it in a very big way.

We keep talking about how 9/11 changed our world view. That statement is currently being put to the test. We've had our wake-up call. Will we step up and act on our new reality, or is that simply talk that will lead us to another attack and another Senate commission to investigate once again how we were caught so unprepared?

Atlantis found?

This is intriguing.

I always found it strange that Plato's descriptions of Atlantis are dismissed as myth by so many, while the rest of his writings are taken seriously. This may not be Atlantis, of course. For one thing, it doesn't look like it was an island as Plato indicated.

Intriguing nonetheless.

[via Captain Ed]

Anti-Christian Legislation Union

Dennis Prager gives an update on the fate of the Los Angeles County seal. I lived most of my life in Los Angeles, so this story is close to my heart, but it really is an issue of national importance.

If you recall, the ACLU threatened Los Angeles County with a law suit if it refused to remove a small cross from its official seal. The cross appears as one of over a dozen elements on the seal that memorialize various aspects of the county's history. Like most of California, Los Angeles County owes a great deal of its heritage to the Christian missionaries who settled the region in the mid-1700s.

As you can tell from the picture, the cross is hardly prominent. It appears in one of seven panels on the seal. The panel comprises about one-tenth of the seal, and the cross shares the panel with three other elements—one a much larger graphic of the Hollywood Bowl, L.A.’s famous outdoor theater, and two stars that represent the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Indeed, one pretty much has to be looking for the cross in order to notice it.

The ACLU claims that the presence of the cross constitutes government endorsement of a religion and thereby violates the concept of separation of church and state. This is absurd. The cross was included not to promote religion, but simply to commemorate the important contribution of Christianity to the region. As Mark Roberts says on the page linked above

Suppose a history textbook used in the public schools sought to tell the story of D-Day. And suppose, further, that this textbook included a photograph of the Normandy American Cemetery, with its over 9,000 crosses on the graves of the soldiers who perished in the invasion. In this case a public school would be displaying an image of a cross (many crosses, actually). Now if the cross is necessarily a religious symbol, then this would be a violation of the Constitution … But I think it’s clear that the textbook includes a picture of crosses, not with religious intent or meaning, but with historical intent and meaning.

Just so. This action by the ACLU has nothing to do with the separation of church and state ( a phrase, incidentally, that does not appear in the Constitution). If it did, they would be lobbying also to remove the likeness of Pomona, Roman goddess of the harvest, that resides at the center of the seal and consumes over one-third its real estate.

The true agenda of the ACLU is the scouring of all things Christian from the public realm. We’ve seen this in their efforts to remove three plaques bearing Biblical quotes from the rim of the Grand Canyon while failing to challenge the naming of several Canyon features after Hindu gods. We’ve seen it in their campaign to prohibit the Boy Scouts from using San Diego’s Balboa Park on the grounds that they are a religious organization. We’ve seen it in their attempt to force the city of Las Cruces, NM, to change its name simply because the name is Spanish for “the crosses.” This is madness, and it is the height of religious intolerance. They ACLU has earned well the epithet Anti-Christian Legislation Union.

We really need to have a national dialogue on this whole separation of church and state issue. The Founding Fathers had no intention of separating the two. The first official act of the First Continental Congress was to open in Christian prayer. The Founding Fathers simply wanted to make sure that the church wasn’t running the government, and that and that people were free to worship however they pleased. In fact, they were keenly aware that our system of government would fail if it were ever to be divorced from its religious foundations. I fear we are on a path to do just that.

James Madison:

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments.

John Quincy Adams:

The greatest glory of the American Revolution was this: It connected in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
...

Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the Foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?

I'm just browsing, thanks...

Over the past several years I’ve been following the progress of several alternatives to Internet Explorer. Some very creative people have been working to enhance the browsing experience and I enjoy checking out the latest bells and whistles.

The biggest improvement over IE is the introduction of tabbed browsing, which allows you to open many pages within a single browser window and flip easily between them. This doesn’t sound like much of an improvement, but once I tried it, I wondered why someone hadn’t thought of this long ago. Most of the new generation browsers now offer tabbed browsing, but for some reason Microsoft hasn’t followed suit.

