Category: Politics – Politicians – Government in Action

The Election Comes Down to One Thing

The post-convention bounce for Bush — which began a week before the convention — leaves me with the following big questions:

1. Are there enough truly undecided voters left to make a difference in the outcome of the election?

Probably not, especially if the Republican base is energized to turn out in large numbers. And the base seems to be energized.

2. What — if anything — would change the minds of enough voters to swing the election to Kerry? Is there a scandal in the wings? Might Bush stumble so badly in the debates that his performance turns off borderline supporters? And how would voters react to a successful terrorist attack in the U.S. or against U.S. interests overseas?

Scandal-mongering at this point is more likely to backfire on Kerry than to hurt Bush.

Bush seems unlikely to stumble badly in the debates, if stumbles at all. He still misspeaks, but not as often as he used to. And his inarticulate directness is more impressive than Kerry’s grandiloquent circumlocutory style.

The real joker in the deck is terrorism. A thwarted attack would be a big plus for Bush. A successful attack might cut either way.

Absent a terrorist attack, the election is now Bush’s to lose.

Hellfire and Brimstone from Zell Miller

From Zell Miller’s speech to the Republican National Convention, quoted without comment:

In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.

Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America “all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.”

In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.

And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man.

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between “here lies a president” or “here lies one who contributed to saving freedom”, he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today?

Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in- Chief.

What has happened to the party I’ve spent my life working in?

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism – it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.

They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war.

They were wrong.

And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.

Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts….

This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?

U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

John Kerry, who says he doesn’t like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.

That’s the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.

Free for how long?

For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.

As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.

George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.

John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war. George Bush believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.

No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.

George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.

From John Kerry, they get a “yes-no-maybe” bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends….

This election will change forever the course of history, and that’s not any history. It’s our family’s history.

The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we’ve got some hard choosing to do.

Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him….

Don’t Back Down, Governor

I’m not referring to Governator Schwarzenegger, who needs no counsel on that score. I’m referring to Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland, a Republican (oddly enough for Maryland), whose Lieutenant Governor, Michael Steele, happens to be black. Ehrlich, in the course of defending Steele against the usual “Uncle Tom” charges from black Democrats, pulled a reverse and played the race card against Democrats. Here’s some of the story from The Washington Post:

High-ranking Maryland Democrats yesterday denounced Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s remarks this week that the Democratic Party is “racist” in the way it appeals to black voters.

Ehrlich told members of the Maryland delegation to the Republican National Convention in New York on Monday that the “message” conveyed at last month’s Democratic National Convention is that “if you have black skin, you have to believe one way. You have to. Or you’re a traitor to your race.”

Ehrlich’s statement was intended as a defense of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R), an African American who addressed delegates last night.

“That’s the message we’ve seen from a number of conventions,” Ehrlich said. “That’s why it’s important that this lieutenant governor speak to this country. That’s racist.”…

Precisely. The presumption that the only “good” black is a Democrat black is blatantly racist. It implies that blacks can’t think for themselves. And it’s sad that some blacks — partisan Democrats all — live up to the stereotype of blacks as “Uncle Toms” to the Democrat Party’s condescending white, liberal “massahs”.

Here’s a Bait-and-Switch Opportunity

Joanna Glasner at Wired News reports on this year’s vote-swapping schemes:

Supporters of third-party candidates, be they save-the-spotted-owl Greens or trim-the-government Libertarians, are finding themselves in a similar quandary this presidential election year.

They dislike both George W. Bush and John Kerry, but not equally. The dilemma: By casting a vote for a third candidate, they fear they’ll inadvertently boost the campaign of the major-party candidate they despise most.

Help is on the way. While their methodologies may not be legal or even tested, a number of websites are cropping up to allow backers of presidential wannabes from alternate parties to vote their conscience without draining support for a preferred major-party candidate in a crucial swing state.

So-called vote-swapping, or vote-pairing, efforts under way for November’s election largely mimic those that cropped up in 2000 to minimize the impact of Ralph Nader on Democrat Al Gore’s chances of victory. Through such websites as like VoteSwap2000, Votexchange2000 and Nadertrader.org, Nader supporters in swing states agreed to vote for Gore if a voter in a solidly pro-Bush or pro-Gore state agreed to vote for Nader in their stead.

