Does anyone else care that today is Election Day?

[Bastastic]

So, today is Election Day. I studied on my state propositions, read up on who's running for what and what they really stand for and I am ready to hit the polls. The funny thing is, out of all my friends and co-workers I am the only one voting. My uncle is a history teacher at a middle-school, and he isn't voting. When asking everyone why not, the common response was, "I don't care". So everyone has a mindframe of who I am talking about, I am 23. My friends are the same age, but my co-workers range from 20-50. Yet, no one is going to vote. One of the older men here said he never voted in his life. It feels as if I'm the outcast here. Am I missing something?

[Aplomb]

Bastastic, I voted early last Friday and the time was 1pm to start 2:30 to finish. The lines today extend outside of the facilities where voting is taking place. Two co-workers tried to vote on their lunch hours today but there was at least an hour wait at that point.

Voting areas have been changed here in Denver from precincts to areas where anybody from any precinct or district in Denver can vote so that more voters can vote. That's what I've been told. What I see is that the people in my housing project can walk a few feet to go vote. I can't speak for all of Denver, but from where I am, it looks like this is a way of catering to democrats, making it easier to get more of those votes from those who otherwise would not be voting --and still may not, just because the line is so long, even though the weather is certainly decent enough to be standing in.

[American Patriot]

Been there, done that today, and yes. Read my blog ok?

[mike taylor]

Today I am ashamed to say I am from Minn. ...Muzzie Keith Ellison won..in his acceptance speech, people were cheering, etc, and then, he said it..god is good. The cheering subsided and the local Fox network immediately cut back to the 2 Station news casters who quickly said that Ellison was Muslim and they would get back to his victor later. We are doomed....

I am afraid for what is going on in this state in regards to politics. Praise GOD I can put my trust in him.

Hope your state is faring better...

[Joey Bagadonuts]

Hiya Bas,

Yep, I voted today too.
I expected long lines even though Florida's "early voting" began on Oct. 23rd.
but I walked in...NO wait at all.
I checked in, voted, and was in the parking lot in under 10 minutes.

I had minimal interest in voting this year. I think that the negativity, partisanship, bickering, scandals and the bitterness has just turned me off. The only two things that got me motivated were the ideas that the Wicked Witch of California (Nancy Pelosi) might be Speaker Of The House, and Howard Dean (Heyahhhhhhhhh) being able to smirk tomorrow morning.

My choice for the "I just can't believe that people are so F-ing stupid" nomination?
The people of Massachusetts who voted to return an alcoholic killer to the US Senate AGAIN!




***

[Malsua]

Well, at least Bush will get to blow the dust off his Veto stamp.

Pelosi's 100 hours of horror's will be starting in January.

If you're not familiary with that..

It's a 3 step process.

Raise taxes, oh sorry, their phrase is "Roll up tax cuts".
Raise the minimum wage which will put people out of work.
Reduce Student loan rates. Which makes no sense to me, was this really a big deal other than it's just more tax and spend from a communist?

http://www.speaker.gov/library/econ/...100Hours.shtml

[Ryan Ruck]

Oh yes, I remembered for sure. In fact, I have voted in every election (including primaries and off year elections) since I registered at 18.

But, it looks like today is a dim day for our great Republic...

All I can say is that I will be able to sleep with a clear conscience.

I predict we will be seeing the helos taking off from Baghdad much the same way they did in Saigon. The Libtards are determined to make this Vietnam 2.0 come hell or high water, and this election win might just give them the power then need to make it happen.

I also heartily recommend getting as many non-PC firearms (ARs, AKs, SKSs, FALs, etc.) and full-capacity magazines that you can afford before January. I'm betting that the Dems will try for a new AWB, and this time it will be much harsher and will not sunset. I hope to God I am wrong but I'm afraid I am not. As they say, "Buy it cheap, stack it deep!"

[American Patriot]

I will be visiting the gun shows, and picking up stuff.

[Malsua]

Oh yes, I remembered for sure. In fact, I have voted in every election (including primaries and off year elections) since I registered at 18.

