Sunday, November 28, 2004

The "L" Word Personified --

Michael Moore: the supersized man of ego, girth, babble-bash and speculative docu-dramas now wears his own "L" sign for his Loser, Lackluster image and nil contributions to the entertainment world. Moore heads entertainment's Frigid 50 list. Not surprising.

Self-promoted as the poster boy of the Democratic party (and cited as but one reason sKerry lost), he's become a legend in his own you-just-don't-get-it mind.

May his announced fahrenhype sequel be filmed in the deserts of Iraq.

May it take longer than the projected 3 years. Much longer. Decades longer.

May he be caught by huns -- without his Capital One card.

May he lose cell phone service so we can't hear him.

May he be rescued by an Iraqi Girl Scout troop.

May his camera lenses be scratched by grit and rendered inoperable.

May his film crew be kidnapped by a marauding band of Hollywood insurgents.

May he step in doo-doo in Qua Qua.

May he discover a cache of WMDs while scuffing his berks in the sand.

May he experience dysentery. Without toilet paper.

May he have to eat Beanie Weenie K-rations from a can. With his left hand.

May the fleas of a thousand camels nestle in his facial fur.

May his clip-on Foster Grant's melt in the sun.

May his genitals retract in the chill of the night to a position on top of his shoulders, to prove -- once and for all -- that he really is a dick head.

May sand gall his thighs and permeate all crevices of his body folds.

May he learn to speak jackal without a lisp. Brawwwwwwww harrrrrrwwwwwwww.

May he fantasize about Condi Rice.

May his only protection from the sun be a bright red baseball cap, emblazoned with "W 2004" in reflective letters .... (Now that's a bit too cruel. Forgive me. The lettering should be neon pink.)


Sunday, November 21, 2004

Basketbrawl --

Yeah, I got angry. First I was disgusted. Then angry.

It was the image of a small frightened child being comforted by an older child in a supposedly safe venue in the stands above a basketball court that did it for me.

First of all, I don't even like men's pro basketball. Grown men with body tattoos, gold chains and god-that-had-to-hurt-looking body piercings running up and down a court in baggy shorts (playing noooo defense while) swishing a ball through a net for money. B.O.R.I.N.G. Except for maybe a last nano-second of the 7th game in a best-of-seven series with the score tied 200-200. (When I was in retail, we used to be leery of young men in baggy pants -- into which they could stuff merchandise when they thought no one was looking.)

Maybe those over-paid kazillion dollar boyz in baggy shorts who play-for-pay will have to forfeit some of those big bucks in damages while sitting out the season. Or maybe they can hit the pro wrestling circuit. (Forget it -- they wear tight pants in that league ....) Or take the rest of the season off (instead of a few games, as one bozo asked) to promote his music career. At least NOW we know why some brawlball players put their hands into those baggy shorts while standing at the free-throw line (i.e., as baseball players are known for "adjusting" themselves) .... These bozos are SEARCHING for their brains!

Fans (including lots of impressionable kids who probably look at some of those idiots as role models) PAY to sit in designated seats where they have the right to cheer, holler and taunt (not throw things at, btw) players who perform less than professionally. (Remember all those re-runs from the Christians vs Lions series and the original gladiator league? Even then, there were rules of engagement.)

Players don't, however, have the right to leave the court to enter the stands and attack fans. Under any circumstances. (I bet if we really really delved into word history, we'd find that the word "stadium" once meant, sta-di-heck-outta-um-stands.) That's why the court has lines around it. That's why the bench is also designated for players and team personnel ONLY. That's why locker rooms are closed to fans. Fans pay to see you play. Get it?

I hope the NBA commissioner has the guts to bounce a few balls himself. (I doubt it. But I still hope.) I'd hate to see modern-day Rome-dome fall.

Maybe someone will show the commish that image of those kids in the stands.

Sunday, November 14, 2004

An Open Letter to Europe

My side-bar reading list includes several references which, while I may read them regularly, do not necessarily reflect my personal opinion(s). One such reference is The American Thinker. The article reproduced below approximates some of the tenets I have held for most of my adult years ..... Rather than trying to write them now, all I have to do is keep this link close at hand.

Works for me.

An open letter to Europe
November 11th, 2004

Hi. Are you nuts?


Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I’m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds. One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?”, and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre -- to explain the election’s outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.” And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”

Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren’t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you’re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso – and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses – and thus create jobs – with a minimum of government interference. We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we’ve got.

If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn’t. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe – you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and – not coincidentally – ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes.

Europe is Dying

It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture quickly goes from being “un-religious” to anti-religious. Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope’s heroic efforts to the contrary.

Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of abortions in Europe is at an all-time high. Indeed, your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying. And of the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in stable, two-parent households. Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it just about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed – except by fleeing to the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.

