Medary.com

Here are my recommendations for who to vote for, in the 6th Congressional District of Missouri where I live. None of this makes me very happy at all, but I guess that's life in a democracy (which is really a republic, but let's not argue, OK?)

U.S. Senate
Jim Talent (R), Claire McCaskill (D), Frank Gilmour (L), Lydia Lewis (Progressive)
U.S. Representative, 6th District
Sam Graves (R), Sara Jo Shettles (D), Erik Buck (Lib), Shirley Yurkonis (P)

At the top of the ticket, its high time for a lengthy rant.

You probably aren't going to believe this, but I don't believe that politics should be treated like sports. I'm not a "fan" of the Republicans in the sense that I root for their victory against the other team. I don't think that's at all healthy.

I try instead to look at what politicians are actually saying about the issues that are important to me. I can't tell you how much I crave the emergence of a wing of the Democratic Party that would emphasize the importance of economic as well as personal liberty, that would unabashedly come out for a strong national defense, that would recognize the fundamental challenge to Western civilization from a resurgent, militant, totalitarian Islamist movement headed by Iran.

As far as I can tell, there isn't one. Instead we get Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jack Murtha, and Howard Dean.

I do not want to see the next two years wasted in partisan witch-hunts organized by the Democrats, hunting down and assassinating the character of political opponents merely because they have an (R) following their name. The ridiculous overreaching in the wake of the Mark Foley non-sex with non-minors "scandal" (especially in comparison to the silence about the Harry Reid million-dollar profit on real estate he didn't own) gives any objective observer ample warning of what is to come with Democratic control of either house of Congress.

I do not want to see a former U.S. judge who was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for bribery (only the sixth judge in the history of the U.S. to be removed from office)--Alcee Hastings--to be Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Read that again. I do not want someone impeached and convicted of BRIBERY to be Chairman of the freakin' House Intelligence Committee!!! Yet that is exactly what will happen with a House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I do not want to see the United States abandon Iraq to chaos and anarchy. Yet this is what Jack Murtha stridently advocates, while ridiculously suggesting that the U.S. troops in Iraq should pull back to Okinawa (which is not quite half way around the world from Iraq. Germany would be closer.)

I do not want to see an ethically challenged milquetoast rising to be the Majority Leader of the Senate. But that's what will happen with Harry Reid if the Democrats should gain a majority in the Senate.

This year, it really doesn't matter how good a Democratic candidate looks, or how bad a Republican candidate looks. Neither Talent nor Graves are particularly bad candidates, but this election isn't about them.

The Democratic Party is a shadow of its once proud heritage. Once, leaders like Truman and JFK could be counted on to defend America and freedom and liberty throughout the world. Domestic politics truly ended at the water's edge. No more. Now, the national Democratic Party led by Howard Dean and Markos "Kos" Moulitsas, in their single-minded campaign to regain political power by any means necessary, would appease North Korea and Iran, abandon Iraq to the barbarians, and hope that expressions of good-will and friendliness would keep the enemies of the West from again murdering thousands of Americans.

Ignoring, misunderstanding, and downplaying the Islamist threat is why 9/11 happened in the first place. This is not purely a Democratic failing, but it was borne from the "End of History" period following the collapse of the USSR and the defeat of world communism. Those few who saw the Islamist threat coming failed to warn those who could do something about it--Democrat or Republican. But after 9/11, it was the Republicans who realized that the Islamists were serious about challenging and defeating Western civilization. The Democrats, so focused on simply regaining power, show every sign that they are willing to doom millions in the Middle East to tyranny and oppression, and feed the resurgent dreams of Islamic fundamentalists, simply to score political points in the U.S. There can be no more damning indictment of a once noble political party founded by Thomas Jefferson.

This country needs a serious, engaged opposition party. The Democrats are certainly engaged, but they have not demonstrated to me that they are serious about anything but returning to power. With the notable exception of Joe Lieberman, there is no prominent Democrat who appears capable of consistent, sober and thoughtful critiques of the policies of the Republican majority and President.

There are thoughtful Democratic voices out there. A large number of thoughful political commentators and bloggers are Democrats, including Armed Liberal at Winds of Change, Tammy Bruce, Glenn Reynolds, and Victor Davis Hanson. There are, I'm sure, many other reasonable, thoughtful Democrats--some of whom may actually hold national public office today. But we can't hear them through the cacophony of the Netroots, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Hate-America-First crowd.

Until rational Democrats re-take control of their party from the likes of George Soros and Markos Moulitsas, it is simply too dangerous to vote for any Democrat for national office.

This is a circumstance where while I'm not completely happy with the Republican choices for the House and the U.S. Senate, a vote against them is a vote for an orgy of partisan witch-hunts and gotcha politics that will make the years since Bill Clinton first was elected look like nursery school. No thanks.