But, it looks like today is a dim day for our great Republic...

All I can say is that I will be able to sleep with a clear conscience.

I predict we will be seeing the helos taking off from Baghdad much the same way they did in Saigon. The Libtards are determined to make this Vietnam 2.0 come hell or high water, and this election win might just give them the power then need to make it happen.

I also heartily recommend getting as many non-PC firearms (ARs, AKs, SKSs, FALs, etc.) and full-capacity magazines that you can afford before January. I'm betting that the Dems will try for a new AWB, and this time it will be much harsher and will not sunset. I hope to God I am wrong but I'm afraid I am not. As they say, "Buy it cheap, stack it deep!"

Dems don't have enough to override a veto. The only reason it went through before was BJ signed it.

I think you're right about Iraq. I say fuck it. Rangel wants to defund the military. I say go for it. Eliminate the military, all branches. fold it up, send 'em home. Wait for the ass raping that's going to come and in the aftermath, what will rise, will be the end of democrats and socialists in this country for 100 years to come.

[Ryan Ruck]

Dems don't have enough to override a veto. The only reason it went through before was BJ signed it.

You are a bit more optimistic than me Mal.

But... Remember campaign finance reform? Remember Bush's promise to sign a renewal of the AWB if it came across his desk?

Gun Owners Upset About Gonzales' Support for Gun Ban

Gun ban concerns

Of greater concern to some conservatives, Gonzales has said he supports the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act -- as well as an extension of the now-expired ban on "assault weapons."

In an email alert to its members, Gun Owners of America, a Second Amendment group, warned that Gonzales not only supports President Bush on reauthorizing the federal assault weapons ban - but Gonzales also has indicated that gun control is a "heart-felt position of his own."

GOA notes that at his confirmation hearing, Gonzales "spoke of his brother, who is a Houston SWAT officer, and said, 'I worry about his safety and the types of weapons he will confront on the street.'"

"Hence, he (Gonzales) supports a prohibition on semi-automatics that, in truth, only amounts to a ban on ugly guns," GOA told its members.

"GOA activists are certainly aware of the fact that President Bush has repeatedly trumpeted his support for the Clinton semi-auto ban, which expired last September. But every time Bush has opened his mouth on this issue, GOA activists have led the way in bombarding the White House."

It's time to take President Bush to the "political woodshed" once again, GOA said in the email.

"No, we probably won't change his mind on this issue. But if we barrage his office with phone calls, faxes and e-mails, it is very possible that we will increase his reluctance to push the ban," the email said.

"So please make sure you contact President Bush," the email concludes. "While some might think that an anti-gun Attorney General is limited in the amount of damage he can inflict upon the Second Amendment, we can be sure that his position on critical court cases could affect our gun rights for generations to come."

Gun Owners of America is urging its members to express "outrage" that President Bush "would nominate an Attorney General who supports a federal ban on semi-automatic firearms."

The email message includes a "pre-written letter" that GOA members can send to President Bush, reminding him of their opposition to any gun ban - and reminding him that he was re-elected "in large part, because gun owners opposed the cockeyed positions of your opponent."

I think you're right about Iraq. I say fuck it. Rangel wants to defund the military. I say go for it. Eliminate the military, all branches. fold it up, send 'em home. Wait for the ass raping that's going to come and in the aftermath, what will rise, will be the end of democrats and socialists in this country for 100 years to come.

As I said, just like Saigon...

[MinutemanCO]

This just plain stinks. It feels as if there is a sense of doom creeping over our nation... as if this election was preordained. It's possible it's just my own depression over election results and the impending future of our republic that has me down.

Thinkin' about continuing to prepare and arm myself and family...

[Malsua]

The problem I Ryan is that communist democrat party wants the benefits of the military when it suits their goals. I'm serious, wrap it up. Pull them all home from EVERYWHERE. Cancel all international commitments to anyone. CEASE being a power, super or otherwise. Let france, project power. Let Iran send humaniatarian aid to anyone. Simply let anyone know, attacks on US soil will be met with nukes as we have no other defenses. End of story.
I'm so sick of the fucking socialists in this country that want to take EVERYTHING I have worked for my whole life and give it to someone else. Eliminate the military entirely.

