chrisishardcore.com

Moving

To those of you who may have found your way here, moving my domain from Earthlink to Cornerhost and the Earthlink side of moving is pretty dumb, anwyay in 3 days I hope that chrisishardcore.com finds it's way here, in the meantime use the temporary link chrisishardcore.com.mn.sabren.com.

Listen to This Voice

So, there is this organization called Family Concerns here in Georgia. It is headed by a total nutcase named Nancy Schaefer, who is running for State Senate from District 50, which includes a number of counties that border the Carolinas, including Towns. Zell Miller is from Towns county, but more on that in a minute.

Here are a few things that Family Concerns advocates:

• Title IX must be rescinded because it has adversely affected teenage pregnancy, among other things.
  
• The lottery is equally as bad as prostitution. Since Georgia has a lottery, we'll probably legalize prostitution soon.
  
• Smart Growth is a United Nations "plot".
  
• The Lottery (which the good Zell championed) is an "Insidious Evil"
  
• "Real Women" do not have jobs...for decades American woman has been brainwashed. She has been asked to kill her babies, endorse lesbianism, and divorce her husband (she actually wrote this in the AJC causing Jim Wooten to kick the communications director of the GA GOP for not coming up with such wonderful prose first for that week's Thinking Right).

So you get the idea. Now, back to Zell. Zell, and a few of his backers like to argue that it's not that he left the party, it's that the party left him. Well, I don't want any part of a party that has members who agree with Nancy Schaefer and Family Concerns. And I don't think anybody who is still a Democrat wants to go back to the days when the Democratic coalition included such swine.

You can click the above link to see for yourself, but here is the moneyquote:

I want you to know that my Lord and Saviour has forgiven me...and I hope you and Family Concerns can forgive me for my neglect and lack of understanding on the issues that were important to you and should have been to me

Without argument, the single most important thing Zell Miller ever did was implement a state lottery and HOPE scholarship in Georgia. Nancy Schaefer and Family Concerns were among the top opponents of that lottery and scholarship. And now Zell asks for their forgiveness and in the process admits that his keynote accomplishment was a mistake.

Zell Miller, you can call yourself whatever you want. But you are not a Democrat in my book, and the only reason you're still calling yourself one is so you can sell more copies of your book. I want to remember Zell for what he was, and not for the sad caricature of a former great man that he's become. He's about to nominate the worst President of the last 50 years for re-election, 12 years after he nominated one of the greatest.

The Democratic Party of Georgia has set up a website to remember Zell for what he was. It's called Listen To This Voice and features his great 1992 convention speech. Go watch the video and then donate to the Democratic Party of Georgia so we can make sure that nuts like Nancy Schaefer stay out of our state legislature, and so we can keep the Republicans from stealing the House like they stole our state Senate and engaging in Texas style mid-decade redistricting. If you want, you can add $.26 to your contribution so they'll know it came from this website. I won't get a cut of the money, but I do work for the Democratic Party of Georgia, and I am a member of the state committee. I'm working with a dozen or so great people and hundreds of wonderful candidates to take back our state legislature and keep Zell and his ilk out -- but it takes money to communicate our winning message. I've never asked for money on this blog before and I won't again for a long time. This is very important. Thank you for your time.

More Young "Hip"ublicans!

The AJC has a pretty glowing profile of 5 new young hip Republicans! I think we see stories like this every once in a while, and while the tendency of some may be to panic, there is a killer quote at the end of the article that, to me, says we don't have too much to worry about, even if Kerry isn't the telegenic leader that we wish he were:

Younger voters aren't as familiar with the importance of issues like tax cuts and tax breaks for families, [Domenich] said, noting a survey that showed a high percentage get most of their news watching Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." "So if they're only getting their news from 'The Daily Show,' then they're not getting much news."

22 years old and already out of touch with your peer group. Wow. If this is the future of the Republican party then all I can say is hurry up and take over the reins!

Pessimism/Optimism

There are some numbers that reassure you when you're feeling pessimistic.

