2006 archive

Listen.

Here.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving? Good cooking advice here.

I will certainly experiment with the suggestion about gravy towards the end of the interview.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was ousted as Senate majority leader four years ago because of what some interpreted as racially insensitive remarks about America’s segregationist past, made a surprise comeback today by being elected to his party’s No. 2 spot in the chamber by a single vote after lobbying hard for the job.

Does that mean that Bob Novak was correct

. . . For good reason, the GOP often is called “the stupid party.”

While an unpopular Iraq war and an unpopular George W. Bush were primary causes of last Tuesday’s Republican rout, massive public disapproval of the Republican-controlled Congress significantly contributed. While abandoning conservative principles, the spendthrift House had become chained to special corporate interests represented by K Street lobbyists.

Jonah Goldberg weighs in here. (Yeah, I know I linked to this in my previous post, but he covered a lot of ground.)

The remarks that led to Lott’s loss of position are pretty well known.

Of course, the issue was not that he said that if the country had elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond to the presidency “30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

The issue was the blind lack of awareness of how saying something like that, about a person who ran for the Presidency on a segretation platform, in public might somehow have reverberations.

Dammit, after the century of the civil rights struggle, someone who is not able to realize what he should not say in public (private is another matter) offends the national decorum, if nothing else. And his selection to this post indicates that his political colleagues endorse that offense.

But at least his house will be rebuilt, if not his Senate.

.

Is it merely a sense of entitlement, or is it just plain old avarice:

Gift registries have been set up to help friends of Arkansas first lady Janet Huckabee choose gifts for the Huckabees’ new half-million dollar home as they prepare to leave the governor’s mansion.

(snip)

“Have people never heard of a housewarming? … Can I afford the towels? Yes. That’s not the point,” she told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “They’re excited that we have a new house and they wanted to do something nice for us.”

On Tuesday, the governor criticized media reports about the Web-site registries at Target Corp. and Dillard’s Inc. stores.

Huckabee said the gift registries — first reported by Stephens Media Group — were put together by his wife’s friends for a housewarming party.

er–unseemely seems to be hardly a strong enough term for such acquisitiveness. But it’s the same country-club sense of entitlement that Jonah Goldberg referred to here.

Half-million dollar houses don’t need to be warmed–they’re already hot.

I wrote earlier about the glories of Caller ID and of the antics of Republican operatives on the telephone.

Well, John Law got one:

A former telemarketer has agreed to plead guilty in a Republican phone-jamming plot against New Hampshire Democrats four years ago.

Shaun Hansen faces two federal counts of conspiracy to commit interstate telephone harassment in a deal with prosecutors. No sentencing date was posted.

I seldom use drive-throughs. I think I got my fill of them at Mickey-D’s when the kids were young. But I had occasion to use one at a bank on Saturday while on the way to visit my mother.

We wheeled into the drive-through lane, third vehicle in a row. A van was at the front.

We sat.

Nothing was happening. The little carrier box was in its nest, but nothing was happening. I remarked to my friend that, perhaps, the driver was filling out paperwork–maybe a loan application. She remarked that perhaps I was not cut out to use drive-throughs.

Then I saw him in his side-view mirror.

An older gentleman (who am I kidding? Probably about my age) yakking on a cell phone.

And yakking.

The Car Talk guys took two phone calls.

Then he saw the box.

He reached out and took it.

And kept yakking.

Meanwhile, the Car Talk guys finished another phone call.

And then he drove away drove away.

With the box.

Still yakkiing.

Fortunately, Suntrust had a spare carrier box.

The Commonwealth of Virginia does a thumbs-down the State Police’s use of 10-codes; they have concluded that, rather than clarity, they make for confusion:

But the potential for trouble is clear. A few years ago, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called in a “10-50” while working in Maryland, police said. To Montgomery police, that means “officer down.” Squad cars rushed to the scene — to discover that, in the agent’s code, “10-50” meant traffic accident.

