SSSHH! DON'T TELL THE LEFT THIS:

I find it difficult to restrain my amusement at the way the American Left is at present relentlessly shooting itself in the foot. Their bile and hate has so overcome them that they are saying almost insane things about their election defeat. They seem to be almost uniform in blaming evangelical Christians for their defeat and the abuse they are pouring out at those much-abused people is quite amazing. "Dumb" and "stupid" are just the mildest of the adjective hurled out. "Jihadists", "Theocrats", "American Taliban" are some of the more imaginative descriptions.

Great! Is all I can say. Hurling gross insults at people whose votes you need if you are to win next time is so stupid that it almost confirms the Left as children of Satan. Does the Left really think that Christians will not notice what the Left thinks of them? I think the Left are at the moment doing far more to send the Christian vote to the GOP than George Bush could ever do in his wildest dreams.

And that is the big laugh! A lot of the Christian vote is still up for grabs. The swing to Bush actually had nothing to do with the Christian vote. If any particular demographic is to be blamed for Bush's victory it is actually Catholics and women. The Left are abusing an entirely innocent party!

But I will say no more on the matter. Let us all keep an amused silence about the matter from now on. To check up on what I have just said, however, you could (for instance) read the following:

"The Economist": "Look at the figures: the moralists' share of the electorate was only 22%, just two points more than the share of those who cited the economy, and three points more than those who nominated terrorism as the top priority. A few points difference (and the exit polls are, after all, not entirely reliable) and everyone would have been saying the election was about jobs or Iraq. Moreover, that 22% share is much lower than it was in the two previous presidential elections, in 2000 and 1996. Then, 35% and 40%, respectively, put moral or ethical issues top, and a further 14% and 9% put abortion first, an option that was not given in 2004. Thus, in those two elections, about half the electorate said they voted on moral matters; this time, only a fifth did".

Mick Hume: "Bring on the most influential myths of the post-election debate so far: that the Republicans won by scaring stupid redneck voters, and by mobilising a powerful block of Christian fundamentalists to vote for their conservative moral values on abortion and gay marriage. It is not hard to see why this should be an attractive explanation/excuse for the Democrats and their supporters on the international left. After all, how can they be blamed for losing to Bush, if the voters are just too ignorant or too bigoted to appreciate their sophisticated arguments? This sort of contemptuous attitude towards the electorate reveals rather more about the left than it does about American voters. Apart from anything else, it is a bit rich to blame Bush for emotive scaremongering when the Kerry campaign was just as guilty... But, as Guardian/Observer columnist David Aaronovitch points out, on closer inspection the 'populist uprising' of Christian conservatives turns out 'to be more or less a mirage, a self-inflicted liberal nightmare':

Krauthammer: "Ten years and another Democratic defeat later, and liberals are at it again. The Angry White Male has been transmuted into the Bigoted Christian Redneck. In the postelection analyses, the liberal elite just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times achieved the highest level of hysteria, cursing the GOP for pandering to "isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism" in its unfailing drive to "summon our nasty devils." Whence comes this fable? With President Bush increasing his share of the vote among Hispanics, Jews, women (especially married women), Catholics, seniors and even African-Americans, on what does this victory-of-the-homophobic-evangelical rest?"

Jill Stewart: "But as national Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin noted, President Bush increased his support among occasional churchgoers more than among regular churchgoers. That speaks to support untethered from intense religiosity..... In California, he notes, Bush improved with swing voters: white Democratic men, Republican working women, Latinos with children. Nationwide, women split between Bush and Kerry. Just four years ago, Al Gore won an 11- point female advantage, thanks to a 20-year trend in which women went Democratic. The vanishing gender gap and other trends cannot be blamed on Kerry's failure to pray".

And I love this comment:

"It is not true that the Democrats didn't show sympathy toward fundamentalists during the campaign. They did -- just to the wrong ones. Islamic fundamentalists received a great deal of understanding and tolerance from the Democrats. John Kerry made a point of showing sensitivity to the Islamic community and for it earned numerous endorsements from Muslim Imams. Perhaps herein lies a new strategy for the Democrats: What if they treated Christians as respectfully as they treated Yasser Arafat? What if they extended to Christianity the tolerant understanding they extend to Islam? Maybe from time to time the Democrats could refer to Christianity as a religion of peace. One would think a party that can canonize a de facto terrorist and jihadist like Arafat could tolerate a Southern preacher or two. Jerry Falwell has never blown up an airplane like Arafat, but Democrats wouldn't be caught dead in his company".

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ELSEWHERE

Wicked Thoughts has just put up a sweeping demolition of the thoughts of Brian Leiter, the influential far-Left law professor and blogger.

European economic growth only 11% of U.S. growth: "Figures for the third quarter have punctured French delusions of growth altogether. The French economy crawled along at an annual pace of just 0.4% between July and September.... As for Germany, its economy grew by just 0.4% last quarter, at an annualised rate". [For comparison, the most recent GDP growth-rate figure for the USA was 3.7%]

Happiness: "A new survey of national wellbeing has found the people happiest about their lives are those earning more than $150,000 a year. Those least happy earn less than $15,000 a year". [See also my post of Sept. 14th]

Arlene Peck is a bit disturbed at the conciliatory attitude towards the Palestinians coming from the post-election White House.

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE SEMI-SOVIET EU

Peter Hitchens "The E.U. is a top-down creation, an elitist idea with its roots in the branch of European social democracy whose features were internationalism, a loathing of the nation-state, a belief in the benevolent intervention of the state in almost all areas of life, and a belief that capitalism untamed was necessarily evil. Remember that many of the founders of the Soviet Union were well-intentioned and didn't mean to end up where they did.... I'm not saying it's like Stalin and the gulag, but I think the end result could well be quite like Brezhnev, and what some Russians still refer to as the golden time. There was plenty of vodka, plenty of sausage, national pride, but from the point of view of someone who wanted a free society, it was disastrous. The Brezhnev regime, though it wasn't Stalinist, was very nasty to those who persisted in dissenting. The European Union hasn't a gulag, but it also doesn't have habeas corpus, it doesn't have jury trial, or due process as it is understood in the U.S. and the U.K. It has no concept of opposition"

Seceding from the EU: "All of the various secession proposals fail to consider the possibility that no permission should be needed to drop out of the EU. Yet that is the question that needs to be asked first. Should some nation be forced to continue its membership in the EU if it cannot persuade some supermajority of member nations to let it go? Forcing an unwilling nation to remain part of a political association that it does not want goes against all theories of fairness, not to mention human rights. Permission to leave should not be required. Any nation that wants to leave should be able to leave without asking permission of other member nations.... One also needs to consider that failure to allow a group of dissatisfied citizens to leave a political union that they did not want led to the completely unnecessary deaths of more than 600,000 Americans. So bloodshed can happen when people cannot peacefully exit from a political association that they feel no longer represents them".