"Zell Miller Democrats" in Georgia who voted in the 2000 Democratic Presidential Primary (when Gore essentially ran unopposed) who voted in the 2004 Republican Presidential Primary even though Bush was running unopposed: 4,816. Those who kept voting D throughout 2000 and 2002 who switched this year: 1,064.

Republicans in Georgia who voted in the 2000 Republican Primary and switched over to voting in the Democratic Presidential Primary this year: 116,940. Those who had kept voting R throughout 2000 and 2002 who switched this year: 26,154. "John McCain Republicans" who voted R in the 2000 Presidential Primary but D in other primaries: 21,230. "Sonny Perdue Democrats" who voted D in local elections in 2000, then R for Sonny or Saxby in 2002, then came back to the fold in the Presidential Primary: 19,761.

Of course, take these numbers with a grain of salt, it's hard to devine exactly what bearing they have on the Presidential Election, if any.

Passive Aggressive

Republican politicians and journalists, who are beginning to feel just a little dirty about the slimy Swift Boat Veterans for truth campaign (that is working) have evolved in their analysis of the whole episode to accusing Kerry of being passive aggressive -- or something. Basically, they have no good defense for the ugliness of the smears so they say "Well, Kerry brought it upon himself when he decided to talk about his Vietnam record."

Nope. Wrong. Look, when a candidate makes an issue out of something he does not give his opponents a free pass to just start lying and making b.s. up about that something. Keep in mind that the same Republicans making that claim feel that George W. Bush's own military service record is either off-limits or not in need of any investigation -- despite the fact that Bush in his autobiography uses his experiences in the reserves to bolster his standing with the public.

The truth about the Swift Boat evidence is sad and short. Many Vietnam veterans resent John Kerry for testifying against the war when he returned from combat. About 50 or 60 resent him so much for this that they're willing to say anything and everything that a couple of rich Republican donors tell them to about John Kerry. They will make things up, say they were someplace that they obviously weren't, turn on a dime and change their recollection of an event 30 years after it happened, whatever it takes.

And the whole point of this operation and others like it ultimately isn't just to defeat John Kerry, it's a hope that the frustration that I and others like me feel just turns to cynicism and we just throw our hands up in the air and say forget it, I'm not going to follow this stuff anymore, I'm not voting, and I don't care.

And who benefits from cynicism? I'll give you a hint. Our nation was attacked by a handful of terrorists, and the President decided that the best way to deal with that was to occupy a country that was at best tangentially connected to that attack. That country is a mess, nearly 1,000 American soldiers have died -- most of them from ambushes and guerrila warfare and there is no end in sight.

What's the bigger issue? What John Kerry said to a Senate committe in 1971 or what's going to happen to Iraq? One is a non-issue and one is gravely important. And Republicans know they can't win if you actually make that choice -- so they're trying desperately to get you to just not make any choice. I think it will probably work, but please don't fall for it.

Newspaper Editorialists for Truth

I feel like a broken record, but it is once again time to point out that Jim Wooten is a lying ultrahack. He's lying when he says

Kerry as the anti-war activist who accused his fellow veterans of committing atrocities on a daily basis with the full knowledge of their officers -- a view he holds to this day.

Kerry did nothing of the sort -- if you read the entire transcript you'll see that Kerry was merely relaying the testimony of other veterans -- veterans who were mentally unstable because of the specific horrors of war that Kerry was relaying.

Now, for Jim Wooten's sake, here is an example. Let's say I'm called to testify to the US Senate about Jim Wooten and I say:

I've been told that Jim Wooten just reprints Georgia GOP talking points instead of writing his own pieces.

Now in this case, that happens to be my personal opinion but you could see how I could have a contrary opinion and how I could just be saying what other people have told me. But the truth isn't the GOP spin, and until it is, it won't be showing up in any Jim Wooten columns.

Coordination?

Whether you think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are raising legitimate issues about John Kerry's character or you think they're piloting a boatload of b.s., there is serious doubt as to how much they've coordinated with the Bush campaign in their activities.

