Recently in Politics Category

Something arrived in my inbox. The only thing I've changed in it is that it was written the day after the inauguration, so I removed the references to "Yesterday".

Inauguration Day 2008:

Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boards his helicopter and leaves for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not about me. Today is a historical day for our nation and people."

Eight years ago:

Outgoing President Bill Clinton schedules two separate radio addresses to the nation, and organizes a public farewell speech/ rally in downtown Washington D.C. scheduled to directly conflict with incoming President Bush's inauguration ceremony.

Inauguration Day 2008:

President Bush leaves office without issuing a single Presidential pardon, only granting a commutation of sentence to two former border patrol agents convicted of shooting a convicted drug smuggler. He does not grant any type of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide, ally, or business partner.

Eight years ago:

President Clinton issues 140 pardons and several commutations of sentence on his final day in office. Included in these are: billionaire financier, convicted tax evader, and leading Democratic campaign contributor Marc Rich; Whitewater scandal figure Susan McDougal; Congressional Post Office Scandal figure and former Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; convicted bank fraud, sexual assault and child porn perpetrator an d former Democratic Congressman Melvin Reynolds; and convicted drug felon Roger Clinton, the President's half-brother.

Inauguration Day 2008:

The Bush daughters leave gift baskets in the White House bedrooms for the Obama daughters, containing flowers, candy, stuffed animals, DVD's and CD's, and heartfelt notes of encouragement and advice for the young girls on how to prepare for their new lives in the White House.

Eight years ago:

Clinton and Gore staffers rip computer wires and electrical outlets from the White House walls, stuff piles of notebook papers into the White House toilets, systematically remove the letter "W" from every computer key-pad in the entire White House, and damage several thousand dollars worth of furniture in the White House master bedroom.

Headlines On Inauguration Day 4 Years Ago:

"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops die in unarmored Humvees"

"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"

"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"

Headlines 2008:

"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $170 million"

"Obama Spends $170 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"

"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"

"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"

Michelle Malkin puts it well: Does anyone know how to pay taxes in the Obama White House?

It is bad enough that they're proposing a trillion dollars in Democrat pork projects, but it seems as if most rich Democrats aren't even paying their taxes until they are unfortunate enough to get evaluated for a White House appointment.  Daschle's unpaid taxes on his limo service alone for three years are more than I paid in taxes for the entire Bush Administration...possibly even my whole working life, though I would want to double-check my figures for such a claim.  Certainly it's close.

How about that?! An orderly transfer of power.

For the most part, I'll be glad if the Bush-haters will just shut up now. 

With one exception: the people who said that Bush would blame a terrorist act (or cause a terrorist act) as an excuse to stay in power as a dictator beyond 2008.  Sure, they'd like to just "move on" and pretend they never said it, but it's time to confront them with a basic truth: THEY were the fear-mongers.  And before they just shut up, they need to reflect upon that.  I know they'll never offer an apology.

This insistence that George Bush is intentionally using fear... as opposed to informing us of things of which we should rightly be frightened...has become so accepted that Barack Obama openly talks about moving beyond fear in his election campaign and even in his inaugural speech today.  The Left en masse has decried Bush's "fear-mongering" about terrorist threats, which are either overstated, overplayed, scapegoats or fictitious.  And they have loudly decried it, while all along Bush has been telling us to keep shopping, go about our business and has probably left us in contented ignorance of 95% of the scary stuff he must have read in his morning briefings for 8 years.

The foil-hat crowd said he was spreading fear in order to make money and grab power.  They shouted to anyone who would hear about how he'd stolen his elections, performed a coup d'etat, was a moronic puppet of his sinister Veep, was a mastermind who caused the attack on the World Trade Center, was spying on everyone's cell phone conversations, was apprehending American citizens for being Arabs/Muslims and sending them to secret prisons where they had no rights, was intentionally letting the black people of New Orleans drown, secretly destroyed the levees of New Orleans to make black people drown, gave the guards at Abu Ghraib an executive order to put guys in naked pyramids, was funnelling the national treasury into the pockets of his friends, either wanted to drive oil prices higher for his oil buddies or wanted to expand the places where his oil buddies could drill (which would make oil prices lower),  was just like Hitler, was a crusading religious fanatic who thinks that God is talking to him, ... and...what was it?...something about his inventing a reason for us to go to war because he wanted to avenge his daddy/kill Iraqis by the millions/seize all the oil for his buddies/the lizard people told him to.

I ended that last paragraph because of necessity, but I could go own and own and own.

The Left used fear of George W. Bush to sell books. 
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to sell movies.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to sell merchandise.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to line the pockets of their 527s by millions and billions.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to fund-raise for their candidates.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to gain attention for their blogs.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to push people to the polls for votes.
The Left used fear of George W. Bush to put Barack Obama in office.

