Best of the Web Today - November 24, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Giving Thanks That It Wasn't Close
Here's something to be thankful for: "A federal judge on Tuesday denied a request by third-party presidential candidates who wanted to force a recount of Ohio ballots even before the official count was finished," the Associated Press reports from Toledo:
Judge James G. Carr in Toledo ruled that the candidates have a right under Ohio law to a recount, but said it can wait. The judge wrote that he saw no reason to interfere with the final stages of Ohio's electoral process. Officials have said the results will be certified by Dec. 6.
President Bush carried Ohio by more than 136,000 votes, according to the latest numbers from the secretary of state, so this recount effort is a joke, as are the candidate pushing it, Libertarian Michael Badnarik and Green David Cobb--and let's not forget MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who according to blogger Robert Cox has been pushing all kinds of wacky conspiracy theories.
By contrast, here's where things stood on the day before Thanksgiving 2000, according to our column of that day:
The Florida Supreme court had ordered "hand recounts" in three counties, including heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach.
Miami-Dade County election officials had "decided to scrap the full manual recount" in favor of some 10,000 chads in various stages of detachment, which were "expected to be a treasure trove of putative Gore votes."
A lawyer for the Gore campaign who was making the case for counting "dimpled and pregnant chads" turned out to have "argued the opposite point of view on behalf of a candidate in a 1996 Massachusetts congressional election."
Slate's Jacob Weisberg, a diehard Democrat, conceded that the then-veep had "sacrificed most of his ethical advantage by also trying to lay claim to the White House on an unfair and arbitrary basis."
It would be almost three more weeks before the election dispute would be resolved. Isn't it nice not to be going through that all over again?
Of course, not everyone is thankful for this year's decisive election. Yesterday's Boca Raton News reported that mentally disturbed Kerry backers were finding false hope in the Ohio proceedings:
A licensed Florida psychologist who treated 20 John Kerry supporters for "post-election trauma" after their candidate's loss to President Bush said Monday that the Ohio recount had cheered up Democrats and left him without any patients. . . .
"All of a sudden, my phone stopped ringing and the people I was talking to felt more encouraged," [Douglas] Schooler told the Boca Raton News. "Originally, the deafening silence from the Kerry campaign threw people for a loop. Now even Kerry has e-mailed his supporters to say the votes will be counted and the irregularities investigated. That's all they ever wanted to hear."
Oh well, we guess Schooler can give thanks that business will soon be picking up. And what of his prospective patients? We suppose they can take comfort in the knowledge that depression during the holidays isn't all that unusual.
That Old College Try
In a post titled "Glimpse into the mind of a young ohio [sic] bush [sic] voter," a DemocraticUnderground user called "RawMaterials" illustrates the intellectual superiority of Democrats (quoting verbatim):
Yesterday i was out with some old college acquaintance's, the election came up(very easy with me) and i asked whom they voted for here are there response's, age, and vague reasoning. This should help us understand what is needed to get this kind of voter next time. there ages range between 21-23 male, smart, athletic, but not "into" politics or news.
note, this was in a car ride home i didn't have time to relay get into a discussion and set them straight or open up there minds to reality.
but this is still good info to work with.
The first male, said he was undecided all the way up to election day, and went with bush. here were the reasons, first "I knew what bush track record was and what to expect, but not with Kerry." "Kerry could have gotten elected and just removed all the troops from Iraq, and then one week later we would be getting bombed".
The second male, said he didn't watch any debates(thats when i chimed in so you voted for bush, because there would have been no way if you watch the debates you could have voted for him, he laft)his main reason for voting for bush is that he never relay new what Kerry stood for, and didn't want to vote for the "anybody but bush logic".
I started to get into economic things and how bush is running up deficits, and the second male stated that most of the recession was Clinton's fault. i just about died, i quickly chimed in about greenspan and interest rates and how Clinton did his job as a president and that was to create a surplus and control spending that the other market factors were out of his control (mostly). this enlightened him.
so how do the democrats fix this, I think they need to start to get dirty they need to relay attack the Republicans. they also need to make sure they have a candidate that people can understand and identify with.
granted these guys didn't know allot about whats going on but it looks like there the norm. I also feel that they might have been heavily influenced by there parents, and are not quite ready to be informed and make critical decisions on their own. There is hope for voters like this because they are very bright.
