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January 22, 2006

2006 Mid-Terms

I am not looking forward to the 2006 mid-term elections. I fear that some of the bad mojo that the Republicans have been involved in will come home to roost.

My biggest gripe about Bush and the Congressional Republicans is that they have left their first love. Coming to power in 1994, the Republicans promised smaller government and less corruption. The past few budget years have seen Republicans gleefully spending my tax dollars like they are drunken Democrats. Under Bush and the Republican Congress, the size of the U.S. government has grown.

What gives guys? Seriously? Is it the power? Is that what makes you lose your way?

The funny/sad thing is that the Democrats were tossed out in 1994 because Americans saw them as out of control spenders, sucking on the tit of the American taxpayer. The American people felt that their representatives were out of touch with the things that mattered to them. So they tossed the bums out.

This may happen to the Republicans, if not this election, then maybe the next one. We can only ride national security so long. I think the American people now know that they cannot trust the Democrats with their security. But see the thing is, there has not been another terrorist attack in the U.S. Sure there is Iraq and now Iran, but the average American could honestly care less about those places. Those places are so far away and they do not think that what happens over there will affect them over here. As long as there is work and cheap gas, they are happy. I disagree with them because I see that events in Iraq and Iran DO matter to the continental U.S. But because nothing is directly affecting them, the American people may put the national security on the back burner in order to toss out the current batch of bums.

But, will the Republican Party see this weakness or not? It does not seem to me that Bush sees it. I guess this is what he meant by Compassionate Conservatism. I get my tax cut but he still grows the size of government.

The thing I am most dreading is the Press.

If there is a net loss of seats for Republicans, even if it is just one seat, watch the MSM spin it as the American people are fed up with Bush and the Republicans. They will harp on this supposed shift for the next two years until the actual event is given birth in 2008. We all know they will do this. Hell, they did it last year with the few Governor races out there. They tried to extrapolate those results to 2006 and 2008. It is tiresome pointing this out. The MSM wants Bush and the Republicans to lose so badly, they will do everything in their power to further that goal.

It would not bother me if our papers were like the ones in Europe. Over there you have the Left wing paper and the Right wing paper. All efforts at being unbiased are tossed out the window. That is great. At least you, the reader, KNOW what you are getting. If The York Times came out today and said that they are a Left wing paper and that they will support Left wing ideology and agendas, then I would actually have respect for them. I have NO respect for them while they stay hidden behind this supposed veil of impartiality. Toss that veil aside and be honest. It is ok. Let the people decide what version of reality they want to read....

Ah, now I see why they don't...money.

Anyway. I hope there is either a net gain for Republicans or it is a zero sum game. At least that way I will not have to listen to the MSM drone on and on about what this means for Republicans.

posted by WunderKraut at 12:51 PM

Comments

The important thing is too retain power; even if it's only by one seat in the House and a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

If we lose seats, two things can happen. Our Republicans will wake-up and put their house in order by rediscovering conservatism, or they will see their colleague's losses as sign of the electorate moving to the Left.

If they shift to the Left to chase the polls, we will lose in '08, '10, '12, ...

Tuesday's Senate vote on Alito will tell us where are Senators stand. If they cross party lines, it's a bad sign. I expect Chaffee to vote with his fellow Liberals. That's no surprise. But all the others have no good reason to vote No on Alito.

Alito's confirmation vote could be delayed by the Dems, too. If our leadership allows this to happen it is also a bad sign. Bush is to balme for Altio's delay. Judge Alito should have been on the Court last November. The ill-advised nomination of Harriet Miers is still haunting us and won't go away until Alito is confirmed.

Posted by: Bart on January 22, 2006 01:17 PM

Oh... because I forgot... we only have one paper in the US. The NYT. I must be getting toilet paper delivered to my house. I mean I feel like some of the other papers, Washington Times, NY Daily Post etc are crap, but they are not the NYT.

Posted by: Craig on January 22, 2006 02:01 PM

I just got a mailing from my (Republican) Congressman. It shows pride in many millions of dollars of projects in our district for which he got Federal tax money. And as I review the list, I cannot see one single project that I would consider a proper concern of the Federal government. Instead of ending this system of tax-and-waste, they just signed on and continued it. Aside from national security issues, there is no difference between the parties.