I’ve been very impressed with several of the browsers I’ve tried, but for one feature or another, I always ended up sticking with IE. That changed recently when I began using a browser called Maxthon. Maxthon uses the engine (the “guts”) of IE, so it does everything IE does, but it adds tabbed browsing and some other nice features. (For this reason, you don’t want to uninstall IE, because Maxthon needs it to work.) Think of it as the “next version” of IE.

Shortly after I started using Maxthon, Mozilla released its latest version of Firefox. I’d been impressed with previous versions of Firefox, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. I immediately liked it. It’s faster than IE (and Maxthon) and less vulnerable to viruses and other attacks. It lacked a couple of my favorite features, however, so I continued to use Maxthon.

But the thing about Firefox is that it’s not produced by a company. It’s an “open source” project, meaning that a large group of volunteers is constantly working to improve it. The principle behind Firefox is that not everyone browses the same way or needs the same features. So the basic version is very elegant, not cluttered with a lot of options and features. But it’s also highly expandable. There is a huge (and growing) library of add-ons called extensions which you can download to add specific features.

For example, I added a spell checker and a pop-up dictionary as well as some other handy features. By picking and choosing extensions, you can literally create a browser that does what you want it to the way you want it to. It really is quite amazing. I’ve been so impressed that, as of yesterday, Firefox is my browser of choice.

If you think you’d like an improved browser, I would recommend either Maxthon or Firefox. Both are free, so you have nothing to lose.

If you generally like IE, but would like a few extra options and features, Maxthon would be a good way to go. One big advantage to Maxthon is that it shares your Favorites with IE—if you update your Favorites in one program, they are updated in the other as well. This means if you don’t like Maxthon, you can simply uninstall it and go right back to IE.

If you are looking for a richer, more customizable browser, Firefox is definitely the way to go. Simply download it and import your Bookmarks (Favorites) from IE and you’re up and running. Then, when you’re ready, you can “go shopping” for those extra features you want to try out (extensions are very easy to install and uninstall). Give it a try. I think you’ll be as impressed as I am.

Faking faith...

Kathleen Parker discusses the Democrats' new strategy to highlight their faith and couch their message in religious terms. Her main point is that you can't win people over simply by talking about God and religion a lot. I've been thinking along the same lines, and I expect this new strategy to fall flat on many levels.

In the first place, it's false advertising. You're not going to sell abortion and gay marriage as Christian values. Religion worked for Martin Luther King Jr. because his message matched his medium.

In the second place, it's insincere. People like the President not because he goes around talking about how religious he is—he doesn't; it's the media and those on the left that constantly bring it up. People like Bush because he is comfortable with and sincere in his faith. The Dems are still trying to fake sincerity and few are slick enough to pull it off.

In the third place, it's condescending. The Left continue to see those of faith as simpletons who aren't bright enough to wipe the divine mist out of their eyes. The idea that these backward people will buy into liberal ideas simply because they come wrapped in religious packages will offend more than a few.

Why are we divided?

Walter Williams has an interesting take on why America has become so divided. He says it's because we've turned so many of our decisions over to the government. If the government dictated what type of music everyone had to listen to, we'd be fighting about that too. His solution: reduce the role of government in our lives.

The catch, of course, is that the role of government is precisely one of the things we are divided about. Conservatives traditionally favor more limited government, while liberals support a more active government.

I think Williams is right, and this is something I'd urge moderates to consider. The benefits of small government have always appealed to me, and that theme has been an important one in my evolution toward conservatism.

Don't go there...

Instapundit has a portal to various takes on TennCare, Tennessee's solution to health care. Apparently TennCare is very similar to what John Kerry was proposing, and a step toward where Hillary Clinton wants to take us.

Tennessee's Democratic Governor has announced that they'll have to scrap the program due to high costs. I've read where the nine year old program is currently consuming one-third of the state's budget and is still expanding. No wonder the governor calls it "the dragon that eats everything."

A few points:

1. We dodged a bullet on this issue by not electing John Kerry.

2. The Bush Campaign should have been holding up this disaster during the debates as an example of what Kerry was proposing. American's can't make wise decisions if they don't know the facts. Not bringing this to the nation's attention was a form of negligence.

3. We're not out of danger yet. No matter who the Dems run in 2008--Hillary, Kerry, Edwards, Obama--they will be riding this issue hard. Bush knows that government involvement results in lower quality and higher costs, so his reforms will be directed at tort reform and beefing up health savings accounts. The Dems, because they see government as the answer to everything, will accuse Bush of "doing nothing." They will push a "solution" that promises "free" health care to everyone. (It's a Constitutional "right," you know.) Your job is to remember TennCare and slay the dragon before it starts to feed at the national level.

