So here's my advice: Look at the clock. Know what time it is. Half the country is wondering if we are in the end times. (Excuse me, I mean they fear man may be living through a final, wrenching paroxysm, the result of man's inhumanity to man and of the inevitable culmination of several unhelpful forces and trends.) So wake up and get serious. Get your heart back, and your guts. Be constructive, not destructive. Help. If President Bush advances an agenda you deep down support, then go public and help him. If he advances what you honestly oppose, come forward with constructive alternatives.

Don't "position" yourself on issues like Iraq, think about your position on Iraq and be guided by a question: What will be good and right for America and the world? Reach your conclusions and hold to them as long as you can hold them honestly. A lot of people, not all but many, can see when you're only positioning yourselves.

Stare down the abortion lobby, the gun-ban nuts, etc. Be moderate. Make progress. The next time someone like the late Bob Casey, a popular governor of a great industrial state and pro-life due to conscience, asks to address your convention, let him. Welcome him. People like him widen the tent.

Be pro-free-speech again. Allow internal divisions and dissent. A vital political party should have divisions and dissent.

Develop a new and modern Democratic rationale--the reason regular people should be Democrats again. Stop being just the We Hate Republicans Party. That's not a belief, it's a tic.

Stop being the party of snobs. Show love for your country and its people--all its people. Stop looking down on those who resist your teachings.

Stop taking such comfort in Bill Clinton's two wins. Move on. He was a great political talent, but he won by confusing the issues, not facing them. That's a trick that tends to work only at certain times and only with powerful charisma. And even with that his leadership will be remembered, is already being remembered, as "a holiday from history," in Charles Krauthammer's phrase. And he never hit 50% of the vote in either of his victories, even when he had peace and riotous prosperity on his side. He didn't have coattails. (See Gore, Albert Jr., life of.) And he rose in large measure because George H.W. Bush broke his pledge, raised taxes, and saw the economy plummet. That was calamitous for the Republicans. Your great hope now is more calamity. If George W. Bush suffers a post 9/11 disaster at home or abroad in the next few years it may--may--propel a Democrat into the White House. But who respects a party whose great hope is widespread pain?

So stop allowing Bill Clinton to present himself as Mr. Democrat. Ask him to stay home. He reminds people of embarrassment. He uses up all your oxygen. Love him or hate him, we all know he's the personification of slick, and slick isn't what you want as the face of a great party.

Stop the ideology. A lot of Democratic Party movers and intellectuals have created or inherited a leftist ideology that they try to impose on life. It doesn't spring from life; it's forced on life, and upon people. Stop doing that--it's what weirdos who are detached from reality do. Have a philosophy instead of an ideology, hold it high and dear, and attempt to apply it, not impose it.

Respect normal Americans again, even those who are not union members. We're all touched by grace, we all deserve a voice, and you could learn a few things if you'd listen to those who've had to struggle through life.

And by the way, I'd like it if you started smoking again, at least for a while. Democrats were nicer when they smoked. Then they let all those Carrie Nation types in the party beat them to a pulp, and regular Democrats stopped feeling free to be regular flawed messy humans. That was too bad. Why don't you send the Smoking Ban Lobby back to the abortion-rights meeting, and tell them to leave you alone?

You're still one of our two great political parties. Show some class, the good kind. Throw your cap over the wall as JFK said, and boldly follow.


link

Recalling Waco, Reno Slams Bush for Stalling
(2003-01-30) -- Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, recalling her handling of the Waco siege, said today that if she were president, Iraq would be engulfed in flames by now.

"What's the hold up?" she rhetorically asked George Bush. "You've surrounded a pseudo-religious maniac who's got dangerous weapons. Set the place on fire, Mr. President. Hussein's not even an American citizen. Come on! Light her up!"

Ms. Reno called Mr. Bush a "timid Texas mouse who keeps saying 'Time is running out.'"

"Well, hickory dickery dock, let's blow up the clock, for goodness sake. Flick your Bic and let's get on with it. My boys in the BATF would have been in and out weeks ago."

Ms. Reno's publicist later indicated that the medications would soon be in balance

The situation in Iraq has revealed a wide maturation gap between the left and everyone else. They foresaw no end to the disasters that would follow the invasion of Iraq and what do they predict now that we´re victorious? They´re expecting more disasters to follow the ones that never transpired in the first place, or they are trying to equivocate chaotic looting of a newly freed people with the organized executions and terror that Saddam Hussein committed for decades.

