Category Archives: Election 2007-2008

Which Eco Footprint?

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Which Eco Footprint?

As commentary continues about the dying newspaper industry, there is little discussion about another industry which has emerged almost full blown before our eyes: the Election Industry. Once thought of as a seasonal endeavor, it is broken out and claimed our attention and pocketbook full time, wall to wall.

It’s a brand new paradigm. The customer buys with money but gains nothing in return, unless you count “more phone calls” as a gain. Or mail from (ostensibly) famous names who probably don’t really know you. All this is supposed to make us feel good because we are “donating to a good cause” as a demonstration of our support for the democratic process.

How many people are employed in this industry? How much money is it costing us to keep it going? Whose idea was it to take those folks wall to wall, January to December, year after year? We’re all happy that they have all found steady work, and that their kids will get through all their orthodontic work and into the right colleges.

Sitting here, waiting in line at the four dollar pump, thinking about Senator Everett Dirksen, who once was reported to have said, “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

It makes one wonder which Eco Footprint is more important, the Ecological (Carbon) Footprint that is getting pretty soggy from all that so-called election traveling around over the last couple years, or the Economic (Dollar) Footprint that is getting rather thin and frayed.

One last thing: Over in Europe, they once had a Hundred Years War. We’re not going to do that with this latest tweak of the Election process, are we?

Kumbayyah

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Let’s see if we’ve got this straight.

After the election, which we’re going to win, by the way:

We will not be racist.

We will not be sexist.

We will not be anti-war.

We will not be . . . .

Well you get the pattern.

This is all only about getting past the election, which we are going to win, by the way.

We are going to knit this country back together.

Then we’ll just all hang out together and be nice.

And after the election, the world will get back to normal.

The bad guys will go back into their caves.

And all will be well again.


Sure. Can hardly wait. What channel is TV Land on these days?

Korea: The Bottom Line

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Christopher R. Hill

Panel told nuke talks at impasse

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks urged Kim Jong-il’s government to hand over a promised list of its nuclear efforts, saying yesterday that nuclear negotiators are working to make sure “Pyongyang lives up to its word.”

Christopher R. Hill told lawmakers that six-nation disarmament talks are at a “critical, challenging” point. “There is some sense of urgency,” he said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The United States says the North has balked at providing a “complete and correct” disclosure of nuclear programs to eventually be dismantled. Washington has refused to take the North off a U.S. terrorism blacklist, a coveted goal of Pyongyang, until negotiators have the list.

“Let me be clear,” Mr. Hill said. ” ‘Complete and correct’ means complete and correct. This declaration must include all nuclear weapons, programs, materials and facilities, including clarification of any proliferation activities.”

He made his remarks a day after the director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, questioned North Korea’s commitment to the stalled talks. Mr. McConnell also said the U.S. intelligence community thinks North Korea continues to work on a secret uranium-enrichment program and to sell its weapons around the world.

North Korea has begun disabling its main nuclear facilities under an agreement with the other countries at the international arms talks — China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, as well as the U.S.

Most of the tasks of disabling those facilities have been completed, Mr. Hill said, with American experts working to ensure the plutonium-making facility would require at least a year to become operational again.

But the talks have faced an impasse since the North missed a Dec. 31 deadline on the declaration.

North Korea claims it gave the U.S. a nuclear list in November. Washington says Pyongyang never produced a complete list.

Kim Jong-il
The Bottom Line: It isn’t about what someone said or did regarding North Korean nukes. It’s about the broad, wonderful “open window” the US created when someone decided to stretch our election season over two years, beginning the day after the last election, and ending, hopefully, in November this year, assuming the results won’t end up in the courts again.

If any country is of a mind to stand its ground in a dispute with us, surely this is the time to do it. We are so paralyzed we cannot enact simple legislation, let alone negotiate complex and sensitive issues with a budding nuclear power.

The outlook is stark. Assuming no extensions for courtroom struggles, the current “open window” will close on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, almost a year away.

Anyone who bets that North Korea’s leader will make the slightest move toward accommodation before then should stick to cribbage.

Immigration And Elections

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Town Hall: The Messy Politics of Illegal Immigration

By Victor Davis Hanson

With the war in Iraq politically on the backburner, illegal immigration is heating up as a campaign issue. The public wants action, and the candidates are scrambling to react.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s sure nomination was first questioned when she flubbed an easy debate question about driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

Sen. John McCain’s recovery took off when he backed away from his support of immigration reform that did not first ensure the closure of the border.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is no longer for “sanctuary cities” that shield illegal aliens from arrest. Like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, he’s now a born-again opponent of illegal immigration.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney assures us that some illegal aliens can be deported within 90 days after he’s elected.

Sen. Barack Obama may talk of “change,” but his relative fuzziness about illegal immigration can’t last forever, and at some point he will have to offer more specific proposals.

Some time ago, supporters of open borders lost the debate. The majority of Americans want them closed — now! They ignore the tired slurs like “anti-immigrant,” “racist,” “protectionist” and “nativist.” And noisy May Day parades with Mexican flags and heated rhetoric from the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”) only turn more people off.

It doesn’t do any good, either, for a Mexico City functionary to cry about how mean we are to want a secure border with Mexico. Most Americans also tuned that out long ago.

They know instead that Mexico cares mostly about sending north those it won’t or can’t feed and house — so it can skim off from them billions in remittances once they arrive in the United States.

Mexico City, of course, could reform the country’s laws and economy whenever it wants. But it changes only enough to draw in tourists or Americans looking to buy vacation homes, not to better the lives of millions of its mestizo poor in the heartland.

The spin masters may think illegal immigration is an issue that pits conservative Republicans against liberal Democrats. But it doesn’t always.

Nowadays, worry about illegal immigration is just as likely to mean that African-Americans are terrified of racist alien gangs in Los Angeles. Asian-Americans are frustrated that their relatives with college degrees wait years to emigrate legally, while thousands without high-school diplomas to the south simply break the law to enter the United States.

And many Mexican-Americans are probably tired of being expected to defend the indefensible of foreign nationals breaking immigration laws simply because they may share an ethnic heritage with illegal aliens.

Read the rest below the fold -> here.

Bunker Hill

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It’s almost time for the 110th Congress to return to the Hill and hunker down to a new session of lawmaking.

For those who watched the first session via CSpan and other media, it often seemed more a war than a deliberative process. So, how do they rate their first session?

Here’s a clip from: Dems, GOP Look Back At First Session Of 110th

“This has been one of the most successful sessions I’ve served in 26 years in Congress,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Party “made history in many respects, but much more needs to be done.”

Read the rest -> here.

How big a noise will Congress have to make to be heard over the roar of the multi year campaign that might be called Election 2007-2008?

It sometimes seems as if the principal job of the 110th Congress is to win the Election 2007-2008, and everything else is “second tier” stuff.

We’re getting close to that point where the rest of the world often likes to “take care of business” while we’re busy looking inward.