The Aftermath...
Short version: Democrats took back the House of Representatives, Senatorial disaster was narrowly averted. Donald Rumsfeld took the fall, the libertine press took the opportunity to gloat at a Presidential presser yesterday, and the spectre of a Speaker Pelosi has panty-bunched conservatives from coast to coast. Vast quantities of Kaopectate, Alka Seltzer and Johnny Wlaker Black have been consumed by those who had not only an electoral, but an emotional, stake in the outcome of Tuesday night. Finally, Karl Rove has proven to be human, and it should be funny watching the press that has accused him of being the Prince of Darkness, in league with the forces of the Underworld, busily write retractions and try to explain how such a tactical genius, master manipulator, uber-propagandist and politican magician utterly failed. Don't hold your breath waiting for those articles and columns, though.

Afetr all, Rove served his purpose as strawman, and now can be safely ignored. But anyway...

What does this all mean?

Well, to begin with, you can now look forward to a Congress that will do even less than the one just voted out. Whatever the Democrats believe they can accomplish, they will be hindered and hampered by their own hubris; they will trip all over themselves launching investigations and scandal hunts designed to hurt any republican nominee in 2008, assuring an easy coast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive nominee. While they egage in this sort of activity, they will a) fail to focus on anything resembling regulation, b) potentially turn off a whole slew of independant voters that they will desperate need two years hence by ripping the government apart, and c) be following the script of the Howard Dean/Tie-died-and-tattooed wing of the Democratic party, making themsleves fairly unattractive in the future.

That, ultimately, is to the public good. Politicians preoccupied with petty turf and political battles are simply too preoccupied to screw with the rest of us. Oh, you'll be giving back that tax cut that GWB got passed a few years ago, certainly, but the regulatory monster that is the US Government will be put into hibernation while the Democrats engage in the politics of personal destruction. Of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the room will be the Clinton Machine, which will ensure that when Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer get too rambunctious, their leashes will be forcibly and abruptly yanked. They will not be permitted to stray too far formt he reservation. The keyword for Democrats is: maintain the status-quo until the Hildebeest wins. Don't rock the boat too severely.

You can also look forward to the Republicans fight tooth and nail for everything the Democrats do manage to bring to the plate that doesn't have anything to do with GWB or Haliburton. So, we're pretty safe from intrusive meddling from either extreme. Conservatives (who more and more cease to exist in the true sense of the word) will cry, wail and gnash their teeth, feelingmore and more alienated in a wilderness that is becoming ever-more moderate and ever-more interested in what their politicians actually do.

As to why the Republicans lost Tuesday nioght, well, even a democrat (small 'd' intentional) can figure that out; other than "stay the course", "don't let the terrorists win", and "the other side is worse", they had nothing to offer. This last congress has achieved nothing of consequence, and in the last six years has done nothing but violate every republican/conservative principle from lack of fiscal restraint, to arrogance in the performance of their duties, from the outright taking of bribes to the sexual harrassment of teen-aged males in he very corridors of Congress.

The lesson that should be learned is simply that you cannot continue to cry "terrorist" 24 hours a day (even if it is necessary), while in the background, you fail to accomplish everything you've set out in your agenda and expect to stay in power, or even worse, expect to be invulnerable. The Republicans counted on the national security card, but failed to recognize that after five years of all-terrorist-all-the-time, that the people were sick of hearing it. They already get it. So, now how about you do something about rampant spending, escalating entitlement costs, keeping illegal aliens out of the country and perhaps, learn to behave like law-abiding, responsible adults?

Scanning the "Conservative" web sites these past few days, several themes centered around this electoral setback seem to be raering their ugly heads:

1. Republicans were betrayed; a cabal of libertarians and liberal republicans conspired to jump ship and voted for the democrats, hanging the poor, hassled and oppressed "real" conservative majority (the TRUE inheritors of the Reagan Legacy, dammit!) out to dry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The belief that there was a conspiracy is par for the course; when the truth is too painful to face up to (Republicans simply sucked for the last few years), point to conspiracy. It relieves you of the necessity of facing up to the truth and relieves you of the responsibility of having hijacked the nomination process which created this mess in the first place. First rule of thumb: if you build a house with rotten wood, you deserve what you get.

2. A conspiracy of the Mainstream Media and very good democratic propagandists brainwashed the masses into voting democrat, especially those easily-bribed "swing voters". Yeah, that's right: the MSM and Bob Beckel were somehow required to convince millions that what they saw happening before their very eyes was true. So now electoral loss is due to the millions of mindless sheep out there who need to be told how to think or what their personal interests are. Again, conspiracy theory is the last refuge of those preternaturally opposed to telling themselves the truth.

3. Republicans lost because America is the New Sodom. In this case, it's God's will that republicans have failed because they did not frog-march the abortionists to the ovens, institute a system of street executions for the gays, round up the illegals and impress them into slave labor and purge themsleves of immoral sexual predators (they got the last part right). This comes from much the same legion of idiots who claimed that the (/11 attacks and the shooting deaths of 8 Amish girls were God's just punishment for libertinism and rampant sin. The sooner we get these jackasses out of the republican party and into padded cells, the better. They are no better than the "Earth First" bunch on the other side, and a fair deal loonier than anything I have ever seen in my life. In a different place and time, both of these extremes would have been the people burning witches, branding people with great, big "A"'s on their foreheads, and gathering at the weekly hanging as if it were prime time entertainment.

