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It's been a busy month here at Payton Place (the house, not the web site). Hence the dearth of updates. But here's one for ya'.

After the tragic death of Sen. Paul Wellstone, Minnesota Democrats were all over Republicans because of polling the Republicans were doing. Complaining that Wellstone wasn't even buried yet, Democrats accused Republicans of bad taste, at least, and heartlessness, at worst. How could Republicans be concerned with politics when the state was mourning? How inconsiderate to the Wellstone family!

The next day came the Wellstone memorial service, which became just another political rally, with politicking coming from the very Wellstone family that (supposedly) was offended at it 24 hours before, and from Democrat leaders that were tsk-tsk-ing that sort of behavior on the previous day's evening news.

Surprised? Not me. As I've said before, it appears the the die-hard Democrat voter base consists mostly of folks with extremely short attention spans. They don't remember, or care, what you said yesterday. They only care about what you're saying today (and never mind what you're doing; only intentions really matter). These folks are easy prey for Democrats who change their tune as soon as the wind blows a different way (compare Clinton's governing via poll vs. Reagan's governing based on his pre-existing principles).
posted at 9:31 AM

Was September 11th America's fault? Well if you believe that, then was the recent bombing of a Bali nightclub Austrailia's fault? As of now, 30 Austrailian citizens died in that bombing and 160 are missing. 190 compared to the Austrailian population (19.5 million) is roughly proportionate to the 3,000 who died on 9/11 compared to America's population. (And the 9/11 deaths were not all U.S. citizens.) So the Bali bombing could be considered Austrailia's 9/11.

Prior to this, as Clive James notes in the Guardian, Austrailia pundits blamed America for the 9/11 attacks, because of our behavior in the rest of the world. Now, (not so) amazingly, they're starting to change their tune.

It's so easy to pontificate from the outside, isn't it? And from the inside, I wonder if the 'blame America first' crowd is ready to blame Austrailia now. (Answer: Hold not thy breath.)
posted at 4:59 PM

In the Sore Loser department, supporters of Cynthia McKinney (D-Saudi Arabia) are filing suit in federal court to have the Democratic primary that she lost voided, and have her declared the winner. Given that, consider this:

• Where do you think McKinney stood on the Supreme Court ruling that halted the Florida recounts in 2000? Those recounts that were, you may recall, taking place contrary to Florida law, which is what the Supremes were reacting to. Dollars-to-doughnuts she considered that ruling flawed. And now here are her supporters trying to do something similar, except they're trying to have a legal act (voting in whatever primary you want) declared unconstitutional. as opposed to having an illegal ruling overturned. (And I wonder what her position is on the Toricelli/Lautenberg switcheroo, another judicial ruling that defies the law.)


• The folks bringing the lawsuit claim that the crossover voting denied African-American voters their right to elect the candidate of their choice. This is, of course, given the false assumption that the 48% of the vote that went to Denise Majette was lilly white. It also comes with the suggestion that only the votes of African-Americans should count in Georgia's 4th district.
  
• McKinney's supporters claim that 37,500 Republicans (legally) crossed over and voted against her. That would be over half of the votes cast for Majette (68,612). However, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution could find no more that 3,118 votes where the voters clearly identified themselves as registered Republicans. (And remember, in Georgia the term "registered" is meaningless, since we don't register for a party. Hence the legality of "crossover" voting.) Are they making these numbers up? (Answer: Most likely.)
  

Yes, these are just her supporters, not Cynthia herself, but the silence as to whether or not she supports this endeavor is deafening. (Cybercast News Service could raise neither McKinney herself nor the Congressional Black Caucus on this issue.) And playing the blame game is nothing new to the McKinneys anyway, who have blamed the Democratic Party, Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, and of course J-E-W-S.
posted at 5:02 PM

Speaking of "mob rule", Neal Boortz has a great column on how that relates to the New Jersey switcharoo. The NJ Supreme Court has decided, and the NY Times agrees, that the wishes of the mob (voters (read: Democrat party members) who want a "genuine election") is more important than the law (the "51 day" rule). We're not a democracy, we're a republic. And that makes all the difference. Boortz notes that not a single founding father ever uttered the word "democracy", and for good reason.