This year, with fewer votes expected to go to Nader, some want to make it more comfortable for voters of all stripes to withhold support for the Democratic and Republican candidates….

Who’s more gullible, Nader supporters, Bush supporters or Kerry supporters? Let’s put it to the test. I live in Texas, a sure win for Bush. I’ll honor the request of the first person who asks me to vote for Nader, under two conditions: (1) That person must live in a state in which the Bush-Kerry race is very tight. (2) That person must agree to vote for Bush. Come on, let’s hear from you gullible Naderites out there.

The Doctor Diagnoses Another Case of Simplistic Socialism

Dr. Henry I. Miller is a physician and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994. And he understands economics. It’s too bad that most other medical insiders aren’t as savvy as Dr. Miller. Writing today at Tech Central Station he delivers a deadly diagnosis of Dr. Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About, a compendium of simplistic, socialistic nostrums. Miller’s bottom line about Angell’s book:

Dr. Angell’s proposals to, in effect, nationalize the American system of drug development reflect almost inconceivable naiveté. They are reminiscent of economist Milton Friedman’s example of a flawed syllogism: Capitalism has worked everywhere it has been tried; socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried; therefore, let us try socialism.

A spirited diatribe can educate and entertain, but in The Truth About the Drug Companies, Dr. Angell does neither. Her diagnoses are wrong, and her remedies — which are reminiscent of the government controls and centralized planning of the old Soviet Union — are far worse than the disease.

Don’t bother to read the book, but do take the time to read Dr. Miller’s article, and anything else by him that pops up on the web.

How’s That for Credibility?

John O’Neill, a key member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, recently gave a revealing interview to the L.A. Times. A key paragraph says this about O’Neill:

He portrayed himself as a political independent — a Reagan Democrat, he said, if he had to have a label. Although he typically supports GOP candidates, he says, he voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000. And although the “Swifties” have agreed to focus on Kerry and not to discuss President Bush, O’Neill made it clear he is no great fan of the president, whom he has described to several friends as an “empty suit.”

O’Neill may not represent all the SwiftVets — or even a small fraction of them — on that score, but it makes his anti-Kerry passion all the more convincing. The Vets, as a group, seem genuinely motivated by their justifiable hatred of Kerry’s perfidy and lack of moral character. Karl Rove couldn’t have invented them if he’d tried.

(Thanks to One Hand Clapping and Michelle Malkin for the tip.)

Lame Protest of the Day

Here’s a member of “Billionaires for Bush” mocking Republicans for their purported monopoly on rich adherents:

Of course, there are some real billionaires for Kerry (including George Soros, Ted Turner, and Warren Buffet), and a bunch of Hollywood fat-cats who aren’t living on food stamps. In fact, most of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation are Democrat bastions. It just proves, once again, that you don’t need a lot of sense to make a lot of cents.

The Crystal Ball Is Cloudy

The usually sensible Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, publishes his prognostications on a website called Sabato’s Crystal Ball. This morning he talks about the likelihood of a Bush “bounce” from the GOP convention. He says, in part:

At best, President Bush faces an extremely difficult battle for reelection. First, as we have noted many times, no president but Truman who has done this poorly in the public polls of an election year has in the end been reelected. Could Bush be the second Truman? It’s possible, just as it is very possible he’s the second Ford (1976), Carter (1980), or Bush I (1992).

In addition, as the NBC/Wall Street Journal’s latest survey–and many others–strongly imply, the remaining undecideds are heavily female and anti-Bush, at least at this point….

The remaining undecideds are heavily (care to rephrase that?) female and anti-Bush? If that’s true, then Bush does have a chance. All the anti-Bush females I know have already made up their minds to vote for Kerry. Actually they had already made up their minds to vote for Bush’s opponent on January 20, 2001.

It’s Make-or-Break for Democrats

Economist.com characterizes the GOP’s situation as “make or break”:

Make or break in Manhattan

Aug 27th 2004

From The Economist Global Agenda

The “Grand Old Party” will make its case for re-electing George Bush at a convention in New York next week. The tone will be inclusive, but Mr Bush’s proposals for a second term could look like a continuation of his polarising first four years….

So, it’s “make or break”? I guess the vaunted Economist can’t afford to subscribe to polls or doesn’t know how to call them up on the web.