And one piece of evidence particularly should cast doubt on their independence. They chose to run ads in West Virginia, Ohio and Wisconsin. West Virginia and Ohio obviously are two states that Bush carried last time where he shows weakness -- but Wisconsin? Why choose that state? My guess is that polling has shown that there are a fair amount of veterans in that state who may be persuaded by these attacks, and that one gets more bang for his dishonest buck there. But have the Swiftees done independent polling to verify this? Highly doubtful. And when an organization, particularly one as savvy and sophisticated as the Swift Boat Vets, places a media buy, they've usually done some opionion research to figure out how and where to place that buy. My guess is that the B/C team is that organization and there may be some illegal sharing of information going into this.

It's worth looking into.

Bush Campaign

So maybe the activities of a 527 group is too complicated. How about this direct slander: The new Bush ad (paid for by B/C) says that Kerry didn't go to a single intelligence committee hearing after September 11th -- which is true. But the ad implies that he was a member of the committee and then skipped the hearings, which is not true. Kerry hasn't been a member of the committee since 2000.

All technically* true, though. And if I were to say that I can't prove that George Bush isn't a Saudi agent, that would also be technically true. Wonderful, isn't it?

Swift Boat Veterans for Weekend Furloughs

It seems to me that the Swift Boat Veterans is Karl Rove's answer to Willie Horton. Which is worse? I would argue that the Swifties are worse. The old prison furloughs in Massachusetts were a legitimate point of criticism of Dukakis, and although using Willie Horton boiled it down to it's basest element (he let black people out of jail so they could rape white women) there was an element of truth involved.

Which brings us to the Swift Boat Veterans for 'Truth', an organization that has absolutely no truth involved at all. What you have is a number of veterans of Vietnam that resent Kerry for his activities after the war, who have either sizable grudges or have received sizable sums from allies of President Bush, have joined up with Rove cronies and are doing everything they can to untruthfully malign Kerry's character.

The swift boat liars remind me of a group of children who have conspired to lie about something but haven't bothered formulating a good lie, just the end result. If you diagramed it, there would be a number of statements where 'A' is true and therefor 'B' is the conclusion you'd reach. Only, they didn't bother checking to see if 'A' was in fact true or coincided with previous statements of their's and also the public record.

The perfect example is Thurlow saying there was no enemy fire the day Kerry pulled Rassmann out of the water. OK, said the media, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt (the media is so stupid) and have Kerry and Rassmann prove that there was. Only two weeks later the Washington Post examined Thurlow's own record of the exact same event and it contained references to live ammo being fired into the river. So now what? Well, if you've ever seen a child try to lie and start to get caught, you recognize the backpedaling -- Thurlow claimed he didn't write that, Kerry wrote it, claimed his medal was for an event that wouldn't require there to be enemy fire.

Then the records are examined further and it turns out that the swift boats had bullet holes in their sides. Wrong! claimed Thurlow, they received the fire the day before in another mission.

If any media organization still takes these guys seriously then they should be ashamed, and I am looking squarely at you, Jim Wooten on the local level. This "Swift Boat" campaign against Kerry is the culmination of the dirty personal attack politics that Republicans have used against any and every Democratic Presidential candidate who had a shot in the last 20 years.

And another thing, it is about time that we all stop pretending that Bush is a "nice guy" who just happens to be allied with unfortunate characters, whether they be Wolfowitz, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove. Look -- you can't associate with guys like this and retain your own good reputation -- in politics you are your alliances. Just because Bush *seems* like an aww shucks kind of guy doesn't mean he is. An ally of Rove is an ally of Bush, and I hope Bush reaps what he's sown with these Swift Boat Veterans.

Postscript: Here's Rich Lowry offering advice to the lovable scamps. That damn media!

Underwriters Revenge?

Google's IPO priced at what was considered an embarassingly low $85 / share. Today, they opened at $100 / share. Google had tried to bypass the traditional method of underwriting an IPO to, among other things, avoid this type of bounce (in either direction).