Now what makes this particular point of view interesting (once one gets past the disgust factor) is the the conservative websites are now pasting FOREIGN anti-gay, pro-religious propaganda to bolster their case, possibly because they have lost faith in their own, domestic sources of prudishness and bigotry. Given the recent past (the Mark Foly scandal and the Republican response, and the admission by one of the leaders of the biggest Evangelical Christian group that he engaged in gay sex and drug use with a prostitute), they seem to have lost their faith in the institutions they previously looked to for guidance and sureity. Now you will find fire-and-brimstone-snake-handling baptists, Rock-solid-no-idea-that-doesn't-come-from-Scripture-will-penbetrate-my-skull Evangelicals making common cause with the CATHOLIC CHURCH and posting Catholic commentary on Conservative websites. Yesterday alone, on FreeRepublic, there were anti-gay articles posted from Israeli, Polish and Vatican newspapers,andposters that I know personally to be of the mind-set that the Catholic Church is the next-best-thing to being involved with organized crime, have now eagerly made common cause with the Church. That such things have already happened in the span of 72 hours is simply amazing, and reminds one of just how predictable and hypocritical some people really are.

4. (And this one SLAYS me) Republicans lost because we had "no outlet" for telling the truth about the democrats. This, naturally, has been posted all over the Internet (I've seen it in about 30 places, thus far), which shows just how oblivious some people really are; you've just posted, in a public forum that reaches millions, that the media is somehow denied to you and you can't "get your message out"? Rush Limbaugh, I guess broadcasts to no one from a closet? Fox News, which at least makes the effort to provide both sides of an issue, is watched by no one?Republican candidates were not allowed to purchase advertizing space and run campaign ads on TV and radio? Quite honestly, the message wasnot one people wanted to continue to hear; they've heard it for the last six years. The message was: "Yes, so I might be an all-round sonofabitch, profligate spender, accountable-to-no-one hypocrite, who won't build a border fence, can't tell you the truth about the war in Iraq, and who doesn't really care if the government agency tasked with saving your life from natural disaster doesn't work, vote for me anyway...or the terrorists will kill you."

Non-starter. The country is tired of war and terrorism, and while they don't want the Iraqi adventure to end in defeat, they certainly don't want it to continue in the present fashion; aimless, leaderless, ill-defined and apparently endless. Americans are dying for Iraq, no Iraqis are dying for it. That's a problem. Depsite all the successful thwarting of terror plots in the last five years, Usama Bin Laden is still alive (we believe) and seems to have been forgotten. Saddam Hussein my be getting hanged, but, heck, that was a foregone conclusion and it has very little to do with ending the conflict or setting the conditions for a democratic Middle East.

Unfortunately, it'sa truism that more islearned from failure than from success. What the republican party, MY republican party, must now learn is how did it all go badly, and how do we correct it? Well, the first step is going to have to take a look at how we nominate candidates. We were given a truckload of Hasterts and Frists, Lotts and DeLays, and look where it got us. We have to suffer the insufferable with John McCain and people like Newt Gingruch have been exiled for minor sins. Condoleeza Rice and Rudy Giuliani can't even get a fair hearing because they are (or might be in the case of Rice, I don't know for certain) pro-choice and separate from "the base" on a number of other social issues. "The Base" incidentally, is the problem; candidates have to be tailored to their particular pet peeves or they stay home, which gives us candidates which are politically-reliable (until the candidate can safely get away with being politically-unrliable, see the last six years), but also makes them unimaginative technocrats who managed to manipulate the party machinery, but who otherwise couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag, even if you gave them a chainsaw.

It's time for new blood and new ideas, but I'm afraid we'll get none of either in the next two years. The Right-wingers of the Buchanan stripe (the God, Guns and Gays coalition, as I call them, the American Taliban is apt, as well) will prevent it, and if they can't, they'll do what they always do: stay home or find a Ross Perot type to waste a vote on. Perhaps now is a good time for the Republican party to cut them loose. It will be painful, it might lead to electoral disaster again, but in the long run, purging the party of the lunatic fringe and the Social-Conservative-Litmus-testers,migth pay dividend by making REPUBLICANISM more attractive. This future republicanism can still draw lessons and bullet points form Conservatism (fiscal responsibility, national defense, law and order, end rampant illegal immigration, etc). Conservatism, it seems to me, was and still is a great philosophy, but it's attracting the entirely wrong sort. The problem is the proponents, not the philosophy.

Anyway, I won;t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

In the meantime, Democrats now have two years to fix what they say they will. I have no confidence that they actually will accomplish anythign of consequence because they are, at heart, vicious little school-yard bullies and mental retards, to whom comon sense is something to be avoided like typhus. There are many who are just as small-minded and convinced of the tuth of their idiocy as the most staunch conservative. In the final analysis, both parties are being ruined by their extremes. But anyhow, it should be entertaining TV for the next two years, if nothing else, until the cut-and-run-apologize-to-Hamas-tax-everything-within-an-inch-of-it's-life party drops the ball and a few thousand Americans get killed in a horrifying terrorist attack. I don't wish for it, but I can see it happening.

Perhaps only then will the American people stop this nonsense of electing and paying heed to the extremists in both partys and start thinking about being AMERICANS first and members of a political party, second. But gioven the track record, if 9/11 only equated to a 51-49 race between Bush and Kerry, you have to wonder whether a second attack will do much more in changing minds.