The leftist attitude towards their own politicians suggests their lack of flexibility and understanding. Unlike them, the rest of the country is not lost in a haze of self-indulgence. In March, John Edwards, one of their most marketable presidential candidates, who actually has a chance of winning in 2004, was soundly booed at the California Democrat Party convention for saying that Saddam must be disarmed “including by the use of military force if necessary.” Only a head filled with smog would think that war is never an option when dealing with evil megalomaniacs late Saddam Hussein. The leftist´s self-righteousness will always prevent them from building effective coalitions and we should be thankful for their lack of vision regarding reality.

John Stuart Mill foreshadowed the situation magnificently:

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war is worse.”

To the adults whose minds are trapped in an earlier stage of development, nothing is worth a war, unless the war is directed against ourselves and our right to exist as an independent people.

Howard Dean was the man that they cheered in California and I sincerely hope that his supporters on the far left delude the rest of the party into giving him the nomination because he has utterly no chance of capturing a majority of the electorate. My advice to the Pelosicrats is to keep pushing useless ideas and bad candidates to the American people so we can keep pushing you further and further out the door of our democracy. Your utopian fantasies will not be missed.

Another fantasy from the supporters of men like Dean concerns the prelude to the Iraqi invasion. They argue that many of the voices that were against US action were not heard or they were silenced. No statement could be more off-base than this one. We heard the voices clearly and then efficiently discarded their views.

This accusation was made in the person of our Bizzarro president, Martin Sheen. Do you recall that wonderful photo of Sheen with his mouth taped shut (alas, the tape was removable)? Yes, he was “silenced” too because only a small fleet of reporters came to take down his sophisticated words against the president rather than the armada that he expected. Was he silenced or are we simply conditioned to the fact that there´s no point in listening to him because he has so little to share? I suspect the latter is accurate. Sheen told us that Bush´s real reason for invading Iraq was to please his daddy. Yes, well there you have it! Adolescent minds all think alike. There´s always a convenient and ludicrous explanation around every corner.

I think it clear that what made these leftists really outraged was that they were not consulted about the invasion first and allowed to give their input. Like many an adolescent, they became furious that the parental figure (the United States) acted without their permission. After all, to Sheen, if he has an opinion and we don´t adhere to it then it must be due to a conspiracy as opposed to him being groundless and inane. Like most people in love with themselves, celebrities confuse their own perceptions as being everybody else´s. They are not. George W. Bush, with his 73 percent approval rating after the fall of Baghdad, understands this explicitly even if the left coast does not.

I think it´s silly for them to pretend that they weren´t being heard anyway. Every time I turned on the television, I saw some anti-war rally or some irritable celebrity. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon along with the rest of the “green on the outside, brown on the inside” crowd were ubiquitous. Robbins himself was incensed with the traducing of his “rights” due to the cancellation of a Bull Durham film celebration in Cooperstown. He then gave a speech on April 15, 2003 at the National Press Club and claimed that he and Ms. Sarandon, “last week were told that we, and the First Amendment, were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame.” This claim is lunacy because Robbins was to the airwaves what mosquitoes are to August and, besides, there is no First Amendment right to speak at Cooperstown at celebratory events.

Isn´t the confusion between rights and privileges what is really at issue here? The left unknowingly admits that they are living the most luxurious of lives in the United States when they add all their new perks to our Bill of Rights. Now that “Right to Speak at Exclusive Ceremonies” has been added, they´ll try to add “Right to Join Any Private Club (Augusta)” which will thereby extinguishing the meaning of the phrase “private club.” How about a “Right to Rent Control” next year or the “Right to Have Public Housing (in any city or suburb you desire)”, and the “Right to Kill Your Offspring with the Services of a Low Cost Physician?”

The best solution is to have a plebiscite to create a “gong show” format for all celebrity appearances. Then, if any of these people foolishly confuse film promotional tours with foreign policy hearings, we can just gong them back into the 1960´s from which they came and from which they should never have escaped.

The bottom line is that liberals are not going to take this whipping lying down. They will try to invoke the power of the state to rectify the "injustice" of their drubbing in the marketplace; it's just a matter of time. When they do they'll have some euphemistic excuse to conceal their assault on free speech. They'll say controls are necessary to protect the public interest, or to muzzle hate speech, or something equally lame. Mark my words. And be prepared.

