Useful Fools

In honor of today’s pro-Saddam“peace” rally in DC, I have lifted the following P.J. O’Rourke quote:

“How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

A striking anomaly in the California Recall election was the voting pattern in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also striking is the arrogance of our betters who live there:

Bay Area voters opposed the recall by 63 percent to 37 percent — while Californians as a whole voted to oust Davis 55 percent to 45 percent. Without the nine Bay Area counties, the recall would have passed by 20 percentage points instead of its 10-point margin.

Meanwhile, the region’s voters gave Schwarzenegger 33 percent of the vote as a replacement candidate — while statewide, he garnered 49 percent. Without the Bay Area, Schwarzenegger would have earned 53 percent of the vote

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The AP has an significant foreign policy story about Bush seeking to spread democracy to Cuba and tighten the noose on the tyrannical Castro regime. But they couldn’t report it that way. Instead, George Gedda, the writer, had to spin it… starting this story with “Eager to please a key Florida constituency…”.
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Democrats worship Bill Clinton, a candidate and president who certainly had “integrity and character” issues. Now they are falling in love with General Wesley Clark. And it appears he may have the same issues, if you believe his former boss, General Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate,” was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, “I noticed you took a drink on that one!”

“That question makes me wish it were vodka,” said Shelton. “I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.”

[emphasis added]

With this going for him, how could any Democrat vote for another candidate?

A 9th Circuit Court panel has ruled that California cannot go ahead with its recall election. The 9th, which is the most overturned Appeals Court in the land, routinely agrees with the most extreme leftist and politically correct arguments.

There is little doubt that this ruling will be overturned (as the panel well knows), but it will serve a partisan purpose (as the panel also well knows): it will allow Democrats to whine that the outcome of the recall is illegitimate.

Democrats have gotten a lot of mileage with their assertion that “Bush stole the Florida election:”

• It has mobilized their base and made it harder for Bush to govern.
• It has delegitimatized Bush in the eyes of Europeans, who do not understand the American electoral system, helping the Democrats with their Tranzi (trans-national progressive) agenda (and incidentally harming America’s security and war efforts).
• It is another way to wave the race card.

Now, if a Republican wins the governorship after the Circuit Court is overruled, he will be “illegitimate.” He will have “stolen” the election. Alternatively, if a Democrat wins, it will be “in spite of the handicap of a system that favors the white and rich”.

There are other, somtimes ironic aspects of this ruling:
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A few days ago I noticed the press trumpeting the “fact” that more Americans had been killed in Iraq since the end of major combat than during the war. The obvious implication was that things are going quite badly and that Bush lied about the state of the war. In fact, sometimes it was reported that he had announced “the end of combat” when in fact he said “the end of major combat.”

Having followed the situation fairly closely, I was rather surprised at reaching this macabre milestone, since I knew that over 100 had died in combat during the earlier period, and the later numbers had been well under 100.

It turns out that the press, almost as one, suddenly decided to add accidental deaths to the combat deaths. So of course the numbers went way up, and Americans were once again mislead.

Actual combat death numbers:

• Major Combat Period - 112
• Later Period - 63

Putting this into even more perspective - combat deaths per day:

• Vietnam War - 15
• Korean War - 30
• WW-II - 214

Thus the total number of combat deaths in Iraq - during both phases, is less than one day’s deaths in World War II.

Of course, every death is tragic, combat or accidental, wartime or peacetime.

See here for details.

In 1994, a law severely restricting US nuclear capabilities was passed. This Spratt-Furse law prohibits the design, development or deployment of nuclear weapons with explosive power of less that five kilotons. This law is up for repeal, and all of the usual Useful Fools are mobilizing their forces to maintain this dangerous limit.

The current law intentionally requires that all nuclear weapons possessed by the US be large enough to cause huge amounts of damage, probably to civilians.
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Little Green Footballs and Tasty Manatees both picked up on Hizb’Allah’s announced support for a Democrat presidential victory.

Read the articles and draw your own conclusions!

Some Arizonans (Democrats, of course) are proposing to use some lottery profits to create an incentive for voting… by turning voting itself into a lottery”

…would reward one lucky voter with $1 million from the state Lottery every two years.

Just what we need… ignorant people sending in randomly marked ballots in a faint hope of winning the lottery.

That people believe it should be easy to vote is indicative of the rise of the idiotarian left in our society! Voting should be important. If you don’t care enough to work at it, you shouldn’t do it. But don’t tell that to the liberals - they aren’t so fond of work in the first place.

They created motor-voter laws, so you don’t have to go out of your way to vote, increasing registration of lazy people for Democrats. This same trick allows non-citizens and illegal aliens who get driver’s licenses (there are many) to vote. Another idiocy allows absentee and early voting without a compelling reason, so you don’t have to even been seen voting (increasing the odds of voter fraud - helping Democrats).

Now they want people to vote so they might win a lottery? Only fools would vote just to win a lottery, again increasing votes by Democratic leaning voters (although who they actually vote for is questionable… they may be no more competent than Florida’s year 2000 voters).

Voting used to be a social function. You went to your precinct, were verified (an alien, so to speak, concept) and cast your vote. Now we are turning it into gambling?

Of course, when one reads in the article that the same group wants to dramatically increase per-pupil educational spending (a long disproven attempt to improve educational success), the suspicion that these folks are idiots confirmed!

Pah!!

Another idiotarian talking point: We shouldn’t have killed Qusay and Uday because now they will be martyrs to the cause.
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