It's entirely possible that I'm pissing into the wind here, but it's also possible that the Democrat/Media Complex has peaked too early.

My votes go, with fingers lightly holding nostrils closed, to Republicans Jim Talent and Sam Graves.


State Auditor

Sandra Thomas (R), Susan Montee (D), Charles Baum (Libertarian), Terry Bunker (Progressive)
After looking over the web sites of Thomas and Montee, I'd ordinarily have to give the nod to the Democrat Montee. But I think I'll indulge my rebellious mood and vote for the Libertarian, Charles Baum.


State Senate

Matt Bartle (R), Jason Norbury (D)
I suspect I agree with Bartle on a number of things - - - so it's easier to talk about the things with which I disagree with him. Let's start with human cloning. I just don't buy the bogeyman aspect of the human cloning debate. I tend to be a libertarian on the subject of sexually oriented businesses. I'm skeptical of campaign finance limits, preferring instead greater transparency of financial support of political campaigns. Generally I think that Bartle gives in too often to his inner busybody.

On the other hand, I don't really now a damned thing about Jason Norbury. He's a lawyer, so that's one strike against him. His Q and A with the Kansas City Star reveals that there may be some hope for him. But, given the uniformly disgraceful performance of the Democratic Party on the national stage, I'm loath to pull the handle for any Democrat candidate. This will probably be a last-minute decision. I just might go Norbury, to slow down the Missouri religious fundamentalists a bit. Or I might re-pinch my nose and vote for Bartle. But I won't enjoy it a bit.


State Representative

Brian Yates (R) unapposed
Well, that makes it easy . . .


County Executive

Bob Gough (R), Mike Sanders (D), Richard Tolbert (Reform)

Jackson County government tends to remind you of that saying from the Star Wars movie: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." I think much of it spills over from that other hive of scum and villainy--the City of Kansas City. If ever a governmental unit cried out for a "None of the above" ballot selection, Jackson County would be it. It probably doesn't matter. I guess I'll vote for Gough.


County Legislature

Bob Spence (R)
Again, that makes it easy.


Missouri Supreme Court (retain in office)

William Ray Price
Mary Rhodes Russell
Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr.

Missouri Court of Appeals W. District (retain in office)
Joseph M. Ellis
James M. Smart
Harold "Hal" Lowenstein

I never, ever vote to retain judges. I'm just funny that way. Throw them all out! Let 'em go find honest work.


Amendment 2: Stem Cells

I am unconvinced by the opponents of Amendment 2 that all the evil horrible nasty things they say will happen, will happen. However, I am also not happy that this the subject of a State constitutional amendment in the first place. If it really rises to the level of public policy at all, it should be handled through the legislative process. My inclination is to vote Yes, but really, do the terms "blastocyst" and "somatic cell nuclear transfer" have any business being included in the text of a Constitutional Amendment? Or, for that matter, a law in the first place? Damn, people make me angry sometimes. Yes on 2, but it really pisses me off.


Amendment 3: Cigarette Tax

"Make it legal, then tax the hell out of it" is my basic prescription for drug, alcohol, tobacco, prostitution, heck, pretty much vice that people really, really want to do despite all attempts to dissuade them from doing them. I'll be consistent here and vote Yes on 3.


Amendment 6: Tax exemption for Veteran's organizations

Oh, sure, throw the VFW and the American Legion a bone, I'll vote Yes on 6.


Amendment 7: Office holders forfeit pension on felony conviction; 2/3 legislative vote required to reject citizens' committee pay recommendations.

The opponents of Amendment 7 are up in arms about the provision of this amendment where the Legislature would have to vote down the recommendations of the "Missouri Citizens’ Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials" by a 2/3 vote to refuse the commission's recommendations rather than the current majority vote now. First, did you know there was a "Missouri Citizens’ Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials?" Me neither. Seems like a pretty silly and typically weasely politician thing to set up. But it's already there in the State Constitions. I'd prefer that the "Missouri Citizens’ Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials" be done away with, but since we have it, I don't have a problem with making it harder for the Legislature to turn down its recommendations. Yes on 7.


Proposition B: Raise minimum wage

Not just no but HELL NO. Raising minimum wage has been proven over and over again to do NOTHING for the people it purports to help--low income workers. What it does do is reduce the number of entry-level jobs in the economy by making them more expensive. Remember Economics 101? Supply and demand? Make something more expensive and you reduce demand. There's nothing magical or special about jobs from an economic point of view. Calls for minimum wage hikes are calls for CUTS IN JOBS AVAILABLE. That's just not a humane thing to do. NO on B.


Lee's Summit Ordinance--Ban smoking in all bars and restaurants?

