joyfulchristian

Time for the dogs to turn on each other

Traditionally the Democrats have not been particularly kind to failed Presidential candidates.  However, I must say they have a point on this one:

WASHINGTON - Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country.

 

Some said he will be pressured to give the money to Democratic campaign committees rather than save it for a potential White House bid in 2008.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush (news - web sites) or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore (news - web sites)'s 2000 presidential race.

I certainly don't understand this.  Why would a challenger in an extremely tight Presidential race (and one where he consitently polled just below the incumbent) leave so much money in his campaign?  That's a lot of money and I don't blame the Democrats for pointing out that this might have turned the tide.  In fact, the actual total may be higher than the $15 million number.  If you combine the amount speculated to be in his campaign legal fund we may be talking about $24 or more.

What on earth was Kerry thinking?  The only explanation I can think of is that he'd concluded the money wouldn't put him over the top and decided he'd just put it away for future campaigns. 

In a race as tight as this one though, that seems to have been a large tactical error.  With another 150,000 thousand votes he could have won Ohio (and with it the nation).  It looks like a major blunder to me.

Not that I'm complaining.

I wonder if Edwards realizes what Kerry has done for him

Based on Edwards speech last night and the way he introduced Kerry today I get the impression that Edwards impulse was to fight it out tooth and nail in court. (He is, after all, an attorney.) If Edwards ever wants to be President it would be a big step backwards to get painted as a bad loser.

Truthfully, I don't think Kerry had anything to lose, personally, from fighting it out. Having lost an election, it's very unlikely that he'd be nominated again. But he could do serious harm to Edwards, the party and, lest we forget, the country.

By stepping aside, Kerry has preserved Edwards chances in the future.

I laughed so hard

This morning I sent an e-mail to a friend, who is a school teacher, in Ohio to tease her about things getting drawn out:

what's the big idea out there! making us all wait around like this. of all the nerve!

When I checked my mail at lunch, I'd gotten this back:

i didn't get this "it's all about me" by accident...it is taught in our schools!!!! me"

I was just rolling.

Here it comes

You're already starting to hear the calls for Bush to "reach out" to Democrats. Michelle Malkin has something to say about that. Here's hint: She's a'gin it.

Credit where it's due

John Kerry has decided to do the honorable thing and concede the election. He did it without much delay and well before continuing to hold out would have made him petty and/or childish. He also avoided the sore loser label, though that may not matter. Traditionally the Democratic party tends to not be very helpful in future campaigns to a guy that's lost once. Far more important, I think, is that this eliminates the possibility of dragging Edwards down as well.

This decision is the right thing to do for the country, for his party, and for his running mate. I don't like the man, but he is going out with honor. Unlike someone else I could mention, to say nothing of his supporters.

And the winner for the best mocking of the "selected, not elected" crowd goes to

... Frank J in a landslide.

I think it's safe now to admit that Bush stole the first election and served illegitimately. Thus he was elected for the first time for real yesterday. So, can Bush now run for real reelection in 2008?

I'd laugh myself silly if I didn't have such a headache.

Yes

They are.

ABC and CBS

... who refuse to call Ohio, have called Nevada. Why hasn't NBC? That it would force them to call the election for Bush is the only reason I can come up with.

Kerry really has a chance

... we mean it! As far as I can tell, that's the gist behind NBC's Ann Thompson's constant statements that in the last election in Ohio 90% of provisional ballots turned out to be valid.

Update: And now they have another analyst who says the 90% number was under an old Ohio statute tht was much broader than the new Federal law.

If I was a drinking man

... and playing a drinking game where I was required to take a shot every time Tom Brokaw said that Kerry's people, "feel very strongly" that Bush needs to go, I'd be drunker than a skunk.

I don't even know what his point is.

Cute

Yahoo now shows 101% of the votes in and Bush leading by 5% and they still won't call it. And I'd like to hear an explanatio of that 101.

On the other hand, Yahoo just called Nevada for Bush.

Update: Yahoo now shows 103 percent of precincts in.

Another Update: Spoons points out the same bizarre numbers on C-Span.

Fuzzy math

NBC just reported that Milwaukee had a voter turnout of 115%. Cute. They're chalking this up to same day registration. I wonder how many Clark Kent's registered today.

I'm not surprised

Tom Brokaw keeps saying that the Kerry campaign "has every right" to wait for the counting of provisional ballots. Just now, while they were coming back from commercial, he apparently didn't know he was on the air. I heard him say, "Are you getting nervous up there?"

Yeah, I don't know who he's rooting for.

John Kerry has gone to bed

Why can't I?