The underwriting business wasn't happy about being slighted by these wet behind the ears upstarts and you could argue that their unwillingness to participate fully contributed to the low offering. So what did it cost Google's founders to try and reinvent the wheel? About $20 million. Which probably isn't that big of a deal to them, but it sends a pretty clear message to other fiesty upstarts -- stay within the system!

As an aside, Google's experience is somewhat similar to Pearl Jam when the band tried to do a summer tour without using Ticketmaster. And make no mistake, there are a number of problems with both Ticketmaster and the IPO process, and both should be commended for taking them on.

Migrating

As you might be able to tell, I'm migrating servers from Earthlink to Atlanta based Corner Host at the year old advice of Greg Greene. One of the reasons for migrating is that I wanted to upgrade Movable Type (not a problem) and use MySQL (problem) to manage the content. As you may have noticed, comment spam had gotten a little out of control, and when I migrated the blog I was able to delete most of it, and out of over 3,000 comments, over 2,000 were spam.

One of the consequences of this is that I'm testing out requiring commenters to register with TypePad, which shouldn't be too much of a hassle. If you have your own MT blog you've probably already got a log-in and if not signing up will allow you to comment on pretty much every other MT blog out there.

I may switch to allow unregistered comments as well, we'll see how it goes. As always, email me at chrisishardcore@mindspring.com (and remember to fill out the Spam Blocker request) if you've got any questions.

Polls Closing

I'm about to go out to vote, and though I won't get to vote in a lot of the contested races, these are my predictions: Majette in the Senate, Westmoreland in the 8th Congressional District and Tom Price in the 6th. In Atlanta, look for Lisa Borders to be the next city council president. In the state Senate I wouldn't be surprised to see Bill Heath (Mr. Genital Piercing) win in the 31st district, Dan Weber take it in the 40th and Nancy Shafer in Northeast Georgia's 50th district. Well, as I said, I'm off to vote.

Russert

It doesn't suprise me that Russert has turned state's evidence so quickly after watching him "moderate" a debate between Bill O'Reilly and Paul Krugman. Russert acted as if both were pretty much even partners even though Krugman was sticking to a theme in his arguments and O'Reilly kept shouting him down, making stuff up and changing the subject when it was convenient for him.

Probably the worst moment came when Krugman was reading a transcript of O'Reilly's radio show, which O'Reilly first denied was what he actually said, and then told Krugman he should "do his own research" when he found out the source of his transcript (Media Matters) comparing them to hate groups such as the Klan. He also very unprofessionally calls Al Franken Stuart Smalley and seems to be upset that the NYT has never reviewed any of his books.

A personal note: I was called for jury duty about 7 months ago and didn't end up on the jury (thankfully). One of the guys in the selection pool was reading Who's Looking Out For You?, which I think should immediately disqualify you from being on a panel, but he ended up being one of the dozen chosen. Now, if I'm ever involved in any litigation, I'll keep this in mind and try as hard as I can to settle out of court. Why even take the chance that an O'Reilly fan will be deciding your future?

Name Names

I'm curious to learn just which "up and coming" Democrat Martha Zoller is talking to on background who agrees with Zell Miller about the direction of the Democratic Party in Georgia. Here is the relevant article. I'm looking at the map in my office and all the Democrats up there either have no chance in Hades of winning or win because they are multi-year incumbents who are already pretty conservative -- hardly up and coming. Some guy running in a very Republican district might wish the Democratic party were more like Zell's Republocrat party and Ashley Bell, running without Party support may not like the direction of the party, but the Democrat running in Republican territory is hardly up and coming and Ashley Bell's prescription for change is hardly Zell's. But I guess quality analysis isn't really required when you are the goddess of a radio station that no one can pick up anyway.

Senate "Leader"

The GOP thought they could annoint a Senate Majority Leader the same way they got behind their Presidential nominee 4 years ago, but things haven't worked out so great for Bill Frist. It's no surprise...majority parties usually elect a leader through a years long process of finding out who's got the capacity to serve in a leadership position (and usually there is more than 1 applicant) and then watching one or more overqualified men duke it out until one capable choice emerges.