I don't know that the Left ever takes a moment to reflect on its actions.  I would like to think that, sometime in the next few years, either gradually or in a blinding flash of the Obvious, they will come to accept the following truths:

Terrorists really are trying to attack America. 
President George W. Bush was a good man trying to protect America.
The people using fear-mongering to gain money and power were the American Left.

P.S.  They used hate, too.  Huge, festering mountains of hate.   

Roger Ebert received a great honor recently, and I'm of two minds of the matter.  As a guy who appreciates film, I bet he'd be great to pal around with and talk about which X-Men movie was better and why, and what movies he hated, etc.  At the same time, he's not as great a reviewer as he used to be, so it's like giving Scorcese an Oscar for his drivelly picture now just because he didn't get one for his past masterpiece.

Ebert's knowledge as a film historian and skills as an analyst are impeccable.  His commentary tracks on films like "Dark City" and "Citizen Kane" are always worth listening to all the way through, whereas most DVD commentaries feature stars chatting idly about nonsense that's unrelated to what is happening onscreen.

It's only when Ebert starts giving his opinion on any film that's remotely political...or indeed, any non-political film that gives him a good setup for a lame slap at Bush... that you have to watch out. 

His "tell" is that when he's reviewing a political film he starts preaching instead of analyzing.  For instance, even I can look at a Michael Moore movie such as "Roger & Me" and spot weak arguments, unfair use of stock footage and music, emotional moments intended to depress the viewer but irrelevant to the point of the movie, etc.  As a man who has viewed countless documentaries and many propaganda films, Ebert's appraisal of it as a film, a vehicle for viewpoints, and as very obvious propaganda could be insightful...but had the Ebert of today reviewed it, the entire article would probably consist of his retelling Moore's complaints about GM leaving Flint and how awful it was for Flint.  Certainly that's what he does with all of Moore's other films, even giving the lame book-tour-captured-on-video "The Big One" three stars! 

His "review" of the film "Super Size Me" consists of his listing facts about how bad fast food is instead of actually analyzing the film, how it's made, etc.  Chalk that up to his being a conscientous dieter at the time; fine.  "Going Upriver", a documentary about John Kerry's Viet Nam tour came out in 2004 during the campaign in response to the Swift Boat Vets, and Roger Ebert sets himself up as the arbiter of who has the truth and who is lying.  He never questions anything about the pro-Kerry doc or looks at it as a, you know, film, but he does find ample space to cast Republicans as Nazis.  By the way, I will bet $100 that Ebert had never read any of the Swift Boat Vet's allegations beyond what he read in a John Kerry e-mail blasting them.   

"Bowling For Columbine" gave him the opportunity to tell what he thought was a cute anecdote about him and a fellow liberal arrogantly insulting a gun owner in a bar.  In later columns he would admit to being disheartened as many, many claims about Moore's fabrications and dishonesty in that movie came to light... but clearly he wasn't disheartened enough to bring even a scrap of additional scrutiny to Moore's subsequent efforts.

I understand that "The Life of David Gail" was not a good movie, but Ebert goes so overboard, giving it ZERO STARS and fuming about George Bush's use of the death penalty, that it hardly seems fair to the people who made the film.  Roger Ebert disagrees with the political message of a serious drama, so he rates it worse than Young Einstein or Jury Duty.   Heck, even in "Big Trouble", that Tim Allen movie based on a Dave Barry book, there's a quick throwaway line about Pat Buchanan and Ebert goes off about how conservatives are so unfeeling as to not care about people accidentally voting for him.

As Zell would say, I could go own and own and own.  It isn't hard to come up with examples; they're available on a weekly basis due to Ebert's Bush Derangement Syndrome.  These days, Ebert takes every remote opportunity to slip some Bush hate into his reviews, most of his remarks being unfunny, unnecessary and a waste of text.

Roger Ebert should give up film reviewing if he isn't willing to bring any class or talent to it anymore.

Gary Sinise, hard-working crusader for the USO ever since September 12, 2001, was given the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest honor a civilian can earn.

Way to go, Mr. Sinise!

Is it just me, or is Associated Press determined to make every story about the Bush administration stink?  Look how the story hammers hard about Watergate, never mind that Colson is getting the award for his decades of work in helping prisoners to turn their lives around and become better citizens.  Notice, too, how Gary Sinise's name and his work for the USO is buried, while his portraying Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump is all that's mentioned at the top.

Need proof that this fails the good journalism test?  Who were the other TWENTY people given one of the highest honors in the land?  What is Donna Cassata's deal?