Hmmm

Martin Devon thinks John Edwards looked like a loser when saying they weren't conceding yet. I don't know; I listened, but wasn't really watching.

Every one is still saying

... that "we're exactly where we were in 2000."

But it's not. In 2000 we had a difference of a few hundred votes. Almost anything in a recount could have changed that. But now we're talking about a spread of more than a hundred thousand votes. Do they seriously expect to pick up that many votes?

The other difference, of course, is that Bush is currently pulling more than 50 percent of the popular vote.

On the New Mexico call thing

CBS and ABC still haven't called Ohio, while NBC and Fox have. (CBS seems to have thrown up it's collective hands.) If CBS and ABC called New Mexico it wouldn't matter. but if Fox or NBC called New Mexico they'd have to call the overall election. That would make their continuing coverage superfluous while their competitors would still have a reason to be on the air.

Guess not

Stephen Green said he thought Ted Kennedy's meeting with Kerry was to tell him to concede gracefully. At the Democratic watch party they announced John Edwards as, "the next Vice-President of the United States."

So either Green guessed wrong, or they just didn't listen to him

Personally, since Kenney doesn't seem to have any concept of gracefullness, I'm guessing that wasn't it.

Oh for crying out loud!

The press is so scared of screwing up that they won't call Wisconsin and New Mexico even though the results appear to be pretty clear. I guess I'll have to do it. Kerry wins Wisconsin and Bush wins New Mexico. Assuming Bush keeps Ohio, that also means the race.

Actually, I suspect that they're not calling New Mexico because that would put Bush over 27, at least according to Fox and NBC. If they did that, the election junkies might turn out. And since Kerry is up by the same point spread in Wisconsin, with fewer votes counted, it would look rediculous to call it and not New Mexico.

But maybe that's just my inner cynic. [Inner cynic? It sure comes out to play a lot!]

Update:I said the two states had about the same point spread. I meant the same total ballot spread.

Oh right

... that's the reason!

Kelly O'Donnel, NBC's correspondent at Kerry's headquarters, is saying that Kerry may protest state votes to be consistent with the theme of their campaign.

Right!

Just saw NBCs blogger piece

At the end of the segment Brokaw said, "You're going to be hearing a lot more from them and the webinternet." Maybe he's just tired. Or, maybe he's clueless.

I need to report some disenfranchisement

I've got a friend who is a school teacher in NM. Today she volunteered at a polling sight. She said that they wouldn't let her 8th grades vote! Of all the nerve!

More talking heads smoking crack

I keep hearing people calling this a "replay of 2000." Say what?

This election doesn't seem remotely like 2000 to me.

If I understood correctly

... ABC just said that before they called Flordida for Bush they asked the Dems if they had any evidence that they could pull out Florida.

Are they giving the Republicans this consderation before calling states for Kerry?

I knew I should have got extended cable this month

Most of the local stations are bailing and I don't have any of the cable news stations.

Brad Carson is making his concession speech

... I'd forgotten how much I dislike this man. Now I'm remembering.

???????

Several times tonight I've seen people on the national level mention a comment by Republican Senate candidate about "rampant lesbianism" in schools in south-east Oklahoma. I LIVE in Oklahoma and I never heard anything about this.

Just got a call from a friend in Columbus, Ohio

She said the lines at the polls are insane and that one of her friends had to stand in line for two hours to vote.

I've been watching Yahoo's map

Over the last 20 minutes or so, they've shifted Ohio from leaning Kerry to leaning Bush. Of course 20 minutes before they marked it leaning Kerry, Bush was leading in Ohio by 10. This is really up in the air.

So far, Florida looks pretty good for Bush. However all the networks are scared to death of even looking at a 9 point lead or Bush and saying, "Bush is ahead."

Okey dokey

Cokie Roberts is on crack. In about 3 sentences she managed to make the following gaffes:

1. She referred to Tom Coburn as the Republican incumbent. This is an open seat that was up for grabs when Don Nickles retired.

2. She said that Coburn had a big lead until he made some mistakes. Say what? RCPs polling history shows that in the last couple of months this race has gone back and forth with both candidates having good sized leads at different times. In recent days though, Coburn seems to have been on top.

3. She said that the gay marriage ban on the ballot might decide things. Say what? How?

It's 6:35

... and I'm already a basket case. Maybe I should take a nap until we actually start getting real information. On the up side, I bought some cookie dough for the fundraiser of one of my co-workers. That will give me a steady supply of sugar to keep me alert.

Of course ...

... the fact that none of this means anything hasn't kept me from checking on stuff constantly.