[Ryan Ruck]

The problem I Ryan is that communist democrat party wants the benefits of the military when it suits their goals.

Precisely. The Libtards want to turn the military into a big "Meals on Wheels" wearing camo.

I'm so sick of the fucking socialists in this country that want to take EVERYTHING I have worked for my whole life and give it to someone else.

Just remember the words of Hillary the Great: "We're Going to Take Things Away From You on Behalf of the Common Good"

That is what we have to look forward to...

[falcon]

This is a good start as to how I am feeling, of how the Commies are taking over this country.

'Dinosaur' media still not extinct: In defense of Rummy and Bolton

By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, November 7, 2006

The so-called “drive-by media” demonstrated their power in the election results. Demoralized by negative coverage of the war in Iraq, voters brought to power a Democratic Party that will pressure the Bush Administration to leave Iraq before victory is achieved. Those who remember how a Democratic Congress paved the way for a disastrous American withdrawal from Vietnam understand that it is not too early to talk about the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq and what it will mean for U.S. national security.

The so-called “dinosaur media” that played such a prominent role in the Vietnam debacle, when they were at the height of their power, demonstrated that they are not extinct but very much alive. They have been resurrected to do their dirty work in another war. This time, however, the implications of a U.S. military defeat will not be confined to a far-away part of the world. They will be worldwide in scope.

Suggesting the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as even some conservatives are doing, misses the point. Rumsfeld has been carrying out the orders of the President. It’s the President whose administration has failed to articulate the case for the war. Bush’s State Department has degenerated to the point of standing by a U.S. official who went on Al-Jazeera and called U.S. Iraq policy stupid and arrogant. Now, with the pending launch of its English-language spin-off, Al-Jazeera International, the media opposition to the Iraq war and the poisoning of the public discourse on Iraq can only grow here and abroad. Whatever progress is being made on the military battlefield, the war is clearly being lost in the media. And this area, as al Qaeda knows and has said, is the key to the outcome.

Here, the election results demonstrate the shortcomings of the “New Media” that Republicans were counting on to save their hides. Stroked during a “Radio Day” event at the White House, Republican radio talk-show hosts tried hard to motivate conservatives to turn out and vote Republican, but the campaign fell far short.

If the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 was a testament to the power of conservative talk radio, the election results in 2006 have to be seen as strong evidence of the reverse. Simply put, conservative talk radio was unable to motivate the conservative base to vote Republican in sufficient numbers to win. It wasn’t good enough to try to scare Republicans into contemplating a Democratic victory. Alternatively, suggesting that talk of a Democratic victory was a liberal plot to demoralize Republicans didn’t work, either. Putting on a happy face, Rush Limbaugh said on election day: “What happens if they [the Democrats] lose? Nobody’s talking about what happens if they lose, they’ve set their bar so high. What will be the outcome if they lose?” This was wishful thinking that failed to grasp the nature of the discontentment with the administration that came from conservatives themselves.

That is not to say that conservatives did not turn out. It’s just that they didn’t vote in many cases for Republicans. The power of social conservatism was still demonstrated in the fact that seven states approved same-sex marriage bans, a so-called medical marijuana measure went down in South Dakota, and a state amendment to legalize marijuana was defeated in Colorado.

One part of the new media, Fox News, turned in a dubious performance, as its anchors, even the conservative ones, relentlessly promoted the candidacy of liberal Democrat Harold Ford in Tennessee, offering him up to viewers as a “conservative” who was even “pro-life.” National pro-life representatives told me that they tried in vain to provide Fox News with the facts about Ford’s pro-abortion voting record. It was as if a corporate decision had been made to support Ford for the Senate and misrepresent his record. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News parent company News Corporation, was backing Ford as well as Senator Hillary Clinton. Ford lost, but Clinton is now poised, with the possible support of Murdoch, to seek the presidency in 2008.