And your armed forces are a joke. With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves. Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness. You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization. It’s worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each other. Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on the outside and from our own selfish hedonism within. It’s going to take all of our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull through. So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don’t change course. And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization is a nationwide best-seller.


Sunday, November 07, 2004

Moore Means LESS --

Moore means less
(Filed: 06/11/2004)
From the Telegraph.co.uk

Not since Moby Dick has a great white whale been so bloodily harpooned. It took a shocked Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, until yesterday to comment on the US election result. When he did, he made a lame joke, offering "reasons not to slit your own throat". But if John Kerry's strategists feel like slitting anyone's throat right now, it is Mr Moore's.

This was supposed to be the victory that the podgy sage of Flint, Michigan, delivered for the Democrats by winding up students into paroxysms of anti-Bush rage and propelling them into the polling booths. In the event, he achieved the first but not the second objective. The proportion of young voters did not increase on Tuesday. In the gleeful words of one anti-Moore website, "pot-smoking slackers are still pot-smoking slackers": they meant to vote Kerry but, like, couldn't get out of bed in time.

In 2000, Mr Moore's support for Ralph Nader helped lose Florida for Al Gore. This time, he boosted President Bush by outraging Middle America. Take a bow, Mike: you've done it again.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Gay Marriage Myth

The Gay Marriage Myth

Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.
By Paul Freedman
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM PT

Did "moral values"—in particular, the anti-gay marriage measures on ballots in 11 states this week—drive President Bush's re-election? That's the early conventional wisdom as Democrats begin soul-searching and finger-pointing. These measures are alleged to have drawn Christian conservatives to the polls, many of whom failed to vote last time. The theory is intriguing, but the data don't support it. Gay marriage and values didn't decide this election. Terrorism did.

The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election.

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.

It's true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush's vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush's vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere.

Why did states with gay-marriage ballot measures vote so heavily for Bush? Because such measures don't appear on state ballots randomly. Opponents of gay marriage concentrate their efforts in states that are most hospitable to a ban and are most likely to vote for Bush even without such a ballot measure. A state's history of voting for Bush is more likely to lead to an anti-gay-marriage measure on that state's ballot than the other way around.Much has been made of the fact that "moral values" topped the list of voters' concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the "most important issue" of the election. It's true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help.

If the morality gap doesn't explain Bush's re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry.

These differences hold up at the state level even when each state's past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

Prayers to Deaf Ears?

Political Hay
A Party on Its Knees
By George Neumayr
Published 11/5/2004 1:08:09 AM

Normally Democrats urge their candidates to expunge God and morality from politics. Even the word morality grates on them. It is a far too judgment-laden term for their taste. How about the insipid term "ethics"? Okay, if you must -- goes the attitude -- but don't use the loaded term "morality."

Yet what are we now hearing from the Mike Barnicles and Nancy Pelosis? That Kerry didn't talk about God enough. That he failed to satisfy the public's hunger for spirituality and morality. Like children who recently learned a new phrase, liberals are giving Kerry a post-mortem drubbing for not speaking to the "moral values" of America.

Tina Brown, a high-brow vulgarian who has bragged about tarting up the New Yorker, turned prim in Thursday's Washington Post. "Who among us," she wrote, "is not sick and tired of hearing the Cialis ad discuss four-hour erections while we're sitting there trying to watch TV with the kids?" Brown related that she chats with other moms about "how much we worry and strategize and push back against the tsunami of pop culture sleaze that seeps into our kids' psyches." Who knew Democrats had such pious longings? Who knew sexual, let's-not-repress-the-children liberationists had such distaste for Cialis ads? Tina Brown even dropped the pom-poms for Anthony Lewis's wife, Margaret Marshall, the Massachusetts Chief justice who, as Brown put it, "forced her state to authorize gay marriage." Forced? Boy, that's a very right-wing way of putting it. Usually the left says "freed." Karl Rove should give her a "big bouquet," said a piqued Brown. Got that, Marshall? Don't ever turn up the heat so fast that the frogs jump out again. Remember, duping the American people into avant-garde morality takes time and finesse and you lack it. No more invites to Tina Brown's parties for you.

Nancy Pelosi's secularism also took a rare day off after Kerry lost. Now she, too, longs for a little more old-fashioned religion in the public square. She is telling fellow Democrats to be more conspicuous about their faith. "Democrats did not connect well enough with the American people," she told CNN. "Certainly Democrats are faith-filled. Certainly we love our country, and we're very patriotic, but somehow or other that did not come across when 61% of those who are regular churchgoers voted Republican -- voted for President Bush, and when 22% of Americans gave its highest number to what determined their vote to issues relating to morality, more than the economy, more than terrorism."