4. TennCare is an example of why I'm a strong believer in federalism. Tinkering with policies at the national level is very expensive and very risky. By the time we realize we've gone down a wrong path, it's difficult to reverse course. By leaving states alone to find their own solutions, we create 50 smaller, less expensive, and more flexible laboratories. This results in a wide range of ideas that we can compare and contrast. We end up with better solutions, in less time, at less cost.

How cool is this?

They call it a "scramjet," an engine so blindingly fast that it could carry an airplane from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in about 20 minutes -- or even quicker. So fast it could put satellites in space. So fast it could drop a cruise missile on an enemy target, almost like shooting a rifle.

What's in a mandate?

Each time we elect a president, the talk invariably turns to whether or not he has a “mandate” and how necessary it is for him to “reach out” to his opponents. Such talk is understandable. Those in power seek to legitimize their authority so it will be easier to implement their policies. The opposition seeks to hold hostage that legitimacy so they can influence or disrupt the creation of those policies.

But what does it really mean to have a mandate? And what is the President’s duty to reach out to the opposition?

Let’s start by acknowledging that a president is granted a mandate by simple virtue of having been elected. Presumably, he has spent the better part of two years presenting his positions and making the case for the policies he’s promised to pursue. In giving him the electoral thumbs up, the country has not simply elected a president. It has leased a philosophy, and endorsed a set of policies. Clearly we do not elect leaders with the expectation that they will abandon their principles and break their promises.

So every president begins with a mandate. What follows is a rhetorical tug-o-war over the strength of that mandate, and this, like most things political, is far more about perception than reality. So we see the President pointing to his Electoral College and popular vote victories, and to the record-setting number of votes he received. We see his opponents counter by pointing out that nearly half the country voted against him. We see Bushies answer by noting the historic increases in the Senate and the House. And so it goes, with each side fighting to gain political traction.

But in the end, the nature of a president’s mandate is determined by sheer strength of personality and imposition of will. All analysis and political spin not withstanding, a president holds a mandate simply because he has the wherewithal to command it. Thus we see presidents whose victories were narrow and controversial--Kennedy and George W. Bush in his first term, for example—able to claim and act with far greater authority than might have been expected.

President Bush has spoken of “political capital.” It’s an apt metaphor, and not a surprising one coming from an MBA from Harvard Business School. I recently saw an MSNBC special on the Bush presidencies and noted that Bush the Younger spoke in similar terms after his father lost his bid for a second term. He said that his father lost because he failed to spend the political capital he’d earned during the Gulf War on domestic issues afterward. Bush the Younger learned a valuable lesson there: that political capital has a shelf life, and that only by investing it does one create more.

And so Bush speaks of having earned political capital in this election, and of his intention to spend it on the policies he campaigned on. But what of the calls for him to “reach out” to the opposition? Given the closeness of the election, isn’t it incumbent upon him to acknowledge the massive counter current in the country? Isn’t it his duty to represent all Americans and not only those that voted for him? Isn’t the opposition fair and right in demanding that Bush moderate his policies and “come to the center?”

These are difficult issues, but my sense is that the answer is largely no. As mentioned earlier, we elect a political philosophy as much as we elect a candidate. The American people act in full expectation that, if elected, a candidate will enact the policies they voted for, not some watered down version of those policies based on the margin of victory.

Consider also that political compromises tend to do more harm than good. We see this in the practice of vote-swapping in Congress, where representatives agree to vote for each others’ pet projects in order to get their own passed. This results not in progress, but rather in the passing of two bills which should have been defeated. It is the nature of political solutions to be mutually exclusive. Cross pollination typically fails to advance either cause, and often results in policies that hinder real progress.

For these reasons, I believe a president’s duty is to aggressively pursue those policies which he championed as a candidate. To do otherwise would not only betray the trust of those who elected him, but put him in contention with his own beliefs and principles. Likewise, it is the duty of his opposition to pursue the policies on which they were elected. Indeed the dynamic tension between these two opposing forces is a hallmark of our system of government.

