From Today's Bleat

All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the
UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

Go read it. And, if you haven't already, check out yesterday's too where he slices up Andrew Sullivan really thin old school deli style. Tasty.

Iowa Election News Roundup

No... not here silly. All you're going to get here is wild opinion, spleen and invective. If you want one-stop-shopping for the latest Iowa election news, go to State 29.

The World Champion Boston Red Sox

My dad was born in 1901, was a die hard American League and Red Sox fan and schooled me about the curse. I remember the 1967 Series. I was crushed when Boston lost. Yaz was my hero.

I lived in New York in 1986. After the Bill Buckner gimp error, I thought I'd never see it broken.

Sometimes we do live so long.

Sweet.

We Should be So Proud

Tom Harkin is a lying sack of bat guano. And, I feel like I owe an apology to bat poop... in fact to all varieties of feces.

In a letter to the Daily Iowan, Harkin writes that George Bush will have no choice but to bring back to draft.

So Americans today have good reasons to fear the return of the draft. George W.
Bush may have avoided the draft when he was a young man. But if re-elected, he
will not be able to avoid the draft as president.

Nice touch at the end there slamming Bush for avoiding the draft... from a man who lied about serving in Vietnam. Real nice Tommy boy.

The Democrats will say anything, do anything to win this. And, it's all okay, because they're doing it for "the little guy" after all. They're trying to help.

Hat tip - The Corner.

Thus Sayeth Comrade Rekha:

While the free market might work with cars or vacuum cleaners, it can't be
trusted to safeguard people's health.

Have you ever noticed that every time socialists blame the free market for a perceived public woe, when you dig a little deeper you discover that the true culprit is government regulation? In issues great and small, (and please people, this flu shot brouhaha is pretty small potatoes), when well intentioned regulators try to jigger the market, things almost inevitably get worse.

What made the Great Depression, well… “Great”? Tarrifs and other trade barriers that made international trade grind to a halt.

What compelled Soviet ex-patriots to fill their luggage with toilet paper when they returned to the Motherland to visit relatives? Government control of the marketplace in its extreme form.

What has caused the current flu vaccine shortage? Government price controls and over regulation.

Thus sayeth Gomer Pile: Surprise, surprise, surprise!

La-di-f'ing-da

Andrew Sullivan endorses Kerry. Sad, but no surprise.

Sullivan has had his knickers in a twist precisely since the day Bush announced his support for the anti gay marriage amendment.

How you can think Andrew, given your espoused hawkish, neocon, fiscal conservative, quasi-libertarian position, that John Kerry will be a better leader in the war against the Islamo Fascists is utterly beyond my grasp. Blinded by your own predilections...?

Grrrr.

So... there's nothing to do but write a limerick in Andy's honor to mark the occasion.

A political pundit named Sullivan
Gives a liberal hack a huge mulligan
All his hopes he will pin
On this tree with a grin
An endorsement he may wish to mull again.

You gotta laugh. If not... you'd never stop crying.

Have I...

... been dropped into some kind of alternate universe? What the hell is going on here? Have the ground rules changed so much that the "newspaper of record", the vauted "gold standard" of American journalism has allowed itself to become a blatant, partisan, Democrat Party propaganda organ?

The most frightening and surreal thing about this will be the result of this journalistic malpractice. You know what that will be, don't you?

Think about it. Consequences for Dan Rather for the whole "memogate" thing? Nothing.

Consequences for The New York Times for running a poorly researched, ultimately false and meaningless Democratic talking point?

What do you think?

God help us.

Presidential Candidate Matcher

Kris from Random Mentality and greenman from Crap Flinging Monkey both took the test. Kris came out for Kerry over Bush 42% to 39%. greenman... well his header says it best:

It's official I'm a left-wing nutjob.

Imagine our shock... Green Party, Nader and Socialist before Kerry.

Me - 69% for Bush, 39% for Kerry. Of course, I'm pretty sure that they did not probably weight the issues as I would. The war trumps all of Bush's faults on social issues that ruffle my libertarian feathers.

Election 2004 - Down to the Short Strokes

Is anyone out there as... what is the term...? Concerned...? Scared...? Scared s#$tless about this? Coast to coast, anti-Republican campaign violence is breaking out and from the MSM - nothing.

But, should we be surprised? I mean, these good people shooting out windows at GOP campaign headquarters, harassing Republican voters and the like are just speaking truth to power. Sure, their tactics are, well... questionable, but they're fighting for the people. They're speaking truth to power damn it! Yeah, right...

So they're putting the American tradition of peaceful succession at risk. Christ, we had an election in the middle of a civil war. Big deal. The Republicans stole the last election anyway. It's payback time.

And if these electoral "insurgents" aren't effective, fear not. Better get Hans Blix on the line, because the Democrats will bring out the WMDs. Lawyers... lots and lots of lawyers. Not just regular lawyers... no, Airborne Lawyers. 10,000 of them, ready to hop on private jets, jump into the hotspots and protect the right of dead people and cartoon characters to vote.

This is deadly friggin' serious people. This is basic to the survival of our democracy. This is the glue that has held this republic together for the last 228 years. This is the kind of basic life lesson that kids used to learn on the school playground. If you decide to play a game and you're losing, you can't change the rules to your advantage after the game has begun.

But no more. After all, when you're fighting for the people (real or imagined...), the ends justify the means. George W. Bush is such a threat to the Union... nay, the world... that he must be stopped. He must be defeated, even if we must destroy the heart of this country to save it.

God help us all if Bush wins in a squeaker.

Update - Go read this.