Hindrocket has an interesting comment

The Wonkette has posted some alleged exit polling that does look very good for Kerry; however, I have no idea where she got it, and I'm sitting next to her.

Heh.

The first casualty of war

... is the truth. So goes the old saying. It refers to what is often called "the fog of war." The "fog" is the almost total inability to determine what is actually happening in any given battle based on the information available at the time. This is caused by the rapid reception of mutually exclusive reports.

The reason I bring this up is that as I'm hearing all the news reports, blog comments, and talk radio callers. Every thing we hear so far is anecdotal except the exit polls and they have a whole different set of issues. So what you end up with are tons of stories about the "real" trends cropping up all over the place. Remarkably ;) most of these stories end up telling us that the story teller's side is doing phenomonally well.

What's the truth? I have no idea. I know that the polls showed Bush doing very well going into today, but Kerry has tightened things up in the last couple of days. None of that, of course, means a thing today.

I was surprised

Living in Oklahoma I haven't seen a single Presdiential ad on TV (I've downloaded several off the web) since Kerry sewed up the Democratic nomination. That's hardly surprising since anyone with half a brain cell knows Oklahoma is not in play.

Over the weekend though I was visiting family in Amarillo. While I was there I saw an ad from the Bush campaign and an anti-Bush ad from the DNC. Now I realize that that's not a lot, but then I didn't watch much TV there besides the first half of the Dallas game on Sunday. (And I slept through a lot of that.) I can't for the life of me figure out why any one would run even one Presidential ad in Texas. I mean it's not like Texas is in play either.

So what's going on here?

When she's right, she's right

I generally figure that there's no point linking to Instapundit because most people will probably read it there any way, but I just had to point out this line from Megan McArdle:

The law ought to try to strike a balance, but for reasons I don't understand, we've decided to max out turnout even though this means allowing quite a bit of fraud. Since what scant evidence we have indicates that dead, canine, and imaginary voters break heavily Democratic, this will hurt Bush on election day.

Priceless.

Is it just me

... or is the sight of a presidential candidate, in the midst of telling people why they should vote for him, saying, "Wake up America, wake up. ... You have a choice," somwhat, oh ... i don't know ... condescending?

Interesting theory

Dick Morris argues that the explosives story has hurt Kerry much more than Bush. His reasoning is basically that Bush consistently polls far ahead of Kerry on the isses of Iraq and the war on terror. Because of this, he thinks it was crucial for the Kerry people to keep the debate on domestic issues where Kerry polls much closer. Morris thinks that it was a mistake from the beginning to jump on the explosives story because it reminded voters that we have this "war" thing going on and they like Bush better on that issue. When you add in the fact that the whole story is collapsing into a nightmarish web of contradictory stories, the whole thing just makes Kerry look even worse.

Morris's theory sounds plausible, but then again he doesn't have a stellar track record on predictions. Dick Morris is a brilliant man, but sometimes he's often brilliantly wrong.

Now here's a true-blue Bush supporter

Here's one reason to vote early:

Alicia Balseiro, 70, an ardent Bush supporter in Miami, said on Thursday that she had come out to vote early for a key reason. "I don't know if I'll die tomorrow," she said.

Now there is a supporter! Truthfully, that was part of the reason I voted early. Unlike Ms. Balseiro I don't feel it very likely I'll die tomorrow, but I will be on the road this weekend. This way, even if someone runs me down, I'll have had my say.

The election is over

Well, it's over for me. This was the first day of early voting in Oklahoma. Well, at least it was in Payne County, but I believe it's the same state wide.

The polls were supposed to open here at 8. I showed up about 3 minutes early and there were already 30 people ahead of me. I'm guessing they're going to have pretty high turnout for early voting.

I voted straight party for the Republicans. I don't really like using the straight party option on the ballot, but today I figured I might as well. I'm appalled by the actions of the national Democratic part and think they need to be taught a lesson. There are some decent local Democrats here, but there's no help for it. The Dems won't get the point unless they're well and truly spanked up and down the board. They may not even get it then.

One of the things I don't get

Is why so many Democrats seem to believe that Karl Rove is a cross between Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Ghengis Khan, and The Prince of Darkness. Just about every serious screw-up the Dems have made this year gets blamed with Karl Rove. The story is always that Rove set them up and tricked them into acting like morons.

The fake memos? Rove's fault.

The constant harping to get access to Bush's National Guard records, only to find out that there was nothing in them? Karl Rove, of course.

Falling over themselves to accuse Bush of incompetence because some explosives went missing in Iraq, only to discover that there weren't as many explosives as reported and the Russians smuggled them out of the country prior to the war? Karl Rove suckered them.