To sum up: republicans lost because they deserved to. They fell asleep at the wheel, and when they weren't sleeping, they were feathering thier own nests and acting like drunken sailors on shore leave. Teh democrats now have an opportunity to prove they can be serious and grwon up, too, but will fall far short of this seemingly easy goal.

Paeschendale, Indeed...
I require some time to sort out all the stuff floating around on the Republican pasting that took place yesterday. I promise, I will get back with something intelligent, witty and snap-on prescient (right after I stop crying).

A More Dangerous World...
Given the obvious nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Lorea, the spread of a radical Islamic fascism, the disregard for human life shown in a million places from the enforced mass starvation of Darfur, to the killing fields of American schoolrooms, one has to wonder just what kind of future the world faces.

I grew up during the height of the Cold War, where the two major superpowers pointed nuclear holhocaust at each other 24/7/365 , and where the threat of extinction hovered over every human activity you could think of. The destructive force at the command of both the American President and the Soviet Premier was held in check by a very slender set of hair-triggers, that at any moment, could fail and let loose the dogs of war. Terror maintained a balance of force on planet Earth. Neither side (although there were individuals that actively sought such a thing) was going to fry the other unless there was a good reason to do so. Reason, even in something as unreasonable as a nuclear weapon, was still in force.

Nowadays, we have some new players on the stage; Pakistan, India, China, and now North Korea and Iran. Pretty soon we'll be probably be seeing nuclear Brazil and Japan. Thatis the nature of the forcs unleashed by Messers. Einstein and Oppenheimer; once the genie is out of the bottle, and so on and so forth. And the world seems so much more unsafe now in 2006 than it did in 1976.

Of course, if you're a leftist, the reason for this is the conervative policies of the Western nations, and in particular, the United States. If you sit on the opposite side of the spectrum, the reason for this insecurity is the complete collapse of the collective security arrangements of the 20th century that ensured peace through mutual terror. This is an argument that will never be solved, if you ask me, although both sides seem to have merit in their position. The problem is not politics and policy, economics and dogma, it is human nature, a force which cannot be constrained by governments and collective organizations.

Human nature, not the policy of any nation or alliance, created Usama Bin Laden. Human nature encourages poor people who otherwise feel powerless to strive for what they construe as the measure of true power; nuclear weapons. Human nature dictates that when restraints on uncivilized behavior are removed, uncivilized behavior will result. And human nature also ensures that when minor incidents of uncivilzed behavior fail to have the intended effect (to frighten, to call attention to something, to affect the actions of others) then the scale and barbarity of such actions escalate. Hence, we go from hijacking to using airliners as weapons, from kidnapping to kidnapping/beheading on the internet. We go from postulating tenets of human rights and freedoms to sucking fetuses out of a womb via vaccuum cleaner. We advance from stupidity to stupidity, platitude to platitutde, inanity to inanity, horror to horror, and we can never, ever seem to figure out either the source or the engine.

WE are the source. WE are the engine. But to admit it is slightly embarassing. To do anything about it is even more horrible to contemplate: action is beyond the scope of most people, too self-interested as they are. Instead,they scream for "the government" to do "something" about this, that or the other crisis; so long as they can watch "Dancing with the Stars" and get gasoline at a reasonable price, why should they care if there's some Arab dude with a set of TNT boxer shorts? So long as they have the "right" to abrogate their responsibilities and surf internet porn without anyone looking over their shoulder, why should they care about philosophies and ideologies that are poisonous? So long as they can drink all the Bud Light and watch the Super Bowl, why does anyone care that there are people starving, dying of preventable diseases, who don't have freedom, who can't read, who own nothing, who have nothing and will never amount to anything, and who WILL take it out on us, given the opportunity?

Think about it. Then think about the great, unwashed masses, starving in Pyongyang, brainwashed in Tehran, struggling for decency in Baghdad, fighting to survive in Darfur, or ignorant and frustrated in Chicago.

The Cold War has ended, and in it's place a Pandora's box of hatred, stupidity, militancy, intolerance, ideology, hatred --- the entire, disgusting regime of inhumanity on display makes one gag ---- has been opened. In retrospect, it now appears that the Cold War wasn't such a bad thing, after all.

Paeschendale...
For those who have never heard of it, the Battle of Paeschendale was one of the worst incidents of mass-slaughter on the Western Front in the First World War. I recall it for no particular reason other than it seems to have a political counterpart in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Prior to the Battle of Paeschendale, British generals were convinced that the solution to the bloody stalemate of the Western Front was simple obstinancy; all they had to do was to persevere, act with a little dash and verve, and the German defenses would crack, and in would flow the British Army, like a swarm of ants. The War would be over, the British would be victorious, God Save the King! Of course, it didn't work out that way.

Paeschendale was a mass slaughter. One of the worst in the annals of warfare.

I bring this up for a simple reason; the "generals" in charge of what nowadays passes for the Republican party are of similar mindset to the Generals at Paeschendale; They can brazen this one out. All they have to do is hang tough and the democratic lines will crack, and the advancing Republican hoarde will swarm in like ants, the war will be over, God be Praised! Toughen it out is a common theme running through Republican rhetoric these days; we must "stay the course" on Iraq. We must continue to maintain the status-quo in most areas of American life -- against terrorists on the one hand, in favor of tax cuts, on the other.