Yep, me too.  Everyone else was linking to it today, so count me in.  How Obama Got Elected.

Michelle Malkin states that it's "stupid people voting," but that misses the point.  These are people who are almost all high school graduates and half of them are college graduates and many of them read the New York Times, watch the network news, watch CNN, MSNBC, PBS, listen to NPR... and despite this they still did not know some very important facts about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they ALL knew the stupidest things about Palin and McCain. 

Why should they be expected to know that Joe Biden was a plagiarist?  Has it been mentioned at all this year on any mainstream news show?  I certainly knew that because I lived through the 1980s, when the fact was such common knowledge that it was joked about on "Growing Pains"!  I still remember it.  One of the Seaver kids cheated at school and the principal noted that the only other kid who copied homework was "little Joey Biden".  Joe Biden being a plagiarist was a fact known by enough of the audience that it could get an easy laugh.  Now, nobody seems to know it.

But what to make of Barack Obama's voters?  I can understand Joe Average not knowing some of this stuff, but not even 1% of that sample group could get all 12 of them right... and it's hardly bragging to note that I could have aced these questions with ease.  You can criticize that sampling.  Maybe a "more fair" sample (assuming this sample was bad just for the sake of argument) could have done better.  But does anyone think this polling sample by Zogby could be so far off that Obama's voters should be getting most of these right?  And does anyone think that if Zogby did the same to McCain's voters it would be anything close to only .5% of them being able to get all of them right?

I do think that asking the Palin/Fey question is wrong; there should at least be a possible way for the person to answer it right.  If given a multiple choice test, you can't have the correct answer be "the respondent must object and state that it is 'none of the above because it was actually a person not on the list'".

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Thank you, Onion News. I really, really needed that!

Huh.  According to the National Weather Service, the ocean level just fell six inches.

Sarah Palin votes in jeans.  I just have to say it: she is so much hotter dressed as a normal person than she is glammed up.

As I write this, Obama's winning.  It's depressing and unless Obama falls in love with being President we are in for a rough four years.  Of course, as that article argues, McCain's presidency with a Dem-led Congress would have been pretty bad anyway.  The only reason I wanted McCain to win, apart from McCain's bad judges being better than Obama's worse judges, was to have Palin preparing for 2012.

I want a Palin presidency.  Badly.  This year, Romney was the best of the bunch and he was still only a "pretty good" candidate.  Then the 10 gun-fighting rabbits took each other out (or in Giuliani's case, shot himself in the foot with the starter pistol) and the low-lying tortoise who survived was convinced that this qualified him for the Olympic games.  I HAD to vote for McCain tonight, and no way was I going to not vote.  But until he picked Sarah Palin, I sure understood the desire of many other conservatives to just stay home.

If McCain has lost, then surely some will convince themselves that McCain's choice of Palin is what sank him.  [UPDATE: He has lost, and commenters are already saying this.]  Anyone concluding that is nuts.  Palin is the only thing that kept this race close.  Palin should have been running his campaign, not getting handled by a bunch of fidgety image-brokers who wanted to make her beltway-acceptable.   Take Palin out of this race and McCain wouldn't have even come close in the Popular vote.

The treatment of Palin deserves a buttload of post-election analysis and introspection.  A female candidate enters the race, and suddenly we're told what her expenses were for new clothes, hair and make-up. Sure, $150,000 is a lot, but if we're not told what Hillary, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Cindy McCain spend on the same how do we know it's extravagant?  Of course, those are just the wives, but it's hardly fair to compare Sarah Palin to guys who can get by with the same suits and ties.  And it's worth mentioning that Sarah didn't HAVE a fancy wardrobe already and needed one in order to not look unfashionable compared to the wealthy Michelle Obama.  I think the amount is ridiculous, but I'm a guy and I think what the women I know spend on clothing is ridiculous, too.  I don't think any female politician has had her clothing budget leaked and held against her before.  Due to our stupid campaign finance laws, politics is now entirely the realm of self-financing millionaires, but when a middle class woman tries to enter the fray she suddenly has her clothing receipts examined.

While I'm on the subject: this middle class mom who lives in freaking' cold Alaska and has three daughters decided to buy a used sun-tanning bed from a salon's going-out-of-business sale...and somehow this reasonable luxury item is held against her in the campaign.  Did we see all of the other candidates' entertainment expenses held up for ridicule?  Isn't it very likely that the Palins have never had a vacation as luxurious as those taken by the Obamas, Bidens, McCains and Clintons several times a year?  Shall we start listing the multiple cars' makes and models, motorcycles, boats, golf memberships, skis, vacation homes and polo ponies held by all of those?

