ORACULATIONS

Those of you who have been reading me for a while know that while I am a Republican and consider myself conservative, I hold much of the so-called conservative movement in near contempt. Why? Because it is in essence a negative movement. A movement that is mostly composed of people who want to play defense; to stop the other guy, never is it focused on helping society, on helping people. Nowhere do you find a comprehensive set of ideas designed to help the American Middle class or to directly enable the poverty class into the middle class. Most importantly it offers nothing that might make the quality of our lives better for everyone. And I might add to the above--all of it right now.

The bullshit you read like "Stop Hillary," stop socialism, stop gay marriage, stop abortion, stop this, and stop that are by definition destined for nothing more than holding the opposition to three yards per carry with an occasional run back of a pass interception, or to stretch an analogy---a kickoff return that appears to usher in a "new day." This "plan" is an acknowledgment that the three yards and a cloud of dust will eventually prevail; all we are doing is to slow down the eventual defeat. OK, we've run a few kickoffs back but ask yourselves this: since the 1982 election have we gone further down the road to big government, big government spending, and more intrusion into the private lives of people, or less? Did the great conservative Ronald Reagan run up the largest deficit ever or not? I started writing this piece on Wednesday, the day after the "calamity" we call the Democratic takeover of Congress. I knew I was taking a position I hadn't heard anyone else taking. But today, Joseph Farrar of WND has begun a two part series that takes up the same cause:

With all due respect to my conservative friends, this is the kind of thinking that will take them the way of the Whigs.

Don't get me wrong. I love conservatives. Some of my best friends are conservatives. But being "conservative" is not a bold vision for the future. Being "conservative" will never inspire Americans to reject socialism and immorality. Banking on this word, this wholly inadequate, timid ideology is, instead, a sure-fire recipe for political defeat for the foreseeable future.

There is something inherently inadequate with the conservative vision. the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people using the cultural institutions of the press, the entertainment industry, the foundations, the corporations, even the churches.

Every time I read that we "have to stop the government from growing," I yawn. Whenever I hear of someone demanding a strong military (which always means a ton more money) I see another case of some dope with ten dollars in his pocket setting off a $5 IED that destroys a ten million dollar vehicle and kills a couple of the best trained and best educated guys on the earth. And all talk of reducing the deficit is not only a blatant lie but fails to tell us precisely how reducing the deficit will make my life better this year, not ten years from now.

The Democrats are clearly for the implementation of a Welfare State with a huge government bureaucracy that tells us what we can do and when we can do it, just like the EU is doing. Their theory is that capitalism isn't fair. What alternative to Welfare State socialism with all its dictatorial trappings do we offer that will give people a better deal than they have right now? If we actually care about ordinary people bettering themselves we better come up with better ideas.

We are told we are for free trade when the implementation of this concept has resulted in the loss of millions of well paid middle class jobs, jobs that WOULD improve the lives of Americans right now, if only those jobs were here instead of in some Third World dictatorship.

We are told that "open borders" is great for us because it grants employers lower costs, hence cheaper products and lower inflation for the rest of us and we should be happy as clams that money saved by paying "illegals" shit paying jobs raises our standard of living. These are all jobs performed by people who don't have health insurance, educations to uplift themselves, or an interest in actually becoming Americans. Keep in mind that every time one of this "cheap labor" class gets sick they are taken care of by our government supported "emergency" hospitals. Or we hear that "open borders" are bad for us because this "cheap labor" takes jobs away from Americans. Never do conservatives offer a clear solution to a problem that cannot really be solved without a military on the Mexican border willing to shoot and kill unarmed civilians of all ages who are just looking for work. Would you be willing to go down there and kill women and children? Day after day? For the rest of your life?

We must have a set of principals and ideas that will guide "conservative" philosophy to a better "right now" as well as a better future. And we must prove that we are interested in more than the next trillionaire who has set himself up to earn 400 times what he is willing to pay his employees. How does "conservatism" address this obvious disparity? How can we have people in New York paying rents of $20,000 per month while the ordinary workers can't make ends meet? Many of our best and brightest are buying apartments for ten million dollars (or more) while their employees have to live far out of town in order to afford roofs over their heads. How can conservatives address the insane cost of a college education that 90% of us cannot afford without putting our kids into hock with "student loans;" loans that at least half of them will need twenty years or more to pay off? What can we offer the people who are educated in the sciences or mathematics; who are in research and development, or people with other expertise that all of us want to take advantage of---museums, art galleries, large symphony orchestras and so on---how can they exist without government grants, outright subsidization by government, or PBS types of begathons that may or may not work? How does conservatism address these "quality of life" diversions or necessary facilities that are desired by most people?

