Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans filing first- time applications for state unemployment benefits fell to 339,000 last week, the lowest in almost three years, suggesting job prospects are improving.With the economy improving, soon Krugman will be reduced to complaining about the redesigned $20 bill.
The economy is projected to grow at a 4 percent annual pace this quarter following an 8.2 percent rate from July through September that was the strongest in almost 20 years, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed earlier this month by Bloomberg News. It's forecast to grow 4.4 percent in 2004, the most since it expanded 4.5 percent in 1999, according to the survey.
The expanding economy will probably add an average of 200,000 jobs a month in 2004, according to a forecast by UBS' O'Sullivan.
So what went wrong? Unrequited bipartisanship. Implicitly, the Democrats expected that the new situation would produce a new Bush, less partisan and less ideological. For a few months after the attacks, that was the Bush who showed up to work every day. He and the Democrats did a lot of business together, and the country seemed happy.So the leader of the Republican party wanted to *gasp* forward conservative policies!?! And create a Republican majority? The fiend! I had no idea.
It could not last, because Bush didn't want to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, a nonpartisan leader who unified the country without being much help to his party. Ticket splitting began in a big way during the 1950s when millions of Democrats went for Ike but stuck with their party on the rest of the ballot. Bush wanted to realign the country and create a Republican majority for bold conservative policies at home and abroad. [Emphasis added]
In the end, Bush hating says more about the haters than the hated -- and here, too, the parallels with Clinton are strong. This hatred embodies much fear and insecurity. The anti-Clinton fanatics hated him not simply because he occasionally lied, committed adultery or exhibited an air of intellectual superiority. What really infuriated them was that he kept succeeding -- he won reelection, his approval ratings stayed high -- and that diminished their standing. If Clinton was approved, they must be disapproved.After Clinton was re-elected in 1996, I resigned myself to four more years of a Democrat in the White House. But at no point (honest) did I question the wisdom of the American people. After all, the economy was in good shape and there were no foreign endeavors threatening American shores. But nowadays whenever I read the left-leaning blogs or news sources, there’s this ossified belief that if America votes to re-elect President Bush it will be for a whole host of reasons – anything except that America actually agrees with the Bush Administration’s policies. There’s a liberal hauteur that farmers in Kansas or gun-owners in Alabama can’t possibly know what’s good for the country. They’re duped and brainwashed, fooled and suckered into voting Republican. And when voters from Oregon to Florida choose to re-elect Bush in 2004, the Barbra Streisands and Paul Krugmans will silently bow their heads and wonder why everyone in America is so stupid.
Ditto for Bush. If he succeeded less, he'd be hated less. His fiercest detractors don't loathe him merely because they think he's mediocre, hypocritical and simplistic. What they truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he's exiling them politically. On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it's a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority -- something that makes them feel better about themselves. Either way, it represents another dreary chapter in the continuing coarsening of public discourse. [Emph. added]
Yes, there’s been a terrible tragedy in Iran. But the politically incorrect truth is that this was not simply a “natural disaster” or an ‘act of God.” The earthquake that hit the eastern part of that country on the last weekend in 2003 need not have taken tens of thousands of lives. It was no secret that the region was prone to earthquakes. It is no secret that un-reinforced mud-brick buildings would, in case of a severe temblor, bury people alive. The leaders of a poor country could claim that they hadn’t the resources to do anything about that -- that they could not, for example, afford to reinforce existing structures or build new structures that could withstand temblors. But Iran is oil-rich and has had plenty of money to lavish on nuclear weapons programs and on such terrorist groups as Hezbollah. Were Iran a democracy, its mullahs would be held to account, at least at the ballot box.I've heard it said that the United States cannot impose a democracy on Iraq. But today in Bam over 40,000 lie dead because there is no impetus for a better world in an Islamic theocracy. And, yes, I'm looking at you Saudi Arabia.
