One Thing Newt Used to Do Right — More or Less

Sat   3 Mar 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [My Two Cents]

House Ways & Means Chairman Bill Thomas called Rush Limbaugh on Friday to talk about the tax cut bill his committee had sent to the House floor.     Seems the Wall Street Journal had editorialized unkindly about the Republicans on Thomas’ committee because of the specifics of the bill, which would reduce the nation’s federal income tax burden by $960 billion.     Quoth the Journal: “Mr. Thomas’s apparent belief that giving taxpayers in the lowest bracket an extra $360 per couple ($180 for single-filers) will jump-start a moribund economy is an artifact from Keynesian economics of 40 years ago. Indeed, as the past 40 years have demonstrated, tax cuts — or fiscal policy in general — is not an effective tool for countercyclical economic management.”     Thomas’ major point in defense, as heard during the third and final hour of Rush’s Friday installment, seemed to be that President Bush had called him and thanked him for the committee’s action.     Bill Thomas has been in Washington long enough to know that gratitude from a President, however sincere, does not necessarily mean that the President is satisfied with what he’s thanking somebody for. As Thomas himself asserted with high-school-debating-club intensity, politics is “the art of the possible.” Therefore, a President who wants a bill providing “x” over five years, will say “thank you” to a committee chairman of his own party who offers half of “x” over ten years — even while assessing the prospects for more aggressive legislation in the future. What came out of Ways & Means isn’t that bad, but for this particular point Thomas gets a D in rhetoric.     Chairman Thomas went on to point out that the bill, which only deals with marginal tax rates — the “across the board” portion of Bush’s tax cut program — is in line with Bush’s plan and actually accelerates certain portions of it. The other $640 million is apparently to come from such reforms as reducing the so-called marriage penalty and eliminating the estate tax (more properly known as the ghouls-in-government tax). That’s all well and good, but I didn’t hear Thomas specifically address any of the criticisms in the Journal editorial.     For example, the Journal notes, “Tax changes usually become effective too late to help an ailing economy or, just as often, have the opposite impact of the one intended as people game the system. In this case, taxpayers will be doggy-paddling until 2006 when the brackets would have been sloooowly lowered.”     Rush should have nailed Thomas on this one, since he has himself made the point that what the Journal predicts is exactly what happened with the 1981 tax cut legislation won by then-President Ronald Reagan. Because the cuts were phased in slowly, they did not have sufficient immediacy to deflect the oncoming recession, which took a couple more years to finally run their course and usher in the dawn of the economic expansion just lately starting to falter.     Thomas claimed he feared losing votes for the bill, from Republicans as well as Democrats, if it took a more aggressive approach than it does. That, while annoying as all hell, is at least a reasonable point. Outside observers might argue the point, and even a veteran lawmaker might be mistaken about the risks, but generally speaking we who are not in Congress pretty much have to take Thomas’ word for it — but only up to a point.     After all, those votes he’s worried about are to be cast by men and women who represent us outside observers, and except for one widely trumpeted and totally unbelievable poll, the numbers show the President’s tax cut plan is hugely popular. A few phone calls or letters to your members of Congress, whether they’re on Thomas’ committee or not, might be salutary.     Part of the reason there is such trouble over the Ways & Means tax cut bill is that Thomas and the senior Republicans in the House didn’t bother with a heads-up to the grass roots — had more rank-and-file Republican activists been aware sooner of what was to be in the bill, some of the timid members Thomas was worried about might have gotten some spine-stiffening calls and letters. One thing we really didn’t have to worry about much when Newt Gingrich was Speaker, was not knowing what was going on in the kitchen. He talked about it incessantly. Granted, this motor-mouthing also contributed to his downfall by giving the Clinton-Carville War Room more ammunition to use against congressional Republicans. Newt didn’t do it quite right, be he had the right idea.     Under Hastert, it appears that the House GOP has learned the wrong lesson. If they keep disregarding the power of the grass roots in getting the Bush program enacted, the President may have to start going over the head of a Congress led in both houses by his own party.     I get the strong feeling George W. would prefer not to have to treat his fellow Republicans as a good-natured but slightly retarded version of the Democrats who ran things in Reagan’s day.

