My Two Cents
Back when I was still distributing opinions via e-mail, an opinion was still generally worth about two cents. Now, you'd be lucky to get that much for a ton of the stuff.
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Dec 2000
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...only more so
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Wed 13 Dec 2000 7:11
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Our Times]
[My Two Cents]
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Five weeks ago I was planning on writing that “as hard as getting George W. Bush elected was, the task before us all over the next four years is even harder.“
Five weeks and bajillions of court cases later, that assessment still applies, only more so.
For Bush himself, the travails of the post-election War of Succession may actually wind up playing into the style of governance that served him so well for six years in Austin—the 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate has led to the emergence of a moderate bloc that could and very well should blunt any attempt by Lost Causers on the Democrat side of the aisle to monkey-wrench Bush’s appointments. In past years I have not been a big fan of middle-ground blocs trying to blunt conservative Republicans’ efforts, and there is always the chance that the Breaux-McCain alliance could exert at least as much effort blocking conservative agenda items such as an across-the-board tax cut and Social Security reform, as slapping down the Hillary wing in its attempts, in effect, to keep Clinton appointees in office well into the Bush presidency.
However, Bush’s handling of the War of Succession tells me that he, unlike any number of other possible Republican would-be-presidents who would have quickly sabotaged themselves within days of the election, has the capability to get his program through with support from both the conservatives in the Republican Senate caucus, and the moderates in the Breaux-McCain alliance. Only time will tell, of course, but I am reasonably confident that Bush comes into the presidency with his positives intact and his baggage no heavier than if he had won in a landslide.
Indeed, we have learned more truth about the characters of both Bush and Gore after the election than we did during the normal campaign, and I think most people feel that the outcome is right for the nation, however unsightly the means. That by itself ensures a good opening position for Bush.
The Lost Causers of the Democratic Party will undoubtedly keep trying to convince America that Bush stole the election. We can expect the party’s last remaining loyal support blocs—Big Labor, Big Abortion, and the New Plantation—to wave their orange ribbons like Confederate flags at every place where two or more diehard Algoristas gather. Speaking as a yellow-dog Republican, the prospect fills me with gleeful anticipation, because if they do not move on from this defeat—as we Republicans have successfully moved on, by and large, from Bill Clinton’s impeachment acquittal—they will go down and take the party with them.
However, I have little doubt that as most rank-and-file Democrats have said all along that they will accept George W. Bush as President, the party as a whole will not permit a handful of mouth-foamers to split Democrat voters up and redistribute them to the Republicans and the Greens. The Democrats need to clean house, and I think they know it, and I think they will do it. They may even have the job sufficiently done by 2004 that not even Hillary will have a shot at their presidential nomination—but that may be giving them too much credit this early in the process.
For the activists who have come together to support George W. Bush for their myriad reasons, the outcome of the election is no more the conclusion of the job now than it was in 1994. If we allow ourselves to stand back with arms folded and wait for the Bush Administration to give us everything we may believe we’ve been promised, we’ll be letting history repeat itself. As hard as it was working on getting Bush the votes he needed to win, and as hard as it’s been enduring the five weeks of the War of Succession, the work of the next four years will be even harder.
If we blow off that responsibility, we will get what we deserve—more of the same.
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Tickticktickticktick… (Corrected)
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Tue 12 Dec 2000 13:07
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Courting Disaster]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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Well, it’s 5 o’clock on the day that all states are supposed to have certified their Electors for President of the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court has not acted, and the Florida Supreme Court had one of its blinding flashes of lucidity and upheld judges Lewis and Clark on the Seminole and Martin counties absentee ballot lawsuits.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified their Elector slates. Florida’s slate was certified on Sunday Nov. 26, and a certificate of ascertainment, bearing Gov. Jeb Bush’s signature, is in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
I can think of no good reason why the U.S. Supreme Court couldn’t simply wait until tomorrow morning and announce that all judicial hearings and deliberations having to do with the naming of Electors for the State of Florida are now moot—and the process may now go forth in its normal, constitutionally prescribed fashion. In effect, the Court could rule, 9-0, that except for the Electors themselves, only Congress now has any authority to affect any further outcomes in the 2000 presidential election.
It would be the simplest and least fraught thing the Court could do.
