I'm Pleased
 

Mah bad. WMD. Once I make a mistake, I try to make the mistake consistently. Even when I'm mistaken, I'm no flip-flopper.

I'm Pleased
 

And my guy Bush is far more willing to help them die. The description of the people at the wedding is a perfect example of the uncommitted leftist base. Its the millions who buy Fahrenheit 9/11 and believe Moore is right. They think if we just sit back here in the good old U.S. of A, nobody will hold our success against us. And, of course, there is always that oil supply/suburbs/driving thing that we have to ensure. I might reread The Prize again if I have time.

I'm glad to see you recognize the lack of committment thing among many in this country. Come over to our side and you'll see where the committed people are. It is Bush's fundamental selling point.

Slavery and Abortion
 

I'll PM you with the answer (completely and utterly outable), but when you accept it, please acknowledge that my story is consistent.

Partial Birth Abortion
 

As an aside, partial birth birth abortion is the leftist feminist's version of the Iraq War. The pro-choicers moved the front line 1000 miles away. As long as the pro-choicers can keep the battle focused on partial birth abortion, the pro-lifers have that much harder a battle making any headway against regular abortions. And the pro-lifers fell right into the strategy. Its like the pro-lifers had never haggled in their lives.

Partial birth abortion also provides every politician with a great opportunity to disingenuously pretend he's pro-life without angering moderates.

I'm Pleased
 

Alas, not nearly enough of you have been committed.

I'm Pleased
 

I'm not the one who "sees" a right of privacy in the Constitution.

I'm Pleased
 

I'm glad you edited your post. But if you choose to send your thought police after me next, I'd prefer that my method of execution be 800 million babies with hacksaws.

I'm Pleased
 

To be fair, Sebby "sees" the right in the Constitutional penumbra and emanations. (Ha! I kill me!)

Apropos of Roe, the more I hear about Bush's "Dred Scott" remark, the more impressed I am with whoever came up with that idea. Fricking genius. Pantywaist liberals like me laugh and sneer at the surface stupidity of his remarks, while The Base picks up on the code and is reassured that Roe v. Wade is toast once O'Connor retires. And he is able to do it without most people having any idear what he is doing.

Sebby, do you really think that Bush doesn't mean what he says? You social-issues libertarians better hope that you are right ...

I'm Pleased
 

Joey called. His mom is taking him shopping and wants to know if you want to go too. If you do, be sure to be home in time for your orthodontist appointment.

I'm Pleased
 

See TaxWonk? You make it sound like these people aren't more than half of Kerry's support. I'm telling you, this sums up what I heard at the wedding.

I'm Pleased
 

This AM Stern had a guy on who believed lizards control the main families and interbreed etc. He gave his webpage, but I fogot it. It was not bridgeoflove.com

Someone is ripping of Ickes act! Maybe the lecture ticket prices will drop.

I'm Pleased
 

"internets" ha ha this is the stuff of national news.

the Kerry mis-statements we point to here weekly? they are so not covered I don't even remember what they are.

Go Team Dem!!!!

I'm Pleased
 

I find it implicit in the second amendment.

Literalists are funny animals. I find them really interesting because they're always harping about consistency and adherence to the letter of things, except of course when they don't like the way the letters read, in which case they embrace "conservative interpretation", more honestly known by those who like to interpret text as "ideological interpretation."

A great case in point is the govt's drug policy (I hate to hit this easy nail so often, but a finer example of how full of shit most 'conservatives' are can't be found). The false conservatives like to scream for states rights on every issue imaginable. But then, when the states use their rights - to a laudable end, since the Fed Drug policy is 'unconstitutional' under most literalist's standards - suddenly, the conservatives (save intellectually honest, and therefore rare, true conservatives like Buckley) are all about Federal pre-emption. Hmm. The states should have the right to regulate abortion, but not marijuana use? The Fed govt should keep its hand off the states when they get involved in seriou issues like abortion, but should get involved in matters like cancer patients and hippies trying to smoke weed?

Give me a fucking break. I see no honest conservatives anywhere. I see people who want limited govt unless and until that limitation allows other people to act in ways that offend those "conservatives" At least I'm fukcing honest. I'll tell you where I'm coming from. These fucking "conservatives" are always hiding their agenda and the reason is simple - they are the party of less liberty. They deep down want to control people. Their core belief is that we're better off if certain moral notions they like are enforced on everyone else. Call yourself what you are, will you? You're nothing more than the moralizing mirror image of the liberals who think we should all be hyper-regulated like children because we don't know what's good for us.

