Lileks

Let me be quite clear on this: my daughter is not going to pledge allegiance to healthy dirt. I will teach her all I believe about stewardship of the world. I will conspicuously recycle the cans and glasses and papers, even though I suspect it’s all a folly. I will teach her that the earth - lower case, no family affiliation - requires our care and respect. But I am not going to raise an eco-freak who tattles on Daddy to the Block Captain because I threw away a grocery bag that had a rip, instead of cutting it up for note paper. She is a resident of the planet earth, but she is a citizen of the United States of America. While that distinction will be meaningless in second grade I will not undercut her eventual understanding of the concept by pretending that we all pledge allegiance to dirt, crabgrass and crocodiles. Respect them, yes. Start the day with an oath bowing our heads to decreased atomospheric particulate levels, no.

Daily Pundit

Clinton also dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci to Pyongyang to urge the Communist regime in 1994 and again in 1995 to accept two light-water reactors — which do not produce weapons-grade nuclear material — from South Korea in exchange for an agreement to suspend its nuclear weapons program.

"He kept us out of a ground war," the source said of Gallucci's effort.

Sure he did. At the cost of letting the North Koreans, one of the most insane regimes on the face of the earth, get nuclear weapons!

I can't say this emphatically enough: This is the result of the sort of liberal appeasement that places "keeping us out of war at all costs" as the highest, in fact the only legitimate goal. Now North Korea, which has the means to easily deliver these nukes against our allies South Korea and Japan, has immense blackmail power in the region. And why? Because liar, perjurer, and impeached former President BJ Clinton was willing to swallow any lie from a government known by everybody to be one of the most dishonest on earth, in order to avoid war at all costs.
And also, most likely, to avoid anything that might upset his own political applecart.
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And now the same disgusting fools will smear and slander George Bush as he tries to prevent the same thing happening again.
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After all, for them, it's not about the safety of America. It's all about power. Their power. Look for Hillary and Donkschle to lead the charge.

Thomas J. Bray:

More likely, what has stuck in voters' minds is the way the Democrats conducted the Iraq debate. They came away seeming hollow; the debate underlining their cynicism and mean-spiritedness. Democrats, in other words, are in danger of becoming what they accuse their opponents of. Because the media suffer from almost total myopia on this point--preferring always and everywhere to attach the words cynical and mean-spirited only to the "right wing"--they may be missing an important political phenomenon.
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the Democrats utterly failed to confront these issues honestly. Instead, they caviled, whined, played for time and tried to arrange things so that they can start yelling "I told you so" as soon as something goes wrong--even while trying to insulate themselves from having their fingerprints on the decision for war or peace. Michigan's Sen. Carl Levin--chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, no less--wanted to duck the issue by putting the United Nations in charge of the decision.

At least Mr. Levin stuck by his position. The Democratic leaders in the Senate and House, after demanding for months that President Bush make his case, folded like a cheap suit when he did so--even though the case was no different than it was back in August, or June, or even Sept. 12, 2001.
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In calling the bluff of both the United Nations and Congress, Mr. Bush once again reminded the country that he is not just an accidental president, and that Republicans are capable of acting like adults--something one can't say with certainty about the other party.
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again, the Democrats seem unserious about Social Security. They don't seem to be proposing any alternatives beyond implying that Republicans hate their own grandmothers and hoping that the giant Ponzi scheme will somehow work out.
Then there is the return of deficits. We told you the tax cuts were irresponsible, trills Al Gore. But then he blithely ignores the logic of his position, which would be to call for a repeal of the tax cuts or even a tax increase. Even the media were forced to admit that he didn't seem very serious about the issue.

And so on down the line.
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As the Wall Street Journal's Bob Bartley and others have noted, what George W. Bush has done is use Sept. 11 to remind people that politics is a truly serious business. The party of Bill Clinton, having perfected the art of small-bore politics--we feel your pain, so take your family leave and vote for us--suddenly finds itself looking, well, small. As always, most politics is still local, which may keep the elections close this fall. But in a midterm election cycle, close is a victory for an incumbent president. And that is very much within the grasp of this "accidental" president.

Colby Cosh:

If there is a God and his name really is Allah, he must be quite angry about the evening newscasts. If well enough had been left alone from, say, September 10, 2001 on, Islam would have won. In terms of cultural confidence, our own Western civilization is well past its peak. Our countries were, and are, letting Muslims enter and dwell by the busload. Mosques get tax exemptions; Muslim schools get tax funding. Where Christendom's collective religious faith has been reduced to a paltry shadow of its former self, Islam retains the power to capture imaginations which have outrun their allotment of reason. Western welfare states and prison systems give Islam fertile ground in which to flower amidst the alien corn. Islam, we used to be told quite often, was growing by leaps and bounds.