I really hate cigarette smoke. It sends me into coughing spasms--it really does. I've done my anti-smoking thing by voting yes on Amendment 3. I need to satisfy my libertarian inner anarchist by voting NO on this one.

There you have it. Something to disappoint almost everyone. At least I hope so.

Key BBC personalities admit there is an overwhelming liberal bias in the BBC, not only in the news room but in the entertainment programming:

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.'
. . .
Nearly everyone at the summit, including the (BBC comedy show Room 101)'s actual producer and the BBC's head of drama, Alan Yentob, agreed they could all be thrown into the bin, except the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.
. . .

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'

Randall also told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: 'You can't do that, that's like the National Front!'

Quoting a George Orwell observation, Randall said that the BBC was full of intellectuals who 'would rather steal from a poor box than stand to attention during God Save The King'.

If you're getting all of your news from the "mainstream media" you're not getting the full story.  If everything you know about what's going on comes from "Law & Order" you're even worse off.

. . . has nothing to do with ethnicity or skin color.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

Among other findings, the report, "A Profile of American College Faculty: Volume 1: Political Beliefs & Behavior," says that:

    * Professors are three times as likely to call themselves "liberal" as "conservative." In the 2004 presidential election, 72 percent of those surveyed voted for John Kerry.

    * Almost one-third of professors cite the United States as among the top two greatest threats to international stability -- more than cited Iran, China, or Iraq.

    * Fifty-four percent of professors say U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is partially responsible for the growth of Islamic militancy.

    * Sixty-four percent say the government's powers under the USA Patriot Act should be weakened.

Professors, says the report, are at the "forefront of the political divide" over U.S. foreign policy that has developed since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Faculty members have "aligned themselves in direct opposition to the political philosophy of the conservative base voting for the prevailing political power" in America, it says. Unlike most Americans, it adds, faculty members "blame America for world problems" and regard U.S. policies as "suspect."

The report labels the faculty's overall stance as liberal "groupthink," and says it is dangerous because faculty members "are supposed to provide a broad range of ... approaches to addressing problems in American society and around the world." Professors are role models for students and frequently are called upon to act as "pundits" by the media and as experts on foreign policy, it adds.

Diversity has been an overriding priority for years in higher education.  But, as studies such as this demonstrate, only a certain kind of diversity is being promoted.

The story from Yahoo News:

LONDON - Renowned astrophysicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking is getting a divorce, according to media reports Friday.

British newspapers reported he and his wife, Elaine, have lodged divorce papers at Cambridge County Court.

I didn't even know he was married!  Well, I guess it just goes to show . . . (that's just one of those phrases people throw out, you know?  It doesn't really go to show anything, it's just, you know, like, a kind of thing to say, you know?)

primarily in how it's being presented by the media.

That's not me saying it, it's coming from respected military historian John Keegan, writing in the U.K.'s Telegraph:

The recent upsurge of violence in Iraq in no way resembles the Tet offensive. At Tet, the Vietnamese new year, the North Vietnamese People's Army simultaneously attacked 40 cities and towns in South Vietnam, using 84,000 troops. Of those, the communists lost 45,000 killed. No such losses have been recorded in Iraq at any place or any time. The Tet offensive proved to be a military disaster for the Vietnamese communists. It left them scarcely able to keep up their long-running, low-level war against the South Vietnamese government and the American army.

Indeed, insofar as Tet was a defeat for the United States and for the South Vietnamese government, it was because the American media decided to represent it as such. It has become a cliché to say that Vietnam was a media war, but so it was. Much of the world media were hostile to American involvement from the start, particularly in France, which had fought and lost its own Vietnam war in 1946-54. The defeat of Dien Bien Phu rankled with the French and there were few who wanted to see the Americans win where they had failed.

It was, however, the American rather than the foreign media who decided on the verdict. The American media had begun by supporting the war. As it dragged on, however, without any end in sight and with the promised military victory constantly postponed, American newspapers and — critically — the evening television programmes began to treat war news as a bad story.

Emphasis mine.

The main difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that with Iraq, the media were never really in support of the war.

With the recent revelation that Republican Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania is a big Lord of the Rings fan, Medary.com asks the question the entire Internet is afraid to ask:

Is Missouri Senator Jim Talent now, or has he ever been a Dungeons and Dragons player? He certainly looks like the kind of person who did, and very successfully, too.

Jim Talent: D&D geek?

My guess is that if indeed Jim "Seventh Level Elvish Cleric" Talent started with the first AD&D edition rather than the original three stapled, soft-cover books plus Greyhawk.

Claire "Do I look like someone you want to piss off?" McCaskill probably played Sorry. Or UNO. Or, possibly, Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Claire McCaskill: We are not amused

(Full disclosure: filbert did in fact play D&D for a number of years before he kicked the habit in favor of alcohol, basketball, computers, and blogging, but he retains a soft spot in his heart for Illuminati.)