"Good guy, just a bad governor. The only thing I have against Gray Davis is, you know, let's face facts. California is circling the crapper at the speed of light.

The deficit doesn't even bother me that much. ... They talk about us owing like $400 billion or something. I always think, 'Do we actually owe somebody that?' And if we do, you know, don't pay 'em. Nobody pays us! There ya go, I just solved the deficit."

On national politics and the Democratic debates:

"Those are frightening affairs. That is such an empty-headed scrum those Democratic debates. I tune in, you see all nine of them together, it's like a Pez-dispenser séance."

"Dick Gephardt. Most politicians are transparent, this guy's literally translucent. I sometimes think I can see Janet Leigh showering on the other side of him."

"Joe Lieberman. I never thought you'd hear this coming out my piehole, but he's no Gore."

"Al Sharpton's ramblings have gone so far afield now, somebody's gonna have to install an On-Star button in the middle of his forehead."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"You know all the Democrats are going to hell in a handbasket. Now they got [California's] Nancy Pelosi. ... You ever see she has that pop-eyed look all the time? I always thought she might be hyper-thyroid, but then I heard her speak a couple times. She's stupid! The reason her eyes are so wide is that she's as shocked as we are that she made it that high!"

"Robert Byrd, this guy stands there and lectures Bush in the well of the Senate. He was in the Ku Klux Klan! He's demented. You know this guy's burning the cross at both ends! And you know something, if Robert Byrd were your grandfather and he came to Thanksgiving dinner and went off one of these demented screeds, everybody would sit there smiling at him, and as soon as he left the room, somebody'd say, 'Hey, what the hell are we gonna do about grandpa?'"

"And the Clintons won't shut up. If that marriage were any more about convenience, they'd have to install a Slim-Jim rack and a Slurpee machine at the base of the bed.

Mark Steyn Rules all He Surveys

I picked up the Village Voice for the first time in years this week. Couldn't resist the cover story: ''The Eve Of Destruction: George W. Bush's Four-Year Plan To Wreck The World.''

Oh, dear. It's so easy to raise expectations at the beginning of a new presidential term. But at least he's got a four-year plan...

Don't ask me why. Byrd, the former Klu Klux Klan Kleagle, is taking a stand over states' rights, or his rights over State, or some such. Whatever the reason, the sight of an old Klansman blocking a little colored girl from Birmingham from getting into her office contributed to the general retro vibe that hangs around the Democratic Party these days. Even "Eve Of Destruction," one notes, is a 40-year-old hippie dirge.

The other day David von Drehle of the Washington Post did a monster tour of what he called "The Red Sea" -- Bush country -- and went to almost painful lengths to eschew the condescension the coastal media elite usually apply to their rare anthropological ventures into the hinterland. But in the middle of his dispatch was this quote from Joyce Smith of Coalgate, Okla.: "When Kerry said he was for abortion and one-sex marriages, I just couldn't see our country being led by someone like that."

Von Drehle added: ''Later, I double-checked what Kerry had said on those subjects. During his campaign, he opposed same-sex marriage and said that abortion was a private matter.''

If the point is that Red Staters are ignorant, double- or even triple-checking John Kerry isn't the best way to demonstrate it. Insofar as I understand it, Kerry's view on abortion was that, while he passionately believes life begins at conception, he would never let his deeply held personal beliefs interfere with his legislative program. On gay marriage, likewise. That's why gay groups backed Kerry and why von Drehle's media buddies weren't running editorials warning that a Kerry presidency would end "a woman's right to choose": They understood his deeply passionately personally deep personal passionate beliefs were just an artful but meaningless formulation designed to get him through election season. Message: If Kerry's elected, abortions will continue and gay marriage will happen and he'll be cool with both. Joyce Smith understood that. Von Drehle seems vaguely resentful that she wasn't dumb enough to fall for the spin cooked up by Kerry's hairsplitters and enthusiastically promoted by his media cheerleaders.

There's a big lesson for the Democrats there that goes way beyond the merits of abortion or gay marriage. On Sept. 11, the world came unspun: There's no shame in acknowledging, as Condi Rice did last week, that previous policy -- Republican and Democrat -- toward the Middle East is wrong. But there's something silly and immature about a party that, from Kerry to Boxer to Byrd, can't get beyond spin, grandstanding and debater's points: Joyce Smith sees through it, even if David von Drehle thinks it's ingenious. If the president's speech yoked idealism and realism, that doesn't leave much for dissenting Dems except their own peculiar combination of cynicism and delusion.