So I would say that, to the extent there is a duty to “reach out,” it is not in the area of policy, but rather on the matter of tone. Elected officials have a responsibility to remain civil and respectful as they ardently pursue their agendas. In this sense, Democrats are quite right to call for unity and cooperation.

The problem with such calls is that they are being directed at the President when they should be more properly be aimed at fellow Democrats. Of all the charges that have been leveled at Bush, one of the most disingenuous is that he has been divisive. Throughout Bush’s first term, prominent Democrats have assailed him with vile attacks. He has been called an incompetent, an idiot, a liar, a traitor, a fascist, a Nazi, and a deserter. Not once has he responded in kind, nor has he complained. To the contrary, he has responded by continuing to do his job with dignity and decorum. Indeed, it is Democrats who have been “dividers, not uniters.”

With a second term about to get underway, it remains to be seen whether Democrats will take their recent loss as a wake-up call or whether they will continue to call for unity while taking every opportunity to divide. If they chose the latter, I suspect they will find that voters continue to reject them. I also suspect that they will see President Bush’s mandate grow beyond all expectations.

Debunking Affirmative Action...

Linda Chavez summarizes a new study that pulls the rug out from under Affirmative Action (AA) policies.

Conservatives have argued for years that AA does far more harm than good. It certainly is unfair to qualified Whites and Asians, who are excluded from programs to make room for targeted minorities. The fact that Asians are treated differently from other minorities (and that women are treated as a minority group) is an obvious clue that something is amiss with this practice.

But AA is even far more damaging to those it is supposed to help. When you place an unqualified applicant into a highly competitive environment, one of two things is likely: he will drop out, or he will fail. This study, of law students at the University of Michigan, confirms that this is precisely what happens.

The study is notable for several reasons. First, its credibility is bolstered by virtue of having been conducted by a liberal law professor, a life long Democrat and supporter of AA. Second, rather than simply looking at dropout and graduation rates, the study tracks student progress throughout the program. It shows that unqualified students fall behind from the onset and continue to fade over time. Finally, the professor concludes that far more minority students would graduate and pass the bar exam if we would simply eliminate AA altogether.

Sadly, this study, and others like it, will likely be ignored by those who champion AA. The Supreme Court has compounded the problem by basing recent rulings on the junk science being forwarded by AA advocates. For some reason, those on the Left are far less likely to be guided by commonsense or influenced by contrary evidence than those on the Right. We saw this with Bilingual Education, where many on the Left continue to promote it long after it has been discredited. Look for Affirmative Action to follow the same pattern.

[via Betsy]

An ominous Specter...

Thomas Sowell has an important column on judicial nominations, and explains why it's the Senate, not the judiciary, that is out of control.

The issue is not whether judges will impose liberal policies or conservative policies. The larger issue is whether they will destroy the voting public's control over their own destiny. Too many generations of Americans have fought and died to preserve the right of democratic self-governance to let judges continue to erode that right and become judicial dictators.

...

Judges in general, and Justices of the Supreme court in particular, are supposed to be impartial and independent in judging the specific merits of whatever cases arise -- not predictable. What does the separation of powers mean if one branch of government can prescribe in advance what members of another branch of government must do on specific issues?

Global gun control...

Those on the Left favor gun control. They justify the disarming of those who have not committed gun violence in order to prevent them from committing gun violence in the future.

Why does this same reasoning not apply to Iraq?

The party without values...

Dennis Prager explains why the Democratic Party is considered the party without values.

More of the same...

Throughout the campaign, Democrats kept chanting that re-electing Bush would bring us "more of the same." Well, it seems they were right--at least as far as the Left is concerned. Not content with four years of spewing hate and lies at Bush, it seems the target has been expanded to include anyone who voted for Bush. We are all rednecks, bigots, morons, idiots, homophobes, and worse.

You'd think that losing would have taught the lesson that hate doesn't work, but instead the Left has concluded that they simply didn't hate hard enough.

Even cowboy supporters get the blues...

So what's got me feeling so blue? Surprisingly, it's the election results.

If you've been following along, you know that I am a strong Bush supporter. You know that even though I didn't think much of Bush in 2000, I've been hugely impressed with him since. You also know that I consider Kerry a bad presidential candidate—maybe the worst to run in my lifetime. The choice for president has never been so clear to me, the differences so stark.