More on secession here.

But even the French are getting disillusioned: "Like Britain, France will be holding a referendum on the proposed EU constitution. A bout of stress over both this plebiscite and the separate prospect of Turkey joining the EU has now so diminished French aspirations for Europe that the old passion looks altogether spent. Enter Blair. For a root cause of Gallic anguish is Britain. While Blair will have his own tough struggle to win a UK referendum, what haunts France on both the constitution and Turkey is that Britain has apparently prevailed in making the EU an ever-expanding zone of liberal mercantilism that obstructs political union. An initial heart tremor was diagnosable in early autumn, when Laurent Fabius, a Socialist Party heavyweight and former prime minister, astonished France by bidding that the opposition left vote No to the EU constitution in the referendum next year.... The chief argument Fabius advances for rejecting the EU constitution is that it institutionalises Blair's liberal, free-market economic programme, in disregard of social welfare and jobs lost to cheaper, low-wage neighbours. The French now talk of the "English Europe" with the same disdain as Michael Howard's Conservatives talk of "Brussels". Fabius baldly asserts: "The British concept has won." And he does not see why it should be allowed to stand".

Europe from an American viewpoint: "Roughly speaking, I think Americans see the world in this way. A crazy European ideology, Fascism, tried to replace democracy with dictatorship, and ended in concentration camps and a pagan Europe aflame. Meanwhile, another wild ideology, Communism, proposed a Mickey Mouse vision of economics and, except for a powerful military, kept the many nations forced into the Soviet Union at the level of a fourth-world economy, until the whole project collapsed. Americans find it hard to understand what Europeans find plausible in socialist economics. Americans have experienced the great advantages of owning their own property, building their own businesses, inventing and discovering new goods and services. Enterprise is the second secret to American life -- enterprise springing from creative economic imagination and personal initiative".

And Germany's media are DELIGHTED with Bin Laden as he appears on the recently-released videotape: "Osama bin Laden presents himself as less warlike. ...Bin Laden's latest message gives the impression that the bearded man with the soft voice is looking for a new image, away from the jihad rhetoric to a more factual political message ... Not much is left of his usual flaming Islamist rhetoric. The usual tones of "battle against the infidels" are missing this time. Instead he speaks of the ambitions of the "Islamic nation" for "freedom" and "security" and disproves President Bush with political arguments... Instead of martial armed polemics, Bin Laden uses irony to attest to the failures of George W. Bush. ..." (Via Davids Medienkritik)

Robert Kagan: "Europeans do not fear that the US will seek to control them; they fear that they have lost control over the US and, by extension, the direction of world affairs. If the US is suffering a crisis of legitimacy, then it is in large part because Europe wants to regain some measure of control over Washington's behaviour. The vast majority of Europeans objected to the US invasion of Iraq not simply because they opposed the war. They objected also because US willingness to go to war without the UN Security Council's approval -- that is, without Europe's approval -- challenged Europe's world view and its ability to exercise even a modicum of influence in the new unipolar system".

And the German left-wing media report glowingly on the "America says sorry" site set up by a few disgruntled Kerry voters.

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ELSEWHERE

The main reason some conservatives do read the sneering Yglesias is that he does sometimes make sense -- as here -- where he advises Senate Democrats to go easy on the obstructionism. He does not know the difference between "horde" and "hoard", though. Is he dyslexic or just a hopeless speller?

Transatlantic Intelligencer has a most comprehensive demolition of the utterly stupid Democrat claim that America's actions in Iraq are responsible for European anti-Americanism. You would have to be brain-dead not to know that anti-Americanism was rife in Europe long before 9/11/2001 but Democrats still lie in their teeth about it. The blog author uses hard words like "otiose" and "metonym" (I would have said "superfluous" and "substitute-word") but he makes up for that with heaps of documentation.

An amusing suggestion from a reader that alludes to the likelihood of Arafat having died of AIDS: "I could never understand Hollywood's, the Leftist (progressive) Church's and the Catholic Church's seeming love affair with the PLO and Yasser Arafat. I have to wonder: Is there some sort of an underground gay Mafia connection here?"

Australia's Cardinal Pell says that Islamic fundamentalism is to some extent a reaction against the values-free amorality promoted by the Western Left. (For a pic of the good Cardinal, see here or here).

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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EUROPEAN ANTI-AMERICANISM

"Bush was loathed by the British and European Left-liberals before he had done anything in office. He was detested purely and simply for what he was - a point to which I shall return. But the idea that the most recent wave of rabid anti-Americanism stems from mistakes in Iraq is simply absurd. Anyone whose historical memory goes back more than 10 minutes should recall the extraordinary effusion of hatred that spewed from sections of the opinion-forming class as a consequence of America being attacked.

Like most expatriate Americans living in Britain, it was a phenomenon I am unlikely ever to forget. The response to the deaths of 3,000 civilians, by comment writers in the Left-wing newspapers and the producers of "flagship" BBC current affairs programmes, was to orchestrate abuse of the bereaved country....

So, no - George W Bush is not hated here and in Europe because he removed a genocidal tyrant in Iraq and failed to anticipate the chaos that followed.

He is hated because he is the embodiment of everything that the United States is, and Europe is not: not just enormously powerful, militarily and economically, but brashly confident and fervently patriotic. Where Europe is steeped in historical guilt and self-loathing - so immersed in its own unforgivable past that it is trying to fashion a constitution that actually prohibits national pride - America is profoundly proud of the success of its own miraculous achievement.

What it has succeeded in doing is cracking the great dilemma of modern history: how can disparate and ethnically diverse people live together?....