Media ‘Vote’ Counters Missing the Point

Mon   26 Feb 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

Recipients of The Daily Routine will have seen that USA Today has declared Miami-Dade for George W. Bush in the counting of “undercount” ballots that were the centerpiece of last year’s interminable aftermath of Election Day. This comes on the heels of a similar finding in another county. What USA Today reports is that regardless of the standard used in “determining the intent of the voter” Al Gore could not gain enough votes to overturn the certified result — which, for those who were living in a cave during November and December 2000, was that George W. Bush, now our President, won the state’s 25 electoral votes and as a result the presidency. If even the most lax standard of defining a legally cast ballot was used, Gore gained a paltry 49 votes, far fewer than his projected 600, in Miami-Dade. This strongly suggests Bush was correct in accusing Gore of using “fuzzy numbers.” Under stricter standards, Bush had a net gain. A point to bear in mind, however, is that the media-found outcome is based on the consistent application of a single standard to all ballots in question. That is to say, the same standard used to discover a vote for Gore would be used to also discover a vote, if there was one, for Bush. As we saw during the circus of “re”-counts before the U.S. Supreme Court fired the clowns on Dec. 12, the consistent application of standards was not a realistic danger. The controversy over the so-called “recounts” was rooted in a number of discrete issues, of which the most worrisome was the adoption of new standards for counting votes after the ballots were cast. Second in importance, and the issue on which the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling against Gore was based, was the inconsistent or unequal application of standards for determining what is and is not a legally cast — and therefore countable — vote. In fairness, the lack of a consistent statewide standards is due to a failure of Florida’s government to enact or promulgate such a standard, rather than necessarily the fault of Gore partisans. But Gore’s supporters made no bones about their desire to exploit this loophole in Florida election law, along with novel legal theories that made great sense to journalists and the legal hacks on the state supreme court, but not to Florida’s trial-court judges nor seven justices of the nation’s highest court. When media organizations hired major auditing firms to backstop the vote-counting machines used by duly constituted election authorities in the Sunshine State, it was widely recognized as little more than an attempt to do mischief to the outcome that — by the time it was finalized — had won wider public support than the much-ballyhooed “popular vote” victory claimed by Gore. In terms of the legitimacy of that outcome, the media “recounts” were never a threat since public opinion (long the weapon of choice for the Clinton-Gore political machine) had rejected Gore as a sore loser and rallied around Bush. That the results now being reported merely ratify what Florida authorities and the Supreme Court majority held all along, is of value only in providing “bragging rights” to Bush supporters. They do not “legitimize” George W. Bush’s presidency. That which is already legitimate doesn’t need to be re-legitimized. Still, in this day of public opinion as the pre-eminent weapon of political mass destruction, these numbers do infuse huge volumes of new political capital into the President’s account, even as the trashy departing behavior of his predecessor finally bankrupts his. That amorphous hive-mind known as Official Washington would be well advised to acknowledge this even more than they had previously. In particular, members of the President’s own party whose spines have jellified during their careers in Congress should reconsider their opposition to Bush’s tax cut. The turnaround on public opinion also should be heeded by members of Congress who wish to transform Bill Clinton’s current political weakness into tangible punishment for his misdeeds. Public opinion can be fickle (need I resurrect the horrors of 1995-96?), and public adulation in the form of positive poll numbers has always been second only to the unwholesome attentions of young White House interns on Clinton’s list of favorite things. Now that he no longer has that support, he is as close to Hell as this life can put him. It’s also too early in Hillary Clinton’s Senate term to expect her husband’s current tribulations to derail her political future. Both are expert at playing the woebegone victim of hateful enemies, and the hold they continue to have over many conservatives and libertarians is no more wholesome than the Clintons’ own devotion to power, privilege, and droit de seigneur.     Besides, just as Clinton’s behavior is faulted for energizing “Clinton-haters,” so does the obsession of some with “getting” Bill Clinton only serve to energize those few still inclined to defend him.     Any responsible hunter will tell you that the cruelest thing one can do to one’s prey is to let it get away wounded. If we really want to punish Clinton, maybe it’s better now simply to let him crawl away into the underbrush.