Posted by: lmg on January 22, 2006 02:46 PM

Craig,

I did not mean by singling out The New York Times that they are the only ones guilty. Same thing goes for Fox News. Fair and balanced...bah. Just come out and say it, “We are a Conservative news outlet.” Same with The Washington Times like you said.

My point is that the MSM, both right and left, need to just come out and be honest about what their agenda is. There is nothing wrong with that. I feel it would lead to better reporting on both sides. We all know that the MSM is biased for and against certain things, but they try to hide behind a wall of "impartiality". Get rid of that wall and tell us what you think.

Posted by: WunderKraut on January 22, 2006 04:00 PM

Craig, There is no NY Daily Post. There is a New York Post, which leans right; and a New York Daily News, which leans left.

Posted by: abe shorey on January 22, 2006 04:12 PM

I don't think it's enough for them to state their bias - they also need to remove their bias from their actual news reporting and news selection. All I have to do is read one of mediactrity's posts on the nyt's coverage of Israel to know what a problem bias in news reporting is.

See

target="_blank" class="text">http://mediacrity.blogspot.com/

Posted by: max on January 22, 2006 06:41 PM

Still, it would be better to take the hit in '06, and wake up in time to take '08.

Posted by: Tom M on January 23, 2006 12:36 AM

Um, the polls indicate that the American people sure are fed up with Bush, don't know about Republicans more generally.

This is the wartime president who managed to move his polls from about 80% approval to 51% in 3 years after 9/11.

Cut him loose and Republicans will do fine.

Posted by: searp on January 24, 2006 12:49 PM

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Top Headlines

Democrats are condemning her, ejecting her from the party, and claiming she's just a sore loser. But, as Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed observed after one of his cousins shot children to death at a Jewish school: "Hurt people do hurt people." Democrat Congresswoman had planned to rally with Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and Democrat racial gang-leader James Clyburn on Sunday. She had two demands for her re-endorsement of Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed: She wanted him to apologize for his antisemitic attacks on Israel, and she wanted him to condemn Chunk Uggo's antisemetic ad claiming that bananas and eggs cost more because Jews are making bombs out of them to kill innocent non-terrorist Gazans. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed refused these minor reparative steps. The Very Online Left condemns Trump for refusing to apologize or compromise, but they imitate him like Japanese girls used to imitate noted sexbomb Gwen Stefani. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed then said she wasn't welcome at the "unity" rally and did not share Democrat Party pro-terrorist "values." So she announced she would not be part of the "unity" rally.

Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81 18h Haley Stevens was going to do a Democratic unity rally with Abdul El-Sayed and James Clyburn where she was going to encourage her supporters, many of whom have serious reservations about El-Sayed, to vote for him. This was very important for El-Sayed, because Stevens is popular among Jewish and black Michigan Democrats and Clyburn is an icon among black voters nationwide. El-Sayed has weakness with both of these groups and needs to shore them up going into election day. Stevens's condition was that he make an unambiguous, unqualified condemnation of the antisemitic rhetoric his friends, supporters and surrogates have been using, including in ads run in Michigan. El-Sayed refused to do this, and instead asked Stevens not to appear at the event. At that point, Stevens realized that he was not interested in unity with her or her supporters and that she could no longer support him for Senate. El-Sayed is an antisemite. He is friends with antisemites Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur. He will not condemn them. He will not condemn the awful things they say. He has had multiple opportunities to condemn their hateful rhetoric, and he always says: "He is not part of a campaign, nobody speaks for me but me, and I'm not here to talk about that." That's not good enough. If that is how a Republican talked about Nick Fuentes or Richard Spencer, it would be the biggest controversy in the race. The fact that so many Democrats are willing to tolerate this from Abdul El-Sayed is an indictment of the entire party. There is no coalition that can include both the Jewish Democratic members of Temple Israel and supporters of the Hezbollah terrorist who tried to murder their preschool children. Abdul El-Sayed made a decision about who he wanted in his tent. Haley Stevens was late to realize it, but it is admirable that she finally decided to be an upstander instead of a bystander. No Nazis in the US Senate.

And then Stevens went further: She endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, first online, and then later at press conference.