When he drops by a diner on Main Street in some nowhere burg to pretend to eat a hot dog for a photo op, the waitress might well be like the lady who served me lunch on Sunday: she has her own house-cleaning business, but does some part-time work at the local school and a couple of shifts at the diner for a bit of extra cash.

She's a small business, and she knows more about her tax return than Teresa Heinz Kerry knows about hers. Mrs Kerry farms it out to the best advisers money can buy, and they do a grand job: she's one of the richest women in the world and she paid 12 per cent tax last year. It makes no difference whether the tax rate is 20 per cent, 50 per cent or 88 per cent: the Kerrys of the world will still pay 12 per cent.

The American people don't want to be condescended to by ketchup heiresses, billionaire currency speculators, $20-million-a-picture Hollywood pretty boys, and multi-millionaire documentary-makers posing as bluecollar lardbutts.

The Democrats keep talking to people as if they're like John Edwards's 40-year mill-workers, but that's not what work is any more, and a 23-year-old hairdresser can know enough about starting and running a business to be unimpressed at a few footling tax credits dangled in front of her by a 60-year-old lifelong "public servant" lucky enough to be living a grand old life thanks to his billionaire wife's first husband.

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Swiftboat veterans' book that challenged Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam record, plans to vie for the former presidential candidate's Senate seat in 2008.

Sen. Clinton Tells Abortion Rally: 'I'm Pro-Chife'
by Scott Ott

(2005-01-25) -- In another apparent attempt to position herself as a centrist candidate for the White House in 2008, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, yesterday told 1,000 abortion supporters that she's neither pro-life nor pro-choice.

"I'm Pro-Chife," she announced to the stunned crowd. "Being pro-chife means you support a woman's right to end the life of a fetus that will never exist because the government will prevent the pregnancy."

Mrs. Clinton said the federal government should announce a policy of "zero tolerance" for unwanted pregnancies, and could begin to achieve the goal through a combination of condom distribution and government promotion of homosexuality in the public schools.

"And while critics will note that the government already does that, I believe that these are just intermediate measures," she said. "Ultimately, abortion is caused by pregnancy, which is a manufacturing activity carried on by small enterprises with no government regulation. During the 109th Congress, we plan to expand the mandate of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the IRS to regulate and tax the production of human embryos. We have found that the best way to control any creative activity is with government oversight and taxes."

Mrs. Clinton said she looks forward to the day when the burden of filing OSHA and IRS paperwork makes pregnancy "safe, legal, expensive and rare." - Scrappleface

However, the tactical and strategic blunders of the Democratic Party over the last few years have been so spectacular that it may be time to reconsider the intellectual wattage of the respective parties.

What is most startling to observe these days is that the Democrats do not seem able, or willing, to learn from their most obvious mistakes. The most recent example of this blindness is the hysteria with which they've attacked an obscure Republican National Committee mailing about the new Democratic Senate Minority Leader, Reid All About It: Who is Harry Reid? [6], which makes the seemingly innocuous charge that Mr. Reid is "Determined to Obstruct President Bush's Agenda." A party with some sense of humor about itself would have laughed off the charge that the opposition was opposing. A party with some self-confidence would have seized on the piece as an opportunity for free publicity and said, "Dang right, he's going to obstruct the destruction of Social Security and the appointment of extremist judges!" Instead, the Democrats reacted with squeals of outrage. In so doing they turned it into a free publicity windfall for the Republicans and helped to establish a meme that the GOP will be able to exploit every time Senator Reid does work for Democratic interests instead of rolling over for the President.

Senator Kerry and company are hardly the first folks ever to run an inept political operation, but should not his fellow Democrats have learned something from the bitter experience? In particular, mightn't they have noticed that their nemesis, George W. Bush, has succeeded in successive national campaigns by blithely ignoring rumors about everything from shady business dealings to preferential military treatment to cocaine use to secret abortions? Even the easier access to the mainstream media that activists of the Left enjoy has not enabled them to get such better-publicized stories to stick, in no small part because the President and his staff generally refuse to dignify these attacks with rebuttals. There's a pretty simple dynamic involved here: when the President, or any leader, says something it is automatically newsworthy and will get coverage, but when his many critics speak they join a babble that may or may not be heard. The last thing you want to do is pluck a voice from that whirlwind and hand over your own megaphone. But, once again, in the Harry Reid kerfuffle, we see Democrats doing just that. They've done the Republicans' heavy-lifting for them and elevated the notion of Mr. Reid as an obstructionist to center stage.

