The Not-So-Brave New World

¡Hola Thinkers!

¡Recepción al mundo nuevo! Prepárese para los cambios a continuación. Opinión adiós al país que usted conocía. ¿No es maravilloso?

...what's that? You don't like getting emails in Spanish? Start getting used to the idea.

There have been oodles of punditry and speculation on why the Republicans lost both the US House and Senate this election. As I see it, one of (or maybe more than one of) the following scenarios occurred:

1. The US of A is becoming a more liberal nation and this election simply reflected that. Our voting citizenry is craving higher taxes, kid-glove treatment of criminals, amnesty and privileges for anyone who makes it into this country illegally, and less freedom of the marketplace.

2. More dead registered Democrats came out to vote than expected. And it's amazing how in two short years, all the problems with voting machine malfunctions have miraculously been solved! The only time I remember anything like this is when all the news stories on homeless people disappeared after Bill Clinton won his first term.

The new (NY) statewide database of registered voters contains as many as 77,000 dead people on its rolls, and as many as 2,600 of them have cast votes from the grave, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal computer-assisted analysis.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061029/NEWS01/610290381/1006/NEWS

3. The Democratic political machine got smart, supported moderate and possibly even conservative candidates where necessary. Registered Democrat and some Independent voters were highly motivated by their opposition to the war in Iraq, while conservative voters were highly motivated by ... NOTHING!!!

For the past 12 years, the Republicans have had the ball in at least the House, yet they have shown that are politicians first and anything else a distant second. Remember the "Contract With America?" Even though it was a House initiative, it was a perspective that, at least in concept, defined most Republican office holders, from local to federal levels.

Here's the "contract" in case you forgot: http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html

Republicans were supposed to be for smaller government, less spending, rule of law, and term limits among other things. What did we get? A morbidly rotund bureaucracy that Jenny Craig couldn't stop from growing, more pork than a Rosie O'Donnell between meal snack and a complete disregard for protecting our nations borders. I won't even touch the term limit fiasco.

Democrats may say that the Iraq war was the actual vote this week, but that would not explain why Joe Liberman won and Lincoln Chaffee (along with John Hostettler-Ind. and Jim Leach-Iowa) lost. I will contend that the nations conservatives were less than impressed with our free spending, "Republican" Congress, a no-veto President, and a group of "leaders" who started at their fidgeting feet like a kid who just smashed mommy's Lenox vase when the issue of illegal immigration came to the forefront.

So to conservatives across the country, remember this valuable phrase:

¡Es hora de asir tus tobillos! (It is time to grab your ankles!)

My Predictions for the 2006 Mid Term Elections

Hello Thinkers,

I've been a bit busy, but cannot let the mid term elections go without adding my own personal clairvoyance - a la Shirley Maclaine. So here they are - my fearless predictions for this Tuesday night and beyond!

Enjoy,
tuff

(PS. And don't forget to vote! But only if you agree with me!)


PREDICTION 1: Despite the gleeful headlines from the NY Times heralding Democrat seizure of both the US House and Senate, Republicans will not lose control of either. I have always felt there was a 10% rule when reading coverage of pending elections from the Lame-Steam Media. If "the polls" say race is neck-and-neck, the Republican wins by roughly 10%. If "the polls" say the Democrat has a non-trivial lead, the race is really tight. If "the polls" say the Republican has a huge lead going into the election, the media buries the story and reports heavily on the latest social crisis de jour ripping at our nation's very fabric.

PREDICTION 2: Despite the Republicans keeping the House and Senate, the NY Times will still report November 7th, 2006 as a significant Republican loss.

PREDICTION 3: Nancy Pelosi will not blink.

PREDICTION 4: No later than Wednesday morning, Howard Dean will cover his ass by making vague references to Kerry's "botched joke" as the reason for his party's failure to make huge political advances this year.

PREDICTION 5: Katie Couric will still be the least viewed "news anchor" of the big 3 networks on election night. After a major CBS focus group convenes to address the problem, she will add a house plant (or a kitten) to her news desk as a guaranteed way to appeal to a wider viewing audience.

PREDICTION 6: Chris Matthews will be rushed to the nearest hospital with heart palpitations.

PREDICTION 7: Despite supporting in state tuition rates and drivers licenses for illegal aliens, MA gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick will win the states corner office - but by a much smaller margin than "the polls" indicate (5% or less - see the 10% rule from PREDICTION 1 above). Massachusetts will continue uncontested as the political laughing stock of the nation with a liberal Democrat State House, Senate and Governor. God help us.