Like the Generals at Paeschendale, the Republicans also have a recent history of failure; there has not been a single, republican/conservative ideal advanced or adhered to in the last six years, of any consequence. And just like those British Generals, our republican leaders will continue to advance blindly, stubbornly, unable to learn form the past, unwilling to think of the future, determined to spin out an endless "NOW" --- and the slaughter will be great, because the British could not find an adequate solution to the problems of trench warfare and os repeated the same old tried-and-failed tactics, because there was no viable alternative to hand or within their imaginations. And that is exactly what Republicans are asking for at the polls this fall; an endless present, in which they maintain control of the visible mechanisms of government simply for the lack of a viable alternative. The fact that they have a history of failure behind them (Katrina, spending cap busting, Budget busting, lack of entitlement reform despite control of both houses of Congress, just to start), does not cause them to question their tactics; they simply continue them, like the Generals, for lack of a viable alternative or imagination.

At this point, the only real reason to vote republican is because the alternative makes one too sick to contemplate. And if that's all we have to vote for, them why bother? I'm not concerned about the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, or Harry Reid as Senate Majority leader, because neither one of them actually matters; such concerns about who does what job or advances what agenda mean nothing to the man in the street --- they only mean something to political junkies and ideologues. What I'm concerned with is having a reason to get off my behind in a week and pull the lever for somebody. Give me something other than "more of the same" or "the other side is worse".

The truth of the matter is that neither Pelosi or Reid could hardly do a worse job than their republican counterparts, Hastert and Frist. Considering just how bad the current crop of politicos has been, the bar has been set comically low in terms of success. Both of them (Frist/Hastert) can point to an unblemished record of delay, plunder, surrender, ineptitude, alleged criminality amongst their caucus, and shameless pandering. The twin-headed monster of Reid/Pelosi, frankly, hardly frightens me at all, because at heart I know that they couldn't even be as competent in being incompetent as the Hastert/Frist combination has been. They (Reid/Pelosi) certainly couldn't be any better and they most definitely couldn't be any worse. Given the fact that the democratic party has splintered to an even greater extent than the republican party, I can safely predict that even with democratic control of both Houses of Congress, even less will get done. There are simply too many competing voices for the democrats to hammer out a coherent policy on anything, let alone concerted action.

Even with the bar set so low, Pelosi/Reid will, with as much certainty as one can muster with regards to this kind of prediction, more than likely accomplish far less than the Frist/Hastert monstrosity. A congress which does nothing of consequence is typically good for the American public.

But, true to form, our republican generals will trot out the old, tried-and-true tactics in a desperate effort to stave off defeat; a vote for a democrat is a vote for terrorists, for drug dealers, for abortionists, for illegal aliens, for surrender in Iraq, and sets the stage of a president Hillary Clinton (who scares me even less than the Pelosi/Reid Beast). Like the Generals at Paeschendale, they continue to believe that one last, bull-headed push will break the lines and bring victory; resorting to this kind of strategy is the same as sending young men "over the top" into the teeth of machine gun fire and artillery, unprotected.

Fear and maintaining the status-quo are not reasons to vote for anyone. As republicans, we must resign ourselves to the fact that we will probably get creamed in a week's time and that we have a long laundry list of failures to point to in order to figure out why. The republican party will lose not because of Iraq, or the Patriot Act, or Gay Marriage, or any of the other distraction issues either party advances in order to obscure the real going's-on; it will have failed because it promised to reign in federal spending and instead plundered the treasury. It promised to reform runaway entitlement programs and not only caved on Social Security, but added another $100 billion program to Medicare to pay for prescription drugs for people who can already afford them. It's failed because it stands on principles and then consorts with Jack Abramoff and his ilk and defends Tom DeLay. It deserves to lose because it cannot muster enough gumption to do anything that would advance republican/conservative ideals, but somehow can muster enough to pass a joint resolution in the middle of the night on behalf of a brain-dead woman in Florida, trampling all over the ccncept of marital rights and privleges along the way (how Conservative of them was that?).

Let the slaughter begin.

Paeschendale, however, did have a silver lining. It was one of those events that makes human beings scratch their heads and ask "why?". In the years after Paeschendale, generals and military theorists and strategists studied, dissected and investigated every aspect of the Battle of Paeschendale and the lessons learned can be said to have saved lives in the Second Wrold War, as perverse as that sounds. New tactics and new weapons evolved to prevent or mitigate the effects of modern weapons on the battlefield. New leaders emerged determined not to repeat the idocy of the past. The republican party must do the same.; it must find new leaders, evolve new tactics and produce new weapons, if it is to save itself from bloody slaughter.

That is exactly what the republican party must do now in the aftermath of it's own potential Paeschendale.

Okay, I'm serious now...
I know, I know. I've been away for far too long. "Matt!", you might ask, "what the hell have you been doing all this time?" My response would probably not be all that edifying. It would run along the lines of something akin to "Wish to hell I knew!".

The Beast has taken hold again, folks. Depression. A very nasty word and an insidious foe. This bout seems to have lasted several months, but I think -- operative word, think -- I can deal with it this time.

So, bear with me please, it's a difficult time...

News From the Front...
Sorry for my extended absence, but there has been quite a lot happening these days and I've been up to my armpits in it. Most of it has nothing to do with the ebb and flow of events, the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the juggling of career and free time. It has more to do with my state of mind than anything else, and the occasional thought that, perhaps, I'm screaming into the teeth of an Atlantic gale here.