We better come up with something or it's Welfare State City, with all its ills. The start of a solution? Easy. Force the Congress to view AND PUBLISH how each proposed piece of legislation will help middle class Americans RIGHT NOW. That means every earmark, every appropriation, and every new bureaucratic implimentation of a policy. Building a bridge to nowhere? How does it better the lives of most of the middle class in Alaska? Funding some left leaning art gallery in New Mexico? How precisely does this benefit the middle class with tangible long term benefits?

I have other ideas but they involve mayhem, guns, and fucking. Legalizing pot is also a great start.

Time for the really important stuff: Football, College football and some stuff going on within games. I saw the USC vs Oregon game Saturday night, and to get this stuff out of the way, USC is now a very good team and the coaches have turned what was mediocre in September into high octane in November. But now to the rules as determined by the brain dead PAC 10. There was a disputed touchdown by Oregon in the fourth quarter. USC demanded a review----the review took more than five minutes---I actually went out of the stands, into the concession area, stood in two long lines for food and drink and returned to my seat before the decision was announced, one that was cheered by 95,000 fans; there was supposedly "irrefutable visual evidence, that there was no touchdown and USC was awarded the ball. AFTER the ruling, Oregon challenged the challenge result, one that supposedly showed "irrefutable visual evidence" that no touchdown was scored. That don't mean nothin' to the PAC 10, they allowed the challenge. ANOTHER five to seven minutes elapsed before the referee posed with microphone in hand and reversed the "irrefutable evidence" apparently because there was new irrefutable evidence and Oregon awarded a touchdown. Fifteen minutes wasted while a bunch of old fogies who can't see or operate a modern tape operation "decide." INSANE. You will note that in all games involving PAC 10 officials confusion is the order of the day and "reviews" take forever.

Tactical note: USC didn't try a single field goal. They went for it on fourth down all through the game. I notice that other coaches around the country are doing the same thing. I think this is because attempting a field goal is an acceptance of failure, a very poor psychological message to send to players; Oregon tried three and two were blocked.

Late Add: got a note from a friend of mine who is on the basketball coaching staff at USC. The official time for the "replays" was 17:30; so what we have is old fogies who don't know the rules.

New Editor has a survey of the pre-election poll accuracy. Only Pew nailed it, with both ABC News/Washington Post and USA Today/Gallup reasonably close. The rest were ridiculous. Dems won by 5% and FOX polled 13%; WSJ had it pegged at 15%; the worst, you'll be glad to know, was the Communist News Network which predicted 20%. Something to keep in mind next time, if there is a next time.

According to Tammy Brice, the Dems (Pelosi) have stopped calling the war in Iraq a war. It's now a situation.....

Really Bad News for FOX NEWS: They have the lowest 18-54 demographic of all the cable channels. Translation: old farts watch it, young people do not. Look for a major shake up, and very soon. My bet: bye bye Hannity, Gibson, and possibly Cavuto. I don't know O'Reilly's demos, but I spent some time with the under 40 crowd recently and they boooed and cursed him, called him an asshole, and so on. FOX has six months to live.

You have to link here.....I think Rodger Schultz of Curmudgeonly etc. is living a double life. I believe he posted this link but whomever did it deserves a last meal. Here's how to handle a telemarketer, and it's so good and it sounds so real that I think it must be real......

Us supposedly "conservative" bloggers are conducting a poll to find which of the current batch of candidates we favor. I have removed the actual ballot because nothing prevents double voting. The current totals show that most respondents are the brain dead super conservatives who want to sink to the bottom of the sea with candidates who cannot possibly win. When voting consider Giuliani's horrible public divorce including injured kids,

Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York's St. Patrick's Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with "groping in the window at Macy's." In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.

Gingrich's insufferably crude treatment of his cancer ridden wife while he acquired a newer model behind her back (click on the link and get ready to puke),

Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, "Let Our Family Represent Your Family." (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

GOP's favorite 2008 nominee: Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Together, they form the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history. Don't forget that McCain will be 72 years old when he enters the White House and 76 after his first term; will anybody swallow another very old man in the White House? Then we come to Mitt Romney, whose s only negative is that he's a really good guy as well as once being a really good governor of a Blue state; being a Mormon causes hate to run rampant among the Left. He gets nearly no support. Yet.