"I've got some news for Howard Dean," Lieberman added. "The primary campaign is a warm-up compared to what George Bush and Karl Rove have waiting for him. . . . He's going to melt in a minute once the Republicans start going after him."On this I agree with Joe and I think the prime forum for the Dean meltdown will be the debates. Bush will be standing there with his "aw, shucks" attitude, a healthy economy, and a safer country thanks to the overthrow of two brutal regimes. Dean will be flailing his arms, desperate to convince voters that Bush is the most 'reckless' President in history. It just won't work.
Asked how he would persuade people who were not opposed to the war to vote for him instead of President Bush, Dean responded, "By going after him on terrorism, where he's really weak."Please, Howard, make this election a referendum on national security and the war on terrorism. Throw Dubya into that briar patch.
Many Americans will be forgoing holiday celebrations with their families this season to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We need to give them their due recognition for their efforts in the war on terror. As we gather with our families this holiday season, let us pray for those who cannot celebrate with theirs.Right on.
When you can, take a hard look at the Iraqi man, woman, or child your gun is pointed at. You are in Iraq under the orders of the commander in chief. I cannot do anything about that. What I can wish for is that even as many Christians prepare to sing "Peace on earth, goodwill to men," that you find a way, one soldier at a time, to bring it to Iraq. I pray that babies stop killing babies.Jackson could have stopped and his column would have been merely execrable. That final sentence – I’d like to hear somebody argue otherwise – brands American soldiers as baby killers. Merry Christmas, dickwad.
There are now three de facto political parties in the U.S. In order of present strength, these are:Safire fears that if Dean is not the Democrats' nominee, he’ll split off as a third-party spoiler (Nader was a piker!) and help the GOP to tighten its iron grip across America! Yes! [evil laughter]
(1) The Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and most of the statehouses, fat and sassy because the economy is rising and the war is being won.
(2) The Dean-Internet Party, its Bush-despising base so energized as to be frenetic, its leader happy to be the apostle of anger, its bandwidth bandwagon gaining momentum with each pulse of its cursing cursor.
(3) The Old Democratic Party, its base off base, its leadership fractured, its third-way ideology — vainly espoused by the Clintonian Democratic Leadership Council — a lost cause without a rebel voice.
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents… Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a belief in a devil."A couple of readers have E-mailed to warn me to avoid overconfidence about Dubya’s re-election. My feeling is that (assuming Dean is the nominee) Dean’s podium-pounding will translate very poorly into the general election. As Saletan noted (link above) Al Gore’s divisive “People versus the Powerful” call for class warfare was a “demonstrable failure.” There’s no reason to believe that Dean’s negativism will help him beyond the primaries, especially in the face of an improving economy and foreign policy successes. If Howard Dean is the Democrats’ product, I doubt there will be many buyers in 2004.
The poll also shows former Vermont governor Howard Dean surging ahead of his rivals in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, cementing his status as the party's front-runner a month before the first major contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire. But when matched against the president, Dean fares badly, both in a hypothetical trial heat and on who is trusted to handle both national security and domestic issues. Even many Democrats said they still know little about Dean or his views.Red Rover, Red Rover, please send Dean over!
The poll findings show why many Democrats are nervous about Dean as a potential candidate against Bush. They also underscore the concern within the party that, because of the heavily front-loaded primary and caucus calendar, a Democratic nominee may effectively be picked before party activists outside a few early states have had a chance to evaluate the candidates and participate in the decision.If I may add: this was a system designed by DNC chair Terry McAuliffe to front load the primaries and pick a candidate quickly so Democrats could "rally round" before the general election. Instead, the Dems are going to blind-grab a candidate without much debate; the whole process is breeding resentment and fracturing the party. So I'll say it once again: thank heaven for Terry McAuliffe.
As a candidate in the general election, Dean starts well behind Bush in the public's estimation. In an early test of strength, 55 percent of those surveyed said that if the election were held today, they would vote to reelect the president, and 37 percent said they would favor Dean. No other Democrat was tested against Bush in the Post-ABC poll."No other Democrat" was tested? OK!
