Not to be too crass, but here's the deal.

Charles Krauthammer says Arafat's actual death will result in violence, because the Palestinians insist on burying him in a holy area of Jerusalem (are there non-holy areas?), and the Israelis will not permit this. They have a grave prepared in Gaza or somewhere.

A long, persistent coma might be in the best interests of peace.

It's not evil to wish such a fate on someone, especially a loathesome killer like Arafat, if such a fate will result in others living rather than dying.

Thanks to Dummocrats.com, who runs down the day's stories in typically thorough fashion.

Posted by: Ace at 07:58 AM | Comments (6)
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If you've been following the debate over whether poll results should be weighted to reflect presumed party ID, you'll get this bit of top-drawer Mickey Kaus snark.

If not-- well, it's only one sentence long anyway.

It's sort of the same joke as his LA Times headline -- my favorite Kaus-snark -- Davis Recalled, Schwarzenegger Elected Governor of California; Davis Aides "Increasingly Confident," but when a joke works, you just keep using it until it stops working, and then you use it a little bit more just to see if there's a chance people will think it's funny again.

That's my philosophy, anyway.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 PM | Comments (9)
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First Obligatory Liberal Media Story: After a Republican Victory, Whine About How Terrible All This is For "Centrists." Don't Mention That It's Even More Terrible For Liberals, Because People Might Just Get to Thinking That Maybe the Republican Victory is Therefore a Good Thing, And We Don't Want Them Thinking That.

The Washington Post comes through: Rightward Shift May Squeeze Centrists.

Second Obligatory Liberal Media Story: After a Republican Victory, Declare That the Most Important Thing Republicans Do is Cede Power to Democrats and Immediately Implement a Liberal Agenda.

Of course? What else would you do after winning a hard-fought campaign, except immediately forfeit your victory the moment you've won? Why, isn't that precisely what Democrats do? The moment Jim Jeffords defected and gave the Democrats unelected but selected control of the Senate, the Democrats immediately offered to begin passing large swaths of the conservative agenda, right?

Riiiiight.

Only a real idiot can try to write this ridiculous obligatory article without busting up giggling so bad that he actually is forced to type the words "giggle, giggle" and "chuckle, chuckle," but fortunately, we have just such a real idiot. His name is Jonathan Alter.

Genius Jonathan figures out that Bush can appease "us" (i.e., liberals) by merely becoming a liberal.

Well, no kidding on that one, Jonathan. I'm sure he could. Did you figure that out all on your own?

On the other hand, what about the majority of the public that voted for Bush on the presumption he'd enact a center-right agenda? Won't they be disappointed?

Oh, yeah: Fuck 'em. They don't count.

Only God's Special Creatures, the precious, dear folk called liberals, need to be -- nay, demand to be -- appeased in such an extraodinary fashion.

We had an election. There is a winner. There is a loser. There is a winning agenda and a losing agenda.

This is the way it works, Jonathan. If you wanted to arrange some sort of power-sharing agreement where we agree we "both win" and we do splitsies down the middle, you should have negotiated terms before the election.

Not after you attempted to win it, and then, thereafter, planned on sticking it to the conservatives if you did.

Posted by: Ace at 09:15 PM | Comments (24)
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He's taken a "turn for the worse." Via MSNBC TV.

Posted by: Ace at 05:28 PM | Comments (18)
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Well, you all knew this was coming. Hardly any point in bringing it up.

Whenever Democrats lose elections -- and they've been on a royal tear on that score for a while now -- they and their liberal media Spirit Squad have three go-to explanations:

1. We didn't get our message out.

2. We're just too goshdarn principled and nice and civil to fight the mean Republicans as viciously as they fight us.

And, of course, their favorite:

3. We're just too smart for the American public; we've got to learn to dumb it down a bit, so that the troglodytes and neanderthals will understand that their lives will be better if we're controlling them.

Yawn. A friend of mine in college was turned down by a girl he really, really liked; she told him, get this, that she liked him too much to date him.