Recall that just days after the Democratic Convention in Boston, which looked like lost footage from Apocalypse Now and relied almost completely on portraying their nominee's resume as beginning and ending in Vietnam, the Kerry campaign went on the attack against the Swift Vets [7] and their accusations that his war record was inflated. This turned a marginal group with comparatively little money -- who had only been able to advertise in very limited forums and had been so ignored by the mainstream media that the conservative partisan press was complaining about the "cover-up" [8] -- into major players in the political process.

Even if the Left was never as reticent, we should be reluctant to label a whole political party "stupid." But the only other description that seems to fit this behavior pattern is insanity: doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. So, take your pick, stupidity or insanity?

Dean Throws 'Blue Meat' to Red State Voters
by Scott Ott

(2005-02-25) -- Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today launched a tour of states that President George Bush won in November, with planned stops at what he called the "red-state trinity" -- churches, gun shops and Wal-Mart stores.

"The president has done a good job of throwing red meat to conservatives," said Mr. Dean during the first stop on his 'Blue Meat for Red States' tour. "I'm here to show that Democrats can speak this language too."

Mr. Dean first stopped at a gun shop, telling the proprietor, "I need to get me a shootin' iron."

Holding his purchase in the air, he said he was shocked that "an out-of-stater could walk into a gun shop and -- with no background check or waiting period -- buy the most powerful paintball weapon in the place."

He told a baptist church group that his favorite character in the Bible is "Bob the Tomato," but later revised his remarks to acknowledge that the Veggie Tales video series is "not usually included in the canon of Scripture."

The tour was delayed for about an hour in Topeka, KS, as Mr. Dean stood at a Wal-Mart "concierge desk" waiting for the arrival of his "personal shopper." - Scrappleface

June 9, 2005
Imus: "On another note here, speaking of the Democratic Party, which you are a member of, how's Howard Dean working for you?"

Rep. Harold Ford Jr.: "(Laughing) I won't have him down so many times in Tennessee on the campaign trail with me. He has made some comments as of late that really speak to a lack of understanding I think, of the country, a lack of understanding of faith and values. I'm a Democrat and I'm a God fearing one. I grew up in church. Christianity is not reserved for white males. I think perhaps Governor Dean sometimes gets a little excited at the mouth, and says things that are simply not true. It may reach a point where if he can't find a way to kind of control some of his comments, and temper his comments, it may get to the point where the party may need to look elsewhere for leadership, because he does not speak for me, and I know he does not speak for a majority of Democrats and I dare say Republicans in my home state. I know that other, even Senator Biden and others, have made some stronger comments about him. I look forward to having a chance to sit with him here in the next day or so. I think he's going to be here in Capitol Hill a little later today to meet with us. I want to ask him directly. Can he contain himself in a lot of ways, and what is his thought process in a lot of these issues because it is not representative of where the party is."

Senate Dems Lead U.S. Pullout from U.N.
by Scott Ott

(2005-06-17) -- Senate Democrats, despite their minority status, have begun to achieve something which Republicans have only dreamed of -- a U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.

Thanks to a Democrat filibuster on John Bolton's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the United States has effectively disengaged from the global peacemaking body, leaving Republican strategists scrambling to reclaim ownership of the 'U.S.-out-of-U.N.' movement.

"While Acting Ambassador Anne Patterson keeps the lights on and the coffee warm, the United States has essentially abandoned the mission," according to an unnamed Democrat Senate aide.

It's all part of a strategic 'move to the center' in preparation for the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

"Democrats are co-opting key Republican issues so they can claim the victory," the anonymous source said. "When our presidential nominee gives her acceptance speech she'll proudly say, 'Vote for the party that has an exit strategy'." - Scrappleface

The Truth,

Yea, Bush's low approval ratings sure gave John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry a leg up in the last Presidential election, didn't they?

Until us Democrats get rid of the Collectivist Doofii (I'm assuming that is the plural of doofus) who thought they could fool anybody with a clunker like Kerry we're screwed. We need to sit down and seriously decide what we stand for, and it better be better than collectivist daydreams and apologizing to Salafists for the mud huts they live in. - Dem commenter on the Roger L Simon blog.