The answer lies not in the post-religious, anti-clerical mania of the European Union which has just rejected a commissioner for espousing mainstream Catholic principles, but in that patriotism so despised by European elites. It is the unifying force of national self-belief with all those ridiculed school rituals - pledging allegiance to the flag, reciting the preamble to the Constitution - that makes America whole and at one with itself. Bush is the personification of that unashamed America and that is why Europe cannot bear the sight of him".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Master-butcher Arafart is dead. How sad. I was hoping he would live long enough for an Israeli missile to get him. For a summary of the repulsive one's contribution to humanity, see here. And Jeff Jacoby's comment: "Yasser Arafat died at the age of 75, lying in bed and surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves. In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg...."

Good news for Australia's conservative government: "The official unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest levels since monthly records began ..... The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 5.3 per cent in October from 5.5 per cent the previous month.... Releasing the data on Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said the 5.3 per cent jobless rate was the lowest since it began monthly records in February 1978".

Some very biting comments about Americans who despise America and choose to live in Europe instead here. Excerpt: "There are those Americans, or should I say Americans-in-passport-only, who well deserve the title of expatriate. They are predominantly affluent and alienated leftists and they tend to be "writers," i.e., they don't actually write, they in fact have never actually written a sentence, but they nurse their hatred of America during leisurely hours in cafes and kid themselves into thinking that they are writers and patriots. You see them all the time in almost every European city. Mostly male, mostly middle-aged, sitting in cafes, writers all but seldom putting pen to paper. They wear sunglasses, smoke Gitanes and fantasize about under-aged schoolgirls in the delusion that they are experiencing the "authentic" Europe. They know little of the local patois, but fancy themselves fluent".

An interesting argument here to the effect that the Falluja operation is a "Roach Motel" strategy -- first getting the terrorists to "check in" and then killing them off.

Hitchens on the way Leftists hate Christians but praise Islam: "George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he -- and the U.S. armed forces -- have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary -- that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

I have just put up here an article by a British journalist with a few good bits in it that I like: "Contemporary Republicans are not conservatives. On the contrary, theirs is a revolutionary movement aimed at overthrowing much of the post-World War II order at home and abroad." and "After a glorious period of catch-up with US incomes per head, the EU has experienced a marked relative decline since 1990. Behind this lies a worrying deterioration in both absolute and relative productivity performance; and the proportion of people of working age actually at work is only 64 per cent in the EU of 15 members, against 71 per cent in the US, with particularly poor performance in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Spain." [He is right about Europe but is still confused by the old Leftist lie that conservatives oppose all change. It is only foolish or Leftist change that conservatives oppose. They would like LOTS of things changed about the world as it is today.].

Michelle Malkin has up a very clear picture of how "compassionate" Democrats are. The "Red States" are the big charitable donors.

There is an amusing post-election picture of Dan Rather here

Dick McDonald has an excellent gloat about the election result from a retired U.S. Navy Admiral.

I have just put up on Leftists as Elitists the claims by Ted Rall to the effect that Democrat voters really are superior -- followed by a demolition of the arguments he presents.

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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I think I will put election commentary on hold for today:

SOME POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Many conservatives have noticed by now that "projection" is very common on the Left: Leftists commonly accuse conservatives of what are in fact their own faults. This is particularly true of psychological diagnoses, as I have shown elsewhere at some length (e.g. here and here). Perhaps the most constant accusation of that kind is that conservatives are stupid -- where the only published survey on the question that I know of shows the opposite -- that it is in fact LEFTIST attitudes that go with lower average IQ.

Projection is classified in clinical psychology as a "defence mechanism" -- basically something used to prop up weak (and often inflated) egos. But it is in fact only a subset of a more general defence-mechanism: Denial. Denial of your own weak points can be accomplished by projection or in other ways. One of the other ways is familiar to all: Deception (often accompanied by self-deception), or claiming that you have virtues, assets or abilities that you do not have. A rather striking example of this is a claim that seems to have become common among Leftists only recently: The claim that they are "reality-based". That they are "realists" is of course a claim that conservatives have always made and Leftists were for rather a long time fairly happy not to deny that but to counter-claim that they were "idealists". But that strategy seems to have fallen out of favour lately. Why? At one level it is presumably an attack on Christians -- representing a claim that Christians are not realists (though one might ask how come Christians control two branches of the U.S. government in that case) but at the psychological level it simply creates a symmetry with projection: If you claim that your enemies have what are in fact your bad points it makes sense to go the whole hog and claim that what are really your enemy's good points are in fact your good points. One example of this self-identification is well-known Leftist blogger Matthew Yglesias -- who subheads his blog: "Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community". In his most recent post as of this writing, however (post of 9th) he twice uses "right" when he means "write" -- suggesting that his grip on reality is in fact pretty shaky. He is at least dyslexic.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

President's Bush's victory is a win for common decency The true divide in America is not between those who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat. It is between those Americans who love their country and those who disdain it
China's feelings about the Bush victory Beijing believes that the more informed the American public becomes the more it will shift toward the Republicans
Bin Laden tape proof that President Bush is winning The Bin Laden tape was an admission that President Bush had beaten him
The American economy: recessions and tealeaves The fallacious belief that layoffs could be avoided by maintaining wage earners' purchasing power was responsible for deepening and prolonging the Great Depression
A George Soros myth lives on The myth that George Soros broke the Pound has been solidly entrenched. But that's just what it is — a myth

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

I suppose everyone is laughing about this: "France rolled out overwhelming military force Sunday to put down an explosion of anti-French violence in its former West African colony, deploying troops, armored vehicles and helicopter gunships against machete-waving mobs that hunted house-to-house for foreigners. In the second of two stunning days that stood to alter French-Ivory Coast relations -- and perhaps Ivory Coast itself -- French forces seized strategic control of the largest city, commandeering airports and posting gunboats under bridges in the commercial capital, Abidjan."

Great English election result! The English just want to be English: "John Prestcott's cherished dream of English devolution was shattered last night when voters overwhelmingly rejected an elected assembly for the North East. The Deputy Prime Minister, was shocked and humiliated when voters threw out his proposals for a directly elected regional assembly in yesterday's referendum by 78 per cent, with only 22 per cent in favour... Despite a huge push by the Labour Party over the last 48 hours to get out their vote, the higher turn out in the end favoured the "no" camp, which was backed by the Tories and UKIP.... The Government is now expected to tear up its twelve-year-old plan to create eight or nine regional assemblies in England to mirror devolution in Scotland and Wales.