I originally started this screed because, for lack of a better term, I had no other forum in which the tortured ramblings of my (seemingly) diseased mind could be safely put to paper, so to speak, without hurting anyone. It's a safety valve, of sorts, intended to relieve the pressure we all manage to store up inside our skulls. Sometimes, you just have to scream or you'll just go mad.

In this regard, the cyberspace revolution has been a godsend for most of us. You now have a place where you can spew your most vile mental lava with (almost-) complete anonymity, and without the stigma that automatically follows the expression of some unpopular position in....ahem...polite society. I always thought that perhaps the rest of the world was crazy and that I was a minority of one; an island of sanity in an insane world. Perhaps that's arrogant, perhaps it's even nuts, but with every passing day it becomes ever more true. The battles being fought here are every bit as vicious, every bit as deadly, as those being fought in Iraq.

The most recent battlefield has been in the murky depths of political chatboards and blogs. I don't claim to be an expert on either, nor can I admit to knowing all the principle players in the whole cyber-reporting regime. All I can do is contrast and compare, and use my intelligence (such as it is) to sift the cyber wheat from the chaff. Once again, I have been delving into the "conservative" forums and pleading for moderation from some of the more ardent Nazis...errr...conservatives out there.

I say moderation for a reason --- because there's very little to be found. Anywhere.

Every issue these days is founded upon an extreme position, and this goes for both sides of the political spectrum. On the Left, the foundation is always some form of base politics or childish, shallow affectation that passes for intellectuality. Whatever the issue --- high gas prices, the War on Terror, Nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, illegal immigration, entitlement reform, etc --- the Left's basic position is always underpinned by two unarguable, incontrovertible pillars: George W. Bush is evil incarnate, a mere puppet of Big Oil and in thrall to the Christian Taliban in the United States, and, only democrats (small "d" intentional) can be trusted to get anything right. There is never any intellectual proof put forward to support these two premises; they are supposed to be self-evident and require nothing in the way of reason and logic to prop them up. We're supposed to swallow them whole and just believe in them as a matter of faith, unquestionable, undeniable. This is the closest thing to a Leftist Ten Commandments as we're every likely to come.

Eventually, the intellectual gives way to the emotional and when that happens, there is no way to counter anything, no means by which ideas based upon intellectual premises can be put forward. The Leftist, especially the American Left, which holds religion in such contempt, has found it's own religion (Bush Hating) and uses it as an excuse for a Scorched-Earth campaign of reflexive anti-Bushism, and ultimately, anti-Americanism, of the sort that our Airliner-hijacking-pizzeria-exploding-rocket-launching-into-daycare-center Middle eastern brothers would recognize easily. The Left has become that which it fears most ; fascist. And not just fascist, but fanatically so, with a passion that is usually reserved for religion.

On the Right, a similar dynamic is in play.

Check out any "conservative" website these days and there are, basically, only five themes on display: anti-Leftism, anti-Immigrant, anti-Arab, self-immolation, and the Conservative Trifecta of God, Guns and Gays (I lump them together because they always seem to go hand-in-hand). You cannot discuss any of these things with someone who believes themselves to be conservative (usually because the voted for Reagan at least once, but who have no idea of what that actually means) without the argument coming back, eventually, to God, Guns and Gays.

The Right is become that which it fears most; the Soviet Union. Thought control, uniformity of ideological outlook, a religious faith in the destiny of the United States as God's chosen agent for good on earth, are all on display. Dispute any of these basic premises and be prepared to get slimed by the usual epithets: Lefty-lover, Fag-lover, Rockefeller Republican, RINO. The list goes on. Disagree with someone who believes that the ability to recite Bible verse word for word makes you politically conservative and watch how quickly they descend upon you, like the villagers in Frankenstein, torch in one hand, pitchfork in the other.

I now know for certain what I hadn't realized before, or at least was afraid to admit to myself: I'm not crazy, everyone else is.

The Idiot Dialectic...
I've been watching the liberal talking heads on several shows this evening spin the discovery of 500 Chemical warheads in Iraq.

I have but one word to describe it:

INSANITY

The 'talking points' (which are transparent, and understandably so; democrats (small 'd' intentional) have only had a few hours to react to Rick Santorum's news conference) being trotted out to degrade the "Bush was right about WMD's" argument, revolve around three points;

1. These are not the WMD's we went to war for
2. These WMD's are too old to be a danger to anyone

Idiocy, plain and simple.

To take the first...ahem...argument; if these "aren't the WMD's we went to war for" then just which one's would you need to find to justify the war in the first place? A WMD is a WMD, is it not? On a certain level, this defense seems to imply two things; democrats knew these weapons would be found, in which case they would simply deny, deny, deny, and secondly, it implies there is another batch of WMD's out there; Laura Schwartz just implied it on Hannity and Colmes.

Which leads to the question; if there's another batch of WMD's (you said these aren't "the ones"), then where are the others? And aren't you the people who said that none existed in the first place? We have now gone from arguing that none exist, to finding definitive proof that they did, to using "yeah, but there are more" as a counter-argument.

On the second argument that the weapons are too old; if you've ever handled explosives and weapons at any time in your life, the first rule is always have a great deal of respect for the destructive power of such things. You always treat any weapon as if it were live or loaded, and age doesn't mean a damned thing.

I remember not too long ago when construction was being done on Goivernor's Island here in New York. The construction crews found an old, unexploded naval artillery shell, that (I believe) was reported to have been lobbed at the fort on the island in the War of 1812.

Guess what?