Conservatism for Dummies: The FAQ for Liberals

Mon   29 Jan 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [My Two Cents]

Q: Now that your stooges have seized control of all three branches of government, and Bill Clinton isn’t going to be indicted, what will you right-wingers have to talk about? You. I’m serious. 99% of conservatives would be deliriously happy to abandon politics and turn our attentions in full to just living our lives. But as long as you and others like you are still around—in Big Media, academia, and the Hollywood elite—to try to use politics to our detriment, there is absolutely no danger of our running out of things to talk about. I know you liberals find it hard to believe, but look at the Cold War. If all we cared about was holding onto power, we could have kept the Cold War going ad infinitum so we could use it as a political issue. Instead we solved it, as well as any conflict between good and evil can be solved, and it even hurt us in 1992 when President George Bush (the father) was seeking re-election. It was in no way the only issue that hurt us, but giving it up didn’t help us. This stands in stark contrast to you liberals and the way you deal with poverty, race, education and myriad other issues. Your nightmare is not that these issues will get worse, because that would give you something to use in the next election campaign, but that we Republicans will SOLVE them, and thus deprive you of a means to retake power. Q: Do you honestly expect us to believe that a party in thrall to lily-white Big Business special interests would actually try to solve problems of poverty, race and education? Of course not. You are talking about the Democrats, right? When we look at the DNC’s contribution reports, lily-white Big Business special interests loom large—right after lily-white Big Labor special interests, which have an even more egregious history on race matters than most Southern states. Q: I’m not worried about the Shrub getting anything done. He’s too deeply in political debt to the extremist extra-chromosome right wing to succeed in anything except maybe getting himself impeached and removed from office. If he had kept a more moderate course he might have a chance of being a two-term president. To quote Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew a thing or two about dealing with an opponent: “It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.“ The way you libs play politics would give war a bad name. Any Republican who takes your advice on how we should conduct ourselves or pursue our issues deserves what he gets: defeat, at your hands. You wouldn’t take our advice on how to implement your agenda, so don’t insult us by pretending you have our best interests at heart, you @#$!!ing hypocrites. Q: Don’t you right-wing wackos realize you’re so far out of the mainstream that nothing you stand for will ever be accepted by the American people? Nope. We also don’t realize that up is down, left is right, right is wrong, and the sun sets in the east. Q: The only thing you right-wingers stand for is theocracy, with Pat Robertson as an American ayatollah. <snicker!> Yeah, right, whatever you say. The really hilarious thing is, you liberals are always accusing us of hate, of practicing the politics of personal destruction, of being divisive. Talk about the pot calling the kettle albedo-challenged! Q: There you go, stereotyping all liberals because a few go over the top in expressing their feelings. We conservatives don’t encourage our people to express their “feelings” in such hateful, divisive, destructive ways. When people on the right engage in that kind of disgusting behavior, we don’t excuse it by saying they’re just expressing sincerely held views. And we certainly know better than to expect YOU to excuse it, no matter how sincerely we may believe the views are held. You see, we have always known the difference between constructive argument and hateful rhetoric. It’s you liberals who don’t seem to have figured it out.

Flag Flapping

Thu   25 Jan 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [My Two Cents]

Yesterday, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes railroaded a narrow vote in the lower house of the state’s General Assembly to change the official flag of Georgia from its present look to one that de-emphasizes the Confederate battle flag design that occupies two-thirds of the current banner.     All this comes despite certain important facts, not least of which is that onetime Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who was America’s envoy to the United Nations during the Carter presidency, believes it is foolish to pursue the flag issue while more pressing matters are ignored. That the respected Mr. Young holds this opinion throws a monkey-wrench into flag-changers’ tired claims that anyone opposed to making the change is somehow racist.     Those who favor changing the flag are simply wrong in their arguments that somehow changing the flag will alleviate Georgia’s racial tensions. Those tensions do not come from the flag, they come from the people. If as flag-changers insist, the current Georgia flag represents hate, it can only be so if the people of Georgia are full of hate. Only a very few ultra-extremists would seriously argue that this is so. A flag is a symbol, and like all symbols represents only what people read into it. To say that Georgia’s flag represents hate where the people are not hateful, is like saying that a red octagonal formation on the moon must mean “stop” even in the absence of traffic.     But if Georgia’s people are full of hate, it’s hard to imagine any flag we could adopt that could FAIL to represent hate. We could adopt a pink flag bearing a yellow happy face, — or one depicting cuddly teddy bears and bearing the words Kum Ba Yah — and it would still be a banner of hate because it would be the flag of hateful people.     Georgia’s people are not 100% hate-filled, but neither is it absolutely clean of hatred. After all, hate is what is fueling the flag-change movement. But anyone who seriously believes that expunging Confederate symbols will eliminate hate is fooling himself. The act would be far more divisive than the symbols themselves. And I can have no doubt that if Georgia’s flag is changed to eliminate or de-emphasize the Confederate battle flag design, the result will not be a less visible rebel banner, but one that will pop up more and more.     I can’t think of even one reasonable person who wants that, but that is what will happen.     Healing? Hardly.