TJM defends the musical

Some Invisible Man costumes (which I hope aren't just AI):
An invisible man with a missing body (I assume the real person is *behind* the costume;
A kid in the same kind of costume, put together by his mom;
another invisible man;
and another great Invisible Man costume, my favorite.

Email confirmed as once used by the Muskily Heterosexual James Talarico found in leak of emails of Fling.com sex dating site:

An email address that James Talarico's attorneys confirmed belonged to and was at one time used by the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate appears in a database search result associated with the adult dating website Fling.com's 2011 data breach. A Fling.com account was created with Talarico's email address just before Talarico began teaching sixth graders.

The result lists the username "mohawk787" and an account creation timestamp of December 26, 2010, at 20:56:49. The profile's interests field lists "FETISH," "GROUPSEX," "SEXUAL RELATIONS," "ONLINE FLIRTING," and "OTHER."

Townhall shared the information described in this article with the Talarico campaign and requested comment Friday morning, and in response, a mere 35 minutes later, received a four-page, detailed letter from legal counsel for Talarico that addressed some, but not all of the information described in this report.

"Well I can't believe the trans-child-obsessed Confirmed Bachelor James Talarico is into group fetish shit," said noted void phantom Doctor Nullity, The Man Who Never Existed

I'm not the guy who noted this, I saw it on X (Razib Khan maybe), but The Bulwark could be "audience capture". It might have started as the Frum / 90s-Kristol / NRO classic Eisenhower Republicanism. But nobody was reading the Bulwark except leftists.

Tallyrand has a quote on this, "I am their leader so I must follow them".

Same goes for David French, Christianity Today, and the "Anxious Bench" side of Patheos. They may have started out Christian. But it wasn't Christians signing their checks.

Posted by: 88C+u at

Some researchers think the enigmatic and unreadable cipher of the Voynich Manuscript has resisted decipherment because the pages were bound in the wrong order, and putting them in the right order might allow them to finally break the code
But as of now: No Joy
It occurs to me that a key step in breaking the Zodiac 340 cipher was putting the three parts of it in the correct order.

Flashback: "trans man" Lawyer freaks out after a judge denies "his" motion. He's ultimately arrested. "He" makes so much drama he was just recruited to develop a new CW show.
I'm just wondering if this flighty high-calorie pyrsyn is also in the news today for other reasons....
Update: No, it's not. Zee/Zem says they's name is like "Rob Hopkins" or something.
Story here, courtesy of The Blade

Buck Throckmorton on The Continuing Crisis (American Spectator) podcast discusses prediction markets.
[CBD]

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click

[Song title]
Don't breathe down my neck, no
I got no trophies on display
I sign them away
I mean what the heck
All of your promises
Don't fill me with pride no
I just wanna get out on the floor
And do the Cuban slide, slide, slide, slide

From Anonosaurus Wrecks:

@NBCNews

Although Brazil's presidential election took place more than 4,000 miles away, the baseless conspiracy theory that it was stolen raced through the American right-wing media.

Podcast: The Brazil and Israel elections, the evil left, and more!

John Kass retires
He's great. He'll be missed.

Lieutenant Chekov surrenders the helm at age 90

SpaceX launch scheduled for 6:28 Eastern/3:28 Pacific
Via Joyenz

Podcast: Corporate GOP is scum, Paris is burning, Omar is not a political prosecution, elections! and Slotkin says the quiet part out loud!

Supreme Court to hear arguments on 160-year-ban on home distilleries
It's about time they took on an important case! [CBD]

We call on France to exercise restraint when dispersing the freedom fighters on the streets of Paris. These brave warriors for justice must receive immediate humanitarian aid, and their safety must be guaranteed in accordance with international law. Failure to comply will leave us no choice but to bring a case before the ICJ, in close cooperation with that renowned champion of human rights, Afghanistan.

-- Israel War Room
[CBD]

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Garrett's Sus iPod Edition
Everybody wants you
Everybody wants your love
I'd just like to make you mine, all mine
Just imagine he's singing that to a dude.
BTW I thought this was a completely different band from Garrett's Sus iPod, the Bay City Rollers.

TJM discusses the history of Hammer Films

Podcast: The Nobel Peace Prize farce, Ilhan Omar in hot water, Talarico's disappearance, Guilfoyle is a crook, Should Nidal's execution be streamed, Bugs Bunny, and more!