Then there's the snobbery of those who mocked Palin's multiple colleges.  Sarah Palin's biographer Kaylene Johnson was on Dennis Prager (be sure to give that a listen!) and her explanation of this was eminently reasonable: Sarah had to pay her own way through college!  Her parents didn't have the money to send her and her siblings to school, so they all had to hunt for inexpensive options and raise the money themselves.  Sarah decides to go to college in Hawaii because, you know...Alaska.  So she and her Alaskan friends enroll in a Hawaiian college only to find when they arrive that the sandy beaches are on the other side of the island, so she eventually changes schools.  Later, she takes time off to raise more money to finish, and then decides to go somewhere else.  When you are poor and cannot justify traveling extensively, going to different colleges compensates a bit.

One of Sarah's options for raising scholarship money was to compete in a beauty contest.  The mockery and hate which has been heaped upon her for doing so...largely by people who didn't struggle to pay for college, who can't even understand the limited opportunities open to a middle-class girl living in Alaska...well, it should seal off any argument that the liberals are full of compassion and empathy for the lower classes.  (Of course, anyone who remembers the Clinton era and the scorn aimed at Bill's class of women knew that already.)

Ugh.  Obama has just won, and is now talking about "callused hands".  Please.  The guy doesn't know the meaning of the word!  Palin broke her hand hauling in seafood with her husband.  In an era when "Deadliest Catch" is big time TV, here we've got a candidate from the last real bit of frontier.  Alaska is where the spirit of the cowboys has gone, and yes, I think cowboys are good things.  I'm a conservative. 

Sarah Palin has had far more life experience than Obama and has yet to write one, let alone two, autobiographies.  Heck, when Obama was commissioned to write his first memoir, he grabbed his $125,000 advance and took a year to live in Bali in order to write it.  Bear in mind, at this point in his life, his biggest achievement was getting $125,000 and living in Bali.  (All right, to be fair he was given the advance because when he was elected the President of Harvard Law Review he had black skin.  If you are the President of Harvard Law Review and you have white skin, you don't get $125,000, so make of that what you will.)  And at the end of the year, he still didn't have a book because you can't write a memoir based on a lack of experiences.  Jack Cashill makes a convincing case that Obama only produced his book because he had some help from an unknown ghostwriter whose name probably rhymes with Gilliam Pears.

Forget the snobs on the right and the left.  Sarah Palin is the Republican party's future.  I never had the opportunity to vote for Ronald Reagan, having turned 18 in 1988.  Palin is the first Republican candidate in my lifetime for whom I could easily see myself knocking on doors, giving money in the hundreds and even (can't believe I'm saying this) making phone calls.  If she runs in 2012, I will give up my evenings to hang out in the campaign office.  I will blog about her constantly.  I will write letters to the newspaper.

All my life, I have said that I'd have no problem with a woman president.  Just give me the American-born Maggie Thatcher.  Until Palin, I didn't actually think it would ever happen.

Listening to the callers and the hosts on all the conservative talk shows, it's clear that there is NO sexist resistance in the GOP.  Most conservatives would have sawn off a foot if they could have swapped Sarah Palin for the top of the ticket this year.  (At last, my subject line makes sense, eh?)

A fabulous video.  We should have had shortened versions as TV advertisements.  And they should have been running months ago.

All weekend, I have said one thing to my wife and co-workers: I want the election to be over...and at the same time, I wish we had six more months.  No, I'm not a glutton for punishment.  It's just that media fecklessness has propelled Obama to the Presidency and it's only now that we're discovering so many things that should have been part of the national discussion for the last year.

Consider Saturday Night Live.  They've actually complained that they don't know how to parody Barack Obama because he's so, you know, perfect and dreamy and awesome.  For a while, all they could do was make jokes about how Obama's Presidency is undeniable and so Hillary and McCain are just ridiculous for even kidding themselves.  Ha ha, so funny. 

They couldn't perhaps make a joke about how his prepared speeches are so eloquent but if you ask him a question every other word out of his mouth is "uh"?  News of his oratorical excellence is greatly exaggerated.  I belong to Toastmasters International and I was disappointed to see that the latest issue praised Obama to the hilt for his ability to deliver his speech...which is odd, since every Toastmasters meeting we have a Table Topics session where we are asked to speak extemporaneously and there's a grammarian counting every utterance of the words "uh", "um", "and" and "so."  Obama would fail such a test miserably.  Why couldn't they make fun of that?

Of course, the truth is that Saturday Night Live has always been very partisan and uses their comedy to actively support one candidate. I believe this has always been true, but it was nice to see Chevy Chase come clean in admitting that the SNL writers are working hard to bring down Sarah Palin.



So, nice of Chevy to admit the blaringly obvious. One has to wonder if anyone in the press will ever make such an admission in public.