Karl Rove, having presided over a beauty contest nominating process (who doesn't think McCain would make a better President than Bush at this point?) for the Presidency decided to apply the same congeniality contest rules to the Senate. So Bill Frist, who looks good on TV and I'm sure is a fine surgeon (a key point in the Republican's anti-lawyer demagoguery) was the new pick and other GOP senators were urged to line up behind him instead of other worthier candidates like Mitch McConnell.

The big problem with this way of choosing your leader is that the best looking kid rarely makes the best debater, or math champion for that matter, and the GOP has found this out. Tom Daschle and Harry Reid, who practically none of the public that aren't partisan Democrats even like or are aware of, may not be as telegenic but basically run Frist's Senate. You can see the Republican spin -- Frist, with only 8 years in the Senate, probably wasn't experienced enough. But LBJ was one of the most effective majority leaders ever and he had only been in the Senate for 2 years when he assumed the post, and Bob Dole had decades of experience and proved to be no match for either Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich.

So when you think about the Republican run Senate, you should probably picture Bill Frist on the side of the road saving someone's life. It's a much better mental image than the boondoggle the US Senate has become under his residency as leader.

Move Over Rodney

Another day and another Democratic party switcher. Rodney Alexander of Louisiana switched with no time left for a Democrat to qualify (we wouldn't have won anyway, I don't think...). Of the many terrible things about Dem->Rep party switchers (there aren't many the other way) there is one constant that is most odious. These guys are addicted to the power they've accrued and no bribe or dirty trick is petty enough if it means holding onto that power.

That, or in the case of State Sens. Dan Lee, Don Cheeks, Rooney Bowen and Jack Hill, they usually also aren't very bright. Jack Hill may be Appropriations Chairman, but only in the sense that a hand puppet is actually entertaining a crowd. His ventriloquists are Eric Johnson and Tommie Williams and it's no secret. But he'll be re-elected yet again and can continue to pick up his per diem for another 10 years or so.

Bowen and Lee, well what can you say about them? If Bowen were still a Democrat he'd probably be on his way back for another term. Not that he'd have anything to do with it...the Democratic Party would be running and funding his campaign just like they did in '02 -- something the Republican Party was not willing to do for this dupe. Why pay to have Switch-a-Rooney re-elected when a real Republican could beat him in the primary spending little time and effort?

And Dan Lee? Well, at least he'd make it to the general election instead of having the dual distinctions of being the first governor's floor leader to lose AND to lose in a primary election.

That leaves us with Don Cheeks. He may get lucky, but he faces an uphill battle. Cheeks switched for the pettiest of personal reasons, and the majority Republicans showed how much they respected his decision when they voted en masse against his predatory lending proposal after he had pleaded with them in private and on the floor of the Senate, a rare (and humiliating) rebuke for a committee chairman in the General Assembly. Cheeks has a bit of a race problem, and proving that there is a God, he found himself in a heavily Democratic district that also happens to be majority African-American. He's willing to spend unlimited amounts of his personal fortune (and he'll need to) in order to return to the state Senate, where despite the prestigious and honorable title he is considered a joke. As Sonny Perdue told another state Senator he was wooing to switch parties (who didn't switch) "Cheeks came cheep."

So the duplicitious Rodney Alexanders of the world, and the Republican parties who welcome them into their ranks had better cross their fingers and hope for the best because one way or another party switching almost always comes back to haunt you. Just ask Ann Purcell.

Oops

I totally missed this:
High Al Qaeda Aide Retracted Claim of Link With Iraq.

Georgia Poll

So Strategic Visions, a Georgia based Republican polling firm, polled Georgia voters after the convention and found Bush leading 53-42. But Emil Runge, the Democratic Party of Georgia's PR guy who has considerable polling experience with a national public opinion research firm noticed that the polling firm underweighted the black percentage of the electorate. Strategic Visions had the percentage at 18% of the electorate, even though in the past 3 election cycles the percentage has always been between 22-24%. That's a significant underweight.