Goodbye

Fri   19 Jan 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Yee-haw!] [My Two Cents]

Can it really be?     Has America really, at long last, reached the end of the Clinton era?     Well, according to the Constitution, yes. At 12:00 noon on Saturday, January 20, William Jefferson Clinton ceases to be the 42nd President of the United States and becomes the 33rd Ex-President.* However, unlike most of the other 32, Ex-President Clinton plans to remain active in politics, spending time in Washington, D.C. on the excuse that his wife is a United States Senator. He has arranged for his man to become the head of the Democratic National Committee (talk about an oxymoron!). And he was already criticizing his successor weeks before his successor even takes office!     Oh, Clinton has been saying goodbye, as though he really were going to fade into obscurity like every one of his ex-presidential predecessors save John Quincy Adams (who ran for and won a seat in Congress, where he died years later). But his farewells put me in mind of an old country-and-western song: “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?”     Clearly, Bill Clinton is about as certain of the meaning of “goodbye” as he is about “is.”     Some have actually wasted time wondering where Clinton will fly to after the inaugural festivities. There are two reasons why it’s a waste of time: (1) Who cares? and (2) No matter where he goes, he won’t stay there. Washington, D.C. is to him what Jerusalem is to Jews, Mecca to Muslims, and Lenin’s Tomb to Russian Communists. It is the source of that which animates him and gives him reason to live. Having lived there for eight years, he is hooked — and would die of withdrawal pangs within the hour if forced to leave and prevented from coming back.     Perhaps I should say that Washington is to Clinton what blood is to a vampire…     The comparisons go on from there — Freddy Krueger, the guy in the Scream mask, all those unwelcome people who keep coming back no matter what happened to them in the previous movie. Clinton nicknamed himself the Comeback Kid, probably because Hockey Mask Guy didn’t present quite the image necessary to win elections. Now he plans to “comeback” from the inexorable and, even for him, irresistible mandate of the Constitution. But the Constitution doesn’t say that, just because he has to move out of the White House, he also has to GO AWAY.     We got that constitutional amendment that’s forcing him out of office, because of another Man Who Wouldn’t Go Away. Maybe what we need now is a constitutional amendment that does require an Ex-President to get the @#$!! out of D.C. and stay out. * Although Clinton is the 42nd President according to the official count, he is only the 41st man to be President because Grover Cleveland is counted twice for his non-sequential presidencies. Also (by my count) eight Presidents have died while in office, and therefore never became Ex-Presidents.

Bipartisanship

Sun   14 Jan 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [My Two Cents]

In just a few days, a Democrat administration will end and a Republican one will begin.     The Democrats, who have spent the last six years calling on congressional Republicans to be bipartisan, have lately been calling on George W. Bush to preside over a bipartisan administration. They started making this request of congressional Republicans after the Republicans first won a majority of seats in both houses of Congress. They’re making this request of Bush now because George W. Bush will be the first Republican President since Eisenhower to have a Republican Congress to work with.     One would assume the “bipartisan” Democrats have no problem with such Bush Cabinet appointees as Norman Mineta, who will go from the Clinton Commerce Department to the Bush Transportation Department. Mineta is a Democrat. John Ashcroft, however, is a conservative Republican. Democrats can’t abide the thought of Ashcroft becoming Attorney General.     It’s hard to understand what’s “bipartisan” about being happy when a Republican President appoints a Democrat to his Cabinet, but throwing an industrial-strength hissy-fit when that same President nominates a conservative from his own party to a Cabinet post. Apparently bipartisanship refers to a Republican President whose entire Cabinet is staffed with Democrats. By that logic, Bill Clinton should have staffed his Cabinet with nothing but conservative Republicans. But wait, Clinton is a Democrat — by definition, he is under no requirement to be bipartisan.     None of this is new, at least not to those who have been paying attention. Nor am I the first to say that the Democrats and their liberal base are latter-day reactionaries, the Left’s counterparts to the McCarthy wing of the Republican Party of fifty years ago. Some would complain that there is no latter-day Edward R. Murrow to expose the hypocrisy of today’s McCarthyists, but those would be reckoning without such recently emerged media institutions as Fox News and The Drudge Report.     There are indications that Senate Democrats will seek to turn the Ashcroft hearings into a race-baiting witch hunt. These are the “bipartisans” who proclaimed the Clinton impeachment a partisan witch hunt. They should take heed of history. The worst of Joe McCarthy’s antics coincided with the beginning of their own 40-year hegemony over the House of Representatives. If the Democrats become too closely identified with such similar antics today, they can forget about regaining Congress in 2002 or the White House in 2004.     Bipartisanship is a bitch.

