Shots Across The Bow

I know I said Monday, but I couldn't wait that long!

Well, folks, a lot has happened in the world since I've been away. Here's a few quick reactions:

Dean is done. When you have to ask your professional staff to work without pay because you don't have the money to cover the payroll, that means game over. I was shocked to hear about this on NPR, what with all the blather about dean's fundraising abilities, the vast network of volunteers organized through the internet, and what not. You'd think he'd be the last candidate to run into financial difficulties, particularly with a $45 million war chest. But it's all gone now; he's down to his last $5 million. Oddly, it appears that out of $40 million, only about $10 million actually went into media buys; the rest went to pay overhead. According to NPR's report, in an average campaing, it's usually the exact opposite; 75% of expenditures go to getting the message out, with only 25% going to overhead.

I wonder how all those kids who signed up on the websites feel, knowing that the paid Dean operatives pocketed $3 of every $4 the volunteers raised for the campaign.

What does this remind me of? Oh yeah, can you say "Enron?"

I knew that you could.

The Grown-ups are Back in Charge Over the summer and fall, we were subjected to endless blather from the media about the Dynamic Dean with his internet army, and Clinton stand-in Wesley Clark, US Army Ret. (early). While most folks with real lives couldn't even name more than one or two candidates 3 months ago the furor was raised by the most partisan fringes of the Democratic Party. The media played along because it sold papers, and was kinda fun. It certainly made for better press than Gephardt or Kerry going about the nations business.

Boring.

But it's winter now, and people are actually voting and the kids and whackos are being supplanted by rational adults. It's no surprise then that the candidate thought to have the best chance at winning the nomination before the silly season began, John Kerry, is once again the front runner.

The BBC: Just as Reliable as the National Enquirer The past few years have not been kind to the dominant media organizations. First Jayson Blair makes a laughing stock out of the New York Times by fabricating reports, and now Andrew Gilligan does the same for the BBC. (With a name like Gilligan, you kinda had to suspect this all along, right?) Lord Hutton's inquiry found that not only was Tony Blair's government innocent of charges that they'd "sexed up" intelligence to back the war in Iraq, but that Andrew Gilligan had misquoted and distorted the statements of David Kelly in order to make that charge. Kelly, apparently distraught at both the lies being based on his statements, and being revealed as the source of the statements, suicided.

Oddly, Andrew Gilligan is still employed at the BBC, although the top two men there have resigned.

Obviously, Gilligan attended the Bellesiles School of Modern Journalism, where you're taught if you can't find the facts you need, just make them up.

John Kerry: He Stands for....umm...well...I'll get back to you after I poll. John Kerry revealed in the debate last night that he thinks the threat of terrorism is exaggerated. Talk about a disconnect with reality. Let's see; anti war protestors claimed that a single American life was too high a price to liberate Iraq. Apparently 3000 American lives are not enough to convince Mr. Kerry to act in defense of the rest of us.

But this isn't surprising. As has been covered recently, Kerry is well known for waffling and is apparently capable of holding contradictory positions simultaneously. I admire his mental flexibility, but I think I'd prefer a President who actually stood for something.

Clark is Clueless I watched a couple of the Clark commercials on late night TV, stuck in with the rest of the infomercials selling tacky useless junk you'd only consider purchasing at 3AM. His main campaign platform according to these commercials is that he'll get us out of the mess in Iraq. Since the majority of Americans appear to support our actions in Iraq, I doubt that's a campaign message that will win him the White House. That combined with his poor showing in NH indicates that the General is about to get an early retirement.

Again.

The Presidential Race I'm going to go out on a limb here folks, and call this one early. The dems are running on a simple platform. "I can beat George Bush." While that may be a wonderful message to rally your base, it's not going to resonate with the majority of voters who approve of the job the President is doing. Jobs are growing, the economy is growing, the market is up, and even manufacturing is beginning to recover. Bush has co-opted most of the Dems best issues, courting seniors and immigrants. In short, the dems have nothing to run on except their irrational hatred of George, and hatred won't win an election. The collapse of the Dean campaign and the continued irrelevance of Clark mean that the nomination is Kerry's to lose. He will run against Bush and lose handily, although probably not in a landslide, unless the fringe deserts the Democratic party in a hissy fit over the Dean debacle.

The dark horse in the race is Edwards. Should dems decide Kerry is too vulnerable based on his well documented waffling on virtually every major issue facing the country, they might well turn to the relatively unknown Edwards, who has run a masterfully positive campaign.

No WMD Stockpiles in Iraq: Bush Lied That's what the liberals say after Kay resigned. Of course, they neglect the parts of his report about how there were significant efforts by Saddam to acquire WMD, that the failure to do so was less due to UN sanctions and inspections and more due to corruption in the Iraqi scientific community. They forget the part of his Congressional testimony about how there is evidence that parts of the programs were transported into Syria. The don't tell you the part where Kay says intelligence failures, not politically motivated deceptions were behind the universal belief that Saddam had WMD. And they conveniently forget that the only folks claiming the war was based solely on WMD were liberals who opposed it.

Gratitude: Hezbollah Style In a goodwill gesture, Irael released hundreds of Hezbollah prisoners in return for the release of 1 Israeli hostage, and the bodies of threee soldiers. Displying the truth that no good deed goes unpunished, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, promised to kidnap more Israelis in order to secure the release of more members captured by Israel while planning or conducting terrorist acts.

Ignorance Rools in Georgia There is a serious effort in Georgia to eliminate the word "evolution" from science curricula in high school, and replace it with "biological changes over time." Given the vociferous attacks of scientists on religion, i'm not altogether surprised that religious folk have begun to strike back. Unfortunately, this isn't the way to do it. While I have some strong reservations over the completeness of modern evolutionary theories, they are the best explanation to date, and should be taught as such until something better comes along, and folks, in a scientific framework, creationism ain't it.

Man I missed doing this!