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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Friday, December 24, 2004
This will be my last post for several days, although I'll probably stop in again before the New Year. As a final assault on the personal dignity and religious freedom of any readers who may happen to be Christians, I'd like to wish you all Happy Holidays. Donald Rumsfeld has become the latest VIP to tour Iraq. He did something that I believe every senior Anglo/American official touring Iraq has done for the past year: he entered the country with no prior notice and was gone before his visit could be widely known. The visit will probably help with Rumsfeld's political troubles, but are these hit and run visits supposed to convince us that the project is going well? This layer of surprise seems very much like an admission that even one target, traveling under heavy guard and completely inaccessible to average Iraqis, can't be protected without the further device of secrecy. In only five weeks, we are preparing to hold national elections. Holding such elections successfully means protecting thousands of targets, throughout the country and simultaneously, which have been widely publicized in advance and are fully accessible to ordinary Iraqis. Is there even a slight rational basis for believing this can be accomplished? Department of Unintentional/Unconscious Self-Satire This morning, the high court considered whether King County -- the state's largest and a stronghold for Gregoire -- should be allowed to add to the recount 723 ballots that weren't counted originally because of mistakes by county election workers.... A Pierce County Superior Court judge on Friday granted the state Republican Party's motion for a temporary restraining order to stop King County from counting the newly discovered ballots. King County, the state Democratic Party and the secretary of state appealed that ruling. Unless the Pierce County order is reversed, Democrats argued, voters will be disenfranchised through no fault of their own. Republicans countered that the real harm would be if the newly discovered ballots are allowed to be counted so long after the election. Seattle Times, 12/22/04 After a bruising election and two recounts, Democrat Christine Gregoire emerged as the winner by a 130-vote margin in Washington state's astonishingly close governor's race.... Gregoire's lead in the statewide hand recount widened from 10 to 130 today after a state Supreme Court decision allowed King County to reconsider 732 mistakenly rejected ballots.... Gregoire said she was not declaring victory and would not ask Rossi to concede. Outside the Capitol, dozens of Republican protesters chanted "Count all votes!" Seattle Times, 12/24/04 Saturday, December 18, 2004
Good news for parents who have excess infants lying about: thanks to an innovative new EPA program, you can now poison those unwanted brats and earn exciting prizes, including cash, T-shirts, and even a camcorder. This nation, which once was deservedly both the envy and admiration of almost all the world, is now governed by people who actually think this is a good idea. You really don't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. |