But the polls have been close over the last couple of months, so I spent the week leading up to the election preparing myself for a Kerry win. I felt pretty confident of a Bush victory—in fact I predicted one, and not out of hope either. Still, I also knew how disappointed I would be if he lost, so I started steeling myself against the prospect of President Kerry.

I did a pretty fair job of it too. I really think that, had Kerry won, I would have been okay. It would have stung, but I would have accepted it. I would have come to think of him as "my president." I would have rallied behind him and hoped he performed quite a lot better than I had reason to believe he would.

What I didn't prepare for, what I had no inkling of, was the raw sock in the gut I felt following a Bush victory. OOF!

I'm very relieved that Bush won. I'm equally relieved that Kerry lost. But I just can't feel any elation over the result, because for the life of me I can't fathom why this election was anywhere near close. I'm not interested in re-living the entire campaign here. That's not the point. It's just that the choices here were so damn clear to me.

And the thing is, it's not like I'm some partisan hack. I honestly can't remember the last time I even voted. No candidate has impressed me since Reagan, and so I've just stayed out of it all these years. But this year was different. Even to someone as apolitical as me, the issues were crystal clear, the contrast between the candidates enormous. I did my homework this time. I studied the issues. I took a good look at the candidates. And the more I looked, the more convinced I became that the only responsible vote was for Bush. It just wasn't close.

So I’m not dealing well with the thought that nearly half the country didn’t get it—and further, that most of them are thinking I’m the one who doesn’t get it. Many of them are out there calling me and other Bush supporters rednecks, idiots, religious nuts, and worse. I know some of these people, and I have to say that they are not clear thinking, reasonable people. Many of them are downright nasty. So despite the comfort of knowing that “my guy” won, it scares me to realize that things easily could have turned out differently. It scares the hell out of me, in fact.

And it depresses me.

The abyss...

I’ve been in a deep, dark funk.

This isn’t all that out of the ordinary for me. I’ve been dealing with extreme depression for many years. It comes; it goes. I try to hold on tight and ride out the storm. Sometimes it clobbers me and I just shut down completely. When that happens about all I can do is sleep. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing for the past four or five days.

If you’ve ever been depressed—not sad, but clinically depressed—you know that one of the most frustrating aspects of it is that you can’t answer all those obvious questions: What’s wrong? Why are you depressed? What can I do to help?

And of course everyone asks those questions. I get them all the time. And it’s okay, really. The people who ask them care about me and are trying to help. Besides, they really are good questions. I often spend days, even weeks, asking them myself. I just rarely come up with any answers.

But I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve learned that sometimes there are answers, or something that passes for them anyway. Sometimes I sense a dissonance within the dissonance—so faint that I used to miss it. It hides like a shadow in the dark and it whispers to me. And if I listen hard enough, it will tell me what's bothering me. Not why I'm depressed, exactly—but maybe what brought the depression to the surface and fed it.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several days, when I haven’t been sleeping. Listening.

An appeal to Democrats...

The Backseat Philosopher makes a thoughtful appeal to fellow Democrats, arguing that they are far less understanding than the deem themselves to be. He cautions against concluding that Democrats must now be tougher and meaner, and suggests instead that they need to begin listening to the arguments conservatives are making and responding to them substantively.

He goes on to list many conservative arguments which Democrats typically dismiss with slogans and sound bites, but which need to be engaged and responded to respectfully and responsibly. I think he’s right, and I think both parties could benefit from this.

If I could add one thing to Andrew’s observations it would be this: Democrats could do themselves a world of good by learning how to criticize their own.

The obvious example is Michael Moore. “Fahrenheit 911” is a work of total propaganda, a deliberate effort to mislead and distort the truth through selective editing and emotional argument. The proper response from Democrats would have been to completely distance themselves from this film and disassociate themselves from Mr. Moore.

Instead, Democrats went out of their way to embrace Moore. They recessed the Senate to allow Senators to attend a viewing of the film, after which they praised it as fair and accurate. John Kerry and his campaign staff adopted Moore’s falsities as part of their own talking points. Moore was given a seat of honor between ex-presidents at the Democratic National Convention.

There simply has to be a higher standard for membership into the Democratic cause than hate and anger toward the opposition. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend; in fact, sometimes he is your worst enemy. Until Democrats, particularly those in leadership roles, learn this, it will be very difficult for them to capture the hearts, minds, and votes of the American people.