More evidence here to suggest that Arafart is dying of AIDS.

Leftists routinely claim that the American economy "traps" many people in poverty. This article shows that few Americans are in fact stuck permanently in poverty and that those who are can scarcely blame others for it.

There is a good post here saying what I have always said about Michael Moore -- that he is simply a clever and well-paid entertainer of the Left. Perhaps because of that, Moore is careful to avoid outright lies -- relying instead on distortions and innuendo. As this post shows, however, official Democrat election propaganda was not so squeamish.

But Moore is a Johnny-come-lately in the Leftist-entertainment business. Noam Chomsky has had the same shtick for years -- with similar lucrative results. There is a good summary of how reality-defying Chomsky is here -- which also notes how useful Chomsky is to the incessant Leftist need to appear "different".

On 3rd., I commented here about the 100,000 post-invasion civilian deaths in Iraq that Leftists are at present claiming. Wayne Lusvardi has put together some additional commentary on the claim here.

I have a good crop of posts up on GREENIE WATCH today

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

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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BACK TO ELECTION 2004: MY COMMENTS

My first comment is on this plaint from a Left activist: "Contrary to my predictions, we had had a relatively fair election and the American people (or something over half of them) had democratically voted for an extremist Christian regime... In the other America, we believe that killing all those Iraqis (not to mention Afghanis and, indirectly, Palestinians) is not only wrong but also terribly hazardous to our own security.... More important, though, we had better take a good hard look at what is happening in the Christian extremist America, dissect it and try to understand it from the inside out."

She could start by listening to what GWB was saying instead of inventing a non-existent bogeyman. Read what GWB actually said about abortion in the Presidential debates and tell me he is a Christian extremist. He's more a libertarian on the issue, in fact. But she's an illiterate anyway: The people of Afghanistan are Afghans. The Afghani is their currency.

My second point is that to regain Federal electability, the Democrats are going to have to do what the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party have already done -- marginalize the far-Left. The Dems know that of course or Kerry would not have presented himself as a GWB clone on practially all policies in the last election. But a last-minute conversion like that is just not convincing. There has to be real change, not cosmetic change. The British Labour party, for instance, was once the anti-nuclear and unilateral disarmament party. Now its leader is America's chief ally in the Iraq war. Quite a change! Just as is already the case in Britain and Australia, America's party of the Left needs to become just an alternative conservative party.

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BACK TO ELECTION 2004: OTHER COMMENTS

"Love is stronger than hate. That is the lesson of the 2004 election results. Millions of Democrats and leftists have been seething with hatred for George W. Bush for years, and many of them lined up before the polls opened to cast their votes against him--one reason, apparently, that the exit poll results turned out to favor Democrats more than did the actual results. But Republicans full of love, or at least affection, for George W. Bush turned out steadily later in the day or sent in their ballots days before. They have watched the "old media" --the New York Times, the broadcast networks CBS, ABC, and NBC--beat up on Bush for the past year, and they have listened to the sneers and slurs directed at him by coastal elites for a long time. Now they had their chance to speak".

Rove speaks: "Kerry's decision to vote for the $87 billion in funding for troops and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then deciding in October 2003 to vote against it, was a bonanza for the president's campaign, "the gift that kept on giving," Rove said. Bush's campaign featured the videotape in thousands of commercials around the country to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper. Rove played down the importance to the campaign of "moral values," which exit polls last Tuesday unexpectedly identified as a major consideration of many voters, especially those who voted for Bush. Rove said 34 percent of the voters were motivated by issues surrounding Iraq and the war on terror, compared with 30 percent motivated by moral values. "What essentially happened in this election was that people became concerned about three issues: first the war, then the economy, jobs and taxes and then moral values. And then everything else dropped off of the plate," he said... On one sideline row during the campaign, Rove said the president's tailor was devastated about a controversy over a box-shaped bulge in Bush's back that television cameras captured during the first debate. The mysterious bulge spawned speculation that Bush aides were feeding the president advice secretly through a radio receiver tucked under his suit jacket. "Nothing was under his jacket," Rove said".

A timely warning: "Democrats did well in the AAA league of politics, the state legislatures. Republicans have to pay attention not only to where they are gaining votes, but also to the states and demographic groups where they are losing them. Last week, more than 80% of the roughly 7,300 partisan legislative seats in the country were up for grabs, as elections for state legislators took place in 44 states. Before the election, Republicans had a narrow 60-seat aggregate nationwide lead in seats, the smallest any party had held since statistics have been recorded. Now the margin is even smaller, but this time Democrats are on top".

How the Catholic vote turned out in 2004: "Mr. Bush carried Ohio Catholics by 10 percentage points - 55 percent to 45 percent - over Sen. John Kerry.... Nationwide, the Catholic vote swung eight points from 2000, when 50 percent backed Al Gore to 47 percent for Mr. Bush. This year, it was 52 percent for the president and 47 percent for Mr. Kerry, a Catholic. "The change in the Catholic vote was crucial to the margin of victory," Mr. Cuccinelli said. .. Mr. Bush obliquely referred to the role Catholics and Protestant evangelicals played in his victory when he noted at a press conference yesterday that, "I am glad people of faith voted in this election." "

Overseas Leftists outraged too: "The re-election of President Bush dominated British newspapers Thursday, and many cast impartiality aside in reporting the result. 'How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?' the liberal Daily Mirror asked in a Page One headline. Inside, several pages of coverage were headed 'U.S. election disaster.' The Independent bore the front-page headline 'Four more years' on a black page with grim pictures including a hooded Iraqi prisoner and an orange-clad detainee at Guantanamo Bay. The left-leaning Guardian led its features section with a black page bearing the tiny words, 'Oh, God.' ... Across Europe, many newspapers expressed dismay at the prospect of another term for Bush... 'Oops -- they did it again,' Germany's left-leaning Tageszeitung newspaper said in a front-page English headline. The cover of the Swiss newsmagazine Facts called Bush's re-election 'Europe's Nightmare.'

