Politics Blog

Talk about easy choices.

— Lorie Byrd

This is an amazing story.

— PoliPundit

Is the North Korean regime disintegrating? Here’s 4 pages of argument that say it is.

If true, this is terrific news. I’ll miss those hilarious KCNA “news” dispatches, though.

— PoliPundit

Arthur Chrenkoff has an invaluable round-up of the elections.

— PoliPundit

I recently received an e-mail from a buddy of mine – “K-Dawg,” as he’ll be known for purposes of this blog.

He’s a Desert Storm veteran, a commissioned officer, and a U.S. Army Reservist, who recently was called back into action – and thereby out of his cushy job beating plaintiff’s attorneys senseless down in Southern California. (Kidding; about the “cushy” part, that is.) He’ll soon be shipping out to one of Bill Clinton’s favorite bombing targets – Kosovo – in order to assist with peacekeeping duties there.

And he’s got some things to say about various issues upon which McGovern-era stoners, in academia, and trust-fund liberals, in the media, have been ruminating:

I’m here in Germany preparing to go into Kosovo with my unit. I just read Polipundit and saw how Al Franken goes on a lot of USO tours. I appreciate his concern, I guess, though he seems to think we are committing unspeakable crimes. I think I can live without his comedy stylings.

Hey, active duty sure isn’t what you hear about in the media. I’ve never heard a serious complaint about our 18 months back in the Army – not one. We’ll be peacekeeping in Kosovo, which is kind of our third big theater after Iraq and Afghanistan. Back door draft? Hell, we volunteered – and many of us are disppointed only that we aren’t going to Baghdad instead.

Let’s talk about the undertrained, underequipped reservists I’m always reading about. Where are these guys? This is day 115 of training – and our sixth major exercise. If anything, we are overtrained. You should see the number of experts on culture, on language (I had 40 hours of Albanian!) and on military skills they have training us (our lead trainer is a retired four star general!).

And equipment? My complaint is that there’s too much – we have top of the line cold weather gear (all Gortex), brand new improved body armor and all sorts of other stuff – I needed another duffel bag to haul it all.

Is it perfect? Of course not – it’s the Army! But I’m better trained and equipped going onto this peacekeeping mission than I was when I was an active duty soldier deployed from my base in Germany into the Persian Gulf in 1990. And I know the guys going into the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan have it even better.

So that nonsense you read about some sort of broken Army is just that – nonsense. Hey, my butt is on the line and I’m not complaining (there’s still the potential for a real mess in Kosovo) – you can take that as you will, but this is one United States Army officer that’s proud and ready. And my buddies and my troops are likewise.

So, stick that in your shot glass, Whiskey Ted.

— Jayson

The results are early, but even the Associated Press is starting to acknowledge the obvious:

“Iraqi officials said turnout among the 14 million eligible Iraqi voters appeared higher than the 57 percent that had been predicted, although it would be some time before any turnout figure was confirmed.

“In the United States, turnout hovered in the low 50 percent range for years and only this year squeaked to 60 percent.

“Considering that Iraqis voted in dangerous conditions, and Americans don’t, the turnout numbers speak volumes, according to some pollsters.

“When public expression means so much to you that you will vote under the threat of death, that is significant,” said Frank Luntz, a pollster who often works for Republicans. “That demonstrates how much they want democracy.”

“A higher percentage of eligible Iraqis voted Sunday, in their first free election in a half-century, than Americans typically do in an off-year election, according to Luntz.

“In America, the greatest threat to voting is standing in line for an hour,” he said. “In Iraq, these people risked their lives and more than half were willing to do so.”

“High turnout would be an amazing statement and an amazing validation of the degree to which people want to establish democracy in that country,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake”

Polipundit showed the photo of a woman whose finger is inked, proving she voted. I’d say she and millions like her were giving Terror and Tyranny the finger.

— DJ Drummond

I think this one sums up the day. If you prefer something more upbeat, you can watch KurdSAT TV online, which is continuously showing videos of people voting.

UPDATE: The Old York Times changed the caption on that photo. It used to be something like, “People gather outside a polling place in Sadr city as blood runs down a gutter after a mortar attack killed three people.” Now, it’s been changed to “A mortar attack at a polling station in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least three people.”

Notice the subtle bias. Instead of highlighting the people who’re voting, the new caption highlights the mortar attack.

UPDATE 2: Then there’s this:

Best anecdote of the day: in Qadissiyah, voters waiting in line fled when an insurgent arrived on the scene with an RPG. He fired and missed. An hour later, the same voters–with more neighbors, friends and family, came back to finish the job. That’s why the bad guys lost today.

Sort of puts the fevered conspiracy theories of Ohio voter “intimidation” in perspective, doesn’t it?

(link via InstaPundit)

— PoliPundit

Today is the anniversary of the Tet Offensive, when ultra-liberal CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite decided to openly side with the Vietnamese Communists.

Current ultra-liberal CBS anchorman Dan Rather, by contrast, has to grit his teeth and report the good news. Thanks to fact-checking by the New Media, if Rather lied like Cronkite did, he’d become even more of a laughingstock than he already is.

— PoliPundit

Evan Bayh is a popular two-term Democratic Senator from Indiana. He won re-election in 2004 with 62% of the vote at the same time that President Bush was carrying the Hoosier State with 60% of the vote. Bayh is also a two-term Governor of Indiana. He was seriously considered for the Vice Presidential nomination in 2000 and 2004, but pro-abortion groups told both Democratic Presidential candidates that they would not accept a Vice Presidential nominee opposed to partial-birth abortion.

However given the present weakness of the Democratic Party in the red states and the increasing mental illness of blue state Democrats, it would seem only natural that Bayh would be a strong Presidential candidate. But to get to the nomination, he would have to appeal to the far-left base of his party. Robert Novak reports that Bayh’s vote against Condoleeza Rice is the first-step in an appeal to the liberal wing of his party. Bayh seems to ignore the fact that a liberal voting record will make it all-too-easy for Republicans to tie him to Kennedy and Kerry, and family history should teach him that a liberal voting record can result in early retirement in the Hoosier State.

— Alexander K. McClure

A commenter made a good point about the blue ink, which prevents repeat voting:

remember if we tried that in WA, WI, OH or PA the ACLU would accuse people of stigmatizing those who voted, or intimidating voters..or some other nonsense

— PoliPundit