[via Instapundit]

A narrow escape...

Thomas Sowell offers observations about what might have been and what needs to change. Money quote:

Some are saying that the Democrats are going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what they are doing wrong, if they want to regain the support of the public. The time is long overdue for the mainstream media to do the same.

Read the whole thing.

The morning after...

• Yawnaroonie!



• I stayed up until about 5AM, until it was certain there would be neither a late election night concession nor a declaration of victory. It was also certain by that time that John Kerry had about as much chance of getting elected as I did.



• I just heard on MSNBC that Kerry has made The Phone Call. I’m very relieved that he has decided to opt for a “more sensitive” resolution. I expect he’ll be praised for this “gracious” act, but it’s not particularly such. What choice does he have? To prolong this in the face of clear defeat would be politically stupid and mean spirited. That said, I wasn’t at all sure he would do the right thing. And that said, it is good for our collective souls that he be called gracious.



• With the specter of challenges and provisional votes looming over the Ohio returns late last night, it was amusing to watch the different networks squirming to devise ways to avoid declaring a winner. None of them wanted to be on record as having called the winner only to have their call overturned in a week or two.
  
  Fox called Ohio surprisingly quickly after being hyper-cautious for most of the night. I thought they’d never call Florida. Then, after seeming eager to get Bush to the threshold and wrap things up, they sat on their hands, refusing to call Nevada, which was a clear Bush win.
  
  MSNBC took a similar tact, hanging back on Ohio until Fox took the leap, then quickly following suit. They continued to emulate Fox, failing to call another state.
  
  CNN chose a different path, electing to call just about every state except Ohio, even when it was beyond clear that Ohio was settled and not even provisional ballots could save Kerry’s hopes.
  
  I don’t blame the networks for playing these games at the end. They blew it big time in 2000. There was simply no way they could take a chance on declaring a winner to have it overturned later. I think CNN’s approach made the most sense; any extra-electoral efforts would clearly involve Ohio, so it made sense to leave it for last. I do think all three networks should have come clean about what they were doing, however. They should have explained that, although the raw data indicated a comfortable Bush victory, it wasn’t yet official and that the responsible thing to do is to wait to hear from the Kerry camp before making a final pronouncement. I think viewers would have understood this, and respected it.



• It wasn’t the victory I expected or hoped for. I predicted that Bush would win by five percent or more. I expected him to win 38 states and optimistically predicted he would win 40. I’m happy Bush won; I am confident that his re-election is best for the country and the world. But I’m dismayed that so many people share a view of the world that I find so naïve and misguided.



• That said, I am heartened that the victory was a comfortable one—with an absolute majority, a 4 million vote margin, and the President’s party gaining ground in both the House and the Senate. I say this not because I am a Republican; I have reservations over the prospect of one party holding sway over all three branches of government. I believe in conservative principles, but it remains to be seen whether this party will wield their power responsibly.
  
  I am cheered by the comfortable victory because the nation needs it. We can scarcely afford another four years of widespread pettiness and challenges to legitimacy. There will be plenty of that, to be sure, but perhaps now the more moderate voices of the liberal fold will be heard once again. More importantly, I strongly believe in the vision of this President. I’m hopeful that the ratification not only of the man but of the party as a whole will impart a tailwind to his efforts in facing the difficult challenges ahead.

Prager on what Republicans believe...

There is an anti-Republican document circulating on the Internet titled “Things You Have to Believe to Vote Republican.” It consists of poor logic, misrepresentations, and outright lies. Its statements are so specious that they are largely self-refuting. Though the document itself offers little substance, Dennis Prager’s cogent refutations make for good reading.

Pivotal element of the presidential race...

What was the pivotal element in the presidential race? Cassandra gives a summary of bloggers’ opinions. She points to several key elements, but concludes:

If I had to name one factor overall, it would be [media bias]. In any campaign, information flow is crucial. The mainstream media have a virtual stranglehold on information in this country. When I talk with friends and family, I am constantly appalled at the lack of knowledge about what is going on. A small sample of things most voters do not know (because the media refuse to report them):

1. Contrary to what he tells voters, John Kerry opposed the war in Vietnam before he went. He applied for a draft deferment, was denied, served only 4 months of a 12 month combat tour, wrote in his own journal that he wasn't under enemy fire when he received his first Purple Heart (thus making it invalid under Navy regs), two other men corroborate that there was no enemy fire that day, he submitted himself for that award, was denied by his CO, then resubmitted it elsewhere (non-military people don't realize how irregular this is - you don't go outside your own command to get awards).