Dean's Democratic rivals have warned that the former governor's lack of foreign policy experience would hurt him in a general election against Bush, and when asked in the poll whether they trusted the president or Dean more to handle national security and the war on terrorism, 67 percent said Bush and 21 percent Dean. Even on the kind of domestic issues that normally favor Democrats, such as Social Security, health care and education, Bush bests Dean by 50 percent to 39 percent.So Bush leads on domestic policy, foreign policy, the economy, the war on terrorism, Social Security, education, and health care. However, Dean leads on anger, conspiracy theories, endorsements by former vice presidents, and the all-important United Nations vote. This is going to be a squeaker of 1984 proportions.
South Carolina is not going to be John Kerry's firewall -- but a firestorm. A strategy for a New England liberal to lose in New Hampshire and win in South Carolina is not a strategy at all. It is a delusion. Politically speaking, Sen. Kerry is campaigning while dead.Here are the latest S.C. numbers, via Hedgehog Report. Senator Splunge is ahead of…Kucinich. That’s it. Oof.
“And I submit he's [Howard Dean] worse than an anti-war candidate at the time of war, announcing this week that he might have gone to war with Iraq if the U.N. gave us permission, which is an incredible outrage. He's worse than an anti-war candidate. John Kerry's pointing out that he's not even a credible anti-war candidate because he's been all over the map! He was saying that -- well over a year ago that of course Saddam Hussein's a threat. Now he says we're no safer. He's making these sort of almost deranged comments on national security. Republicans are now saying to each other, Maybe we ought to lay off Howard Dean for fear the Democrats come to their senses before -- before it's too late. That's how, out there, they're increasingly seeing Howard Dean.”Since the Democrats view everything the Bush administration does through a political prism, I’m waiting to see how they spin the Homeland Security shift to orange status. My guess is they’ll portray it as a ploy to re-focus attention on security matters where Republicans have more credibility (with good reason).
I posted a second response comment [on the DNC blog], very lucid, no ranting or profanity. Immediately following my second comment, a new poster who identified himself as a Democrat opined that if the Dems could merely offer up a candidate with a credible National Security agenda, he would happily vote for him/her. As of 8 o'clock this evening, both of my comments have been deleted from the blog and my login has been disabled. They even pulled the comment from the registered Democrat in search of a viable candidate. This is their idea of tolerance, inclusion, The Party of the People. They should be selling some nice brownshirts at the DNC online giftshop.I knew this day would come. A couple of months ago, after the launch of the George W. Bush re-election website, the rabble at the DNC Blog complained bitterly about how the GWB Blog doesn’t allow for comments. Here’s the original post (I saved it just for this day) about the Bush Blog and at least one apropos statement:
Actually, what would be typical for that crowd is to allow comments until you say something off message, at whcich time they erase your posts and block your IP address. Now that would be a Republican blog.Oh sweet irony! Actually, that's the perfect definition of the Democratic blog, Mike D. And before you bemoan the comment block on the GWB Blog, allow me to paraphrase a famous proverb: Better to block comments and be labeled a censor, than to delete comments and remove all doubt.
The surprise Al Gore endorsement gave Howard Dean's campaign for President a push -- but was it in the right direction? A Dec. 11-14 Gallup Poll found that 9% of independents are more likely to vote for Dean now that he has Gore's blessing. But 24% said the ex-Veep's support made them less likely to choose Dean.There’s also a longer story about the prospects for the Dems in the South. Or lack thereof.
Perhaps Al Gore really is cursed. Last week this column argued that his endorsement made Howard Dean look unstoppable. Then a diabolus ex machina appeared to throw a weighty obstacle in the good doctor's path. The unearthing of Saddam Hussein has not only left Dr Dean looking visibly discombobulated; it has also relaunched the search for an alternative Democrat to take on George Bush. It may be hard to overhaul the former Vermont governor so late in the day, but that has not stopped the Anyone But Dean lot marching into action again.It’ll sure be fun to watch.