I'm Pleased
 

There is another group who I've read speak in codes to their followers... who was that again? They've been in the news a lot the last few years...

My hope and prayer is that Bush is, deep down inside, a snotty East Coast Presbyterian, and that he'll snap into his daddy's policies in his second term when he's got nothing left to lose. My fear is that we'll get some shit-for-brains Santorum clone like Frist as the next candidate and the Southern Strategy will give us another four years of dealing with control by the lowest common denominator.

I'm Pleased
 

Keep in mind that the sides are sort of equally comprised of proportions of normal people, and issue-zealots. I'm conservative. I'd like more liberty. But, I don't want you murdering your landlord. Is that a moral position? Yeah. Want to argue that it's thus not the proper role of government to interfere in that murder?

I'm Pleased
 

Was your neck of the sticks a farm with lots of hay? Its like one fucking straw man after another. I'm on record here saying state's rights, legalize-it-or-shoot-everybody-but-don't-fucking-reach-into-my-wallet-for-it, and spread the pain to Sebby's suburban crowd while we are at it.

Sebby says, "I'm a lover of liberty, a lifelong pro-Choice Catholic, and I'm sick of people like you saying drugs should be illegal but abortion should be state's rights". Who you talking about here Sebby? Because where I'm from, you are talking about the suburban crowd. Yeah, fuck all the minorities in the ghetto, but don't you dare throw a felony on my kid for buying the shit. Look around you man, your people are the problem. You can erect all the straw boogey-men you want, but at the end of the day its your compromises that were necessary to get to this perpetual cycle of social failure.

Call me what you will, but I don't see no pink elephants in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth. You are an impossibly convoluted caricature of a libertarian.

Aussie Elections
 

Anyone care to speculate why the significance of Howard's landslide hasn't made louder news? Anyone care to speculate whether it would have been louder news if he lost?

proof you are a liability
 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135033,00.html

Ms. Heinz-Kerry's value to the ticket can be seen by the choice of appearances. They have her in Texas. There could be no clearer statement that she scares the guys running the campaign.

Aussie Elections
 

How about:

The American main stream media is, at heart, relentlessly conservative, but, at the same time, polite, and so they don't wish to crow about this rather impressive ratification of Bush's ideas by one of our more important allies?

(What do I win?)

Aussie Elections
 

Ding ding ding ding - You win, a year's subscription to . . . (drum roll) NYT!

Aussie Elections
 

Because no one in the US has ever cared about Aussie elections.

Only to speculate upon the extent it changes the coalition of the willing.

Aussies are pretty much just Texans with funny accents and wanderlust, though, so I wasn't really expecting much of a change.

Aussie Elections
 

it pains me to disagree with you R, but the Spain switch was big news, why wouldn't Australia rejecting the same change be news?

Aussie Elections
 

How about the mainstream American media thinks that stories about election results in Australia won't help them sell advertising as much as printing another article about Britney and Kevin? Election results in Germany (which, depending upon who you believe, either meant that the Germans were happy or unhappy with the "anti-American" national government) got no attention here, and I doubt that the Spanish elections results would have, absent the terror bombings.

And is it all that much of a suprise that Howard's party won? I could swear that the Economist ran an article a few weeks ago about the fact that he was leading by a pretty good margin, and that his opponent was regared as an inexperienced lightweight.

Aussie Elections
 

Because there was a terror attack, and the switch was attributed by many as a reaction to that attack.

Would there have been more news made -- absent the attack -- had the Spanish government stayed in office? Maybe. But not much, I don't think. Perhaps the same amount of attention on either side (opinion journals mostly -- maybe the Nation versus the National Review). I just don't think that most newspapers think that their readers care about it. A story on page A-8.

Aussie Elections
 

2 sorta.

I saw something on the news that Australia's unemployment rate is at 2.8%, which is supposedly extraordinarily low on a historical basis for them. The nation supposedly also feels like things are good and getting better.

Aussie Elections
 

Yes, yours was as spot-on as mine.

But mine was knowing satire.

There are tons of pro-Kerry submissions in the news that surely don't meet this "National Enquirer" test of public utility you are offering. It's a valid theory until you examine how they treat both sides.

It was my impression that Howard was looking dead for several weeks prior.