Behind the Scenes at the Bush-Gore Meeting

Wed   20 Dec 2000   9:30 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Humor?] [My Two Cents]

Here’s what I think happened when President-Elect George W. Bush went to visit Vice President-Evict Al Gore: Gore: Welcome. Bush: Thanks for inviting me. You didn’t need to do this. Gore: I know. (awkward silence) Gore: Have some iced tea? Bush: Thanks. Gore: Is a gallon flask big enough for you? I usually drink from five-gallon flagons but they’re all in the dishwasher. Bush: That’s fine, thanks. Gore: (glug, glug, glug) Bush: (chuckling) Boy, that sound takes me back to my college days. Gore: Ha, ha, ha. I admire your sense of humor about—you know… Bush: Like I said at the convention, I believe in forgiveness because I’ve needed it. Gore: (rolls eyes) That’s nice. (awkward silence) Bush: You ran a good campaign. Gore: Then why was I reduced to arguing over a few thousand scraps of paper and a sackful of ballot confetti? (awkward silence) Gore: I’ll be back, you know. Count on it. Bush: (grins, bobs and weaves like a boxer) Gore: What was that? Bush: (still grinning, but bemused) What was what? Gore: You know, I’m still Vice President. It’s a federal crime to threaten me. Bush: I wasn’t threatening you. It was just ... you know ... a guy thing. Gore: I know all about guy things. Bush: (under his breath) Yeah, you invented guy things. Gore: Excuse me? Bush: I said, this is good tea. Gore: You’ve hardly touched it. Your glass is still three-quarters full. Bush: Guess I wasn’t very thirsty. (awkward silence) Gore: Would you like a tour of the house? Bush: My parents lived here for eight years. (awkward silence) Gore: Well, you don’t want to miss your plane.

For the Record

Sun   17 Dec 2000   10:40 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Our Times] [My Two Cents]

Years ago, much was made of how Ron Brown was going to be the most senior African-American ever in the executive branch of our government. And until yesterday, Dec. 16, 2000, Brown’s post as Secretary of Commerce was the highest such post ever held by an African-American. He was put in that office by a Democrat, Bill Clinton—neither of whose two U.S. Supreme Court picks was an African-American. The record of Democrats when it comes to giving minority Americans a chance at the reins of power, has not been impressive. Walter Mondale chose a woman to be his running mate against a popular incumbent in 1984, almost certainly hoping that the “wow” factor of having Geraldine Ferraro on his ticket would boost his chances. It didn’t. The “wow” factor of having Joseph Lieberman on his ticket this year may have helped tighten this year’s presidential election, but it’s more likely that scaremongering among the diehard Democrat constituencies was mostly responsible for that. There were complaints, initially, that Gore should have chosen an African-American, but those died down fairly quickly. In fact, the one major breakthrough for African-Americans that came from the efforts of a Democrat, was the placement of Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court. It took a Republican, Ronald Reagan, to put the first woman on that Court, even as radical feminists reviled Reagan for disagreeing with them on those parts of the extremist liberal agenda mislabeled “women’s issues.“ And it’s taking a Republican, George W. Bush, to put an African-American in the most senior Cabinet post even as Jesse Jackson, et al, are threatening that Bush will never be granted legitimacy by African-Americans. African-Americans have little hope of seeing fellow African-Americans hold senior positions in any Democrat administration, nor placed on any Democrat ticket, for one very sound political reason: as long as African-Americans vote 9-to-1 for Democrats, that party’s high rollers have no reason to “shore up” that part of their constituency. If Hillary Clinton were to choose an African-American to be her running mate in 2004, what would that do for her share of that voting bloc? Bump it up from 90% to 91%? It just isn’t worth it, from their point of view. Other American voting blocs manage to get courted by both major parties because they’re “in play”—large segments of those blocs have been known to break ranks and vote the opposite of others in that same bloc. Union voters are wooed by Republicans because many of them helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 and were helpful in changing Congress from a Democrat institution to a Republican one; Democrats expend resources trying to keep union voters in the “D” column for that same reason. Republican candidates have to reassure members of their “base” because even though they are unlikely to vote Democrat, such voters have been known to stay home on Election Day out of disgust; Democrats seek to lead Republican officeholders into glaring compromises precisely in order to disillusion conservative Republican voters into staying home on Election Day. African-Americans, though, have very little actual political clout because they are so predictable in their voting behavior. Turnout may fluctuate from election to election, but rarely do Republicans manage to get more than perhaps one in six African-American votes nationwide. And when they do, they call it a victory because it’s usually about one in ten. Democrats, on the other hand, do little to reward such loyalty. They are convinced they don’t have to. It’s up to African Americans, if they want to gain clout, to convince Democrats that their loyalty must be rewarded or it will be lost. And that means convincing Democrats their loyalty can be lost. Such a lesson will never be taught by the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons.