The Democratic presidential candidates woke up Sunday morning to learn that U.S. forces had captured Saddam Hussein. O joy! O joy! O [expletive]!Also in the WashPost, Charles Krauthammer celebrates the de-mythifiction of the great pan-Arab strongman:
And then they find him cowering in a hole, disheveled, disoriented and dishonored. After making those underground tapes exhorting others to give their blood for Iraq and for him, his instantaneous reaction to discovery was hands-up surrender.Austin Bay gives a historical perspective in “Cascading Effects of Saddam’s Capture” and details why bringing Hussein down has far-reaching positive influence. Here’s my favorite excerpt:
End of the myth. It is not just that he did not resist the soldiers with the guns. He did not even resist the medic with the tongue depressor.
Every Middle Eastern autocrat saw the haggard Saddam pulled from the hole. The message: America means to see this war through. To avoid Saddam’s fate means political liberalization. The Iranian mullahs are on notice.Of course, all of this is utterly wasted on Paul Krugman, the skunk at the garden party. Today he sounds just like a Deaniac on the Democratic Underground. All is lost and those of us who think differently are just “waving the flag” to cover up the “truth.” Yeah, whatever. If Iraq turned into a full-functioning democracy tomorrow, Krugman would be complaining about the gerrymandering process.
“History of the Soviet Union”That would certainly help to explain all of Dean’s references to “The Soviet Union” during his Hardball appearance.
“Marxist Existentialism”
“Soviet Foreign Policy”
“Reason and Revolution”
“International Communism”
“Marxist Theory”
and
“Chinese Politics”
Speaking of clear, angry, and just, did you catch Donald Rumsfeld on Saddam? He twitted him in the most humiliating fashion possible. Said Rummy, of our captive, "He had a pistol, but he's alive. That's got to tell you something about him. He's clearly not like the folks he gave $25,000 to, to go do suicide bombings and kill themselves and be done." Ouch, ouch: putting Saddam lower than those Palestinian girls (in many instances). Bravo, Rumsfeld.
"As Saddam Hussein retreats to his secret bed each night, he must know it will end badly for him. Any man who reads as much as he does, and who studies the dictators of modern history, knows that in the end they are all toppled and disdained." —Mark Bowden, in "Tales of the Tyrant," in the May 2002 Atlantic.Indeed.
"If I'd been president, I would have had Osama bin Laden by this time," Clark said at a news conference in Concord, New Hampshire, where he was campaigning for votes in the nation's first primary, January 27.Geez, what a dick. Clark makes it sound like Bush forgot to pick up the dry cleaning or clean the garage. Why it's so simple, and *I* would have done it by now. With Saddam behind bars and a recovering economy, this is what the Democratic party is reduced to: demanding the capture of somebody whom I'm convinced is a coagulated stain on a cave wall.
There was a revealing moment on MSNBC the other night. Chris Matthews asked Dr. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in an American court or at The Hague. "I don't think it makes a lot of difference," said the governor airily. Mr. Matthews pressed once more. "It doesn't make a lot of difference to me," he said again. Some of us think what's left of Osama is already hard enough to scrape off the cave floor and put in a matchbox, never mind fly to the Netherlands. But, just for the sake of argument, his bloodiest crime was committed on American soil; American courts, unlike the international ones, would have the option of the death penalty. But Gov. Dean couldn't have been less interested. So how about Saddam? The Hague "suits me fine," he said, the very model of ennui. Saddam? Osama? Whatever, dude.“Are you gonna make it all 220?”
An article on Friday about the views of L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, about the country's future misstated the weight of the bombs that United States forces have dropped recently on sites believed to harbor urban guerrillas. They are 500 pounds each, not 500 tons.As Maxwell Smart might say: "Missed it by that much."