The investor vote: "The largest demographic shift in this country over the past 25 years is not the number of Americans whose parents speak Spanish. It is the number of Americans who own stocks directly. In 1978 only 17 percent of American adults owned stocks. Today, more than 60 percent of adults and 70 percent of those who voted in 2002 own stock. The "investor voter" has already changed politics in the past 4 years.... Low stock market values make investors demand solutions from politicians that will increases their wealth. Kerry has chosen sides. In the 1995 debate on capital-gains tax cuts he said, "This week defines the difference between them and us." It's not so wise to define 70 percent of voters as "them." It shows your political age."

Heartening Massachusetts win: "In an unprecedented landslide, approximately 85% voted for joint physical custody of children on Fathers & Families' non-binding ballot question. The lopsided margin of victory was greater than that of any elected official in Massachusetts, including John Kerry, Barney Frank, or Jim McGovern..." The wording: "Shall the State Representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation requiring that in all separation and divorce proceedings involving minor children, the court shall uphold the fundamental rights of both parents to the shared physical and legal custody of their children"

There is a rather remarkable map here which shows that the Democrat vote came overwhelmingly from the big cities. By and large it was of course a "bought" vote: The vote of minorities bought with welfare dollars.

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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Just for a change, I am going to do all-Australian posts today -- but if you need some post-election commentary to keep you going, there is an excellent post here. I understand that the author has already got hate-mail about it!



ANTISEMITISM IN THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

Just a few excerpts from an article by Barry Cohen, a former ALP Federal parliamentarian


I have often been asked if my being Jewish was ever an issue during my 20 years in Federal Parliament. Not to the best of my knowledge. I cannot recall a single anti-Semitic remark from either side of the House. That did not mean that everyone agreed with my views on Israel. Nor did I expect them to. However, while my views remain the same, the Labor Party's these days are very different....

But gradually, Labor's Left and more extremist elements, such as the Greens and Democrats, became increasingly shrill in their denunciation of Israel.... That trend has infected the ALP. The handful of pro-Palestinian supporters has grown steadily as the party has become dominated by the education mafia; former public servants and party union apparatchiks....

I'm sick of the calumny heaped on Israel - most of which is a pack of lies... I don't want even-handedness when it ought to be obvious to all but the blind that there is no moral equivalence between a country that seeks to defend its citizens from thousands of terrorist attacks, and the terrorists themselves. I want to hear Labor MPs stand up and be counted. I want to see an end to well-known Labor identities marching behind banners equating Israel with Nazism...

Silence on these issues isn't good enough for me. If people want to criticise Israel, fine - plenty of Israelis do. But let it be reasoned criticism, and if they want even-handedness let them also berate the Arab world for its denial of basic human rights for any of its citizens. Let's hear the Labor feminists take the Arab nations to task for their abominable treatment of women. Let's hear those Labor supporters, who are so loud in their denunciation of homophobia, demand an end to the barbaric treatment of gays. Let's also hear civil rights activists bemoan the lack of basic freedoms available to most of the 300 million Arabs in the 22 Arab countries...

Before the Iraq war one of the most senior NSW right-wing MPs told me: "I understand and support Israel's position, but in my group, I'm the only one." Soon after I told a Labor legend: "Anti-Semitism is now rampant in the Labor Party." I expected a vigorous denial. His response confirmed my worst fear: "I know," he said. For better or worse my character and life were shaped by the anti-Semitism I experienced as a boy and a young man. I was proud to belong to a party that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer.

There is a collection of comments on Barry Cohen's article here. Note the claim to virtue from dopey Leftist spokeswoman Plibersek: "In addition, I am proud of my statements criticising the Taliban for its treatment of women in Afghanistan and the mullahs for their repression of democracy in Iran. I do not believe these criticisms make me anti-Arab". Since neither Afghans nor Iranians are Arabs, she was on safe ground there! (Comments via Fabian's Hammer).

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ELSEWHERE

Australian politics have always seemed more class-oriented than American politics. Australia lacks the race factor and has never had any equivalent to the old conservative Southern Democrats. An article I have just put online is therefore interesting. It shows that by the 1970s even Australia had lost almost all the class polarization in its political system. Working class people by then were just as likely to vote conservative as Leftist. Cultural factors were already more important. In both America and Australia, of course, the process of change has since then progressed even further -- with the major Leftist parties reversing themselves completely -- now being parties of the social and economic elite rather than of the worker.

I said it first!: "A leading Indonesian scientist challenged the widely publicised theory that fossilised bones found on the eastern island of Flores were from a previously unknown species of human. Professor Teuku Jacob, chief palaeontologist from the state Gajah Mada University, will carry out tests to prove the fossils are from a sub-species of homo sapiens -- "an ordinary human being, just like us"... "It is not a new species. It is a sub-species of homo sapiens classified under the Austrolomelanesid race. If it's not a new species, why should it be given a new name?" the professor said." As soon as I saw the initial reports on this, I said that these Indonesian pygmies were probably relatives of the Northern Australian pygmies. See here and here for my relevant posts on the matter.

Welfare reform needed: "Of the 14 million Australians of working age, an amazing 14 per cent depend on welfare. Back in 1969 the figure was only 3 per cent. This affects the economy because these people are not contributing - they're taking money from those in paid employment. A majority of those on welfare are on disability or sole parent support pensions. To put it bluntly, many of them shouldn't be. Let's start with disability support. The numbers have more than tripled since 1980 - to 670,000 - and now account for a whopping $7.6 billion per year. Of course, many of these people are genuinely disabled and deserve our support. But many aren't - unless the level of disability has skyrocketed since 1980, and there is no medical evidence to suggest this is the case. What has happened is that it's been made much easier to get the pension. The two biggest categories are depression and bad backs, which are notoriously difficult to prove, or disprove.... The last Labor government began this increase around 1991, shunting people from unemployment benefits to the pension to make the unemployment figures look better.... This is not just about the economy. Working-age people on welfare for no good reason are more likely to be depressed. Their sense of self-worth is low. Their children, compared with children from working families, are far more likely to become homeless, to break the law, and to end up on welfare.