What would happen if George Bush and Nancy Pelosi sought relationship advice from a pro?

Find out here.

Yesterday was Return Day, when candidates to to Georgetown, in the center of the state, to hear the returns announced reconcile after the campaign. The tradition is over 200 years old and dates from the day when the only way promptly to know who won the poll was to travel to the County Seat and hear the announcement on the courthouse steps.

Return Day, originally the day when election results were announced in Sussex County, was full of smiling politicians and their fans. Candidates — the elected and the defeated — said they had a great time and were happy to put the campaign season behind them.

Indeed, the event officially concluded with Sussex County Democrat, Republican, Independent and Libertarian party leaders literally burying a hatchet with sand.

Maybe we should export this to the rest of the country.

. . . of the people who wound up looking good, and came off looking bad. Here is his list; follow the link for his reasoning:

THE WINNERS

1. George H. W. Bush.

2. Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer.

3. Joe Lieberman.

4. John McCain.

5. Joe Biden.

—
LOSERS

1. Dick Cheney.

2. George Allen.

3. Dennis Hastert.

4. Tom DeLay.

5. Karl Rove.

One man’s take:

. . . All the states Lincoln fought against are now the bastions of his own party.

(snip)

The GOP is now very much the party of Dixie; and the consequence of this election is that the Congressional leadership is even more Southern than it was before. The irony is that it was the moderate Republicans who were disproportionately punished electorally by the extremists in their midst. And so the party that lost because of its extremists now sees itself more dominated by the extremists. Nixon’s cynical ploy – played beyond the extreme by Rove – has, in other words, come back to haunt and defeat his party in the end. Because it over-reached.

There seem to have been relatively few polling problems yesterday, and those that happened were readily explained, despite some dirty tricks which led the Commonwealth of Virginia to call for help from the FBI.

No doubt because Katherine Harris was otherwise occupied.

And, despite the hysteria in certain areas of Left Blogistan, there is no indication of hacked voting machines.

We owe thanks to the poll workers–often poorly or unpaid, many of them volunteers–who pulled this thing off with respect for the procedures of American democracy.

I’m not saying I agree, but I think it’s worth thinking about.

Americans have put the breaks on one-party rule. They have judged the GOP to be guilty of hubris – a vice that typically afflicts those who wield clout without accountability – and so they have decided on the punishment, which is that now President Bush, in his lame duck years, must share power with those whom he only recently demonized as bad for America. He has basically spent the political capital that he boasted about in November of 2004, and now the bill has come due.

Americans decided tonight that Bush should be held accountable for the $2-billion-a-week stasis strategy in Iraq, and that his party should be held accountable for the institutional corruption in Washington. They did not signal a rejection of conservatism per se, nor did they endorse a return to liberalism. Their essential message was far more practical. They said to the ruling Republicans: you had your shot at doing things your way, you’ve screwed up, so now the other side gets a chance.

I made it to the polling place about 10.

Surprisingly enough, for mid-morning, there was a fairly steady stream of voters in and out, though I did not have to wait.

One of my neighbors, who was serving as a poll worker, told me the turnout had been pretty good, not great.

I voted. Straight Democrat. Despite what I said here, I decided that the message was more important than the man.

It’s time for the forces of Truth, Justice, and the American Way to reclaim the national polity.

A 54-year-old Orange Park man credits two small Bibles in his shirt pocket for saving his life when they stopped a bullet.

But, then again, here.

Hear them here:

NPR talks with voice over narrators who specialize in negative ads. (I heard the interview–it was a hoot, especially when the narrators unleased their talents on nursery rhymes).

Does anything illustrate the moral, intellectual, and political bankruptcy of the current Federal Administration and its sycophants more than their belief that, to win the election, they must masquerade as Democrats?

Andrew Sullivan on waterboarding.

In my part of the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere, folks who have a chip on their shoulder are said to have an “attytood.”

Sometimes they have a good reason.