We're Winning
"Iraq's most wanted man, Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hit out at ulemas (Muslim theologians) for having 'betrayed the mujahedeen,' especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a recording on an Islamist Internet site on Wednesday," Agence France-Presse reports from Dubai:
"Oh ulemas of the nation . . . you have betrayed us in the darkest circumstances. You have delivered us to our enemy . . . you have left the mujahedeen to confront (alone) the greatest world power," said the voice attributed to Zarqawi, enemy number one of the United States in Iraq.
AFP notes that the message "could not immediately be authenticated." But if true, such lashing out by Zarqawi is certainly a good sign.
Meanwhile, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reports that North Korea has joined the conspiratorial chorus regarding the Osama bin Laden videotape:
The United States deliberately aired a video of Osama bin Laden just days before the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election to help George W. Bush win, North Korea said on Tuesday, citing comments from Cuban President Fidel Castro.
In an interview on Nov. 16 with the Korean Central Broadcasting Station, the Cuban president "disclosed that the video of the al Qaeda leader, aired on Oct. 29, was a deliberate broadcast to help the reelection of Bush," the television, monitored in Seoul, said.
When communist dictators like Castro and Kim Jong Il are reduced to parroting Walter Cronkite's nutty conspiracy theories, it's a sign that they too are getting desperate
Call It a Blogathon
Spirit of America, the nonprofit group whose good works in Iraq our colleague Dan Henninger has chronicled here and here, is trying an interesting new fund-raising method: enlisting bloggers to raise money from their readers. So far SOA has signed up eight "teams" and 50 individual bloggers, who've raised more than $21,000 collectively. The top two money-raisers are among our favorite blogs, Little Green Footballs ($7,338 at this writing) and Roger L. Simon ($4,690). If you're interested in participating, making a donation or just seeing how the effort is going, click the link atop this item.
CAIR Package
Canadian commentator David Frum reports that two weeks ago he and his newspaper, the National Post, "were served with a notice of libel by the Canadian branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR":
The Post and I are not alone. Over the past year, CAIR's Canadian and U.S. branches have served similar libel notices on half a dozen other individuals and organizations in the United States and Canada. Each case has its own particular facts, yet they are linked by a common theme: That we defendants have accused CAIR (in the words of the notice served on me) of being "an unscrupulous, Islamist, extremist sympathetic group in Canada supporting terrorism."
For years now we've been hearing cries of "censorship" from the left whenever anyone so much as criticizes those with anti-American views. Will these supposed champions of free expression say anything about CAIR's efforts to use the legal system to silence its critics? We're not holding our breath.
A Small Step for Democracy
"Saudis yesterday took the first step toward voting in the Kingdom's historic municipal elections, which are scheduled to start on Feb. 10, as voter registration opened at 140 polling stations in the Riyadh region," reports the Jeddah-based Arab News:
Some of those signing up said they hoped the process would lead to more reforms. "I am happy because this is the beginning of (implementing) democracy," said Mansour Shalhub, a Foreign Ministry employee who was among the first to register. . . .
But Saudi women, who fought fiercely to seek participation in the first-ever elections, are to be left out of the democratic process, with promise to be allowed in the next elections.
"I wish women were allowed to participate, as much as I wish they were allowed to drive in this country," said Abdullah Al-Rajaan, a businessman who was the first to register in Al-Olaya. "I would have been the first in bringing my wife to the ballot center, and the first to buy her a car," he added. "This is the first, small step. God willing, one day we will become like other countries, but it will take time."
Obviously this is far from ideal, but let's give the Saudis half a cheer for coming this far. As for the role of women in Saudi Arabia, it strikes us that the country could use a Rosa Parks.
Arafat Doc Rules Out AIDS--or Does He?
The cause of Yasser Arafat's death remains a mystery, with conflicting reports today about the views of Ashraf al-Kurdi, Arafat's Jordanian physician. The South African Press Association says that al-Kurdi gave an interview to a magazine in which he "rejected any suggestion" that the terrorist leader died of AIDS: "No, certainly not. HIV examinations were carried out, the results were clearly negative," al-Kurdi reportedly said.