Australian book publishing is failing our society badly by publishing far too narrow and turgidly repetitive a range of viewpoints, especially on politics and foreign policy.... How can it be that here we already have a welter of biographies of Mark Latham, who has yet to achieve ministerial office of any kind but only one, highly unsatisfactory, biography of John Howard, soon to become Australia's second longest serving prime minister? In Australia almost every book dealing with foreign policy, especially Iraq, begins with the premise that Howard is bad, Bush is worse, the war on terror is a con, the war in Iraq was based on a lie, Australia's closeness to Bush hurts us in Asia, and so on. There is a reasonable amount of disagreement within those positions, but nothing to challenge the consensus... By accepting the absurd premise that there is something inherently evil about the Australian Government, publishers seem to drop all editorial standards. Any rhetorical and emotional excess is justified. There is no need to marshal facts for an argument. If there is any research in most of these books, it consists of assembling newspaper clippings to illustrate the predetermined thesis.... it's just a virulent and deeply unintelligent stream of abuse aimed at anyone on the conservative side of politics in the US or Australia. You have to conclude that Australian publishers have no standards of honesty, factual accuracy or elementary decency, that they will publish absolutely anything, no matter how bad, if the author is well known and is attacking conservatives.

There is a new Australian blog here written by Father Peter Wales, an Anglo-Catholic. I have corresponded with Peter for a while off and on and, unlike most of the Anglican clergy, I judge him to be a true man of God. His post here, however fills me with rage at American judges.

I rarely put up pictures or graphics of any kind but I have just put up here (or here) a picture of a man in a great hat!

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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Apologies for continuing to focus on the election but I think this was the election that will ensure that the Anglosphere wins the world war it is presently engaged in so I think that is kind-of important


THE "HICK CHRISTIANS" MYTH

I touched on this yesterday but I hope to sink it altogether today. For a start, I do NOT intend to dignify with any counter-argument the sickening denigrations of American Christians that have been spewing from Leftists in recent days -- describing these good people as "hicks", "ignorant", "jihadists" etc. I think the reality is too plain to need any defence from me. And how the sad souls of the Left think such language will help them win the Christian votes that they will need if ever they are to win power again entirely escapes me. So why should I do anything to stop American Leftists from destroying their own future? They are, in fact, an excellent example of the self-destructive nature of hate. How much better off Christians are with the wisdom of Matthew chapter 5 to guide them. I am an atheist and it still inspires me! Leftists claim to be idealists but they don't know what idealism is until they have read those words.

As I pointed out yesterday, the vote for GWB was a clear vote for solid conservatism so it is of great interest to see which demographic groups swung in that direction. I noted yesterday that Hispanics were one such group but have a look through the statistics listed here and you will see that the swings were just about the opposite of what the haters on the Left claim. The swing to Bush actually occurred in almost ALL large demographic groups, including Africans, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics and women -- with a notable EXCEPTION being Protestant Christians! (Down from 63% in 2000 to 59% in 2004). Polysigh has arrived at similar conclusions.

And so has David Brooks: "Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top. This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.... The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums."

And the Leftists call conservatives stupid! If conservatives are stupid, Leftists are fact-free! Not that that's any news.

Leftists have of course tried to console themselves in various other ways for their loss but one of the most amusing such efforts is the frequent claim that Bush's margin over Kerry was small (What's 3 million people to a Leftist? A mere bagatelle. It's the THEORY that matters, stupid!) and that America is still therefore roughly 50/50 divided between Left and Right. The Leftist talent for self-deception is legendary but that one takes the cake. It overlooks their candidate's ENTIRE campaign! Kerry presented himself as being simply a more skillful version of Bush. His proclaimed policies were virtually the same as Bush's. Only his history -- e.g. his Senate voting record -- identified him as the far-Leftist he is. So lots of people would have bought that bill of goods and voted for Kerry simply as an alternative conservative candidate. Lots of Kerry votes were therefore "stolen" conservative votes -- won by deception! The real Leftist candidate was "screamer" Dean and the Dems didn't dare run HIM against Bush. If they had run Dean, they would have seen that the Left/Right divide among Americans was MUCH more extreme than 50/50!

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OTHER COMMENTS ON THE ELECTION

The media lost: "Sen. John Kerry has gotten the white-glove treatment from the press, garnering more praise from journalists than any other presidential candidate in the last quarter-century, according to a new analysis of almost 500 news stories released today by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "It's not just that John Kerry has gotten better press than President Bush before this election, he's gotten better press than anyone else since 1980. That's significant," said Bob Lichter, director of the D.C.-based nonpartisan research group. "Kerry also got better press than anyone else in the days before the primaries as well," Mr. Lichter added. In October alone, Mr. Kerry had a "record-breaking 77 percent positive press evaluations," compared with 34 percent positive for Mr. Bush... But Mr. Bush didn't get the absolute worst press on record. With only 9 percent positive stories in 1984, President Reagan got the most negative treatment by news outlets on record, the study says."

The elitism never stops: "When President Bush's poll numbers surged in April after a press conference where his performance was derided by the press and the chattering classes, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry was baffled ... He said with a sigh to one top staffer, 'I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot.'"

Even the Leftist Nation says it: "The Democratic elite are out of touch, as Republicans claim. They have lost reliable connections to ordinary people, including some long loyal constituencies".

Jeff Jacoby: "Hatred lost. For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For four years, they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the 43rd Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a swastika instead of an 's', the depictions of the president as a drooling moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote, and handed the haters a crushing repudiation."

Anti-illegal immigration win: "Arizonans have voted heavily for the ballot initiative that aims to stop illegal aliens from receiving involuntary taxpayer subsidies, voting in elections etc. Proposition 200's grassroots triumph in the teeth of the united opposition of the entire political establishment and its media mouthpieces is, as with California's similar Proposition 187 ten years ago, a further illustration of the extraordinary power of the immigration issue."

Democrats up against it: "Of all the hard facts Democrats have to consider today, the mass mobilization of evangelical Christians must certainly be the most painful. It's easy enough for the party to produce GOP-clone positions on issues ranging from Iraq to education to "saving" Social Security. But the Democrats will never be able to turn out the anti-gay marriage vote (even as they lack the conviction to field a strong pro-gay marriage candidate). It's getting harder to see just what the Democrats can turn out. The party remains in thrall to unattractive special interests that don't matter anymore: unions, teachers, trial lawyers, and so on"

The Guardian loses: "Thank you, Lady Antonia Fraser! In 2000, Clark County, Ohio went to Al Gore. This time round, after the local citizenry were targeted by the Guardian to be the beneficiaries of Lady Antonia's voting advice, and John le Carr‚'s and Richard Dawkins's and many others, Clark County went to ...George W. Bush!"