Aussie Elections
 

Was there a train bombing in Sydney that I missed?

I'd imagine that the reason relates to a combination of (1) the absence of an attack overshadowing the election, (2) the (slightly) increased difference in time, and (3) the continuation of the status quo is never as big of a story as change, and (4) some newsrooms didn't see the upside in trumpeting this as a validation of Bush's policies, so they left that task to News Corp.

That said, bilmore's answer is more succinct and snappier, kinda like GWB's answer on abortion. So, let's go with that.

ETA: Correction. Bilmore's was "knowing satire." Of course, forgive me.

Aussie Elections
 

Because, as far as I know, there wasn't an al Qaida linked attack on Austrailia a few days before the election. I guess you could go back to the bombing in Bali two years ago that killed a lot of Aussie tourists and part of the Australian national rugby team, but that was from a few news cycles ago. Orderly elections in Australia are not as big of a news item as the post-bombing elections in Spain were.

Aussie Elections
 

When my son loses a football game, he always manages to find something about the refs to complain about. He doesn't lose very gracefully.

(Italy's voters chose a Kerry-clone. NYT front page. Germany's voters reject the Kerry-clone. Very small blurb. Chirac's bribery stories. Not so much. Ink problem in Afghanistan. Big news. )

I'm Pleased
 

Why must you continually try to frame every debate as some sort of suburb vs. urban poor conflict. You've responed to my challenge that most conservatives are phonies hiding an agenda by shooting the messenger. Here's a tip - your technique of reframing/warping the issue so that you can make every debate one about class and race, is transparent. A mongoloid could spot that you're trying to goad everyone into debates where you can take strong moral positions about inequality which make the opponent look like an ogre. You remind me of that line in Holidays in Cambodia where Biafra properly describes upper middle class white self-loathing:

"Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo, bragging that you know how the niggesr feel cold and the Sun's got so much soul..."

Stop trying to call me a classist/racist/anti-urbanist. My post had no hint of any of that. At least when I crash and burn, I admit it, instead of trying to morph the subject fifty times. Admit it, man - you're a conservative - you want people to adhere to certain morals, but you just can't stomach saying it because that forces you to give up all intellectual credibility in the argument.

And get rid of your hard on for for arguments about the ghetto. Its sounds contrived from an obviously whitebread Catholic kid from the better side of the tracks.

Aussie Elections
 

In a temporary defense of the media, the LA Times does have a very nice article today about how happy the Afghans are with the elections. I saw a few yesterday too, including one surprising quote somewhere-or-other about the opposition candidate's complaints being laughed out of Kandahar of all places.

Aussie Elections
 

Actually NYT mid last week was speculating that a Howard loss was likely due to unhappiness with being tied to Bush, but whatever,

Aussie Elections
 

Um, OK. Do any of your son's explanations revolve around bees?

I've not followed the German elections, so I'm not sure what you meant by their "Kerrry-clone." In accordance with GOP orthodoxy, wouldn't that be Schroeder?

In any event, I'm curious -- did any of these events affirming the Rightness of GWB's Iraq policy garner (in your view) sufficient attention on FNC, the outlet most directed to his reelection chances? If not, then I will smile at your knowing satire but accept it as less than a full explanation for the phenomenon.

I'm Pleased
 

Uh, why exactly is it bad to be a pink elephant? Should I "pick a side" or "develop some consistency"? Will I get shot if I can't be pigeonholed? Is not fitting into one of the neat little voter categories defined by the press a sign of mental illness?

Show me a man who prides himself on consistency above all else and I'll show you the second most stupid man in any room, right below to the guy who's proud to announce what group label he fits under.

*I see plenty of pink elephants, but they've got nothing to do with politics.

I'm Pleased
 

Funny. Calling it "Democrat" is much more succinct.

Aussie Elections
 

bilmore was even sloppier than you state here. Kerry is the clone, the "old europe" guys are the mold not the copy. we can't keep letting him get away with this sort of false allegation.

Aussie Elections
 

Mea culpa.

Not Onanistic
 

Sez you. I never engage in "self-loathing." As a (Not Italian) Catholic, I follow the rule that every sperm is sacred/every sperm is great/when a sperm is wasted/God gets quite irate.

Aussie Elections
 

Yes.

Don't know. Don't get it.

Not Onanistic
 

I'm picturing you with lots of little stoppered bottles, and it's . . . disquieting.