You know the liberals, lefties, and Democrats are starting to panic when you hear rumors out of that quarter that the whole "Missing Iraq Explosives" scam was a setup engineerred by Karl Rove to trick them into going public, so the Bushies could release official information that makes them look like the smear-artist morons they are.

No kidding.

More on the terror tape

Drudge claims that when ABC handed this new tape over the the CIA, they redacted the final 15 minutes:

ABCNEWS withheld portions of an alarming new al Qaeda videotape which warns the next terror attack will dwarf 9/11 from the feds when they submitted the video for analysis, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.

And what do these final minutes supposedly contain?

"What took place on September 11 was but the opening salvo of the global war on America and that our Lord willing, the magnitude and ferocity of what is coming your way will make you forget all about September 11," the man, whose face is covered by a headdress, warns in the video. "After decades of American tyranny, now it's your turn to die."

And what is the pretext of this attack supposed to be?

A top goverment source said from Washington that ABC withheld the final 15 minutes of the tape from the feds -- the portion of the tape where the man warns of retribution for Americans electing Bush and Cheney.

[...]

"You are guilty, guilty, guilty. You're as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You're as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell...," the man states.

He goes on to warn of an upcoming horror: "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead.

"People of America, that was the verdict now for the sentencing: as participants and partners in the crimes of the regime, you too shall pay the price for the blood that has been spilled."

Of course, the election of Bush and Cheney is a complete straw man. Before 9/11 Bush's foreign policy basically boiled down to, "You leave us alone and we'll leave you alone." That didn't stop the attacks in 2001. If al-Qaeda doesn't like Bush's current foreign policy, they have no one to blame but themselves; they pretty much forced his hand.

On another issue, why hasn't ABC aired the tape yet?

One ABC source, who demanded anonymity, said Thursday morning, the network was struggling to find a correct journalistic "balance" before airing any story on the video.

"This is not something you just throw out there while people are voting," the ABC source explained.

Because, of course, the American people aren't capable of watching the tape for themselves and figuring out what conclusions to draw. Of course not! They can only be allowed to see the tape after ABC has decided on the meta-contextual narrative that will surround such a viewing.

Earlier today Megan McArdle said:

It's no better to hold a story until after the election because of its political impact, than to hold one until right before the election because it will make a bigger bang. Nor would it be right to hold a tape telling Americans to elect Kerry, or else he'd kill them.

I would tend to agree with Megan on this. Holding on to a story because you're trying to keep it from affecting the elections is just as bad as holding a story in order to affect the elections. (Note the update to her post which indicates that the CIA may not have authenticated the tape after all.)

On another note entirely I'm not sure how the final 15 minutes could be withheld from the CIA without them noticing. Surely, to have any chance of determining whether the tape had been altered or enhanced, they would have demanded the original recording. I'd be shocked if ABC removed the last 15 minutes from their original. After all, if they did that, once they aired the wittheld footage, how could they prove it was authentic? And if they did remove the footage from the original, shouldn't the CIA have been able to tell? It's possible they might even be able to retrieve some of it.

Any way, that whole angle confuses me.

They've finally done it

Remarkably, the mainstream media has convinced Spoons to do what George Bush could never do: He now says he's voting for Bush.

JYB links to some bombshells

You're got to read this post about coordinated activity between the VC and Vietnam Veterans Against the war. If this stuff is true, then it would be direct evidence that John Kerry committed acts of treason.

I say if because if, as the story states, we've had this evidence since 1971-1972 then I can't imagine why nothing was done about it. Of course I don't understand why Jane Fonda wasn't arrested as soon as she returned to American soil. I clearly don't understand the dynamics of the time.

Hey!

I thought Frank was supposed to be doing satire.

Which reminds me, several months ago I excerpted a bit of one of Frank's longer posts and I got hammered by a reader about how "insenstive" the comments were. When I replied something along the lines of, "Well, it is Frank J," my reader basically said, "Oh, I didn't realize it was Frank J. It's OK then."

Why tell that story now? I have no idea. It just popped into my head and demanded to be let out.

Swift Geese Veterans for Truth

The Winter Hunter Investigations. (Via No Pasaran)

Absolutely hilarious.

I've known for a long time that Joel Mowbray was a great reporter

This just confirms it:

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

Yeah, it just keeps getting better from there. Why is it that John Kerry keeps fabricating and/or stretching the truth about events he holds up as reasons why he's qualified? Does he think no one would check?

This just in ...