Daily Kos Fox News (11/18-19): 52% / 41% (+11)Hey, like Polipundit, I don’t think these polls are all that meaningful and a year is a lifetime in politics. But if you’re going to have a poll watch, shouldn’t you be a little more honest in updating the numbers?
Real Clear Politics Fox News (12/4-6): 52% / 34% (+18)
DK Gallup (11/14-16): 50% / 47% (+3)
RCP Gallup (12/5-7): 55% / 43% (+12)
DK NBC News/Wall Street Journal (11/8-10): 51% / 44% (+7)
RCP NBC/WSJ (12/13): 52% / 41% (+11)
RCP NBC/WSJ (12/15): 58% / 34% (+24)
I preferred Dean's more indecisive period just after Baghdad fell last April, when he confessed ambiguity when asked if the United States was better off with Saddam toppled from power. His more recent discovery of the view that it really is a good thing he's gone is more troubling because it raises the obvious question of how you can claim credit for having been against something whose main result you consider good.And here’s David Brooks in today’s NYT:
Dean tried yesterday to show how sober and serious he could be. In fact, he has never appeared so much the dreamer, so clueless about the intellectual and cultural divides that really do confront us and with which real presidents have to grapple.Tom Oliphant in the Globe makes the case that developments in Iraq could shake up the race in New Hampshire while Andrew Sullivan advises Joe Lieberman to make a strong case for his pro-war stance. Things could get interesting.
To the Editor:Well put.
You report that "Saddam Hussein, once the all-powerful leader of Iraq, was arrested without a fight on Saturday night by American soldiers" (front page, Dec. 15).
Suicide bombers, take heed. Your leader did not follow his own advice. There is no honor in death. Man's natural instinct is to live — even if it means surrendering to the enemy.
Fight to live honorably, not to die as someone's pawn.
But one of Saddam's arresting officers said yesterday that the dishevelled former dictator had immediately offered to negotiate when captured on Saturday night.Quote of the day (so far!)
"He said: 'I'm Saddam Hussein, I'm the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate'," recalled Major Brian Reed, operations officer for the first brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division.
Major Reed said he responded to Saddam: "President Bush sends his regards."
Bush told Rumsfeld that the capture must "be handled in a military fashion and be announced from Baghdad," a senior official said. Administration officials explained that they wanted the news to appear to be a victory for the Iraqi people rather than a personal triumph for Bush, who six months before the invasion called Hussein "a guy that tried to kill my dad," a reference to a 1993 assassination plot against former president George H.W. Bush.Can you imagine Bill “The Big Me” Clinton doing the same?
Taking Saddam alive - and giving him all the dignity of a bedraggled hobo - is about as big a propaganda victory as the forces against terror can hope to accomplish.As Tom Brokaw noted this morning (paraphrasing T.S. Eliot): Saddam didn't go with a bang, he went with a whimper.
Gore impersonator: “As Paul Krugman said, George Bush is the worst leader of any nation on earth going back more than 500 years”Now that’s fair and balanced satire.
Dean impersonator: “Really, worse than Hitler?”
Gore: “#3”
Dean: “Pol Pot?”
Gore: “#6”
Twelve months ago, Saddam Hussein was sitting on his solid gold toilet. He’s now on the run, moving every few hours and unlikely ever again to feel even a standard black plastic seat against his bottom. His sons are dead, so there’s no possibility of dynastic succession. There has been a noticeable decline in the number of suicide bombings against Israel, suggesting the intifada is having some problems without its sugar daddy. Conversely, there’s been an increase in pressure on the Saudi Arabian and Iranian regimes.I think the most striking thing about the past year is the new clarity. The United States is no longer going to turn a blind eye to terrorist states and Saudi back-channel funding of Islamofascism. Also, we're not going to say that our allies are allies when they don't do a single thing to help us when we ask (and, in fact, actively campaign against our goals). It's a new era of political incorrectness and it feels so good.