When the elites of the New York metro area caused Columbia, New York University (known far and wide as NYU), and Fordham to drop big time football in the late 40s and early 50s they robbed the less than affluent kids of the New York metro area of the chance to compete at a top level in their home environment. This meant that local athletes had nowhere to go but "there," somewhere far from home where their families and friends could only read about their exploits or hear rumors of dreams achieved. So Columbia, the team that produced the first win over the wartime undefeated Army juggernaut in four years; Fordham University (1942 Sugar Bowl champions), the school that boasted what might have been the greatest offensive and defensive line in college history -- the "Seven Blocks of Granite," featuring some guy named Vince Lombardi among others; and NYU (Cursed by the un-New York name of "The NYU Violets"--I ain't kidding you) a school that produced some great individual players---all from the New York metro area--- ceased to compete except at the unknown conference level. New York elites actually caused these schools to drop big time football because football was beneath them. Nobody at the New York Times cared; in fact the New York Times doesn't even cover their local high school teams.

Heck, you have to understand, high school public school football is played by "the children of nobodies" while the children of elites care about (full contact) yacht racing, suicide soccer, horse shows, and La Crosse.

Well, after last night the entire area gets to see the kids from their poorer families play. At last they can experience first hand the success of their kids, the ones that play in the largest metro area in the country, the scum that is ignored by the New York elite press and television. Now their kids, who are among the best high school football players in the country, don't have to go to Florida, Oregon, or Michigan to get their shots at fame and the Big Time. Everyone in the tri-state area is suddenly cheering for a college football team. Their college football team.

This actually means something. I’m not exactly sure what.

I have written copiously (that means lots and lots) about Democratic Congressman, Alcyee Hastings, one of the most corrupt members of the U.S. Congress. This guy is the apogee of corruption, outright criminality, and political slime. In case you haven't had enough from me, TCS has a major rundown on this slimeball today. He is going to chair the House Intelligence Committee. My complete rundown is here. If you are a spy for the U.S. you better go into hiding right now because you will be murdered within the year. This guy will sell you down the river for 100K in petro-dollars at the blink of the screen on an ATM machine. Any claim to integrity made by Pelosi will be permanently dirtied before she takes office. And you can probably add murder to the list of crimes committed by Hastings before his first term is over. Read up on this horrible guy.

WHO IS THIS?

She is the much maligned, trashed, and dragged through the mud, Lindsay Lohan. Her career continues to soar in spite of all the shitty gossip sites. She looks great. Period.

ONCE AGAIN ----LAPD cops caught on tape beating a suspect while suspect is on ground and defenseless. This is clear and close up. Christ, you can't even rape a ten year old any more without somebody putting you on YouTube, not that you will be convicted mind you, or even if you are convicted by a runaway jury some idiot judge will give you ten days suspended.

Hollywood Tuna is having a good time today:

What kind of pitiful celeb-biography is this?? Where’s the eating disorders? The abusive step-father? The “sold- her- ass- on- the- streets-to- feed her- crack- habit- at- age- 14” stories? We want suffering damnit! I take it back. Kristin Kreuk is not that interesting after all.

Good read, especially for depressed Republicans. Gets you back to what is really important.

War Crimes trials begin, per Salon (subscription required)

....lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay have other ideas. In a message just sent to reporters, they say they intend to file war crimes charges against Rumsfeld next week in Germany, arguing that his departure from the Department of Defense means that he's no longer entitled to immunity from prosecution.

It won't be the first time lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights have tried to persuade German authorities to prosecute Rumsfeld for war crimes. They tried in 2004 -- the subject then was Abu Ghraib -- but German officials declined to pursue the matter because, they said, the United States was investigating on its own. Still, it's clear that Rumsfeld took the prospect of prosecution at least a little bit seriously at the time. Before German prosecutors announced they wouldn't be taking up the case, Rumsfeld said he'd have to think twice about whether he could take the risk of traveling to Germany for a meeting there.

CCR lawyers say that, under Rumsfeld's direction, the Department of Defense has "adopted the practices of torture and indefinite detention" that they're challenging in a number of other cases.

Chicago Reader has a verbatum quote. (Hat tip: Maxed Out Mama)

EVEN BETTER NEWS: Impeachment Trials to begin (per Malkin). The Democrats will rue the day if these people have their way. My feeling is that when you actually examine the election, the hard left has been rebuked, and rebuked big time. The Democrat leadership is Hard Left but the elected representatives are clearly Center Right, with the clear exception of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

NSFW But not all that unsafe either.

The bikini features over 150 carats of D Flawless diamonds, including a 51 carat D Flawless Pear Shape, a 30 carat D Flawless Emerald Cut, a pair of 15 carat D Flawless Rounds and a pair of 8 carat D Flawless Pear Shapes all set in platinum.