But United Press International quotes al-Kurdi as telling an Amman newspaper, "The medical report did not specify the tests and examinations which Arafat underwent before his death or reveal the results of those tests." So were there tests or weren't there? Can we believe anything these guys say?
Ah well, one thing we know for sure: Arafat is in stable condition after dying at a Paris hospital.
Reuters 'Reporting' Seen as Editorializing
"Bush Cabinet Moves Seen as Stifling Dissent"--headline, Reuters, Nov. 23
Great Moments in Organized Labor
Charles Shoebottom, a meat cutter for Detroit's Chicago Beef Co., is on strike--but none of his co-workers are. The Detroit News reports that Roger Robinson of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 876 said workers at the company "rejected [a] proposed contract more than once, voted to go on strike, and then backed out when the strike was called"--though Shoebottom did not.
To turn the picket point into a picket line, Local 876 brought in replacement strikers:
Motorists passing by daily on Gratiot [Avenue] honk horns and wave in support of men and women on a picket line outside the plant.
Those pickets, however, except for striking meat cutter Charles Shoebottom, are not company workers. They are hourly help hired by the union to man the line and carry signs.
Actually, Shoebottom had company when he first struck: "Of two other employees who walked with Shoebottom," the News notes, "one is in prison and the other took another job."
We'd Rather Have Turkey--I
"Demonstrations of how to deep-fry a turkey have been hard to miss on national and local news programs, but little is said about the millions who have given up the bird and opt for a vegetarian Thanksgiving," United Press International reports from Chicago. But UPI has something to say about them:
"What's the best way to stuff a turkey?" asks Farm Sanctuary. The farm animal-rescue group says it's to feed the turkey -- rather than eat it.
The public is invited to "adopt" a turkey at Farm Sanctuary shelters in Watkins Glen, N.Y. or Orland, Calif. For $20 you get a color photo of your bird and an adoption certificate. Proceeds go to feed and care for the turkeys.
Details are available on AdoptATurkey.org.
It turns out, though, that only vegetarians or denizens of the Vega system are eligible to adopt the birds.
We'd Rather Have Turkey--II
In a column published over the weekend (and not a moment too soon), Dave Barry gives thanks for Dan Rather, who announced his retirement yesterday:
Yes, it is a tragic but statistical fact that every Thanksgiving, undercooked turkeys claim the lives of an estimated 53 billion Americans (source: Dan Rather). . . .
Nobody actually makes "pumpkin" pie; everybody buys it at the supermarket. The question is: What does the supermarket put in there? The Food and Drug Administration is investigating this, and according to one informed source (Dan Rather) "they think it's tofu." . . .
But in all seriousness, I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. I personally am very thankful that I have readers like you who have terrific senses of humor and thus recognize that I am just "kidding around," especially if you are in the turkey, deep-fat fryer, tofu or pumpkin-pie industries. Also, even though I have "poked some fun" at Mr. Dan Rather, I sincerely believe he is a great journalist and a credit to his home planet.
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More Trouble at CBS
"Correction Department Faces Inquiry on Overtime Costs"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 20
What Would We Do Without AAA?
"Thanksgiving Travel Heavy, AAA Predicts"--headline, Huntsville (Ala.) Times, Nov. 22
News You Can Use
"Leave Gun, Chain Saw at Home When Flying"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 24
Chilean Whines--III
Yesterday we linked to a video clip of President Bush rescuing a Secret Service agent from a melee in Chile. It turns out there's a clearer video available, at the link atop this item, from the Associated Press, with narration in English.
As for the language of yesterday's video, we didn't recognize it but speculated that it was Chilean. Many readers wrote to say that in fact the main language spoken in Chile, and the language of the video, is Spanish. At first we were skeptical, but we checked the CIA World Factbook, and it confirms that in fact Chileans speak Spanish. If the CIA says it, that's what we call a slam-dunk.
All of which goes to show that you're never too old to learn. All these years we thought they spoke Spanish in Mexico. |