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

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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MY ELECTION REFLECTIONS

The heavy-duty pontificating about what the election result means is already well underway so let me try to spoil the party by pointing out the obvious: In 2000 GWB tried to learn from Clinton's apparently very successful centrist policies and campaigned as a "compassionate conservative". He lost the popular vote by half a million but thanks to the small-state bias of the electoral college he still got the job. In 2004, by contrast, he campaigned on security and morality -- classic conservative causes. And what a difference it made! He won the popular vote by over 3 million. So can anybody doubt that in voting for Bush it was good solid conservatism that was being chosen and that the Anglosphere is basically conservative? It was the conservative element in Clinton's appeal that turned the tide for him; it is the conservative element in Tony Blair's appeal that will continue to win the day for him and it was certainly thoroughly conservative policies that recently won the day for John Howard in Australia.

The case of Australia is particularly useful in seeing how it all works. For over a decade the Australian Labor Party followed policies (privatization, tariff reduction etc.) that were in many ways more conservative than the policies of our nominal conservatives. And that got the Labor party a long term as the government of Australia. Eventually, however, John Howard came along with even more conservative policies and tossed Labor out. And he has recently won his fourth election in a row. Howard was never successful enough to gain control of the Senate, however -- until the last election. In the last election the Labor party took a lurch to the Left (more socialized medicine, attacking private schools, bringing home the troops etc) and got the lowest share of the vote for over 70 years. So now Australian conservatives DO control our Senate.

So what it all shows is that Leftist parties in the Anglosphere can only succeed at elections by being an alternative conservative party. Which is also why John Kerry pretended to be a gun-lover and a Christian -- when he clearly knew nothing about either.

The predominant Leftist "explanation" for the defeat of Kerry seems to be that it can only have been a big turnout by those dreadful religious "hicks" that did it -- virtually claiming that there is no such thing as an intelligent Christian and quite ignoring the fact that the born-again Christian in the White House has an MBA from Harvard. Let me note again that the Australian comparison is instructive. In the recent Australian elections, the conservatives did at least as well as George Bush -- even grabbing complete control of our Senate for the first time. But very few Australians are religious so there is no Left/Right religious polarization in Australia to explain all the new conservative voters. All the outspoken church leaders in Australia were in fact AGAINST John Howard, as far as I can recollect (Who noticed?). But if the major conservative parties were not particularly representative of Christians, there WAS another party that DID represent Christians -- the Family First party. And it got only 2% of the vote! So with such a tiny Christian vote, Australia should, on Leftist reasoning, have elected a bunch of near-Communists. In fact, of course, Australia is in many ways more conservative than the USA -- with BOTH major political parties (Left and Right) completely ruling out any form of homosexual marriage long before the election (as just one instance of that). So you DON'T need a big "homophobic" and "fundamentalist" turnout to get a big conservative win in Australia and it would be pretty surprising if the American result could realistically be explained that way -- given the great similarities between the two countries on everything but religion. The big swing to GWB seems to have been among the Hispanics, in fact. See below.

But let the American Left continue with their febrile Christian-bashing. It will only entrench them as losers -- and Christians have had 20 centuries of experience in putting up with ignorant abuse.

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MORE ELECTION REFLECTIONS

My vote for the most amusing post-election comment so far -- from the NYT, of course: "Caving in to depression and a sense of helplessness should not be an option when the country is speeding toward an abyss" (Thanks to Dick McDonald for the link)

There is another amusing NYT article by Garry Wills that is apparently very popular in Leftist circles. Wills claims that America is as intolerant, oppressive and irrational as the Muslim countries. Anybody who is so far out of touch with reality as that would have to be an American college professor. If he told such falsehoods about his own society in a real Islamic country he would be dead. As it is, I am sure he was handsomely paid for his delusions.

The Times of London shows a lot better perspective than the rubbish the NYT prints: "It is absurd to believe that Bush's re-election represents the triumph of a Christian fundamentalism... The world did not end on Tuesday. A great darkness did not descend across civilisation. America is not about to embark on a biblically-mandated jihad against the enemies of evangelical Christianity around the world. American soldiers will not be enforcing Washington's imperium on your towns and villages any time soon".

Hispanics: "The biggest reason for Bush's victory was that he finally cracked the Democratic stranglehold on the Hispanic vote. While Gore won 65 percent of the Latino community, holding Bush to a mere 35 percent, Kerry only carried the Hispanic vote by 55-45, paving the way for the Bush victory. Since Hispanics cast 12 percent of the vote in 2004, their ten point movement to the GOP gave the president an additional 1.2 percent of the national vote. Take a similar amount away from Kerry and the Latinos gave Bush a 2.4 percent edge in the general election balloting".

"Healing? "After conceding the election to President Bush, John Kerry encouraged the American people to "begin the healing" and said it was time for us to come together and unite. It is not that easy, Johnny Boy. Who are we suppose to unite with? The people who vandalized Republican headquarters around the nation? Those who sprayed bullets through GOP offices, hurled rocks and cinder blocks through windows, sprayed racist and anti-Bush graffiti on walls outside and broke laptops and other equipment inside? Or just unite with those large groups of unkempt hippies who attempted to overtake Republican headquarters around the nation? What about the people who vandalized and egged cars that had Republican bumper stickers on them, or those who slashed the tires of dozens of GOP Campaign vehicles election morning? Is this what we are suppose to unite with?"

Lots of people liked the county map of the election results. It shows that even within States, it is mostly the big city areas that voted for Kerry. The map is reproduced here together with some comments. Michelle Malkin has the map up too.

Hee hee!: "European leaders struggled to prevent tensions over Iraq and transatlantic relations flaring out of control last night as President Bush's election victory dominated an EU summit. While Tony Blair accused Europe of being in denial about America, President Chirac of France withdrew from a lunch with Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi leader, who accused France of being a "spectator" refusing to get involved in his country's reconstruction. President Bush's re-election has upset his critics in Europe, particularly in France, which had led the anti-war effort. Yesterday French politicians insisted that Mr Bush's re-election showed the need to turn the EU into a superpower to counteract the US."