Your cost, should you wish to purchase the bikini, a glittering $30 million, model not included.

Noonan writes about one really outstanding column per month but she outdid herself on 10/28 when she wrote an essay about how many important people in Washington thought the GOP was a disgrace and should lose. In part:

When the meeting was over a woman walked up to me. She spoke of what was going wrong in Washington--the preoccupation with money, a lack of focus on the essentials, and the relentless dynamic of politics: first thing you do when you get power is move to keep power. And after a while you don't have any move but that move.

I said I thought the Republicans would take it on the chin in 2006, and that would force the beginning of wisdom. She surprised me. She was after all a significant staffer giving all her energy to helping advance conservative ideas within the Congress. "Yes," she said, in a quiet, deadly way. As in: I can't wait. As in: We'll get progress only through loss.

That's a year ago, from the Hill.

This is two weeks ago, from a Bush appointee: "I hope they lose the House." And one week ago, from a veteran of two GOP White Houses: "I hope they lose Congress." Republicans this year don't say "we" so much.

What is behind this? A lot of things, but here's a central one: They want to fire Congress because they can't fire President Bush.

Republican political veterans go easy on ideology, but they're tough on incompetence. They see Mr. Bush through the eyes of experience and maturity. They hate a lack of care. They see Mr. Bush as careless, and on more than Iraq--careless with old alliances, disrespectful of the opinion of mankind. "He never listens," an elected official who is a Bush supporter said with a shrug some months ago. Along the way the president's men and women confused the necessary and legitimate disciplining of a coalition with weird and excessive attempts to silence Republican critics. They have lived in a closed system. They now want to open it but don't know how. Listening is a habit; theirs has long been to suppress.

In the Republican base, that huge and amorphous thing, judgments are less tough, more forgiving. But there too things have changed.

Noonan is one of the many who are glad the Republicans lost, and if you read the conservative magazines you will sense the same thing. Cutting to the chase: We fired a guy who we think stinks. We also fired his pals who stink along with him. Upside? The Democrats will do little damage to the economy because the Blue Dogs combined with the Republicans won't let them. The damage, if it comes, will come from "war crimes" trials (already started per Maxed Out) or an impeachment effort. The Republicans don't have a monopoly of not learning from the past. But let's not kid ourselves, losing the Senate was a major event. This may mark the end of judges who use the Constitution as a guide to interpret the law; the appointment of Alcee Hastings to lead the intelligence committee virtually guarantees that all spies will be killed because he will engineer it. If I was an Iraqi friend of the U.S. I'd cut and run while I still could.

The NBA is in their second week so I was watching the San Antonio-Phoenix game for a while last night. As the game unfolded it turned into the typical thrilling NBA "game," an ego centered mano a mano affair (no outside shooting, almost no screens, and the pick and roll apparently illegal). I just couldn't get it out of my mind that neither of these teams, in spite of spectacular individual efforts, could beat the amateur teams of Greece or Spain. How many fans will start to think like this? Just wondering.

Wait a second. Don't forget the Blue Dog Democrats. I wrote a very long piece a few weeks ago about the number of Blue Dogs in the Democratic party and the liklihood of their number expanding. Well the number expanded to at least 40, which makes the Blue Dogs a larger block than the Black Caucus. These guys are not going to allow Pelosi and the far Left to run wild and will join with the Republicans from time to time to balance the budget and things like that (assuming the assholes want to balance the budget). Blue Dogs have as a main concern, the leeching of jobs from here to foreign countries and they aren't going to lie down for any more trade agreements that cost American jobs. The Republicans are going to find themselves very unpopular with used to be middle class voters. Stay tuned on this one.

Faith Hill was amazed she didn't win "Best Vocalist?" The one who should have been completely amazed was the great Martina McBride (above left)---great looking and great singer. BTW, I think Hill was kidding around, she had to know she was in a close up and I've never heard of her being some kind of bitch. But there were stories, never denied, of her using coke a long time ago. It's next to impossible to cover up drug use these days so I doubt it played a part now. Her rep is super clean, and I mean super clean with nobody saying a bad word about her. But her "blow up" has seven postings on page one of YouTube. Looks like a PR nightmare for her.

Duke Rape Case Reducks: believe it or not, Mike Nifong was re-elected in a landslide yesterday in Durham. Nobody wants to admit the total racism of a majority of Blacks, which is every bit as bad as the White racism of the 40s. Now they have a white man they can actually lynch and they have jumped on the band wagon. Only thing I don't get is why the Justice Department cannot intervene in a case where the Constitional rights of the accused are violated.