But the decentralized nature of Islam, which seemed such a strength not so long ago, has proven to be a weakness; it has allowed a transnational class of bored, intense, youngish men to attack the West at precisely the points at which it is least vulnerable. People like the convenience of air travel. They like being able to go to musicals. They like going to the craft store to choose from a couple thousand different colours of yarn. They like being able to visit Bali and hang out on the beach. Islam's true strategy for eventual world conquest was to conceal the fact that it would take these worldly things away from us, and to concentrate on its own strengths (egalitarianism, simplicity, and a magnificent ability to instill the satiated, narcotic feeling of true believerdom). Unfortunately, its followers seem determined to confirm, and then some, every sterotype in the book.
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. Islam would have had to wait for capitalism to rot from within, which it was, and probably still is, doing. That wasn't going to be a quick process in any event--I'm thinking in centuries here, not years, in case that's not clear--but my sense is that Islam's self-appointed murder evangelists have slowed it by calling attention to how vulnerable the benefits of capitalism are.
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The Muslims have gone beyond that: they've awakened a sleeping giant and they keep kicking it in the balls.

He points to this from Damian Penny.

David Frum debunks the myth that Iraq is a Bush Vendetta

The biographer of the great New York highway builder Robert Moses tells this story. Before the First World War, Moses had unwisely made an enemy of the young Franklin Roosevelt by routing a road away from FDR's state assembly district.

A quarter-century passed - and now Moses wanted to build a great bridge across New York harbour and name it after himself. But because the bridge crossed the route from the ocean to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Moses needed a waiver from the Navy Department.

No problem: the bridge was more than high enough to let super-battleships sail beneath it. Or there was no problem until FDR heard about Moses's request. He gleefully ordered the waiver to be denied.

But the matter did not stop there. The New York building unions wanted the bridge built. So did the steel and concrete manufacturers. So did the Brooklyn real-estate industry. So did the entire New York congressional delegation.

A trusted aide broke the news to the president: he would have to give way. "Are you telling me," Roosevelt complained, "that the President of the United States cannot be allowed one teeny-weeny, little, personal animosity?" "No sir," came the answer. "Not even one."

Voice on Tape said to be Al Gore
Comment:

No voice recognition system ever invented will convince me that Gore could have survived the carpet bombing of Tallahassee/Atlanta (Tora Bora?) even if he were alive prior to that conflagration, which is, now that I think about it, in doubt. I can't be the only one who saw those zombie-like videos performances just prior to November 5, can I?

Posted by: Larry R Duncan on November 13, 2002 05:39 AM

Russ Smith on the election:

Clinton’s reputation as this generation’s greatest pure politician, acknowledged by this columnist, took a licking last Tuesday.

Yes, he slithered out of trouble in 1992, when a compliant media didn’t dig deep enough into his past to expose the man as a narcissistic fraud; and was lucky enough to escape conviction in the Senate after being impeached, mostly because of a robust economy. But Clinton’s political skills should be reconsidered. Who has he helped beside himself? Unlike President Bush this year, he was poison on the campaign trail in 1994–his first midterm after being elected–leading to the historic GOP takeover of Congress. And he was lucky enough that Newt Gingrich, after masterminding the victory, suddenly thought he was prime minister and then was putty in Clinton’s hands. In ’98, he stayed out of sight, with candidates fearing Monica’s shadow behind him; and in 2000, a bitter Al Gore shut him out of his presidential campaign.

It’ll be fascinating to see whether Democratic presidential contenders will seek Clinton’s counsel for the 2004 primaries. My bet is no, for a couple of reasons. One, he clearly doesn’t have the juice of a now long-ago era. More importantly, the GOP’s takeover of the Senate changes, perhaps dramatically, Hillary Clinton’s timetable for her own White House bid.

Whigging Out analyses the election:

For most of the 20th century the United States functioned as a one party nation, and the Republicans were an adversarial prop, much like the team that faces off against the Harlem Globetrotters. When a party rules to that extent it isn't necessary to resort to baser methods to achieve goals, nor is soul searching required.