What Gore SHOULD Say

Wed   13 Dec 2000   15:09 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Humor?] [My Two Cents]

My fellow Americans—and the handful of malcontents who denied me my God-given right to be the next President of the United States (you bastards!): I come before you to begin the healing process after all the terrible wounds that have been inflicted by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy over the last few weeks. I beg each and every one of you not to let those sneaky cannibals in the Republican Party get away with this travesty. When Tom DeLay comes to your house to drag off your children for his dinner, please bash him over the head with something big and heavy. My good friend David Boies will defend you—okay, so maybe that’s not a great incentive, but it’s the best I can do. I’m about to be unemployed for the first time in my adult life, and without Dad to arrange something for me. I’m going to be a powerless bum, so all I can offer you is David Boies. I’d rather have him defending you in court than sharing my steam grate. He snores!! And will somebody please come up with something for Bill Daley to do? He keeps calling me at Dick Cheney’s house telling me I’m gonna be sleepin’ wit’ da fishes because he won’t get to be Secretary of Defense. That guy scares me. You know, the only reason he has a forehead is because he’s bald. And I have to associate with him! You see what I’ve been reduced to!? Maybe if I ask real nice Bush will give him a job. Mr. President-Elect, I know you’re watching, whaddaya say? Wanna give a break to a guy down on his luck? Aw, why bother? He’s already being nicer to me than I deserve. And Bill won’t return my calls. Hell, these days even Tipper won’t return my calls! I tell her secretary it’s Al Gore calling and she says, “Which one?“ I tell you my life has become a Rodney Dangerfield monologue! I can’t live like this! The only bright spot is that Bill won’t be running for mayor of New York after all. Maybe if I move up there I can get that job. Those mechanical voting machines don’t even have chads—right about now I’d give anything to have never even heard that word. And to think if Karenna had been a boy we would have named her Chad. Well, I suppose I could always call Whoopi Goldberg. She promised me when I started this campaign that if I lost I could be on Hollywood Squares.

Swami Tsunami Rises Again

Wed   13 Dec 2000   8:41 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Humor?] [My Two Cents]

At 9:00 pm, Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. will go on national television to concede that Texas Governor George W. Bush has managed, with the connivance of a slim majority on a Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court, to steal the presidency away from him. He will endeavor once again to re-invent himself—this time as the magnanimous statesman who gives up what is rightfully his rather than lead a divisive effort to overcome such a massive right-wing conspiracy. His message will be that although Bush’s legitimacy is non-existent and the entire electoral process has been ruined forever, the millions of Americans now weeping over the destruction of Our Democracy must, for the good of the nation, put aside their righteous indignation and accept the usurper Bush as the 43rd President of the United States. “I feel your pain,“ he will say, biting his lip, “but we must move on, and live to fight again another day.“ Let me know if I’ve called it right. I’m gonna be watching Animal Planet.

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