BACK TO THE ELECTION AND ITS AFTERMATH

Both Henneberger and Gould have recent articles out which portray how frantic and extreme Democrat supporters now are in their hatred of Bush and of conservatives generally. Such fury is not the reaction of people who are quietly confident in the truth of their own beliefs. It is the derangement of people who know that they are wrong and who are steadily having their props kicked out from under them. How otherwise to explain the fact that such great preachers of "tolerance" cannot abide over half of their fellow citizens?

I guessed wrongly. It is the voting machines that Leftists are blaming for their defeat: "A large number of states already have electronic voting machines in place. A large number of those do not produce paper ballots at all. Since many pundits have already raised hell about the highly politically partisan Republican ownership and control of these high-tech companies, I won't rehash that here. If you haven't heard about it, you've been living on another planet. If you didn't hear yesterday that many of these machines already contained thousands of votes before Tuesday's polling places opened their doors, you've been relying on mainstream media for your news." [Odd that the machines worked fine when Clinton won! -- though I must say that the American voting system as a whole is a shambles. In Australia, all voters need proper identification to register and all votes are on paper. Leftist outrage might help to get a stupid system reformed].

No tolerance in SF: "The summer of love has given way to the autumn of fear in San Francisco, a liberal stronghold where residents bitterly disappointed by the Bush victory are in no mood to reach out and mend divisions..... Some are canceling plans to travel to neighboring "red states," where Bush drew most of his support. They are asking serious questions about the future of American democracy. And the usual post-election bravado about moving out of the country when a favored candidate loses is sounding different this year. It sounds a lot more serious..... Peace and tolerance have long been the words to live by in San Francisco, known for its large gay community, broad ethnic mix and frequent anti-war protests. But days after the election, many residents said they ... did not know how they could tolerate the Bush administration, or Americans who voted to re-elect him. "I have family in Idaho, but I told my wife we're not going to visit them now. It's all Republicans there," said Ron Schmidt, a public relations executive. "We have family in Indiana and I don't want to go there either.""

LOL: "The Bush political team intuitively understood the tone of the U.S. voters much better than the media did. To be honest, I still don't quite understand how certified media junkies like me could have been so wrong. I read the New York Times and the New Yorker religiously. I watch CNN and the networks' evening news programs as well as the gabfests on Sunday mornings, too. Go figure". [Wotta dummy! He probably believes in global warming too.]

Single women: "This year, the Bush and Kerry campaigns joined the media and various women's groups throughout this election to chase a hot new voter, the unmarried woman. Dubbed the "Sex and the City" vote... this elusive group of 22 million women was expected to turn the election in John Kerry's favor. But in the end it was George W. Bush who successfully wooed the single female voter. Bush increased his share of the unmarried women's vote by twenty percent over the 2000 election, more than increases in votes cast by unmarried men, married women or married men.... Today's unmarried woman is independent and mindful of the way in which political and economic issues affect her on a personal level. She wonders whether her investments and retirement accounts are safe from broad fluctuations in stock prices. She follows interest rates and real estate trends... A large part of her pay is taken each payday by government in the form of income and social security taxes to fund programs from which she receives few direct benefits.... Perhaps the Kerry campaign failed to convince unmarried women that the Bush administration has mishandled the economy".

Rare sense from Seattle: "It was Bush's progressive agenda that kept him in office.... The left's conservative policies of get-along diplomacy with dictators and theocracies have been rejected in favor of more progressive and proactive strategies of freedom and pluralism..... Bush's victory was due to the fact that nationally the majority of voters was tired of the status quo, tired of the knee-jerk conservatism of the left and wanted a progressive administration. Kerry wanted to take us back to the ideas, policies and attitudes that prevailed before the 9/11 attack.... The majority of Americans wanted a candidate and an administration with new ideas and a plan, and the Democrats offered an administration that was anti-everything.... . The left has shown itself conservative and reactionary on the domestic front as well, resisting in political lock step such progressive ideas as the testing, standards and performance required by the No Child Left Behind Act, against any reasonable limitations on abortion, against any and all aspects of "ownership society" such as partial privatization of social security or health care savings accounts..."

A good gal: "She'd already signed the precinct register when an election worker said her Bush-Cheney T-shirt amounted to illegal electioneering. So Debbie Dupeire pulled it off. Dupeire, who voted in a sports bra, exercise pants and flip-flops, said she was afraid she would lose her chance to vote if she left to turn her shirt inside-out.

There is a good article here on how adversely midweek voting affects American productivity. But I guess that the Australian system of voting on Saturday would be too big a change to ask for.

There is an excellent article on the electoral college system here. One excerpt: "It is precisely because of the Electoral College that the recounting of votes focused on one state instead of many. If the popular vote decided the winner, we would still be bogged down in questionable recounts in dozens, if not hundreds, of counties across the country. The potential for mistakes and abuse would have been enormously compounded, and the cloud over the eventual winner would have been all the more dark and ominous".

A good post on Chicago Boyz: "The core strength of "liberal" America resides in the descendants of Yankee puritans, a memetic "Greater New England" that sprang from the Yankee diaspora which settled the Northern tier of the country. These folks have been living uneasily with their fellow Americans for over 350 years. They have been trying to reform the rest of us for our own good the whole time: Revolution, abolition, prohibition, civil rights, environmentalism..." [He is right. The slightest knowledge of history will tell you that the Pilgrim Fathers were bungling communists. Their Blue State descendants are just a toned-down version of that]

Rush Limbaugh has some good commentary on the latest Leftist response to their election loss. They think the "Blue States" should secede and join up with Canada. They also claim that the "Red states" are parasitical on the "Blue States" anyhow. Rush gives some reasons why "it aint so".

Chicago Boyz also mentions the current Leftist talk about the Blue States seceding but, despite the obvious precedent of the civil war, seems to take it seriously. He somehow misses the way Anglosphere countries normally deal with territorial differences: States' rights. If Jeb Bush can be persuaded to stand in 2008, the Republicans will have America wrapped up until 2016 so a Leftist push to devolve power away from the Feds to the States should result from that -- which would be highly amusing considering past Leftist love of centralized power and hostility to States' rights.

"Republicans have bigger yards." --Tom Firey, explaining all that red space on the electoral map....

Favourite bumper-sticker: "First I voted for John Kerry and then I voted against him".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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