As for those “polarising first four years” (I love those English spellings): Do you mean the four years that began with honked-off Democrats crying about the election that Gore almost stole? Democrats only got more honked-off as Bush finessed them on taxes, the war in Iraq, and (most recently) campaign-finance reform. If this be polarization, let’s have four more years of it.

The Republican Advantage in Presidential Elections

Republican presidential candidates must work harder for their electoral votes than their Democrat opponents, yet they have a statistically significant advantage over those same opponents. What do I mean by “work harder”, what is the statistically significant advantage, and what are its implications for future elections?

Working Harder — A Result of Long-Term Political Realignment

From the election of 1880 — the first post-Reconstruction election — through the election of 1928, the percentage of electoral votes cast for the Republican candidate was usually the same as, or greater than, the percentage of States won by the Republican candidate. That relationship reflected the tendency of Republicans to win the more-populous States of the Northeast and Upper Midwest, whereas Democrats could only count on the less-populous States of the South.

After the aberrant election years of 1932-1948 (spanning the Great Depression, World War II, and the Dixiecrats), the relationship shifted, and the realignment of party allegiances began. Eisenhower made inroads into the “Solid South” in 1952, and greater inroads in 1956, while holding onto traditional Republican States. Then, as the Northeast and Upper Midwest began increasingly to vote for Democrats, the South began increasingly to vote for Republicans. This realignment was complete by the election of 1980, when the Democrat (Carter) won only one Southern State — his home State of Georgia.

Although the population of the Southern States has grown faster than the population of the States in the Upper Midwest and Northeast, the net result of realignment, thus far, has been to the disadvantage of Republican candidates. That is, since realignment Republicans must win a higher percentage of States than they did before realignment in order to win a given number of electoral votes. That relationship will change, of course, as realignment persists and the South continues to outstrip the North in population growth. But it holds for now, even in the aftermath of the 2000 census.

The Statistical Advantage

Republican presidential candidates, in spite of their geographic disadvantage, have held a significant statistical advantage over Democrats since the 1950s. Perhaps it began with Eisenhower, survived the Goldwater debacle and Nixon’s disgrace, was renewed by Reagan, and wasn’t diminished by Clinton’s ephemeral and largely partisan appeal. Whatever the explanation, the share of Republican presidential candidates has been out of proportion to their share of the popular vote, which means that they have tended to do better than Democrats in populous swing states.

The effect of this phenomenon is shown by a statistical analysis of the percentage of electoral vote going to the winner of elections from 1956 through 2000. The best regression equation has only two significant explanatory variables: percentage of two-party popular vote and Republican Party affiliation.

Implications

If Republicans can hold onto their solid base of States in the South, Southwest, the Plains, and the Rocky Mountains — and if they do not destroy the trust in presidential Republicanism that seems to be the legacy of Eisenhower and Reagan — they can win the White House more often than not for decades to come. That’s not a guarantee, because those are big “ifs”.

Election Projections Explained

REVISED, 09/21/04

In Method 1, I assign all of a State’s electoral votes to the expected winner in that State, according to TradeSports.com. A price of greater than 50 indicates a Bush win; a price of less than 50 indicates a Kerry win. (A winning bet of $50 on Bush at a price of 50 returns $100, for a $50 profit; a winning bet of $60 on Bush at a price of 60 also returns $100, for a $40 profit; a losing bet on Bush at a price of 60 pays off those who bet on Kerry; and so on.) If the price is exactly $50, I record the electoral votes as a tossup and don’t allocate them to either candidate.

In Method 2, I allocate all of a State’s electoral votes to Bush if the TradeSports.com price is 55 or greater, and all of a State’s electoral votes to Kerry if the Tradesports.com price is 45 or less. For prices between 45 and 55, I allocate a State’s electoral votes according to Method 2.

Method 3 translates the expected share of two-party popular vote into electoral votes, based on a statistical relationship for presidential elections from 1956 through 2000. I use the current results of the popular vote-share market at Iowa Electronic Markets to estimate the leader’s share of the two-party vote. I use that share in the following regression equation:

Fraction of electoral vote going to the leader in popular votes =

– 9.166 (a constant term)

+ 32.201 x the leader’s fraction of the 2-party popular vote

– 25.742 x the square of the leader’s fraction of the 2-party popular vote

+ 0.067 (if the leader is Republican, otherwise 0).