When the EOD people came to remove it (they actually blew it up in place) not only did the explosives THEY used go up, so did the shell's. A 200 year old shell was able to explode, sure with a little help, but explode it did.

In this day and age, landmines are a cause celebre. Millions of them remain hidden and buried all over the world and thousands are injured and maimed by them annually, the vast majority in Southeast Asia. If I recall, the Vietnam War ended in 1975. The war in Cambodia and Laos went on a decade more, yet almost every day, reports come in of children being injured ny landmines left over from that conflict.

So, if 200 year old naval shells can go "BOOM" and 40 year old landmines can do likewise, what makes you think a sarin-filled artillery round buried in the sand of Mesopotamia can't?

Yes, a chemical weapon works on different prinicples, and unlike some conventional explosives, are far less stable and susceptible to the ravages of time and enviornment. But, to dismiss the possibility that even "old" sarin or mustard gas shells are "harmless" is incredibly stupid. To insist upon it for political purposes is CRIMINAL STUPIDITY.

This sort of stupidity is not wholly an affectation adopted for political purposes, either. There is a strange, inverted dialectic to it, as well. So, while 500 WMD artillery shells in the hands of Saddam Hussein (and potentially, terrorists) is "no big deal", 500 S&W revolvers in the hands of private citizens, with licenses, is. One is no big deal, the other is a "crisis" and a "tragedy" and a "threat to our children's safety".

I say we ask John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy to personally go to Iraq and help destroy these shells with their bare hands, and Mrs. Clinton with her fangs.

Troops on The Border...
The President of the United States pre-empted Oprah's Ball last night to make a speech on Border Security. Two thoughts on this:

a) About freakin' time, Mr. Bush! When did you finaly get the idea that this is a vital national security issue?

b) The Left is gonna fry you: they missed the opening minutes of a non-event which is the equivalent of a coronation-beatification-and election of a new Pope, all rolled into one. You don't pre-empt Oprah and expect to get away with it, you fascist! (sarcasm).

Both premises are interesting on a couple of levels.

Despite years (running on decades, actually) of concern by many Americans about the unfettered immigration of massive numbers of people not steeped in the Western tradition, nor particularly interested in assimilating into American culture, entering the country in violation of our laws, somehow this problem has been one that has never taken any precedence in American politics. Even the iconic Mr. Reagan simply kicked this can down the road and bestowed anmesty on (at the time) 10 million illegal immigrants.

Five years AFTER 9/11 and the regime we now labor under which is intended to provide a "sense of security", has the porous southern border has now finally been identified.

"Better late than never", some might say.

Until illegal immigrants are shot on sight, just as soon as they sneak across and touch American soil, I'd say this was nothing but talk.

Dropping Shoes...
Some more information about the Duke rape case has come to light in the last week. The prosecutor's office in Durham, NC has named another alleged defendant, the results of a second set of DNA tests has been sorta-kinda released, the defense has made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct concerning the rules of evidentiary discovery. Defense press conferences have been the lead item on many a newscast.

What does it all mean?

Beats the snot out of me!

However, the sordid affair will continue to be played out in our living rooms for the next few months, at least, and we'll be subjected to more "journalism" of the Geraldo Rivera-Greta Van Susteren sort, in which endless speculation will be passed off as "information".

From where I sit, everyone involved should be taken out and shot, but that's just one man's opinion. It's already apparent that the whole tempest has very little to do with justice and everything to do with primping, preening, self-interested lawyers, who somehow labor under the misapprehension that they are God's gift to humanity. I blame John Gresham, personally.

Wherever the chips finally fall, we can be sure of two things:

a) No one will be satisifed at the eventual outcome, and nothing approaching Justice will be served.

b) Someone (perhaps a lot of someone's) will have a short, but spectacular, career making appearances on Oprah and writing "tell-all" books which will tell nothing at all, and even when there is a tidbit of real information, will be so biased in favor of one side or another as to be useless as either history or social commentary.

Conservatives: Endangered Species...
We are rapidly approaching the national farce that has been politely and generously named "the Mid-Term elections". This is the time, in the middle of a President's term of office, in which the people vote for their representatives in those hallmarks of American Democracy: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

If you are a conservative, you are quaking in your shoes. And you should be. You look at the blasted landscape which is all that remains of the "Regan Revolution", which propelled your ideology from "the Old Fuddy-Duddies Wish List" to "mainstream American Politics", and wonder just where it all went wrong. Unless you're Trent Lott, and can pretend the problem doesn't exist. Politics, you know, is the domain of the anointed. Us peasants may have opinions but they don't amount to squat when compared to the wisdom of the Conservative elite. Especially when it comes to how money gets spent.

You wonder where it all seemed to jump the tracks. Unless you're Tom DeLay and the (alleged) abuse of power and federal campaign finance laws flouted in an attempt to create a Conservative majority within your state is not a transgression punishable by law, but your God-given DUTY, dammit!

You feel somewhat strange, having to do contradictory things just to stay in power. Unless you're John McCain and you have the ability to pass a series of laws bordering on the restoration of the old "Seditious Libel"regime, or when you complain about the cost to your state of taking care of illegal aliens in small-town border hospitals, and the rising crime rates and social dislocation associated with illegal immigration, and then campaign with all your might to pass amnesty for the same illegal aliens.

