Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Over at Best of the Web, Taranto’s lede today (spotlighting Eugene Volokh’s item on Stanford U. inviting Lynne Stewart to be a Visiting Public Interest Mentor) ends with:

One wonders how long it will be before some university invites Osama bin Laden himself to be a guest speaker.

Hell, if I were president of a university, I’d invite him myself. And then make sure if he accepted that there were nothing but armed Special Forces in the audience.
Not that he’s alive to accept the invitation.

As Rush always says: Democrats are much funnier out of power than they are in power. Ain’t it the truth.

From ArgusLeader.Com:

“The president ought to feel good this morning, and I congratulate him. We had a president who talked a lot about 9-11, the war in Iraq, and North Korea. It precluded us from breaking through, talking about issues like the economy, education and health care,” he said.

But you didn’t have any solutions of your own, so why would this have made a difference?
Silly Senator.

If Terry McAuliffe now believes that “the responsibility for this sputtering economy is now [Bush’s]”…does that mean he agrees that the responsibility for it up to now has been Bill Clinton’s?
Terry, sometimes you make a guy just bust out smilin’.

I thought this country was ruled by its people. Joe Conason apparently didn’t get that memo back in high school civics class:

Now the Democratic voters who chose not to show up Tuesday are going to find out what their decision meant, in a country ruled by President Bush, Trent Lott and Tom DeLay.

Maybe your Democratic talking heads talked up the fact that you were going to blow the Republicans out a bit too much. Idiots like your DNC chairman quite possibly made a lot of your voters think it was a shoo-in, so why go to the polls?

In this historic election, Bush overcame his weaknesses as a statesman with his skills as a politician.

Mr. Bush is more of a statesman in his little finger than Bill Clinton and Algore are in their entire bodies combined. Statesmanship doesn’t mean rolling over for anyone who doesn’t necessarily like the fact that the US is the predominant nation in the world today.
The rest of the article is more of the same and isn’t worth Fisking, but he goes on to allude to Republican efforts to intimidate voters, etc. I’ve never been impressed with Conason and there’s nothing in this article to change my mind about him. However, one more of his points is worth highlighting:

Moving forward onto this hostile political terrain, the Democrats would do well to recall the combative stance adopted by the Republicans after losing both houses of Congress and the presidency in 1992.

Joe, Joe, Joe. That’s why you lost this time. People are sick and tired of Democrats making loud noises but not providing any solutions to the problems they claim the Republicans are responsible for. When you work up some real honest solutions to the economy, the drug problem, election fraud (most of it perpatrated by your own party), and terrorism, feel free to write another column about it, but until then…why don’t you just shut the fuck up.

Terry McAuliffe is on Fox, blaming the losses on everything but himself.
UPDATE: David Asman just suggested that the first thing that came to mind about McAuliffe’s speech was “sore loser”. No kidding. McAuliffe had nothing to say except bluster. The economic problems we face aren’t Bush’s fault; they started in your boy’s reign, Mr. McAuliffe (remember that guy who said, “It’s the economy, stupid”?). And I’m not so sure I want the economy of the ’90’s again, given that it was all on paper.
You’re goin’ down in flames, fuckwad. And it’s about time.

Here’s typical moronic whining from a Florida Dem who proves that Florida Democrats have learned nothing from the lessons of 2000 (and are unlikely to learn anything from the lessons of 2002):

“If anyone has used their role in the election to their own benefit it’s been Katherine Harris,” [Ryan] Banfill[, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party,] added. “I think Floridians would have been a little happier if she boned up on election law rather than looking into the past and writing her memoirs.”

This is simply ad hominem bullshit. Katherine Harris knew the law, and applied it. Florida Democrats — including the Florida Supreme Court, to their lasting shame — chose to take a more, hmm, elastic view of the law that wasn’t warranted if you took a close look at it.

This is from John Fund’s column in the WSJ:

The level of suspicion between the two parties since the Florida fiasco is deep and enduring. Republicans point to well-publicized cases of Democrats inventing illegal registrations on Indian reservations in South Dakota and plying the mentally ill in Wisconsin with quarters and food to cast absentee ballots as examples of widespread fraud. “Ballot security and preventing voter fraud are just code words for voter intimidation and suppression,” responds Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Maria Cardona.

Like I said yesterday, here is a case where Republicans are trying to protect the sanctity of the ballot, and Dems are trying to subvert it. When a party stoops to these tactics, and its representatives stoop to the kind of rhetoric espoused by Ms. Cardona, it is clearly in disarray and grasping at straws.

What a dumbass. From the WashTimes:

Only three days ago, Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, professed to be confident of a Florida blowout for his party. “There are lines already, huge lines, people, a record vote coming out in Florida,” he told NBC’s Tim Russert. “We are going to win Florida, which is going to set us up, Tim, very nicely for 2004.”
The threats and boasts, widely echoed by other Democrats, came to naught.

I’ll say. Not only did Jeb win, the lovely and intelligent Katherine Harris won her Congressional race. Sounds to me like all those huge lines and record vote were to tell the Democrats a big “fuck you”. Although I’ll agree with him on one point; as far as I’m concerned, the Dems are set up very nicely for 2004…to go down in flames.
However I don’t agree with this analysis:

“Over time, the raw feelings of the Florida recount receded, and people took a second look at George W. Bush and liked what they saw,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of the state GOP in Georgia, where Republicans celebrated Rep. Saxby Chambliss’ defeat of Sen. Max Cleland, the Democratic incumbent.

I think Floridians were simply incensed that Gore and the Democrats made them look like morons in 2000, and I don’t think the raw feelings of the recount receded at all, especially from talking to people I know in Florida. The problem is that the revenge the Dems smelled in the air was aimed squarely at them for causing the whole problem in the first place. The butterfly ballot designed and approved by Democrats; Democrats putting an undue burden on the state with selective recounts; Democrats dissing Katherine Harris for following the law of the state in certifying the election; Dems trying to get military ballots thrown out; a Democratic FL Supreme Court trying to overturn the will of the people. I think Floridians saw through the BS served up by the Dems and realized that it wasn’t the GOP that was trying to disenfranchise them; it was the Dems.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.

In NC, Erskine Bowles loses. Another Clinton repudiation.
In FL, Jeb Bush wins, and wins big. Another Clinton-Gore repudiation.
In GA, Saxby Chambliss wins. Proving that disabled veterans who vote against defense can be defeated.
Too much fun.