Five Gifts/Articles Of The Post-Election Season...
Everyone's doing their Christmas specials on TV, I might as well blog mine. We'll have a liberal perspective of the news, a fair amount of Bush bashing around the eggnog, and enough conservatives whining about how liberal I am and how I should move to Canada to fill a DVD of Christmas goodness! You don't like it, this happy reminder exists to remind you that it's my blog and considering I used the word liberal at least four times within the five lines (counting the title) of this piece, you have no right to be shocked. (I point again to the Republican approved area of my blog: the piece of Christmas advice to Republicans, and while I do have liberal retoric in there, it's fairly non partisan.)
On with the show, as they say. The Five Gifts of Christmas Blogging:
5) Recount In Ohio:
Link
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Look, ordering the recount...is it the birds, the planes, the Kerry campaign? No, it's the Libertarians and the Greens?! Neither one of them can win the election, and neither of them gained one percent of the vote. So why are they meddling? I can think of two reasons: first, they want to see the election deposed in a calm and fair manner, and second, they hate Bush along with most of us liberals. The Greens I understand, considering Bush's deposition on environmentalist issues, but the Libertarians aren't that far from the Republicans when it comes from certain issues of policy. Anyhow, whilst they're trying their damnest to find out what happened in Ohio, despite the exit polls, the electors have already voted. It may be too late for anything to happen to stop the swearing in of GW, but if there is foul play, these probes and recount should help ferret it out.
4) 'Biggest Cabinet Shakedown Since Nixon':
This is an incredible story as it unfolds. There are just too many items to cite. I was kind of elated to hear that 'there is no civil rights' Ashcroft was leaving, but his replacement seems to be worse, espically at a time when torture is a hot button issue with both aisles of the House and Senate. It seems likely, due to civil rights issues and a few other permutations, that Gonzales and Rice will both get their secretary ships without too much opposition or fuss, considering the Democrats don't want to be painted as racist, and we'd expect that bomb to be used in 06 and 08 by some campaign or another as a smear attack, or the less that PC perception thereof. Bush invokes the Peter Principle and Rumsfeld stays, however. Homeland Security is still vacant seeing that the honest, decent cop Bush was going to put in there turns out to be less than honest and decent. Oh, well, live and learn. I guess THAT'S why a lot of jobs use FBI background checks...wait, doesn't Bush control the FBI?
3) Santa Rummy's Coming To Town, But Your Tour Of Duty Still Won't Be Shorter.
Mmm...still not going to cite this one. Apparently some reporter and a Guardsman got together and decided to let loose the inevitable question of why the military is currently using scrap for humvee armor. Rummy made a cute comment that again makes me want to compare him to a drill sargeant than the Secretary of Defense. He's like that guy on Survivor that's a total jerk to everyone and ends up winning anyway. You still don't understand why he's there, and it seems he's unwilling to go away. In related news, soldiers are suing for stop loss, and depending on who you cite, the armor issue for humvees is getting better...or not. Or it was a problem...or not. Personally, to have a reporter zing you and then have 2,300 men applaud the zing from the words of a guardsman means there acutally was a problem to begin with.
2) Won't Stop Voting For The Ukraine President Until Tomorrow...and Tomorrow...and Tomorrow...
Ukraine has elections this year that make any American election seem honest. Their court system threw the election results out at least once, and it seems that the opposition candidate was poisoned by dioxin, which can be found in lovely chemical agents such as Agent Orange. It's a real mess. Putin seems to favor the current nominee the party in power has, but with the election rigged (hey, guys, if you wanna rig an election, taking people to the polling places on government busses to vote muitiple times is a stupid way to do it. Thought you should know, you seemed rather clueless in that regard.) The opposition leader may just win because everyone got sick of the dirty tactics. There has been at least one theory presented to me by one of my friends that the opposition leader poisoned himself, but I don't buy it conaidering the nature of dioxin and the fact that he'd have to be painfully careful on how much to use. Oh, and folks, we kinda need to stay out of this one as much as possible, even though it is unfair that there are countries who can't vote sanely.
Citing:
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LinkOp-Ed from our Deputy Secretary of State.
(too many to cite. Googling Ukraine Elections: 2,400,000 hits.)
And my favorite post-election Christmas news story is:
*drumroll*
1) McCain Has No Confidence In Rumsfeld, Says That He Smells Kinda Funny Too.
Well....I did embellish the last part of that. Personally, this was a tie between this article and the other one I may still go to town on:Link. However, I'm going to cover this one only because it's put into the 'Clueless In America' comment on this adminstration. When a war vet who's also been a POW, is on the Armed Services Committee of the Senate, decorated muitiple times for the service to the country says your Secretary of Defense is a moron (and while McCain's respectful and wouldn't say that point blank, but that's sorta parphrasing, in part what he said), you should really listen to them. McCain handled this gracefully and well, even admitting the president can choose his own cabinet. It's a shame if he runs in 2008, some attack will be launched against him that will prevent his presidental nomination from getting any further than the primaries. He acutally sounds sane. Of course, I wouldn't blame McCain if he's still a little miffed from having to blast Moore for the adminstration while Moore was at the RNC convention, or the fact that there's been a number of untrue attacks on his character.
Citing:
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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays of your choice to both red and blue, and whilst I will be posting more, I might not mention this again. I will use flames to keep myself warm during the holiday season. Frankly, I've seen a lot of the dark side of Christmas in my occupation this year (I work in a retail related business), so while there are people looking forward to Christmas, I just want it to be over. I will try to contain some joy, however.
The wolf dragon/AWM playing the merry trickster,
Sol