I used to think I was a conservative. Well, at least I held some conservative views. I've recently began to discover that I was grossly wrong. Not because Conservatism, as an ideology, is flawed in any fundamental way (and let's admit that it does have some flaws), but because many of the Conservatives who proudly proclaim themselves as such are one of the following (and very often, both): crazy and/or liars. The more I think about it, the more I begin to see myself more as a republican with a few conservative viewpoints, and an awful lot of frustration.

Now, as to mental illness and lying.

Peruse many of the Conservative websites these days and you'll find an awful lot of the following: name calling, expectation of lock-step allegiance, castigation of an individual who might otherwise agree with you 99% of the time for having an opinion which differs from "conventional wisdom", religious bigotry. You'll find an awful lot of people who claim to "know the Constitution inside and out" and who somehow manage to infer that it simultaneously says things that it doesn't, or not say something that it does.

You will find a fixation with the minutiae of daily life that very often doesn't even touch upon politics (or should) in any rational sense. Most of these fixations revolve around social issues, not legal or legislative, and personal finance (pocketbook issues) and on which the Constitution is obviously silent for practical reasons. These fixations are anchored by four issues; the Three G's (God, Guns and Gays) and Abortion. Mention any of the above, like to say they really have very little place in political debate, and watch how soon you get labeled a "Rockefeller Rebublican", a RINO (Republican in Name Only), a closet leftist, fascist, queer-lover, Baby-killer, and a whole lot worse.

This is the crazy part. The lying part is even worse.

There was, we were told, a major shift in the country's political leanings which manifested itself nearly six years ago. The voters of this country were trending more and more conservative, and had done George W. Bush the ultimate good deed of ceding control via elections to the Republican party, in particular, the Conservative elements within the Republican party. These Conservatives, in no particular order, are the visible faces of the Republican Congress. They are Trent Lott, Tom DeLay (currently out of politics and facing indictment), Bill Frist, John McCain,
Mitch McConnell, and a few you've never heard of. The Conservatives, now with full control of the apparatus of government, and a war on terror to fight, would soon correct the list to port(i.e. the damage done by Eight years of All-Clintons-all-the-time) that threatened to sink the Good Ship United States.

This would involve, in no particular order: a balanced budget, a beginning on the elimination of the Federal Deficit, a solid energy policy that would break American dependence on foreign oil imports, national security against terrorism, entitlement program reform, Campaign Finance Reform, Tax Reform, National Ballistic Missile Defense, a reversal of Roe v. Wade and a more responsible and conservative Supreme Court, among other issues.

And what did we get? We haven't exactly "balanced the budget", but we have "arrested it's growth", which are code words for "that customary 10% yearly increase in funding the Department of Marshmallow Easter Bunnies used to get is, instead, reduced to 9%, and next year, 8.5%, beyond what they actually need to fufill their overall mission, which is ensuring that every Christian child in the country gets the maximum number of pagan-inspired sugar bombs on the day in which we celebrate the Resurrection fo the Savior. So much for balanced budgets.
By the way, there has not been one appropriation which has been threatened by a Presidential Veto since GW Bush took office. Not a solitary one. He lost the pen, apparently, except when public pressure threatens to stop a ports deal with an Arab country dead in it's tracks. That's when he recalls that he has the power of the veto; to override public opinion.

We then use the (mostly) imaginary savings from "arresting the growth" and pour it into a host of other federal programs and prjects, prime amongst them those that fall into the category of "Compassionate Conservatism", which is actually code for "socialism, but because it was advanced by a Conservative, is not supposed to be called socialism". So much for the Federal Deficit. Not only are the "Conservatives" spending the money they "saved" by "arresting the growth of federal spending", they're borrowing more in order to advance more of the same. It wasn't too long ago that Congress, led by the Conservative majority (of course) voted itself the right to increase the federal borrowing caps (imposed by many of the same Congresscritters! Go figure!) to NINE TRILLION DOLLARS.

Energy policy? Well, we did have one. It involved drilling for more oil domestically, but had very little in the way of finding an alternative to oil once and for all, except for a few blurbs about nuclear power, a few subsidies for more ethanol research (that ethanol subsidy has been in place since the 1970's, by the way. Have to make sure American corn farmers get welfare too, you know), and the quest for the ever elusive "hydrogen-powered engine". In the meantime, the federal government mandates "specialty blend" gasolines (more than 20 different types) brewed for particular regions of the country in order to control smog, without allowing for the construction of new refineries. The result: when oil prices are at all time highs, and American refineries are operating at near 100% capacity foir nearly a decade now, gasoline costs $3.00-plus per gallon and we're assured that supplies are plentiful. Well, if they're plentiful, then why does it cost $50 to fill my tank every three or four days?

The US Army now occupies Iraq,which many on the political left maintain was invaded only so that we could steal Iraqi oil for Dick Cheney's friends at Haliburton, and gasoline prices rise faster than an exotic dancer on a pogo stick with a raging yeast infection. Just where is all this free oil we're supposedly stealing? Why is it that Americans, spoiled bastards that we very often are, get incensed over $3 gasoline, but but don't care a tinker's cuss about $4 milk? The plan was, as is now obvious: more of the same, but with an honorable mention for what was considered a "liberal" plan of the past.

Our National Security needs were apparently taken care of when the Congress created, and then approved, the Department of Homeland Security, which is really the conglomeration of 50 or so formerly-nominally-independant government agencies without a corresponding Cabinet Member, into a monstrosity that now has one. It is a Goliath that now includes the CIA, FBI, FEMA, ICE (New acronym for what used to be Immigration and Naturalization Service), the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Adminsitration (i.e. high-school drop outs at the airport who originally brought you 9/11, only now they're unionized and federalized), and a host of others. And which does not work.