But when the Republicans became a serious challenge to Democrat supremacy after 1994 the true nature of the beast was revealed. Suddenly the party was forced to make love to its base, which turned out to be the base that always sustains socialist parties: the dispirited, unhappy, ugly and most ignorant of society. And on top of that layer there is a thinner layer of snotty, semi literate people who fancy themselves far smarter than they really are, who wish to control the losers beneath them due to strange psychological deficiencies.
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That is why after 1994 the Democratic party turned itself over to the likes of the Clintons, Terry McAulife, Tom Daschle et al. These are people who come programmed to win at any cost, which is cool if no one is watching. It's easy to pull the wool over the eyes of the voter if everything is rigged for you to do it.
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So the Democrats are in trouble, but the Republicans are only slightly less so. But it is undoubtedly the Democrats who are at risk for self immolation this week. If they start casting around for new set of faces they will quickly discover that Bill Clinton and Terry McAulife are grade A human beings compared to the dreck on deck. Nancy Pelosi is not national leadership material even for the Green Party. Well okay, perhaps for the Greens. But the storefront of the Democratic party is going to look like Sanford & Son if they start putting the likes of Pelosi at the hostess station.
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The talk this week is of a Democratic reassessment of strategy. That implies that there are substantive options for them to choose from, when in fact there are none. The Democratic party has but one use left to it: redistributing wealth. There are no legitimate civil rights issues left for them to capitalize on. They trade in the commodities of fear, envy and anti-Americanism.
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**So Dick Gephardt will be the first casualty of the post-election it appears. He will announce Thursday he is giving up his position as House Minority Leader. Dick Gephardt is everything wrong with the Democratic Party. He is a hollow man without conviction and devoid of a soul. Thing is, when it comes to the Democrats, it can certainly always get worse. Gephardt may be viper and a creature of cold political calculation, but he seems perfectly Churchillian next to Nancy Pelosi who well might take his place. Republicans should be praying for this woman to ascend. Oh God, please, my fellow Republicans, just hush up and let the Democrats do their thing. I can't think of a better way to improve on this week than to have the likes of Pelosi controlling the House Dems. That would truly herald deep dark days for our friends on the left.

and,
also:

The Democrats have only two solid homes remaining in the US: CA and NJ. Both represent a certain style of Democratic behavior. The Californian is the 60s idealistic Democratic Party that still backs cruel and unusual taxation on society's achievers, a bloated welfare state and rejects anything having to do with war, right or wrong. The New Jersean is the cynical, do what it takes to keep power and keep the people down Democratic party of the Clinton-McAulife-Daschle axis. New Jersey is home to the Soprano Democrats who just have that special allure to people in NJ.
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Anyway, on to the MAIN POINT of this blog. I believe that a political party is only as good and decent as it is made to be. Because the media is so hostile to the GOP, and because the Republican base is simply more attached to notions of bourgeoisie decency, it rarely tries some of the sleazier gambits that the New Jersey party has been trying and getting away with over the past decade. The fact of the matter is that the Republicans couldn't pull off these tricks and they know it. This has made the GOP a much better party as a result, even if it means short term humiliation each time they are played for chumps.
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But maybe after last Tuesday something changed for the Dems. Maybe the years of being coddled by ABC, CNN, CBS, the NYT, NBC etc. allowed them to hang in there bereft of ideas far longer than they would have if they were held to a good standard. Maybe last Tuesday they realized that the environment has changed now and there can be no more gains made purely by stacking the deck in their own favor.
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Could it be that the rise of Nancy Pelosi to Minority Leader signals the Democrat's effort to tear off their costume they've been taught to wear by Clinton and be that out of the closet liberal/Socialist party they really are? And wouldn't that be a good thing? Perhaps it would encourage the GOP to jettison their own safe leadership for a more "real" team. The Republicans, including myself, have been laughing at the California party this week for even thinking of giving the leadership role to a flagrant liberal like Pelosi. But shouldn't we be applauding them for a rare act of political sincerity? Maybe the Dems will suffer greatly for this act in an electoral way, but you can't say they aren't trying to do it the honest way. Why don't the Republicans consider bagging Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott before they turn in another mediocre two years of pale achievements? The people would then be able to vote liberal vs. conservative.
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the roll over and take it attitude the GOP is adopting yet again as they are cheated out of a senate seat in South Dakota should be enough to remind us how we are the sucker party. Two senate seats the Democrats stole successfully in this election cycle, NJ and SD, and the GOP attitude is hey we still have control! Poor Republicans. How they bumbled their way into the majority is a testament to the mindblowing idiocy of the other major party.

A Pack Not a Herd.

Margaret Carlson on Clinton.

Armed Liberal has advice for the Democrats.

Psycho Taco takes on Katha Pollitt.

Mark Steyn, quit whitewashing Muslims:

Broadly speaking, in these interesting times, when something unusual and unprecedented happens, there are those who think on balance it's more likely to be a fellow called Mohammed than, say, Bud, and there are those who climb into the metaphorical burqa, close up the grille and insist, despite all the evidence, that we should be looking for some angry white male.

Telegraph:

that's not the Bush style. He doesn't rush headlong into gunfights at the OK Corral, he corrals folks until they say they're OK about the gunfight.

(Al Schroeder calls Bush the "Columbo President."

David Brooks, are the Dems going to become the stupid party?:

Well, Republicans can only hope. But the truth is that while Democrats are stupid, they are not that stupid. If you listen to intelligent members of the Democratic political class, you learn that the party hasn't totally lost its head. The smarter liberals say the last thing the party needs is another one of those DLC vs. populist intra-party fights.

Instead, the first thing the party has to do is get some credibility on national defense. So long as voters don't trust Democrats to be tough on terrorism, it doesn't matter what the party says on anything else. This is so patently obvious that surely some Democrats will come up with an ostentatiously hawkish homeland security agenda over the next few months.

Zell Miller and others on what Dems need to do.
A few of Emperor Misha's favorite things.