2. Democrats introduced the draft bill in Congress, where it was defeated 402-2. It has always been vehemently opposed by the White House and the DOD. A draft is actually more likely under Kerry than Bush, as Kerry has vowed to increase the size of the armed forces dramatically.

3. The "million blacks disenfranchised in the 2000 election" lie Kerry keeps telling is baseless. The Democrat led- and run- Civil Rights Commission investigation into the 2000 election found no evidence to support this allegation. An important question for Kerry supporters: if 1 million blacks were truly disenfranchised then, why didn't Kerry sponsor legislation to fix this gross injustice? Such a horrible, horrible travesty should have produced some response from the Democratic congress... should it not? Where was the leadership on this one, Senator?

4. George Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam while he was in the National Guard. And many of his National Guard wingmen have come forward to vouch that he did complete his drill as required. The media have simply refused to report it.

5. John Kerry, after calling for George Bush to release his military records (and promising to release his own on Meet the Press) refuses to do the same. Almost 100 pages of military records remain unreleased to this day. And they relate to disputed parts of his record, which he consistently refuses to address. Why does he feel he shouldn't have to answer the very same questions he posed to his opponent? Is he above the same standard? Apparently he feels so.

I’d have to agree. I’ve spent hundreds of hours educating myself on the issues in this election. I’ve been amazed at how biased the media coverage is, not only in how it presents the news, but in which news it presents. The public, not entirely through fault of its own, is both misinformed and uninformed. In addition, most of the “pundits” on TV are forwarding bad information, whether out of malice or ignorance I can only guess. Not a night goes by where I don’t hear some major misrepresentation of important events being passed along as “fact.” My efforts to inform myself this year have totally destroyed any faith I had in the media, particularly the TV media, whose broadcasts I’ve come to regard as mediamercials.

Undoubtedly the biggest injustice perpetuated upon the public is the “fact” that the war in Iraq is a “mess.” The truth is that by any reasonable historic measure, our efforts there have been a tremendous success. We have done in 18 months what the critics said was impossible, and with fewer casualties than even the optimists predicted.

Media continues to campaign for Kerry...

The integrity of the main stream media has taken some pretty big hits in this election year. Some were subtle, like the Time Magazine cover chicanery. And of course some of it was blatant. We had Rathergate, where CBS used forged documents to discredit the President, then continued to stand by them long after they had been exposed. We had Boogate, where the Associated Press falsely reported that Bush supporters had booed the news that Bill Clinton had been hospitalized. Most recently, we had NYTrogate, where the NYT ran, and continued to run, a story blaming Bush for the loss of munitions in Iraq when the facts were far from clear—and where CBS intended to break the discredited story less than 48 hours before election day.

Now we have some slight of hand from MSNBC, where Tom Brokaw has edited an interview with John Kerry to cover up a damaging remark.

In the original interview,

Brokaw said: "Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do."

Kerry said: "That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where they are getting that from."

This is very significant, because Kerry has been claiming for months that his entire military record has been released. (I wrote about this and other things Kerry continues to hide here.) This is a direct admission that Kerry and his staff have been lying.

But when Brokaw reran the interview on a later broadcast, Kerry’s response had been edited:

Kerry said: "That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it."

The rest of the sentence is suddenly GONE, nowhere to be heard. Out. Of. Here.

Additionally, the MSNBC Dateline home page has a link to the Kerry interview, but it links to the edited version--minus the incriminating remark—not the original transcript. Why would Dateline edit Kerry’s quote mid-sentence, then promote the edited version of the transcript, with no indication that it had been edited, if not to cover for Kerry?

Pajama Journal has screen captures of both the original and edited transcripts in case they are altered or removed.

[via QandO]

Thoughts on Election Eve...

As I sit here in the waning hours of Election Eve, I find myself with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m just tired. Tired of the commercials. Tired of the phone calls. Tired of the junk mail. Tired of the pundits. Tired of the mud slinging. Tired of the yard signs. Tired of the bumper stickers. Total. Election. Fatigue.