The r-squared of the equation is 0.948; the standard error of the estimate is 0.047 (that’s 4.7 percent); and the t-stats on the coefficient and three variables are -3.175, 3.083, -2.738, and 2.379, respectively.

In summary, Method 1 follows the winner-take-all rules of electoral voting where, with the unimportant exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, each State casts its votes en bloc. Method 2 gives a “safe” or “fairly safe” State to the likely winner in that State, but for “tight” races (i.e., races where the price is less than 55 but greater than 45) it allocates votes by the expected-value method. Method 3 translates the leader’s expected popular-vote share into expected electoral votes, based on a statistical analysis of the last 12 presidential elections.

Inflaming the Base

This site is trying to pretend it’s for GWB. But it’s so obviously phony that only those who are truly stupid or psychotically anti-Bush could believe it’s a pro-Bush site. In his zeal to ban smear ads (or is he really just engaging in another clever campaign ploy?), Bush shouldn’t attack this site. He should spread the word about it. It will inflame his base to new heights of enthusiasm for his re-election.

This Is Getting out of Hand

I thought Bush’s condemnation of ads by 527 groups was a clever political ploy. After all, the SwiftVets shoe-string operation has hurt Kerry a lot more than Soros-Hollywood liberal backed outfits like MoveOn.org have hurt Bush. But now we read this:

Bush, McCain Discuss Ads by Outside Groups

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – President Bush wants to work with Republican Sen. John McCain to go to court against political ads by “shadowy” outside groups, the White House said Thursday amid growing pressure on the president to denounce attacks on John Kerry’s war record.

“We want to pursue court action,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Mexico. “The president said if the court action doesn’t work, that he would be willing to pursue legislative action with Sen. McCain on that.”

Say it ain’t so, George.

Is Character Really an Issue?

That’s the question asked and answered by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Here’s much of what he has to say (my comments are bracketed and bolded):

It’s accepted wisdom that character is an issue in elections, especially Presidential elections. Let’s examine that assumption.

Sure, if you know with good evidence that a candidate is a lying, thieving, stealing, sliming, philadering, cheating, insane idiot and louse — well, then, yes, character is an issue. [In other words, character can never be an issue with Jarvis. Why did he bother to write the rest of this post?]

But when is any human being really so one-dimensionally flawed (and when — since 1933 — are every one of his backers so hypnotized or stupid or corrupt to allow him to get this far in life)? [Hey, Jeff, people like to be on the winning side. A lot of them don’t care what it takes to win. Take Hillary Clinton, for instance. She put up with a guy who hit eight out of nine on your list, above. I don’t think Bill’s insane, but I think he’s got the rest of the bases covered.]

Now I know what some of you are going to say: Aha! You have a problem with character because Kerry’s character is being attacked and you’re likely to vote for him; how friggin’ convenient for you!…[No, I don’t think that. I follow your blog, and I’d say that you’re more likely to vote for Bush than for Kerry. But I still disagree with you about the character issue.]

I find that I have many problems with character as a campaign issue:

1. Character is not a measure of competence. And what I really want in a President is competence. [To what end? To micromanage the economy? Competence at what? Competence, as a word in itself, is meaningless.] Jimmy Carter had character….[Yeah, the character of a sanctimonious, lip-pursing deacon that he is. I saw that in 1976, that’s why I voted against him.] Bill Clinton ended up with a cracked character [To say the least.] but I say he was a good President….[You may say that; I won’t. Clinton was too busy triangulating, ingratiating himself to domestic interest groups, and trying to create a paper legacy for himself to pay attention to what was going on in the world. Look what it got us: 9/11. Yes, I know that you barely survived it. But you’re not the only one and the fact of your near-death doesn’t give you a monopoly on wisdom.]

2. Character is used mostly as an excuse for good old-fashioned political mudslinging….[True. But not exclusively true, as you admit when you say “mostly.”]

3. Character is the argument that will never end. If you don’t like the candidate, you’ll say he has crappy character. If you like the candidate, you’ll defend his character and say that the other side is just a bunch of character assassins. Wheels spin, mud spurts, and we don’t get anywhere. It’s mean-spirited. It’s unproductive. [Actually, I started out not liking Kerry for entirely different reasons. I knew nothing of his character until he began with the flip-flops. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that Kerry’s character makes him unfit to be a president in whom I would repose confidence. How is that mean-spirited or unproductive.]