For the July-September quarter, economic growth was 8.2 percent, the fastest since 1984, productivity growth was 9.4 percent, the fastest since 1983, and manufacturing reached its highest level since 1983. Is it pure coincidence that in 1983-84, as today, the nation was deep into the first term of a tax-cutting Republican administration?Later in the day, the Conference Board seemed to answer it:
Revising its year-end economic forecast sharply upward, The Conference Board today projected that real GDP growth will hit 5.7% next year, making 2004 the best year economically in the last 20 years.Of course, we all remember that 20 years ago Ronald Reagan squeaked out re-election over Walter Mondale. Will history repeat itself for the current Republican president? We’ll see!
Lil, Darrah, and Sandra join forces to defeat evilBurton wins reward and takes Jon to something with food (I didn’t watch) making the critical error of leaving the women together to plot. Finally, Sandra gets through to dopey Lil and church-mouse Darrah that their best strategy is to get rid of one of the men.
Item! Dean, talking to Diane Rehm -- the Mother Teresa of Beltway radio -- excoriated Bush for undue privacy in the Sept. 11 investigation. It produced some "interesting" theories, Dean said, such as the idea that the Saudis warned Bush of the imminent attack. Very clever, this; it allowed Dean to move the charge from the fever swamps of Internet forums to the national spotlight. Did he believe it? Oh, no -- but it's interesting, he said, and can't be disproved. OK, then: Dr. Dean sealed his gubernatorial records, and this makes some suspect he was an abortionist who sold the sundered remains to Satanists for Black Mass rituals. Hey, it's an interesting theory. Until we see the records, who knows?GRTWT ASAP.
All these items are part of a disquieting trend: the mainstreaming of the extreme. Think of the GOP at the peak of its pique in the '90s. The Republicans didn't nominate a ranter who trafficked in "interesting" theories about Bill Clinton whacking Vince Foster for discovering the family coke ring. They nominated decent old Bob Dole, America's Poster Dad for erectile dysfunction. The party's nut jobs seethed in the margins -- which is why Bush could later win on the "Kinder-Gentler 2.0" program of compassionate conservatism. Republicans didn't want revenge so much as they wanted to win.
But the Democrats want revenge. For Florida. For Bush's refusal to let France and Germany decide American foreign policy. For invading poor, helpless, never-hurt-a-fly Iraq. For making the Dixie Chicks feel uncomfortable. Not for drilling in ANWR, but for wanting to. For this and a thousand other sins, Bush must pay -- and if al-Qaida detonates a nuke in the Baltimore harbor during President Dean's term, it'll be Bush's fault for toppling the fascists of Iraq without the approval of Syria and China.
To the Editor:Al’s got a gross of “Gore 2008” bumper stickers in his basement.
As a liberal Democrat, I'm dismayed that Al Gore, whose inept 2000 presidential campaign gave us George W. Bush in the White House, has acted to promote Mr. Bush's chances again by endorsing Howard Dean, whom a great many of us believe cannot win.
It was bad enough that Mr. Gore, in an era of peace and prosperity, still could not beat a lightweight like George Bush. Does Mr. Gore have to compromise our chances of regaining the White House next year as well?
In the past nine presidential elections (1968-2000), the 11 states of the former Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, have awarded 1,385 electoral votes. Democratic candidates have won just 270 (20 percent) of them. Which Deanisms -- the war is bad, same-sex civil unions are good, Americans are undertaxed -- will be most helpful to Democrats down there?How about "stop voting with your guns"? They'll love that one.
Faced with a presidential race suddenly recast by Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean, Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and John Kerry sharpened their attacks against Dr. Dean, with Mr. Kerry accusing him of inconsistency on the Iraq war and Mr. Lieberman saying Dr. Dean represented the party's past.That’s killer material there.
In his aptly-entitled play A Man for All Seasons, playwright Robert Bolt dramatizes a conversation between the impertinent William Roper and the discerning Thomas More. Roper, exasperated with the unwavering commitment of More to the rule of law, asks: "So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law?"