On the other hand, I’m excited. The election is finally upon us. I’m more informed on the issues and the candidates than I have ever been. I’m proud of that. And I’m eager to learn the results of this plodding national pageant. I’ve been a good boy and I’m ready to unwrap my present.

Then there is the thought that tomorrow might not be the end. That it will go on and on, the way it did in 2000. My sense is that, as a country, we’re just not up to that. I know I’m not up to that. So I will add my prayer to what I suspect are millions of others tonight: Let it be over. Let the winner win by a lot. Oh, please, let it be over.

I made up my mind months ago, of course. For the first time in decades the choice between the two candidates is crystal clear to me. In truth, I haven’t voted for president in many years because I haven’t been impressed with a candidate since Ronald Reagan. But I’m impressed with George W. Bush.

No, this isn’t one of those “hold your nose” votes. I’m not compromising or voting for the lesser of two evils. I see a good man, with a clear vision, and the resolve to see it through. I see a man who has accomplished in 18 months what his critics said couldn’t be done. Like Reagan, I believe history will judge this president a great one. Bush’s legacy, of initiating the transformation of the Middle East, and by extension the world, will have profound positive effects for generations.

At the other end of the equation, we have John Kerry. I am not engaging in hyperbole or partisan hackery in the least when I say that he is about the worst candidate I can imagine, particularly at this time in our history. His global-community vision may have some relevance at some point in the far distant future. His multi-cultural perspective may have merit in some alternate reality. But in the here and now, John Kerry is a blind man. He fails to see that American values are far superior to those of Europe and the Middle East. He fails to appreciate that America is that “city on a hill” that Reagan spoke of, and that it is no exaggeration to say that America is the single most powerful force for good in all of human history.

We live in a dangerous neighborhood. “Friendly” nations seek to weaken us. Tyrants wish to conquer us. Extremists vow to exterminate us. We are at war, and shall remain at war for generations to come. We cannot make the mistake, as we have in the past, of assuming that others share our values and good intentions, that conciliation will be met in like kind, or that the current conflict is an aberration. Nazism wasn’t an aberration. Communism wasn’t an aberration. Islamo-fascism isn’t an aberration. There are, and will remain, bad people in the world. Their challenges to our values, to our very existence, are the norm. Long after the conflict in Iraq is won, we will be dealing with the likes of Iran, Korea, China, Venezuela, and unforeseen others.

John Kerry doesn’t understand this. He plans to demonstrate our good intentions by letting down our guard. He promises to scrap our missile defense program, our best defense against modern warfare. He vows to end our “bunker buster” program, our best defense against those who develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons under ground. He believes that making ourselves weak will reassure other nations and cause them to disarm as well. This is utter foolishness. Should we disarm our police officers so that criminals might be persuaded to put down their guns?

History has shown us that others do not hold our values. They are not interested in our good intentions. They wish to harm us, to destroy us. American weakness is only reassuring to them in the sense that it is an invitation to attack.

We don’t know where the next threat will come from, or what form it will take. What is a terror threat today could quickly become a conventional threat tomorrow. We can’t afford to open up holes in our defenses. Our enemies are searching for those holes, and will adapt their strategies to take advantage of them. John Kerry has promised to open those holes, and doing so will put our nation at risk.

And so, when I consider all this, I’m quite distressed that, apparently, half our nation simply “doesn’t get it.” It may seem admirable to oppose war, and to suggest that it be used only as a “last resort.” But I submit that wars fought as a last resort are wars fought much too late. Such wars are longer. Such wars are more costly. Such wars are more bloody. The time to disarm a foe is before he’s loaded his gun, not after he has fired it. I fear our nation has yet to learn this lesson.

Let me conclude by saying something that, sadly, many are embarrassed to say: America is the greatest nation on the planet. No nation has done more good or made greater sacrifices for the unselfish betterment of others. Our character, our values, and our intentions are uniquely noble in all of history.

And so I embrace George Bush, who understands this, and who unabashedly promotes American virtues and values, not bending to other nations, but encouraging them to stand beside us in what is right. And so I utterly reject those who, like John Kerry, would have us yield to and adapt our values to those of the “global community.”

Put simply, it is infinitely better that the world become more like America than that America become more like the world. Now you can say that it’s arrogant and self-righteous to say such a thing, and maybe you’d be right. But you’d be wrong if you said it isn’t true.