4. Character cannot truly be measured until it is tested….[Kerry’s character has been tested, amply, since he declared himself as a presidential candidate last year. He has flipped, he has flopped, he has evaded the truth about himself, and he has been hypocritical in the nth degree about the use of character assassination. How’s that for starters?]

5. Character is a distraction from the issues that really matter, the issues a President can influence that, in turn, affect our lives….[The best thing a president can do is to honor his oath of office and uphold the Constitution. Kerry’s character flaws suggest that he will do neither; he will simply do what is politically expedient (much like Clinton) and, in the process, he will drag the country further down the slope of socialism. And, does he really have what it takes to deal with terrorism, or will he be too politically correct and hung up on multilateralism. Based on his character, I fear the latter.]

6. Character is a proxy for morality and morality is a proxy for religion and religion mixed with government always scares me. [It ain’t necessarily so. See my preceding comment.]

None of this is to say that we will not or should not vote on character. [Well, then, why did you bother to write this post?] At the end of the day, unless a candidate has a stand or stands we simply abhor, each of us will inevitably end up judging whether to vote for candidates based on whether we trust or admire or like them. That’s as it should be.

But when we start arguing over such intangible and personal criteria — when we start yelling at other people that they should or should not trust or admire or like someone the way we do — then the argument reaches often absurd and usually useless depths. [Who’s to say what’s relevant or irrelevant in politics? You? McCain and Feingold and the Supreme Court? Where do you come off trying to tell us what’s important and what’s not important? Sure, some of the stuff people are yelling about is absurd. Sure, there’s lots of scurrilous crap floating around in the blogosphere. So what? That’s politics in the U.S. as it has been practiced since the election of 1800. Worry about something that really matters — like John Kerry’s character.]

The Only Vote That Counts

As of the moment, if you believe polls, Kerry will collect more popular votes than Bush, even in a three-way race with Nader. But it’s close, and the election is more than two months away.

Well, suppose Kerry does “win” the popular vote, at the national level. So what? Why should anyone pay attention to that vote? The only vote that matters is the electoral vote.

Repeat after me…

Why Kerry’s War Record Means So Much to Democrats

Democrats are mostly against all wars and have been since the venture in Vietnam went sour (here in America, not there in Vietnam). Democrats flocked to Kerry when it seemed that his war record — coupled with his sort-of, sometimes opposition to the war in Iraq — would legitimate their knee-jerk antiwar stance.

When you live by a candidate’s war record, you die by the candidate’s war record. Kerry’s candidacy is beginning to die the death of a thousand swift cuts.

McGovern(ment) to Earth

George McGovernment,* speaking from somewhere in space, has transmitted these thoughts to breathlessly waiting Earthlings:

“Liberals are lambasted,” he said. “Some people don’t even want to say the word.”

He said conservatism and liberalism have always had their place in U.S. history and both should continue to be at the cornerstone of American politics.

It’s true that “liberals” don’t even want to say the word; they’ve switched to “progressives”, for all the good it will do them.

So conservatism is okay? What kind of “progressive” are you, McGovernment? But what about libertarianism? Probably never heard of it.
__________
* One of my children — who have always been wise beyond their years — gave McGovern this more appropriate surname sometime in the 1970s.

Kerry and Vietnam

He was for it before he was against it before he was for it.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

Let them slug it out with Kerry and his minions. The truth, to the extent it can ever be known, will come out in the process — which will generate much more heat than light. But that’s the way of politics.

It’s far better than the alternative, which is to suppress political speech. We’re almost there, thanks to McCain-Feingold, Bush’s decision not to veto, and the Supreme Court’s abandonment of the First Amendment in upholding McCain-Feingold’s most oppressive elements.

If free speech is on the way out, as it may well be, at least it’s going out with a bang.

That’s all I have to say. I’m sorry to disappoint you if you found this post because you were searching for something meaty about the Swift Boat Vets. But, as long as you’re here, have a look around. There’s some rather meaty stuff on other issues.

Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

Headline: 9/11 Commission Formally Disbands. Good. Now the commissioners can go back to doing something less useless than second-guessing and imparting fatuous advice.