Update, 9:44 p.m.: Just over an hour after I sent out my last comment, I caught Brit Hume on Fox News Channel interviewing a legal expert about the way the Dec. 12 deadline works. It is what’s called a “safe harbor” which in this instance means that if a slate of Electors is certified conclusively by midnight Dec. 12 then it can’t even be challenged in Congress. And in the absence of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling by midnight Dec. 12, which is to say, without the case being closed, Florida’s Electors would not have that conclusivity, and could be challenged in Congress.
This has obviously been the aim of the Democrats and their accomplices on the Florida Supreme Court: delay the conclusion of the dispute surrounding these Electors so that, once their votes come to Congress, those votes can be challenged by one House Democrat and one Senate Democrat—the very same, very messy scenario that has been tossed around so much among Big Media’s nattering heads.
I have no doubt that it was with this in mind that Gore and his henchmen suddenly stopped talking about Dec. 12 as their “drop-dead” date. They knew that if they could keep the controversy on life support until 12:00:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Dec. 13, they would still have an opportunity to throw yet another monkey wrench into George W. Bush’s lawful and—now, thanks to the antics of the Gore Loser and his cohorts—popularly supported accession to the presidency.
The strategy at this point, since no rival slate has been certified, is to convince a majority in both houses of Congress to throw out the Florida Electors in hopes that by having a majority of the 513 valid Electors Gore could win the prize. You can bet that if Congress rules instead that the College of Electors consists of the full 538 despite Florida’s slate being excluded—which would throw the selection of the President into the House of Representatives—the litigation will be even more spectacular than what we’ve already seen.
As I write this, SCOTUS has two hours and about fifteen minutes to keep the present mess from turning into a cesspool.
Pray with me.
[Of course, these were email distributions, not blog entries, so the original and correction were sent out separately.]
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Swami Tsunami Predicts
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Tue 12 Dec 2000 5:55
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Humor?]
[Courting Disaster]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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The last time I tried to predict what would happen with a high court, I was so wrong that the International Brotherhood of Prognosticators, Clairvoyants, Economists and Tarot Card Readers threatened to yank my union card.
I had predicted that the Florida Supreme Court would be sufficiently abashed as to refrain from wreaking further mischief on the presidential War of Succession. Obviously, they are incapable of shame. Therefore I, Swami Tsunami, the Great and Infallible (snort, <giggle> cough-cough! haccckkk! cough cough cough cough!!!!), do predict that the Florida Supreme Court will rule that (1) all of the absentee ballots counted in Seminole and Marton counties must be thrown out; that (2) Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Kathleen Harris are illegal space aliens and therefore unqualified to hold elective office on Planet Earth; that (3) the Florida Supreme Court is hereafter to be referred to as The One True and Holy Repository of All Sacred Wisdom and Knowledge, and that (4) therefore it is the U.S. Supreme Court that must submit to its rulings, not the other way around.
I also predict that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule (1) by a 5-4 majority that Jesse Jackson is the nation’s last best hope for peace among the races, and therefore he must be the next President of the United States; the four dissenters will argue that Jackson should instead be made Absolute Monarch of Earth; and (2) by a 7-2 majority that all future presidential elections be settled by a jello-wrestling tournament, best three falls out of five.
They may still yank my union card, but at least I’ll have a gig making predictions for the National Enquirer. Or for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, if Gore wins. “Surpluses! Surpluses for all eternity!! So it is written in the stars!!!“
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Interpreting the Law
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Sun 10 Dec 2000 11:37
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Courting Disaster]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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The Democrats continue to insist that the four rogue justices of the Florida Supreme Court were merely interpreting the law, reconciling conflicting statutes.
Well, suppose for a moment that a court were asked to reconcile the differences between, say, an electric steam iron and an electric hot-air hair dryer. Logically, one would expect the result to be either an iron that can dry your hair, or a hair dryer that can also press your clothes.
What we got from the Florida Supreme Court was a mag-lev bullet train that could also pave and stripe a parking lot at the bottom of the ocean.
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Be of Good Cheer
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Sun 3 Dec 2000 3:05
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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Those few members of the Gore Constituency that are still speaking publicly against the legitimate outcome of the presidential race, are falling back on the tired old Snideley Blumenthal screed that there is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
In a classic case of what psychologists call “projection,“ they’re accusing George W. Bush and the Republicans of “stealing” the election. On what factual basis do they make this accusation?
