Elections

Ramblings about Democide & the Primaries

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Once again, we think of the tragedy of war. Yesterday, NPR counted up the horrible death toll of WWII. The chill Tyouth describes we all feel. But Belmont Club charts deaths in Iraq; Gateway Pundit observes:

For the last three months of 2007, a Venezuelan was twice as likely to lose his life to violence as an Iraqi.

A pattern we’ve long seen (demagogic man of the people rises and, sure of his own virtues, finds himself driven to kill and torture his foes). In the twentieth century, in only one year did democide not claim more lives than war.

Those wearing Bushitler masks might contemplate that what they fear most is associated with a pattern we’ve seen over and over. Cheap populism not big business scares me. And it is voices like Chavez’s – like so many before – that unleash archetypal greed and violence. Edwards is no Chavez; he isn’t even a Huey Long. He’s simply a rather irritating trial lawyer who is never interested in the general but always the particular, never the reasoning but always the sentiment, less in good science than tender pathos. I wish he appealed to the minds of his listeners a lot more and their guts less, indeed, to their virtues rather than their vices. His rhetoric makes me uneasy but doesn’t, not really, scare me. Unlike those afraid of Bush, I am confident the system works. It can withstand Edwards – it can, actually, withstand a good deal. I just hope it doesn’t have to.

Quote of the Day

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Once the US squandered its post-Sept. 11 leverage with Pakistan it was left with only bad options for coping with the nuclear-armed jihadist incubating country. And these too, it has ignored in favor of the chimera of democracy and elections.
 
After Sept. 11, President George W. Bush declared war on the forces of global terror and their state sponsors. But as the years have passed since then, he has done more to lose the war than he has to win it simply by ignoring it.
 
Bhutto’s murder is not a sign that elections and democracy frighten al-Qaida and therefore must be pursued. It is a sign that the Taliban and al-Qaida – together with their supporters in the Pakistani military and intelligence services and Pakistani society as a whole – don’t like people who are supported by the US. Her assassination was yet another act of war by the enemies of the West against the West.
 
If democracy and freedom are the US’s ultimate aims in this war, the only way to achieve them is to first fight and win the war. Bhutto – like her Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese counterparts – was a sideshow.

–Caroline Glick

2007 In Review for Chicago and Illinois

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2007 ended up with the happiest note for Illinois politics in years. On November 7, 2007 disgraced former “Republican” governor George Ryan reported to Federal prison to begin serving his 6 1/2 year sentence. I put the word “Republican” in quotes because the most prominent events in his tenure include waiving the death penalty in Illinois and continued deterioration of our states’ precarious finances.

When the last governor’s race occurred in Illinois between the Democrat Blagojevich and equally uninspiring Judy Barr Topinka I actually hoped for a Democratic victory (normally anathema on this blog) because I figured that the oozing “snail trail” of corruption could be followed to its logical destination if Blogo remained in power. And, sure enough, on December 21, 2007 the Federal prosecutors formally linked Blogo to the Rezco corruption case with more to come.

As always, the FBI are the only people who fight corruption in Illinois, despite our myriad local police and judicial armies dutifully punching the clock, as I noted in this post (it is from 2006, but some things never change, and likely you could utilize it in 2076). The Chicago Police kicked out their superintendent after a series of shocking events, caught on videotape, including the beating of a tiny female bartender by off-duty cops and the inevitable attempts to cover it up. His name is Weis and he is from the FBI; while I admire his guts for taking on this job (where the locals are already disgruntled that the new top cop comes from outside) I think that his odds of success are about the same as the lone survivor in that new “Justice” movie where he attempts to battle 1 billion zombies.

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Chavez Surprised

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Was anyone else pleasantly surprised at the results from Venezuela? The Devil’s Excrement, Gateway Pundit, Drudge.   Russia, of course, was less surprising.

Catatonic or Mellow?

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Do we just not want to talk about tomorrow?

Okay, so here are Crosby & Astaire in a dated but mellow moment.

Mellow may require some medication in the next couple of days. Except, of course, being reality based we aren’t all that surprised. Tradespots has had the same message for months.

I’d take more heart in the late-breaking polls if Bush hadn’t felt obliged to campaign for Tom Osborne. Not many miles from the village where I grew up is the Osborne highway. One of the first things I noticed in my brother’s living room was a collection of books by Osborne (for instance). If he’s weak something somewhere must be happening – and it probably isn’t good.