More responds:"Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"
Roper, with all the sincerity of our own contemporary zealots of both the right and the left, retorts by exclaiming:"I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"
More replies: "Oh! And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat! This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."
A front-page article on Wednesday about the Pentagon's decision to bar French, German and Russian companies from competing for reconstruction contracts in Iraq referred incorrectly to Germany's role on the United Nations Security Council. It is a temporary member, not a permanent one.Right there on the front page. Tsk tsk tsk.
“The court also voted 5-4 to uphold restrictions on political ads in the weeks before an election. The television and radio ads often feature harsh attacks by one politician against another or by groups running commercials against candidates.”As the kids say: “Duh!” Of course political opponents attack each other in the run-up to an election. The Supreme Court has now decided when and how much we can spend on free speech; is it a matter of time before they decide what we can say?
Horst: [threateningly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.Extra: Moe sends over this wav file for fun. Thanks Moe!
Burns: [recoils in mock horror] Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans!
[hiding behind Smithers] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!
Horst: Stop it!
Man 2: Stop, sir.
Burns: Don't let the Germans come after me. Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.
Man 2: Please stop the `pretending you are scared' game, please.
Horst: Stop it! Stop it!
Burns: [brief pause, then resumes] No! They're so big and strong!
Man 2: Stop it.
Horst: Stop it, Mr. Burns.
Man 2: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.
Burns: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans...
Horst: Burns, STOP IT!
Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.More like the “Grabbiest” Generation.
Help to counter the Dems circus sideshow by donating or giving your time to the campaign to re-elect President Bush. Also, visit or join Blogs for Bush and visit these bloggers who are supporting the “Wictory Wednesday” effort. Thank you.
Dean's problem is that his fibs are increasingly conspicuous. He accused Koppel of spending the debate's first 75 minutes on Iraq, a statement whose falsity was obvious to anyone who had watched from the beginning. Dean also blamed Fox News for having prompted him to talk about the "theory" that Bush had been warned beforehand about 9/11, when in fact Dean had broached that idea on NPR's Diane Rehm Show. Memo to Dean: Clean up your accuracy, or you'll go the way of the guy who just endorsed you.Zing! The Boston Globe was also unimpressed. How’s this for a headline: “Dean mumbles and rambles.”
CARLSON: Terry, one of the reasons so many Washington Democrats don't like Howard Dean, apart from the fact he doesn't like them, is because they recognize he can't win because he's too radical.I dislike Howard Dean for so many reasons, but one is that he has publicly stated that he wants to purge the DNC of Clintonites like Terry. Please, Howard, don’t do it!
Case in point, a week ago, a week and a half ago, he suggested, implied, that President Bush may have been informed about 9/11 ahead of time by the Saudis. He kept open that possibility. That's out of bounds and outrageous, isn't it?
MCAULIFFE: No, it's not.
Oh, I'm gettin' nuttin' for ChristmasAl Gore today: “Saddam Hussein is a bad guy”
Mommy and Daddy are mad.
I'm getting nuttin' for Christmas
'Cause I ain't been nuttin' but bad.
This looks to me like a deja vu presidential election, with the Democratic candidates all resembling their party's past losers and President Bush setting himself up for a 1972- or 1984-style landslide.Kondracke also makes the case that, just like Reagan, Americans generally like President Bush as a person. This is going to contrast sharply with the angry Democratic base and their tempestuous, razor-tongued candidate Howard Dean.
"This is huge," said Donna Brazile, Gore's 2000 campaign manager. "This gives Dean the credibility he's been lacking, from someone from the inside of the party. This will give Dean a tremendous boost in locking down the nomination."The Wash Post article hints that Gore may have endorsed Dean as a way to unify the Democratic party behind one candidate. (And what a candidate!) The flip side of that is Dean can look forward to almost a full year of Republican attacks.