My columns on the leftward drift of Fox News have generated interesting reactions. One came from Australia, where Murdoch began his media empire: “Mr Murdoch’s helping of leftist candidates is no surprise to long-time readers of ‘The Australian’ [a Murdoch newspaper]. Although their editorials are mostly pro-freedom and free-market, when it comes to elections they back whoever they think will win anyhow. This shows that Mr. Murdoch is more interested in power and influence. I would suggest he may have some vague conservative instincts, but these come a poor second to the accumulation of power. I therefore believe Fox was launched to fill a niche and make money for Mr. Murdoch rather than as a principled alternative to the MSM [mainstream media], and if Mr. Murdoch thinks using Fox to pander to leftists will increase his influence then he’ll do it. To put it another way, he has permanent interests rather than permanent politics.”

One factor in the Democratic victory, as the exit polls indicate, was congressional corruption. But corruption can be defined in different ways. Some conservatives believe the Congress abandoned conservative principles through reckless spending and the failure to address issues like border control. That, too, can be considered a form of corruption. Ironically, during a year when David Limbaugh released a book alleging that the Democratic Party was intellectually and morally corrupt, it looks like voters, including conservatives, held the Republican Party more accountable in this area.

Curiously, some conservative radio talk-show hosts had alleged that the Mark Foley sex scandal was a Democratic Party dirty trick, rather than a legitimate and real example of Republican corruption. A more conservative House GOP coming into office next January will not be able to avoid coming to grips with the infiltration of the party by gay Republicans actually committed to the social agenda of the Democratic Party. Not only Foley but retiring Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe, who is accused of having inappropriate contacts with former male congressional pages, had been leading a double-life on Capitol Hill but getting rewarded for it by Congressional leaders.

A different kind of corruption was in evidence in decisions made by the national Republican Party. Putting the retention of power over principle, the White House backed liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee for a Senate seat in Rhode Island, in a primary against an excellent conservative challenger, after Chafee had sabotaged the nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the U.N. in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chafee lost, and the White House ploy has backfired in a big way. Now, with Democratic gains in the Senate, Bolton’s nomination is once again in limbo. His temporary appointment expires at the end of the year.

Many conservatives will argue that Bolton has done a magnificent job for the U.S. at the U.N. and that the White House should mount another campaign on his behalf, in order to get him a permanent appointment. Bolton’s fate will tell us a lot about the direction of the administration.

www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2454047.2215277776.html

[falcon]

The following is a must read, very long so here you go.


The Only Issue This Election Day

By Orson Scott Card
There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

The rest of the article;
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/nl51.html

[Aplomb]

Like minds...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/1...teyn12.article

U.S. must prove it's a staying power



November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.


I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.

The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.

Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.

Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.

What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.

For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.

Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"

On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
©Mark Steyn, 2006

[Sean Osborne]

Atypical Mark Steyn article... points out lots of problems and offers not a single hint of a solution to those problems.

I responded to this article very early this morning to my email group of government, military and civilian intellgence officers:

Okay Mark Steyn... say we don't run from Mesopotamia as we did from Saigon, Beirut, the Iranian Desert or Mogadishu. Exactly how do we now accomplish the mission in Iraq given the new political paradigm in Washington? How do we do it?

Rumsfelds release from his duties was not the defining event in the politicization of the war in Iraq.

The assignment a Paul Bremer as grand civilian overlord of Baghdad was. Before that the decision not to show the American flag in Iraq was based purely on politics as was the self-denial that America was not in Iraq as a conquering army. Stupid is as stupid does, and it's unwarranted political meddling in military affairs - which warfighting exclusively is.

When a war gets as screwed up by politics as Iraq currently is - you need a leader with gonads made of titanium to stand up and irrevocably decide to un-screw it as forcefully and as rapidly as possible.

[Malsua]

While I really don't have an opinion of Paul Bremer, such a position is inevitable. There has to be someone in charge. Are you saying that it simply should have stayed under military command?