Act on your faith, Democrats, wear religion on your sleeve -- that's now the message from Democrats who find it very "troubling" that we have a president who…acts on his faith.

"I believe that we have it within us," exhorted Pelosi. "I know that many of the people who are in politics on the Democratic side do so according to the -- the gospel of Matthew and indeed the Bible, but we don't demonstrate it clearly enough and faith is such an important part of the lives of most people in our country. They want to know that we identify with that."

After spending the last few years trying to pry slabs of the Ten Commandments out of public courthouses, remove God from the pledge, deny public money to faith-based charities, and harass the Boy Scouts, it takes a lot of gall for these Democrats to give Kerry a hard time for insufficient religiosity. Has the ACLU been alerted to this new threat yet? Pelosi has given the green light to a new crop of theocratic Democrats.

Actually, Kerry did talk about God quite a bit in the campaign. The third line of his campaign biography stated that "John Kerry was raised in the Catholic faith and continues to be an active member of the Catholic Church." The problem wasn't that he failed to talk about God. The problem was that the American people didn't believe him. When he emerged from church on Ash Wednesday with ash on his head, the American people didn't see faith but phoniness. Picking up a bible on his visit to black churches didn't help him any more than picking up a rifle in Ohio. The American people didn't respond to his religiosity, because they knew it was religiosity without religion.

Democrats can talk and talk about God, but who's going to believe them when their agenda is to nullify the Ten Commandments? Since their rhetoric doesn't match reality, Americans rightly tune them out.

"I have a commitment to faith" sounded from Kerry's mouth as convincing as "I have a commitment to national security." Democrats can't talk about faith, then endorse partial-birth abortion and expect the American people to take them seriously, any more than they should expect the American people to take them seriously when they talk about American sovereignty and endorse "global tests."

In his lunging attacks on Bush's religion, Kerry often said that "faith without deeds is dead." The American people ended up agreeing with him -- about his.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Setting Priorities ....

The more I think about the tragedy of Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer diagnosis, the more disappointed I am in a man who-would-be-president NOT insisting that his wife receive medical assessment and treatment IMMEDIATELY.

I wonder why he or she would wait until the day after elections .... I wonder even more about his priorities ....

Advice for Michael Moore and MoveOn.org .....

What Skeeries did when election results came in.....

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Get thee to a monastery and other thoughts --

How did a multi-million dollar campaign blitz, hollywood's most outspoken entertainers and mainstream media lose an election to the man everyone (huh?) loved to hate? Analysts continue to work over the statistics and those "gotcha" exit poll results without a satisfactory answer. Missing those dangling chads to blame, they're left to speculate about the influence of special interest groups and hot topics.

[IMO, homeland security and terrorism were the top two issues in the election, with personaBLE qualities third, and Kerry's vulnerabilities fourth.]

Those who project that GWB's election and the next four years will be directed by an evangelical coalition (or any other single special interest group) should reconsider the reliability of polling, pollsters, sour grape slants, wishful thinkers and Monday morning bench-warmers. In case you haven't seen the county-by-county national graphic, not everyone who voted for Bush was Republican, rich, Christian, uneducated, heterosexual, conservative, WASPy or lived in the South.

As for morality being a primary voter issue (based on what 20% of interviewees stated in exit polls), keep in the back of your mind that those exit polls were dead wrong Tuesday. Whatever you may have observed about GWB's morality, you might also remember that Sen. Kerry campaigned from the pulpit on five consecutive Sundays before the election and answered the same "faith" questions that Bush answered during the debates.

And don't be conned or duped into associating the theme of "family values" with anti-gay sentiment. While the majority of American voters may currently oppose gay marriage (for either religious or social or personal reasons), there is strong and growing support for civil unions throughout this nation. While I consider homophobic Biblical and political tenets flies on the fruitcake of life (that's the best analogy I can come up with without being equally offensive), I'm fairly confident that neither God nor GWB are anti-gay.

Using the title of an ineffective anti-Bush website, it really is time to MOVE ON and stop looking for some group -- any group -- to "blame" for Bush winning (or Kerry losing).

But I digress ---

Think the election was stolen? How does 51-52% of the populace "steal" an election? Do you really believe that half of America is Republican and voted a straight ticket? It's about time to stop the labels, stop the alibis and accept the reality that voters voted their CHOICE in leadership and not their party affiliation.

Who really won this election? Give lots of credit to every-day, hard-working Americans who volunteered to walk the streets of their neighborhoods talking to neighbors who listened to them -- and not to the paid profiteers or Hollywoodites who belittled, scorned and humiliated any American who voiced support for GWB or his programs. Contrary to the profilers (and I repeat), not everyone who voted for Bush was Republican, rich, Christian, uneducated, heterosexual, conservative, WASPy or lived in the South. Check out one of those national county-by-county digital maps if you want to see how election results translate in colors. Red is for reality.