And of course he believed that, because it was pleasing to his ego to believe it. And I had to listen to him for a whole night carrying on about how sick and twisted it was that she wouldn't date a guy because she liked him just too damn much.

And I'm thinking, "Um, you know, there's another possibility you're missing here. Maybe she actually likes you too little to date you, and she's just being nice. Sounds crazy, I know, but think it through."

So, here we go again. Right on schedule. The American public likes liberals too damn much to actually elect them to the Presidency, or even to the Senate.

Over at the amateur leftist webzine Slate, the silly partisan William Saletan just can't get over how sick and twisted the voters are:

Simple but Effective
Why you keep losing to this idiot.

...

f you're dissatisfied with Bush—or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory—you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off?

I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire—don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

...

What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. ....

If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry. You already have legions of people with preparation, stature, expertise, and nuance ready to staff the executive branch of the federal government. You don't need one of them to be president. You just need somebody to win the White House and appoint them to his administration. And that will require all the simplicity, salesmanship, and easygoing humanity they don't have.

But of course the Democrats won't.

Why not?

Well, the trouble is that, while everything William Saletan says is undoubtedly true, he's just too darn smart for the Democrats, and they like him just too much to actually take his advice.

I swear. Sometimes this less resembles a coherent political movement than it does some sort of positive-self-esteem cult. So much of liberal politics is identity politics, and not of the normal race or religion or sexuality kind.

It's an identity politics of ego-stroking, the idea that if you think the right things and vote the right way you are Very Intelligent and Quite Cultured and Morally Superior to the common trash that you pass in the street on your way to Starbucks.

If we just give them certificates-- duly signed by, say, the Secretary of the Interior -- declaring them Better Than All the Rest of Us Lumpenproletariat Trogs, do you think they'll go away, at least as far as politics? That seems to be all they're really after, anyway. Why not just give to them what they so desperately crave and get them out of our hair for forty years or so?

Update: Kimberly/#2 Pencil rips:

I love how lefties constantly insist that IQ is a fallacy, standardized testing is unfair, emotions are more important than intelligence, and such things simply don't matter (especially when testing is used for education reform).

But deep down, they're all just waiting for the moment to scream, "MY IQ IS HIGHER THAN YOURS! So you have to listen to ME because I'm SMART and you're DUMB!" Or something such as we get with all the sore losers today going on about how the "dumb Southerners" voted for Bush. The minute they lose, it's all about IQ.

I've noticed that. Then again, I think there's a touch of that in everyone. I'm proud to be kinda-smart, but when I meet someone who's smarter than I am, I immediately dismiss him as some sort of head-up-his-ass Poindexter.

My rule is that it matters than I'm smarter than Person X, but if Person Y is smarter than me, really, that extra bit of intelligence is entirely wasted, and is actually a drawback, when you think about it. He should spend more time outdoors, hiking or something, like I don't.

Or, as George Carlin (hate him now, but on-point) noted, anyone who drives slower than you is an asshole, but anyone who drives faster is a fucking maniac.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (45)
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Listen, it's getting louder every day...

Right Rainbow notes:

By the way, the biggest loser of this election isnÂ’t Mr. Kerry. ItÂ’s Big Media, whose lies no longer go unchallenged.

This guy thinks so too.

Look, we're not going to displace Big Media. That's silly.

But we don't really have to.

We'll never be more important that the New York Times as a whole.

However, the day is fast approaching when we'll be, collectively -- bloggers, readers, and commeters all -- more important than the New York Times Op-Ed page.

And I'll take that.

USAToday isn't the country's national newspaper anymore, at least as far as opinion and analysis. The internet is.

And they're not getting their monopoly back.*

* Unless, of course, blogging goes the way of CB-Radio, which, let's face it, it probably will next week, and then thirty years from now we'll all be old and drunk and somtimes lapsing into archaic jargon like "fisking" that's every bit as sad and pathetic as "Ten-four, good buddy!" or "I got a double-bubble on my caboose because I broke the double-nickel!"

But, assuming that doesn't happen, which it will, then we're on our way, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 02:15 PM | Comments (13)
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On the phone with Son of Nixon right now.