Patting myself on the back: I called the election at 4:30 PST only wrong by five House seats and may still be right about the Senate (see below). I just got totally bored reading the phony blogs and listening to the even more phony TV analysts. Bad old Big Media got it right and I was just the messenger. Had you confined your reading to me you could have gone to see Borat..... or Jackass #2.

Things the Republican idiot class haven't learned from this election....yet.
It ain't just the economy, stupid. You can't eat high stock prices. A hell of a lot of people are not making four hundred times what their employees are making, they can't pay tuition, go to the doctor, afford medical insurance, and in most cases buy a house. Say what you like, but the blue collar middle class has been raped and the leading suspects to the voters are NAFTA and Free Trade. And guess who is responsible for both NAFTA and Free Trade.

Fear sells insurance and funeral plots but it won't win elections. All the Republicans offered was "fear of Pelosi" and that didn't work. Wanna bet the morons start talking about fear of Hillary next? They might as well because as things stand right now they have nothing else to offer. The Republicans talked about nothing other than fear of Communism and inflation for forty years and never won either the House or Senate.

If the face of the party is Denny Hastert.......well you know what to expect. A bunch of stumbling old white men from Mars ain't gunna cut it. Ideas cut it. Not that the Democrats have any, but what they have ain't stealing, screwing young men in cloak rooms, and sucking the boots of every corporation they possibly can. (Of course, that is exactly what they have, but we only deserve to run the country with ideas and integrity)

Being Daddy's son ain't enough either....George Allen, George Bush, Bob Taft Jr. (in jail), don't mean much. I like to think that Ivan the Terrible had a son called Ivan the Pussy, or Alexander the Great had one named Alexander the Ordinary; we need people of accomplishment other than Arnold Schwartzenegger Jr. and Billy the Kid III.

Media kills. We have to find a way to communicate past Hollywood and the print media. Talk radio and a few blogs ain't it.

Take a trip to Power Line this AM. Very interesting takes. Then trip on over to the Washington Times for a sane view of things.

Neither party ran on a forward-looking agenda, with Republicans asking voters to stay the course on Iraq and the economy while Democrats proposed rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts and said they represented a vote of no confidence in the way the administration has prosecuted the war.

Most notable: all the conservative blogs are taking this one standing up. All taking the position that the Republicans sold out and deserved to lose. I feel no anger at all. I feel nothing, I get more pissed if my kid's team loses a meaningless scrimmage in August. I had no enthusiasm for them at all.

Late reflections: Main issue, as I think it should have been, was the rampant corruption within the Republican Party. Those corrupt pieces of crap deserved to lose, but we citizens lost big time....before this election ever took place. Iraq, a major concern, was only the second most serious issue. The major issue in '04 was "values" (morals). The GOP sold us out for money, and that revealed for all to see exactly what their values actually were. While I can't tell you the contempt I have for the entire bunch, Bush's lousy leadership, if that is what we have been getting from this White House, was a major factor as well. The GOP ground game? The ground game told the leadership to "fuck off, we are sick of you." Here in CA we had a lot of issues on the ballot that would have cost money; at least half of them passed which means the money to pay for "bonds" has to come from somewhere but with Democrats in power here, they will convince the voters that big business will be forced to cough it up. The Democratic victory may be brief if they don't listen to voters either. Will they refuse to build the fence, will they attempt to end the tax cuts? I bet they will not because the Republicans still have a lot of power and there are enough "new" Democrats who are very conservative who won on Tuesday. BTW conservative Democrats are good news for Hillary. Bets are off if the Donks try to impeach Bush. Barnes, in Weekly Standard, further tees off on the incompetent GOP and he is correct.

Election: at 4:30 Democrats a lock for the House, only question is by how much. They are this close to taking over the Senate.

at 3:45 FOX says the Democrats are going to win big. Big issue on exit polls is corruption, which means the Pelosi words worked (or that the crooked Republicans committed suicide). "The late break to the GOP is just not true," said Fred Barnes and he is to the right of J.P. Morgan. They say that the Dems will win a minimum of 25 House Seats (as many as 32) and could win six Senate seats. Bill Krystol, another righty, says the Democrats will also win the Senate.

at 3:30 PM PST (6:30 Eastern) FOX is hinting that they have exit polls and that they show trouble for Republicans. All of MSM swore they wouldn't use exit polls but FOX has apparently led with an attempt at a scoop. Until exit polling is illegal it is going to be done. ABC has just released theirs: shows voter dislike for Bush.

# posted by Howard : 11/07/2006 04:36:00 PM  0 comments links to this post