The big "October Surprise" that the Left intended for the election was the story about the lost Iraqi explosives. The L.A. Times says that the "explosives" removed from Al QaQaa in Iraq "are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon". A professor of chemistry, however, says that the chemicals concerned were not explosives at all. See here for details. Though why the Left ever thought a possible army stuff-up was the fault of GWB has always escaped me. Do they think he is there in Iraq every day supervising every single platoon of soldiers?

The election has put my Leftists as Elitists site into high gear. I have recently put up some more great quotes there.

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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THE WRAP-UP

Just imagine how Michael Moore and George Soros are feeling now. Justice has been done.

We do live in a better world now. The Islamicists are pipsqueaks compared to the menace that was once posed by the old Soviet Union. And just look at this news item now: "Russian President Vladimir Putin led world leaders' tributes to George W. Bush's victory in the U.S. presidential race, saying it meant Americans had not allowed themselves to be cowed by terrorists. "If Bush wins... I can only feel joy that the American people did not allow itself to be intimidated, and made the most sensible decision," Putin said at a Kremlin news conference". I have always had great respect for the long-suffering people of Russia and it is a joy to see that the artificial antagonism between them and the people of the Anglosphere has now ended. It is a considerable irony that the two biggest Slavic countries -- Russia and Poland -- now seem to have greater affection for America than Western Europe does. Note the disgusting comment by the Swedish Prime Minister in the same news item.

There is a lot of talk in the media about a "divided" America. See for example this rubbishy article. But Polipundit notes what will be obvious to everyone but the media: "I don't think it's an "bitterly divided country" when: 1. The Republican president just won over 50 percent for the first time in 16 years. He won more raw votes than anyone ever has, including Reagan. 2. The GOP has 55 senators. 3. The GOP has over 230 House members. 4. There are at least 28 Republican governors, including those of the 4 largest states. 5. The majority of state legislators and legislatures are Republican. 6. The GOP has just performed miracles, like ousting a Senate caucus leader for the first time since 1952, and getting a Republican senator elected from Louisiana for the first time ever".

And as Neumayr says: "What does all this talk of division really add up to? Aren't reporters really just saying that they feel divided from the country they cover? If the country is as divided as they eagerly assert, why don't the Democrats control half the branches of government? Why did they lose, not gain, votes in Florida? Why did Bush improve on his popular vote numbers so significantly? The country-is-divided chatter is not a journalistic report, but a wish -- the media's attempt to create the appearance of division so as to create division which might obstruct the progress of conservatism in the country."

But there is nonetheless still a very clear geographical division, as this map shows. The people who think they are superior and the big-city welfare clients whose votes were bought got together to vote for Kerry.

I think John Kerry's concession was one of the few good things he has ever done. He certainly showed more class than his odious litigation-loving vice-presidential sidekick who seemed determined to spin the matter out forever. And he put himself well above Gore too. Note this comment on conceding defeat: "They say Nixon had no class, but in 1960 he put the good of the country ahead of his own ambition and conceded a very close and controversial election to John Kennedy. A shift of a few thousand votes in Illinois and Texas would have given Nixon the presidency. In both places voter fraud was legendary and always on the Democratic side. Until the day he died, Nixon believed he had won in 1960. It seems to be one of the few things he really believed sincerely. Nobody will ever know whether he was right. The election was too close to call and in Chicago they knew how to steal elections too well to be caught. It is not so much that we are in new territory with elections, but we have become much more litigious. Al Gore should have given up after the first recount for the sake of the country. Despite myths that have been repeated endlessly, he had no reason to believe in widespread Republican fraud. Democrats ran all the disputed counties and the infamous butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat. Any fraud is much more likely to have benefited them".

A good summary of election night here. Excerpt: "In a graphic demonstration of how strong the Republicans' lock has become on the South, only one generation ago the preserve of the Democrat Party, even John Edwards, Mr Kerry's running-mate, saw his own state of North Carolina vote for Mr Bush by 56 per cent to 43, the same margin of victory for Mr Bush four years ago. Mr Edwards's own senate seat, which he vacated to focus on his initial bid for the Democrat presidential nomination last year, went Republican by nearly 200,000 votes. Democrats lost all five of the Southern senate seats they were defending"

Some Democrat "clients" reject them: "But before the entire Bush constituency is dismissed as merely a collection of religious fanatics, armed to the teeth and living in the hills, it should be remembered that the army of secular Americans is about the same size as those for whom cultural conservatism is the essence of their politics.... The crucial additional building blocks in the Bush coalition were drawn from beyond the stereotype of the Republican electorate. Mr Bush performed notably better among three categories of Americans on Tuesday than he had done four years earlier. These were women, the elderly and Hispanic citizens. The Hispanic electorate has been wooed by the White House for the whole of Mr Bush's tenure. He reaped a substantial reward for his efforts, not least in Florida. The Democratic Party, once the ultimate "rainbow coalition", has thus lost its hold on female electors and its dominance over a rapidly expanding ethic minority".

Hey! How come he's not a "neocon"?: "Mr Rove can claim more credit for Mr Bush's re-election triumph than anyone other than the President. The strategist who masterminded Mr Bush's three previous elections, two for the Texas governorship, was always going to emerge from this presidential election as either an electoral genius or a snake oil salesman. The strategy and tactics were his alone. He shaped the battleground and crafted the message. He recruited and marshalled the troops and issued their orders. And he got it all just about right". [He doesn't sound like a Jewish intellectual recently converted from Trotskyism to me! He has no university degree, has been a Republican since age 9 and isn't Jewish. But silly me! If he has big influence he MUST be a neocon!]

Promethean Antagonist is from "flyover country" and comments: "A pompous weasel who collaborated with communists and established a record of having done absolutely nothing for the last 30 years, was defeated by the voters of "flyover country" -- those dreaded commoners who don't know names like, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida have rejected George McGovern Jr. The Left and the international spoiled brat brigade will wring their hands in horror..... The greatest irony of Bush's win is that he may not have won if the phony renegades of Leftist elitism hadn't screeched their nonsense for over a year now. To folks like Michael Moore, Moveon.org, Steve Earl, Bruce Springsteen et al. (the list is really long), ya blew it! and you have only yourselves to blame."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and this week's host voted for Bush so pay him a visit!

I have just put up on Leftists as Elitists some amusing excerpts from elitist reactions to Bush's victory.

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

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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