Fnord.

A match made in marketing . . . Blue meets Hello Kitty:

TOKYO | America’s favorite puzzle-solving dog, Blue, is getting together with Hello Kitty, Japan’s most famous cat, in a partnership announced Wednesday.

Toys, clothes and stationery decorated with the floppy-eared blue canine and the bubble-headed mouthless white kitten will arrive in stores here in spring 2007, under a licensing deal between Sanrio Co. of Japan and U.S. licensing business Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products, the companies said.

Dr. Helen Smith (wife of the redoubtable Instapundit) is a criminal psychologist--she notes a recent journal article which landed in her mailbox:

Getting back to the current regurgitation article on the same topic, Jost finds in his research that liberals scored higher on openness than conservatives, what a surprise! "Results revealed that all six of the openness facets were associated with liberalism rather than conservatism: openness values (r=-.48), aesthetics (r=-.32), actions (r=-.27), ideas (r=-.24), feelings (r=-.24) and fantasy (r=-.19)" (American Psychologist, October 2006, pg. 663). So liberals are more open to ideas, feelings, and actions than conservatives. Dr.Jost, why not try this hypothesis out in the real world beyond the ivory tower? If you want to find out if liberals are open to new ideas, actions, and feelings, I challenge you to do the following:

1) Post comments around on various lefty blogs such as FireDogLake, The Daily Kos or Alicublog. These comments should disagree with the view of the host or view of the blog or diary; for example, state that you support Israel at the Daily Kos, wonder if feminists who are against sexual harrassment should support Bill Clinton at FireDogLake, and/or politely stand up for colleagues at Alicublog who you feel have been treated unfairly just because they disagree with the views of the host. Now, check back to evaluate scores for these paragons of openness for their ideas, actions and feelings. If your comments have been troll-scored by the Kossacks, deleted by Jane Hamsher, or ridiculed by whoever runs the Alicublog, give an openness score of zero. Negative bonus points if you are called a douche, told to stay in your place so as not to "assail your betters," or have a racial slur thrown your way.

Yes, the tolerance of the left is truly legendary.  Look no further than Columbia University, for instance.

Fox News is all over another attack by a stingray, slapping a barb into an innocent peace-loving human.

When will the carnage stop?  President Bush, do something about the stingray menace! 

Where is the U.N.?  Where are the diplomats?  Kofi, we need you now more than ever!

If you're in Missouri, you know that the Democrats have a nice political machine going on over there in St. Louis. One of the big cogs in that machine is a group called ACORN. This group represents on its donation page as being a "charitable organization" but is in actuality a partisan political action organization. (OK, the national ACORN is a partisan outfit, but state ACORN chapters are technically non-partisan--and if you believe that's how it really works, you'll believe almost anything as long as it has "Bush Lied" attached to it. Which, sadly, seems to describe a large, vocal, and influential segment of Americans today.)

St. Louis' Gateway Pundit links to a Democratic-leaning St. Louis blog, Pub Def, which is tearing the cover back on ACORN's shady dealings. The deal: hire lower-income people to go out and shake the trees for Claire McCaskill votes.

Note to Democrats: This works a lot better if you actually pay those folks you hire to do your dubious Get-Out-The-Vote effort.

One big question: What are the links between ACORN, the Missouri Democratic Party, and the Claire McCaskill U.S. Senate campaign? Click on this link to see the Pub Def video, showing the unpaid ACORN workers saying that their get-out-the-vote campaign was called Project Victory 2006. As both Pub Def and Gateway Pundit note, this is (oddly enough) the same name under which the Missouri Democratic Party is running it's "coordinated campaign effort:"

We are pleased to introduce Project Victory 2006, the Missouri Democratic Party's coordinated campaign effort for this election year! We are excited about this year's campaign and expect that our field effort will be incredibly strong and well-received. We are proud that more than 75 percent of the Project Victory's staff members either are from Missouri or attended college in Missouri, and we expect this to be a tremendous asset.

There's coordination, and then there's Democratic coordination, which apparently includes not paying poor people that you've hired (by a "non-partisan" front group for a radically partisan national organization) to pound on doors campaigning for your candidates.

You can pick what part of this scandal offends you more--non-partisan groups engaged in blatant partisan political behavior, or the spectacle of Democrats telling poor people to get out the Democrat vote for money, and then stiffing them.

Oh, right, Mark Foley was a gay pedophile-wanna-be. Never mind. Meanwhile, how are those sweetheart real estate deals going, Senator Reid?

If you're bound and determined to vote against the Republicans, you really should open your eyes to who you'll be voting FOR.