So, let's take a look at the original weighting and what the poll results might have been:

Race	Bush	Kerry	Other/Und.
White/Other	63	33	4
Afr Amer	8	85	7
Total	53.1	42.4	4.5

Of course, the Bush/Kerry numbers among whites are what I would consider a good guess, based on my guess of what the Bush/Kerry numbers are among black voters. The important numbers with the black voters is the Kerry number + the undecided. As you may remember from the 4th district race, African Americans voters can be hard to poll accurately, producing a larger number of undecideds than the overall population. The thing is, they (like other undecided voters) always break against the incumbent and with African Americans, historically break towards the Democrat, even though they told a pollster they hadn't made up their mind yet.

So what to make of the Strategic Visions poll? When I reweighted it to have AA turnout at 23% and white/other voters at 77% (the 2000 turnout number -- the state has actually gotten slightly less white since then) it turns out Bush's actual numbers are 50.35 while Kerry has 44.96. The undecided number is 4.69. If those undecideds break Kerry's way then this state could be very close.

Maybe they'll all see Zell Miller testify to Bush's greatness and change their mind, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Of course many people will say that you can't recklessly reweight a poll like this, and you can't just guess what the white/black numbers were for Bush and Kerry. To that, I challenge Strategic Visions to release the internal numbers for their poll so that we can reweight it correctly and figure out what's actually going on in this state.

Hold it Right There Alec Poitevint!

The Georgia GOP has been crowing for weeks about how more Georgians pulled a Republican ballot than a Democratic one. Some sources of mine tell me that now that the final numbers have come in, it may not be true! Stay tuned. (Of course, this is utterly meaningless but when you lose the Supreme Court race as badly as the Ga GOP did you have to have something to brag about).

And Another Thing

More for the post below: It is not normal for there to be so few undecided voters, the polarity in this election is unprecedented. Unlike other years, people want to make a decision, even if it changes. Most of the movement in polls goes between the candidates, with that wonder of the modern world, the undecided voter, staying undecided. So it could be a "secret" bounce that the number of Kerry voters who may change their mind shrunk in a number of polls from an average of about 13% to an average of about 5%. Pollsters call the different types of voters "Hard" voters and "Soft" voters. Let's say that the number of Soft voters shrunk from 20% to 10%. If Kerry maintained his support and Bush didn't add any or lost ground, as he did in many polls, that does not bode well for the remaining 10% who will eventually (even if it is on Nov 2nd) make up their mind.

The bottom line is that the media totally bought into Bush's spin -- Kerry hasn't gotten that magical 15% bounce (which would totally have doomed Bush if it came true, I wonder why his pollsters were expecting it?) and rather than do some investigation and serious analysis have basically let BC '04 write this week's poll stories for them. There's that do it cheap, do it fast, lazy bias, the real bias of the media.

Did I Miss Something?

The media, in their infinite wisdom, deemed the Democratic Convention no longer important. The television networks didn't even cover 90% of it, and all we heard for one week was endless blather about whether (or how much) it was even relevant. And then 1 poll comes in that shows Kerry getting no improvement after the convention. Other polls show modest improvement or a solidifying of those who say they are solid in their support for Kerry. That same media, having seemingly forgotten that they deemed the convention insignificant, pounces on the 1 poll and makes a big stink about the fact that there was no bounce.

If this isn't the perfect example of the lazy, self-fulfilling, hype obsessed media, then I don't know what is. They should point out that, in fact, 2 weeks ago they thought the convention was insignificant and maybe that's why there was no bounce.

OR, they could point out that "it is rare for an incumbent president to be trailing" at all during the year of his re-election (Gallup).

Now, how about President Bush in 2000? Of course, you can't do a strict comparison because every election is different and Gore wasn't the incumbent, but, Bush accepted the nomination on August 3rd, 2000.

Let's take a look at the Gallup Poll Results before the convention, after the convention, and then approximately a week after the convention:

	July 25/26	R Conv	Aug 4/5	Aug 7	Aug 11/12	D Conv	Aug 18/19
Bush	54		57	47	55		46
Gore	40		38	46	39		47

As you can see, Gallup didn't do the 2000 race on the cheap, providing pre-convention polls for better comparison. And as you can also see, Bush got absolutely no bounce from the Republican convention that year. Moving up 3 points in the poll the day after, dropping 10 (after Lieberman was added to the ticket) and then regaining 8 points a week after the convention-- net difference 1 point! Gore got a pretty big bounce after his convention but still polled lower than Kerry.