... Cher is a moonbat:

Cher warned moveon.org clubgoers to fight Bush, before "it's too late":

"All the gay guys, all my friends, all my gay friends, you guys you have got to vote, alright? Because it would only be a matter of time before you guys would be so screwed, I cannot tell you. Because, you know, the people, like, in the very right wing of this party, of these Republicans, the very very right wing, the Jerry Falwell element, if they get any more power, you guys are going to be living in some state by yourselves. So, I hate scare tactics, but I really believe that that's true."

"I think that as Bush will, if Bush gets elected, he will put in new Superior Court judges, and these guys are not going to want to see gay pride week."

Cher declared that Abraham Lincoln "looks like Kerry on a crappy day."

So let me get this straight; Cher believes that if Bush is elected we're going to ship all the gays off to lock all the gays up in some place all by themselves. And what's with the total gratuitous blast at Lincoln? How can that possibly be relevant.

Of course, compared to Al Franken, this looks perfectly sane:

"The buzz is any state that elects a Democratic Senator will get nuked"

I'd like to believe that this is just hyperbole, but I've seen enough of late that it seems pretty clear that a lot on the left really believe that Bush really is as bad as Hitler and they really believe he might nuke states that vote against him. (And you can just guess what Franken's opinion of the military if he believes that officers would carry out such an order.)

The thing is though that if you really do believe you're dealing with the next Hitler, there is only one morally justifiable course of action. It's therefore no real shock to read stuff like this:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Some people will no doubt be shocked that a leftist columnist would openly call for Bush's murder. But it should be no surprise. Hitler slaughtered millions of people and brought a war of aggression that spanned several continents. The only truly honorable people in the German government and military were those who tried to kill him to stop it. While killing someone is distasteful, if that person is recklessly and/or maliciously killing millions of people it becomes the morally necessary thing to do.

That's why all this rhetoric about "Bushitler" and the "Bush Family Evil Empire" (no, I'm not making this up) is so dangerous. You can't tell how many there are, but I have no doubt that many of the people talking like this really believe it. There really are people who believe that John Ashcroft is about to haul all the liberals off to concentration camps and that Bush would actually nuke American cities if they voted against him.

That's what makes this dangerous. A lot of people are shocked that people would talk of killing Bush. That's not the problem. Like I said, killing Hitler would have been the morally right thing to do under the circumstances. No, the problem is that these people are so divorced from reality that killing Bush actually makes sense.

For that reason it's vital that every time someone compares Bush to Hitler or makes some other equally monstrous accusation or comparis that they be called on it and forced to deal with the consequences of their acts. It doesn't even matter if they believe it; there will be people who do hear them and believe it. And the more of this lunacy people believe, the more likely it becomes that partisan disagreements will end in bloodshed.

I find myself forced to agree with Hindrocket:

This is, of course, where the liberal campaign of hatred and violence has been going for some time. I do think it is likely that someone will get killed; I hope it isn't President Bush. One can only wonder: if such a tragedy occurs, will the liberals come to their senses?

Maybe not. I'm desperately afraid that more than one person that will have to die before this madness ends.

And while I'm at it, I've got just as much trouble with those on the fringe of the right who scream things like "Hitlery".

Unless things change course, in a few more years things could get very dark.

Election amnesia

An excellent line from the President about John Kerry's flips and flops:

Campaigning in the pivotal state of Florida 10 days before Election Day, Bush lambasted Kerry for criticizing the Iraq invasion despite his prewar vote to authorize force there and his warnings about the danger of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"The senator used to recognize that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat who hated America," Bush told thousands of supporters at a baseball park in Fort Myers.

He said Kerry "seems to have forgotten all that" and suggested the Massachusetts senator had adapted his views for political gain.

"As his position has evolved during the course of the campaign, you might call it election amnesia," the president said.

Heh.

Fun with campaigners

Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend in Ohio. While we were talking she described an event that happened the other day. On Tuesday afternoon she went home from work sick. While at home she got one of those annoying campaign calls (which I haven't had to endure, not being in a swing state) and decided to have a little fun. I'm paraphrasing, but I think this is pretty close. C represents the caller and A is my friend.

C: Ma'am, I wanted to make sure you were aware of the upcoming election.

A: No way! There's an election coming up? When is it?

C: It's in two weeks ma'am.

A: Cool!

C: Ma'am, are you a registered Democrat?

A: I'm not sure. Which one is the elephant and which one is the donkey?

C: The democrats are the donkey.

A: The elephant's cuter. I think that's what I want to be.

C: Ummm. OK.

Click.

I'll have to remember this routine. It could come in handy.