We don't have mob rule. Well, we're not supposed to have it.
posted at 1:52 PM

Whites and Asians have been removed from an anti-racism conference.

I'll pause a moment to let the irony sink in.

Citing the idea that slavery was too painful a subject to discuss in the presence of non-Africans, a vote was taken, and the result was that all whites and Asians were voted out. Most walked out in protest anyway. Chairwoman Jewel Crawford of the United States defended the vote by saying, "the motion of exclusion was the will of the majority."

I'll pause another moment to let the irony sink in again.

I'm betting that at some point in our history, you could have said something similar about the issue of slavery, at least in some states. "The motion of exclusion [from the restaurant/bus/club/school] is the will of the majority." But that doesn't make it right, then or now.
posted at 1:37 PM

Given the New Jersey court's decision to replace Torricelli with Lautenberg by judicial fiat, actions that should logically follow include:

• All uncontested races should have court-appointed challengers (i.e. The Miranda Rule of Elections: If you cannot afford a challenger, one will be appointed for you).


• Any parties other than the Republicans or Democrats don't count as parties and/or challengers (because since the court said that the public should have a choice, obviously those other parties aren't actual choices). In New Jersey, other (now legally unimportant) parties include the Green, Libertarian, Socialist Worker and New Jersey Conservative Parties.


• Once campaign finance reform kicks in, parties can surrepticiously replace their candidate within 60 days of the election, and then be forbidden by law to announce that change (since the McCain-Feingold gag rule will have kicked in).

Is this really how elections should be run? What ever happened to judges interpreting the law and legislators enacting it? It's the same situation as in the 2000 Presidential election in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court said that the deadline wasn't a deadline, regardless of what the law actually said, and that "the will of the people" should prevail. The people of NJ have already spoken, as they did in Florida, through their legislators and via the law, that within 51 days of an election you can't change horses. Now the NJ judges have said that that's not what they meant.

The same liberals who call the Constitution a "living document" (i.e. subject to the whims of activist judges) are playing fast & loose with state law now.
posted at 12:31 PM

Now here's an interesting thing to consider: The ozone "hole" over Antarctica, that place where the ozone is thinner than other places, has shrunk and split. It's total size is at about its circa 1988 area. Well that's good to hear, but here's where it gets interesting. According to NASA, the main reason this is happening is...warmer air! The warmer temperatures reduced the formation of clouds that harbor the ozone-zapping clorine and bromine, and thus the ozone recovered.

Now, if you want to believe that global warming is happening (and caused primarily by man) then you have to see this as good news. Global warming isn't the problem, it's the solution! OK, maybe that sounds silly, but at the very least one must add this to the list of items that show that the planet can, in fact, deal with oddities thrown at it. Where it's warmer, the foliage grows faster, taking even more carbon dioxide out of the air, and cooling things down. It happens naturally all the time. And now we have more observable evidence that the earth isn't such a passive, fragile system some environmentalists make it out to be. It's pretty sturdy and durable.

Make sure to watch the broadcast news this week to get more information on this wonderful news. As in-depth as they cover it when the ozone "hole" expands, they'll certainly devote at least as much time to when it shrinks, right?

Right?
posted at 2:21 PM

George Will hits the nail on the head (as usual). The "peace in our time"-"give peace a chance" crowd has got to have their eyes firmly shut, their hands over their ears, and must be singing "La la la la I can't hear you la la la" at the top of their lungs if they believe anything said emminating from Baghdad. Will points out that Kofi Annan, "who was last seen doing his Neville Chamberlain impersonation", actually believed the Iraqis when they said they'd welcome weapons inspectors without restrictions (a day or so before they added restrictions), and 2 Democrat representatives (McDermott of Washington and Bonior of Michigan) are saying we should take Iraq's words at face value, while casting aspersions on the truthfulness of their own President. Aren't they paying attention.

Oh, and a note for Al Gore. If President Bush is allegedly "playing politics" with the war situation, what are those 2 representatives doing with their "believe Saddam, don't trust Bush" talk? Positively slinging mud! And lets not forget, as George Will reminds us, that Gore and many other Democrats support the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which called for...regime change! Thus we see once again the modus operandi of the garden-variety liberal: Sound and fury without actually doing anything, because intentions are more important than actions
posted at 9:23 AM