Who was the real loser on Nov. 2? Peggy Noonan makes a strong case: "... the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief -- CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election -- [it was] the yeomen of the blogosphere [bloggers].... and the Internet [who] took them down."

The election is over. The campaign hype is over. GWB has been re-elected as our President. Accept it. If you want to join a longggggg list of hollywoodites who threaten to leave this country, be advised that Canada will not welcome you immediately -- you'll have to wait about three years to get citizenship .... George Soros has said if Bush wins, he'll spend the next four years in a monastery. (Surely he can still afford a room at Holiday Inn or Motel 6.) Maybe he'll take Michael Moore with him. Now that's an idea..... They can spend the next four years re-writing the Constitution as a rap duet for the politically challenged.

(Do they have monasteries in Iraq or Afghanistan? How long must you wait for citizenship? They've missed the elections in Afghanistan, but if they hurry, they MIGHT be able to vote in Iraq in January........)

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Close only counts ....

.... well -- finish the definition as you choose, but those who are now saying that almost half the electorate OPPOSED GWB, reminds me of the team that came in second in a two team playoff. What is IS. No matter how you couch it, GWB received a mandate from 51% of the electorate.

Big numbers. And given the context of the hate-base, the media bias and the U.N. conspiracies, the odds of his winning were even greater.

Spin that in your next editorial, media mongruls.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

A passing fear ....

As I drove home this afternoon, my mind wandered to residual halloween nightmares ....

Edwards as Vice President. Edwards returning to Congress after making the insightful decision not to run for reelection .... Edwards being a heart-beat away from the Presidency.

Please, no.

He ran for President for a good reason. OK, two good reasons. First he has the money. Secondly, his political career was over if he had to rely on re-election to the Senate.

Do you think the Democratic party actually expected the John's to do this well? I wonder if they are getting more than they bargained for (such as the potential of 8 years of skerry stuff) .... I suspect they did not think anyone could defeat GW .... I sense that they may have (in the backs of their own conniving minds) been waiting for 2008 to make the big run for the presidency .....

I did arrive home safely, btw, in spite of the nightmares.


Early Returns ....

I'm enjoying watching the pundits assess the early returns tonight .... there seems to be a telling discrepancy between exit poll surveys and actual precinct returns .... PANIC on the Democrat front -- apologies from the pundits....

Susan blahblah Esteridge (spelling?) has always been an overpowering "know it all" (which the host stated in his intro). He meant something complimentary (or so he said). I find this accurate and not a compliment. She always shouts over anyone who attempts to engage her in any (yes, any -- including legal) discourse .... the know-it-all. I do hope her man Kerry loses. For many reasons ....

I'm proud of my state. Not only did Bush carry my state, but he appears to be doing very well in the popular vote. Electoral votes will come .... My entire staff (9) voted for Bush; my family has voted for Bush. Not an easy feat as several are democrats. Even I am a registered Independent. Several friends, however, are democrats and have voted for sKerry.... They remain friends, of course -- but they will definitely pout if and when Bush is reelected ....

I'm reminded of those who vote for sKerry based on hatred of Bush.... I can't understand this mentality.....

On second thought, I do have some understanding of disliking someone (not quite at the hatred level, however) .... I dislike sKerry for several reasons -- one of which is his military history, including the lies and meeting with the VietCong while Americans were held as POWs. The flip flops notwithstanding, sKerry has no identifiable position that I have yet been able to grasp. There have been many instances in which he states "I have a plan," but there have been little more than goal statements presented --- not plans.

Please don't let the next President of the US have absolutely no discernable plans for anything except raising taxes and asking the U.N. to define terrorism .... tick tick tick.


Monday, November 01, 2004

Kerry Defines Terrorism

This morning on Fox News, Kerry spokesman Gen. Clark FINALLY specified how Kerry would define terrorism: he would consult with our friends/allies to determine the standards for defining terrorism, per a summit-of-sorts, to determine our reactions --

God help us. Please. Vote. Vote. Vote to put Kerry on permanent windsail status.


How Much Leadership Do Voters Want?

"A leader's first priorities are peace and prosperity, which in our time mean keeping the U.S. economy competitive amid the emerging challenge from India and China, and of course the battle against terrorism.

A frequent lament among journalists, and often voters, is that politicians always take the easy way out; they never risk their personal popularity or re-election chances for the sake of longer run gains in the national interest. In Iraq and the Middle East, Mr. Bush has done precisely that. We will find out on Tuesday how much Presidential leadership the voters really want in a dangerous world."

(Viewer Password Required to read entire article.)
Dogs for Bush: K-9's unleashed for Nov. 2 .....