Exhibit A: “Al Gore won the national popular vote.“ Of course, there is no such thing, in law, as a “national popular vote.“ Both Gore and Bush knew when the campaign started that the prize was not a popular plurality nationwide, but separate popular pluralities in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Gore’s position has been adroitly compared to a football team claiming that, although they lost the game on points, they gained the most yards and should therefore be awarded the win. But undermining all of this is a disconnect between Camp Gore’s adamant stand on counting votes in Florida, and its indifference to similar votes in other states. If the millions of disregarded ballots across the country were treated to the “pregnant chad” standard, there is every chance that Bush could more than make up the 300,000 or so votes by which Gore leads in the phantom “national popular vote.“ But such an outcome would surely be denounced by the Gore Constituency because it wouldn’t match what has long been gore-ordained.
Exhibit B: “If we could just count all the votes in Florida, Al Gore would be the winner.“ This is the defining example of “gore-ordained.“ There is no factual basis for this claim, and yet the Gore Constituency insists on repeating it over and over again, using the classic Big Lie strategy spelled out by such 20th Century luminaries as Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The only rational explanation for such certainty, if it is honestly held, is that somehow the Gore Constituency knows something its members are not sharing with the rest of the nation. Did the Democrats conduct a count of the vote totals before the election? If so, they should enter the facts into evidence. Otherwise, we can only conclude—as did Democratic consultant Pat Caddell—that it is, in fact, a Big Lie. Of course, if they do have certain knowledge of what the Florida vote totals should be, that raises a whole different set of problems for the Democrats; but the Gore Constituency’s media brigade isn’t likely to report on evidence of premeditated election fraud by the Democrats. They never have before.
Exhibit C: The fact that the Bush team is fighting back against the Gore Constituency’s attempts to steal the election, is said to “prove” that the Bush team “knows” Florida voted Democrat, otherwise why would they be resisting a “full, fair and accurate” re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-recount? This is like Charles Manson saying his conviction in the Tate-LaBianca murders “proves” the police committed the crimes, otherwise why would they work so hard to get him convicted for them.
Be of good cheer. They’re on the run.
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A Gore Lexicon
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Sat 2 Dec 2000 2:58
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
0 comments
[Humor?]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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We’ve all heard the new phrase “Gore Loser,“ used to refer to a losing candidate who refuses to admit defeat despite recount after recount after recount after recount after recount…
Here are some more new coinages, humbly offered for your amusement and edification…
Gore-ordained (adj.): asserted as fact despite having no factual basis. Example: “The Democratic victory in Florida was gore-ordained.“
Gorestall (v.): to seek to delay or prevent the legitimate conclusion of a process due to one’s disapproval of the outcome.
Malice agorethought (n.): the deliberate prior planning and co-ordination of attempts to gorestall the conclusion of a process because one already knows in advance that one will not like the outcome.
Gore constituency (n.): that segment of the news media that acts as an accomplice in a Gore Loser’s efforts to gorestall a conclusion with malice agorethought because the evident outcome is not what was gore-ordained.
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Nov 2000
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With Apologies to Napoleon XIV
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Wed 29 Nov 2000 4:32
by Kevin McGehee
in Chattanooga, TN
0 comments
[Humor?]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[My Two Cents]
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[No, not that Napoleon XIV—this one.]
They’re Coming to Swear Me In
(to the tune of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”)
Remember on Election Night when Florida went first blue
Then black then red then black then right up in the air?
We laughed, we cried, and then we tried, we tried and tried and really tried
To get the votes because it just wasn’t fair.
Well…
They’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
They’re coming to swear me in, ho-ho! Hee-hee! Ha-ha!
To be President, then life’ll be beautiful all the time
And I’ll be surrounded by those nice young men in their cheap sunglasses
And they’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
A lot of people still don’t know that I invented elections
And I doubt I’ll ever get the credit I deserve
For swinging chads and dangling chads and dimpled chads
And pregnant chads—it’s all so sad because I live to serve.
But…
They’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
They’re coming to swear me in, ho-ho! Hee-hee! Ha-ha!
To the White House, with the Rose Garden and young interns
Who sit and smile and do all kinds of wonderful things
And they’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
They’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
They’re coming to swear me in, ho-ho! Hee-hee! Ha-ha!
To be President, then life’ll be beautiful all the time
And I’ll be surrounded by those nice young men in their cheap sunglasses
And they’re coming to swear me in, ha-ha!
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