So, when the biggest hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in a century drowns New Orleans, FEMA can't do what it needs to because it's been distracted by it's Terrorism responsibilities and underfunded, and can no longer operate unless it gets an order form the Secrectary or the President, but in which the ultimate authority for disaster recovery belongs to the individual STATES, not the Federal government. DHS allows American ports to be bought or licensed to Arab nations in an age of Islamic terrorism without notifying the American public, or even the President, but insists that all the "necessary security reviews" (the results of which are never made public because of --- you guessed it --- security concerns) were done.

DHS is not a security apparatus; it is the result of a redrawing of the org chart. A sad testament to the extent to which American business has infected American government (when in doubt, make someone else responsible, anybody, and draw me a new Org chart!). This is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We're promised entitlement reform of programs that are slowly bankrupting the American people and which will entail enormous amounts of money to fund to the exclusion of just about all other federal spending. Specifically, we were promised Social Security and Medicare Reform, and with a Conservative Congress, either should have been a slam dunk. Instead, we got the same dysfunctional Social Security system that will be with us forever (and in our wallets forever) and a NEW Medicare entitlement, known as Plan D. Both stand for "bribe the remnants of the Greatest Generation and those soon-to-be-whining-pains-in-the-ass-we-call-the-Baby Boomers, with a continuation of the gravy train, and free medication, too boot. Oh, and by the way, it will cost us another trillion dollars. And neither does anything to "arrest the growth" (there's that phrase again) of either program in terms of the ever-increasing percentage of the Federal budget they consume.

Campaign Finance Reform? More like the biggest, open assault on Free Speech in the Country's History which instead of "getting the special interests out of politics" has turned politics into a game ONLY the "special interests" can play, and a tenure-for-life proposition for politicians.

Tax Reform? The IRS is still with us. There has been no alternative to the "Progressive" Income Tax after six years of control. We've had federal tax cuts (which are quickly erased by state and local tax INCREASES), but no "reform" whatsoever. Reform, in my dictionary, means fixing that which does not work any longer. Reform in Conservative circles now apparently means "keep cutting my taxes and see if I care if the tax system is flawed, unfair and inherently criminal".

As for the rest: there is no NMD (National Missile Defense) in anything but name, even if the sites have been built or are still under construction. Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land and the abortionists have NOT been frog-marched to the ovens yet (like every good conservative wants them to be). The Supreme Court is now packed with people we believe to be Conservative fellow-travelers, but that notion has not been tested yet. This, incidentally, is the only "victory" that Conservatives can point to; they finally packed the court in their favor and can now enjoy the extra-Constitutional practice of creating federal law from the bench that once was the private domain of the democrats and their hanger's-on. The first "extra-Constitutional" victim will be Roe, but as far as a Consewrvative is concerned, since it was the creation of an extra-Constitutional ursurpation of Congress' authority, it can ONLY be slain by an extra-Constitutional usurpation of Congress' authority. Two wrongs, apparently, make a right. God forbid the republican party do something constructive, like fight like hell to get a common anti-abortion bill on the ballot in all fifty states or pass a law in the hallowed halls of Congress. We can, apparently, get a bill to prevent a feeding tube being removed from a comatose woman in a vegetative state in a few hours, but six years results in no action taken to protect the unborn.

This is the Right-to-Life party, right? How about a little consistency? If Terri Schiavo can get a law passed yesterday, why can't you can't you get a law outlawing abortion? How about you give the American public a chance to vote it up or down, and then live with the results, one way or another? The reasons: Terri Schiavo drew television coverage that could present Right-to-Life conservatives in a favorable light to their minions. The passage of a law in Congress to outlaw abortion is too risky (you could lose the vote, and then elections). Fighting for Terri was a no-brainer.

Conservatism used to stand for something. It used to mean that the grownups were supposed to take over one day and right some of the fundamental wrongs in American society caused by nearly a century of democratic/socialist control. It has done none of that. It has co-opted socialism wherever convenient in order to bribe voters rather than stand on it's own pillars of personal responsibility and responsible, unobtrusive government. It now includes something called "No Child Left Behind Act" which pretends to eductae every last rugrat in the country, a "Patriot Act" which removes a whole mess of legal protections in the name of stopping terrorism, and taking your shoes off when you arrive at the airport. It has advanced the "Spoils of War" system of political patronage and spending of federal funds that it has accused their opposite numbers of engaging in for decades, but which it now considers it a virtue when applied to it's own patrons and sycophants. It is deaf to the voice of public opinion. It is content to allow an invasion of millions of foreigners across our borders while it screams about it's dedication to security and flashes it's law-and-order credentials, while actively seeking to REWARD them for their lawlessness and taking advantage of the American social spending network in order to keep the price of lettuce, a hotel room or beautifully-manicured lawn care low.

Apparently, I've been mistaken all this time.

If this is what Conservatism has become, the refuge for those as religiously insane as any Iranian Ayatollah, as flagrantly irresponsible as your teenage son with the heroin habit behind the wheel of your new Ferrari, as profligate with money as a drunken sailor on shore leave, as politically tone-deaf as the proverbial post, then it deserves to die a nasty death.

If THIS is Conservatism, I've had all the Conservatism I can stand, thank you.