The topic?

Gloating.

This is the best day of my life.

Giggling like schoolgirls on happygas.

Gloating Highlights:

Buzz on Boston talk radio is that Massachusetts SJC Chief Justice Margaret Marshall re-elected George Bush. By demanding that the court take up the gay marriage issue -- and force it on an unwilling population -- she inspired, directly, 11 anti-gay-marriage amendments, some in key states, and one in Ohio.

A grateful nation thanks you, Ms. Marshall.

Next, whoever put Juan Williams on FoxNews last night deserves a huge bonus. Son of Nixon's favorite moment (which didn't quite happen, but almost did):

BRIT: So, Juan. We're giving Florida and Ohio to Bush. What do you think of that? Juan...? Juan...? Are you all right, Juan? Do you want a glass of water, Juan?

Howard Stern has apparently turned on erstwhile liberal ally Jon Stewart, asking the key question: "Why would anyone listen to Jon Stewart? He's an idiot, and he's not even funny."

Al Franken and Bill Maher are spinning the brutal defeat as good for them, personally. See, they're comedians (or so they say), and a humorously incompetent President like Bush will just make them rich. Yayyyy.

The best part: Son of Nixon notes that, in a President's second term, he sort of has to take it easy, because he doesn't want to upset the apple-cart for his Vice President and political heir. In this case, however, neither Bush nor Cheney will ever run for elective office ever again, so Bush is free to pursue, as SoN puts it, "all sorts of crazy-ass shit." The kind of shit that's sooo crazy-ass that even hard-core conservatives say, "Now look here, Old Bean. I'm all for unilateralism and all, but I don't know if we can just invade a country for 'looking at us funny'."

That level of absolutely lunatic wingnut shit. That's what I'm all about.

And the liberals are going to hate it.

Cry.

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (27)
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Ahhhh, I'm so glad partisan liberals are so committed to fair play and democracy as to be above dirty Republican trickery.

Cry, you vile lunatics.

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (13)
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Three reasons:

1. We expanded our strength in the Senate. For some time, conservatives have been talking (and talking, and talking, and talking) about the so-called "nuclear option" to end obstructionist fillibusters on justices. Problem is, you still need at least 50 Senators to vote for the procedural change, and we didn't have that-- Snowe, Collins, Chaffee, the Senator from Brigadoon, and most likely John McCain wouldn't go along with the plan.

Well, we now have 55 Senators. Hopefully, the new ones will decide that we cannot continue with a minority of Senators imposing a veto on judicial appointments.

Actually, given Bush's mandate, the Democrats might stop fillibustering now, but I wouldn't count on it.

2. Had Kerry won, the Democrats would have been associated with economic prosperity for the next fifty years. Clinton inherited a quickly-expanding economy and got out of Dodge just as the wheels came off the wagon. Leaving Bush, of course, with a recession.

Now the economy is growing again, but it hasn't quite begun growing like the gangbusters late nineties economy we've now (rather foolishly) sort of come to expect as the new normal. It might soon get to that level.

But imagine if Kerry had been elected. Now imagine the economy taking off, as it will probably do, in January.

Imagine the talking points. Republicans = recession. Democrats = rampaging prosperity.

Honestly, that could have all but killed the Republican Party. I've had nightsweats over that scenario for two years.

Now Bush will preside over an expanding economy for the next four years (knock, knock, spit, spit). Driving a stake through the heart of the rhetorical value of the mantra "the Clinton boom."

Ummm, that last sentence is pretty inelegant. You know what I'm getting at.

3. We will continue to perservere in the War on Terror, and psychopathic Islamofascists will not think they've "won" by influencing our election-- except, perhaps, in the way opposite to the one they'd intended. This, of course, is most important of all, because this isn't just about politics, this is about the security of the United States of America.

Our enemies are now on notice: We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not give up until we have won this war.

Bush said it, and we as a nation mean it.

Four more years of hell, Al Qaeda.

Cry.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (21)
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Cry.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (2)
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