Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Jeff Jacoby on the failure of bilingualism.

This is a mistake. You’re going to lose, and look like whiney dicks in the process.
Why are you going to lose? Because this is essentially a state election, even though it is for a seat in the Federal legislature. There are no federal laws in play except as affect military absentee ballots (and realistically, how many of those folks are going to vote for the Torch?). There is no Electoral College involved. It’s a straight up/down popular vote.
As much as you and I agree that justice was a funny word for what was done in the NJ Supreme Court, I just don’t see the US Supremes overturning this one. After all, NJ didn’t try to change the election laws after the election was over. The election ain’t till next month.
And bottom line, if you think the Supremes are going to put up again with the kind of abuse they got over Bush in a case that wasn’t really anywhere near the same, I think you probably are smokin’ something funky and not sharing it with me.
Don’t get me wrong; it stinks to high heaven; it would stink on ice. But it probably isn’t worth the trouble and bad press a USSC appeal is going to entail. Far easier to drape the Torch around Lautenberg’s neck and fight it that way.
(FWIW — a couple of days ago I was enthusiastic that a USSC appeal might fly and win. The more I think about and read about this case, the less I agree with my alter ego of September 30. Thus my current pessimism.)

…I suggest that Doug Forrester completely ignore the NJ Supreme Court ruling and the Lautenberg substitution…AND KEEP RUNNING AGAINST TORRICELLI.
I came to this epiphany after reading Ann Coulter’s Frontpage Magazine column a few moments ago. La Coulter writes:

Torricelli’s Republican opponent, Douglas R. Forrester, has designed an entire campaign — polls, advertisements, issues — on the assumption that he was running against a specific candidate. As soon as his campaign against that candidate began to work and he pulled ahead, Democrats switched the candidate.

But they can only switch the issues if Forrester plays along. Forrester should keep hammering on his legitimate opponent, Torricelli, with a clear subtext that you can’t change political horses in midstream in the name of “giving the voters a clear choice”. It seems to me that the clear choice is to repudiate this sort of political chicanery by electing Forrester to the Senate.
Not that I expect NJ voters to do the right thing.
UPDATE: Via the Professor, Howard Kurtz takes this a bit farther — “[Torricelli]’s an albatross that conservatives want to hang around the neck of every breathing Democrat.” Woo-hoo.
The title of Kurtz’s column? “Torching the Whole Party”. Time to get out the kerosene.

John Fund has some excellent thoughts on election by litigation, and what it bodes for the Nation. Hint: It don’t bode well.
The solution, of course, is for Republicans to come out in force on November 5 and pull that Republican lever. Don’t waste your time picking and choosing this Democrat or that Democrat because you know him or because she makes more sense than the Republican. And for crying out loud, don’t waste your vote on Libertarian or other soi-disant third-party “candidates”. Ross Perot should have taught us something about that.

Virginia Postrel is posting again (yay) and today compares NJ politics to Calvin Ball. “There is no election law. They run politics like Calvin Ball. A person could become cynical.”
Apt, that.

Jessica Lange has some thoughts. If they can be so characterized, as opposed to, say, stomach rumblings.
Oh damn. I see she’s another “Bush stole the election” idiot:

“Bush stole the elections and since then we have all been suffering the consequences,” Lange told the enthusiastic crowd.

Frankly, my dear, I haven’t been suffering. Except by listening to you and wishing you’d shut your stupid hole. Why don’t you stay in Spain and never soil our shores with your presence again?
Via The Corner.

Stephen Moore at Cato with a Governors’ Fiscal Policy Report Card.
Our lovely guv, who blew an alleged $2bn surplus in just about two years (in all actuality I doubt the surplus was really ever there), gets a score of 52 and a C ranking. I don’t think I’d grade him that high. Maybe if he sells his, oh, sorry, the state’s, jet airplane.

I’d be more sympathetic to this article if it didn’t come out of a Florida paper, but there’s no question that Kleagle Byrd is and remains the king of pork.
Since I’ve come to believe that NASA is not the way to get us to Mars, I’m less than sympathetic to local (ie self-interested) newspapers bemoaning that a few million got whacked from the billions being poured into the “Space Coast”. Good God, folks, doesn’t Disney make you enough money as it is?
(We who frequent the Gulf Coast rather than the Space Coast just ignore this sort of thing. That money doesn’t tend to percolate over our way.)

From Fox:

WASHINGTON — Critics say President Bush’s seeking the blessing of the United Nations — a “paper tiger” of legendary lethargy and inaction — before moving on Iraq is a waste of time.

It’s rope-a-dope, folks. Bush will end up paying nothing but lip service to the UN. Believe it. This guy does:

Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy analyst with the Cato Institute, points out that while Bush went out of his way to prove his case against Saddam in his September speech at the U.N., he expects that the administration will carry out plans to invade Iraq no matter what the international body, Saddam or Congress has to say about it.
“My guess is the U.N. Security Council will go along with what Bush has proposed,” he said. “But, I think what Bush was saying in his speech was ‘You are either with our policy and can look relevant or you can obstruct our policy and we’ll bypass you and you will look irrelevant.'”

WTF? “Endangered foods“?????
Come on. Come on. Pull the other one. Next you’ll have me believing in global warming or ozone holes or Saddam not having WMD or something equally stupid. Does someone actually make money working for this group? And if so, why?