PREDICTION 8: Electronic voting machines will be blamed for 'irregularities' in minority communities only. Jesse Jackson issue a press release claiming proof of vote tampering and will call out for the electoral college to be replaced in 2008 with a CNN/Gallup poll of likely voters in Berkley, CA.

PREDICTION 9: Ned Lamont will lose resoundingly as Connecticut Republicans give the nod almost exclusively to Joe Lieberman. Sporadic laughter will be heard from the voting booths in the Consitution State.

PREDICTION 10: Alot of drinking will be done in Hyannis on Tuesday night.

**BONUS PREDITION***: Terrorists around the world will emphatically support all Democrats for elected office in 2006. Oh wait, that's already happened:

JERUSALEM – Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday's midterm congressional election in the U.S. – including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party's position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are "tired."
...
They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.
...
"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52747

Arrogance Kills

So the other day, Mrs. Tuff took Tuff Jr. into Boston and picked up our 18 year old from her dorm. While I was happy to have the entire family back under one roof, they did come home sooner than expected, and less than halfway through my recently acquired DVD, "Jenna Jameson Does the Dude Ranch." Right at the part where Rocky the Quarter Horse learns to remove Jenna's bra with his massive teeth, they charged into the house and let me tell you it was an uncomfortable moment to say the least. It didn't help that I was wearing my "All Women are Blithering Idiots" t-shirt, either.

As I stared at their faces, each turning shades more closely resembling my last lobster dinner, I said the only thing that came to my mind: "Gosh, I'm really sorry that you are offended by this."

So I can understand what John Kerry is going through right now. Just in case you have been living under a rock for the past few days, at a rally for California Democrat gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, John Francois Kerry said the following:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/30/politics/p174330S38.DTL&type=politics

Note the quote from Angelides at the bottom of the SFGate article: "We are going to make history." And boy have they ever.

The bruhaha has shown no sign of slowing down. Whether Kerry is trying to look strong in the face of adversity (AKA not be swift-boated again) or simply maintain his air of intellectual superiority, every step he has taken since has landed him in bigger and bigger cow-pies.

First there was the defiant non-apology posted on his web site:

I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23164_Kerry_Goes_Ballistic&only
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/release.html?id=33

I wonder if this means Kerry wants only military veterans to disgust him. That's fine with me. It worked two years ago like a charm. Next there was the 'botched joke' non-apology on "Imus in the Morning" (a show I never listen to anymore since Don Imus reminds me too much of Madeline Albright):

A day after rejecting calls to apologize for his remarks, Kerry, appearing on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show on MSNBC, declared: "I said it was a botched joke. Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061101/pl_nm/usa_elections_kerry_dc

This one is just full of crap. Kerry said what he meant and meant what he said. Only the bluest of liberal Kool-Aid drinkers can believe Kerry has a high opinion of the US military, or that he can relate to someone who is happy just to get their bills paid every month. Yet even at this point, he does not directly address the content of his statements, only the misexecution of an alleged joke. Are we to expect that this was a slip of the tongue from someone who testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 as follows:

"They [US Service men in Viet Nam] told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

...and said the following to Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation on December 4th of 2005:

And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs.
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_120405.pdf

The piling on has continued. Campaign invitations for John Kerry are drying up faster than Scotch bottles at the Kennedy Estate in Hyannis:

A congressional candidate in Iowa said swiftly he no longer wanted him to appear at a scheduled rally. Kerry abandoned plans to attend events in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. "Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he said. He needs to apologize to our troops," said Rep. Harold Ford Jr., locked in a close Senate race in Tennessee.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/01/D8L4H6DO0.html

And now for the Johnny Gigolo's third non-apology, we get a written statement (how brave!):

"I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended," Kerry said in a statement.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061101/pl_nm/usa_elections_kerry_dc

Note that he never admits what he said was WRONG. He is sorry that his words were "misinterpreted". Clearly it takes a big man to admit he made a mistake and sincerely mean it, and clearly, Lurch is not a big man at all. A sincere man would also do this in person, in front of the largest audience he can find, not hiding behind a piece of paper or a web server somewhere.

The amount of energy put into a real apology is nothing compared to what is being spent on his latest political death-spiral. But John Francois simply cannot be seen as anything other than the smartest man in the room. He is too important to be bothered with such petty humility. What he does not realize is that arrogance kills and is never forgotten.

I could elaborate more on this, but I have to go and rustle up a DVD out of the trash can.

(ps. Just in case I do run for a public office someday, I will now state for the record that I do not, nor have I ever owned a Jenna Jameson DVD - at least one that included a horse named rocky.)