So there are a lot of things to think about. One reason candidates used to get a huge bounce is that they *used* to poll in the 30's before their convention began. Very few challengers were leading the incumbent president before either convention started.

I'd also refer you to this helpful chart which reminds us that Gallup was wrong in 2000 (nailing Bush's number but under polling Gore by 2) and that in '96, '92, and '88 Gallup predicted a bigger margin of victory for the eventual winner than they actually received. So that magical likely voter screen Gallup uses that you've read about? It ain't scientific.

Also from Slate, what my optimistic rantings might look like if I had an editor.

The Republicans Curious Understanding of Race

News that Alan Keyes is interested in getting in the Illinois GOP race and that Illiniois Republicans even want him is kind of curious. You've got a state that's trending Democratic at the statewide and federal level pretty heavily, and the Democrats have an impressive candidate who is now practically a national figure (who just happens to be black) and the GOP seems to think their ticket to national prominence is to get their own black candidate, even though the candidate they ditched had a pretty impressive record sans his sexual troubles.

A similar thing is going on in Georgia's 8th district, as national party figures line up behind a candidate (Dylan Glenn) whose only accomplishments seem to be that he has managed to work for President Bush and Gov. Perdue in the past 2 years. He seems ambitious, and having worked for both figures in a period of 2 years makes you think that it was more for a resume' pad than a desire to actually stay at either job and achieve anything notable. In fact, since he's been running for Congress unsuccessfully for most of his adult life you have to wonder exactly what achievements he's been able to rack up.

And then welcome to the Georgia (and national) GOP. If you're black and decide you are a Republican, that is an achievement in itself. To many Republicans, more so than taking a chance and running for office in a state that was once solidly Democratic, winning, working to build a sizable minority in the state House, and if you're Lynn Westmoreland (who I'm describing) more or less controlling that same state House in 2003 with a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats.

It's funny, but Repubicans have long talked about how conservative white men are under attack, simply for being white men -- and if you're Lynn Westmoreland, you've got to be feeling that at this moment. The ironic thing for Westmoreland is that he probably never expected who'd be leading that attack. Other conservative white men, who see the demographic changes underway and know the only way they can stay in charge is by stepping on their own every once in a while.

It's a good year to be Dylan Glenn. In one week he may be on his way to the US Congress despite having no significant achievements under his belt. And even if that doesn't work out next Tuesday, it's hard to imagine that the next time he decides to run for something (maybe Congress again, maybe Lt. Governor) the playing field won't be cleared in advance.

Turning My Stomach

Well, I've seen (on CSPAN) the new Bush strategy, and it almost makes you sick to your stomach. The man will say anything, seemingly regardless of whether he believes it or not. In fact, he can't believe half of what he says because it is so inconsistent with the other half. How can you criticize Kerry for proposing programs that "overspend" when your own administration has the largest budget deficit in the history of the country...four years previously the budget was in surplus.

These inconsistencies, a willingness to be on both sides of every issue when it is convenient (unlike Kerry whose main sin seems to be that he sees more than two sides to both issues. shades of grey vs black and white) is what will make it so hard to defeat Bush. He's so eager to retain power that he will do anything necessary, up to having his homeland security czar issue an increased terror alert and qualify it by saying:

But we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror

So you see, in Bush and his campaign team's mind, every good thing that's happened in the past 4 years can be solely traced to him, every bad thing the fault of terrorists or their Democratic appeasers in Congress.

So either the American people (outside of hardcore Republican partisans) decide that this kind of megalomaniacal "leadership" is more than we can afford, or they fall for the tricks of this adminstration, the centerpiece of which is all the government spending you'd ever want with none of the tax revenue you don't want to pay. What kind of country do we live in? I think it's the former but worry we may have sunk to the latter.