Good news: many of the Democrats winning tonight in the House are mainstream. . . and not Pelosi Democrats.

Bad news: Pelosi will be majority leader.

I hoped to hold the House, but was wrong about both that and the Senate. Plainly the War and Republican party mistakes (Macca anyone?) destroyed hope for victory.

One thing I have learned: there is always another election. Ohio was toxic for Republicans due to local issues. New York is trending Democrat. . . and this was an off year. I think pro-war Republicans will have to accept that the war was a drag on the party. . . even if it was right.

We will see how the next two years go.

(more at Middlebrow…)

I always vote “no” on spending. . . since usually they don’t ask. Culture of life voters should vote for 85 an abortion parental notification bill.

Your most important vote is for local judges. . . but in California this is confusing.
(more…)

Every election since I was a boy marked the “end of the Religious Right.” Every election since I was a young man marked the “peak of the Reagan Revolution” and the end of conservatives.

If you believe the media, then Republican wins are shocks and Democrat wins are natural.

One fact: no Democrat has won 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter. I have never voted (I am 43) in a Presidential race in which the Democrats have received over half the vote. Republicans may lose the House and Senate, but it will be close and I don’t think it will happen. I am sticking with my prediction of the first of the year.

I am no prophet or son of a prophet, but I don’t think most people spend a great deal of time “doing politics.” They are worried about Iraq, tired of crisis, not thrilled with either party, but aren’t going to do much to rock the boat. Most people like their own folks . . . and will re-elect them.

My bet is that the party turn out in 2004 will be a lower version of 2006 (same profile minus Indie voters . . . which is good news for Bush this time). My assumption is that over-polling Democrats is getting worse (not better) and that most polls are “off” by about 2/3 percent.

My picks (with a short reason):

Senate: Republicans at 53. (Main Stream shocks: Chafee will lose, but Steele will win.)
House: Republicans will lose 16 seats, but gain 2 (at least one in Georgia) to retain thin control of the House. Nobody much is watching the weak Dem seats. House polling stinks and two of the supposed easy Dem pick ups are in Republican districts where pundits assume voters are too dumb to vote for the candidate they prefer . . . new media is educating these voters. Most pundits still do not understand how the new media can get information to target voters. Mid-terms are low turn out elections, which are all about getting out the base. Republicans are the best at this. . . and have been all my life.

The key is to ignore polling . . . listen to good radio like Pastore and Hewitt . . . and vote.

This discovery shocked even me:

The study also finds that more than 50 percent of students at four-year colleges have only the most basic literacy skills, meaning they can’t do basic tasks like summarize the arguments in a newspaper editorial. On both measures, students at two-year colleges perform even worse.

Without literacy, most people will lack adequate vocabularies. An inadequate vocabulary leads to an inability to verbalize experiences or beliefs. This hurts the natural human desire to stand outside of self and ask hard, yes Socratic, questions. “Am I correct?” or better “To what extent am I correct?”

Words make the world wider by allowing humans to categorize experiences. Due to television, movies, gaming and other virtual reality technology, people have more experiences. We have increased visual intelligence, easily seeing the flaws in the most sophisticated special effects films, but we lack the vocabulary to talk about them . . . to reflect on our experience.

When someone tells you that the “new media” or the Internet is changing everything, ask them if arguments that form the basis of scientific, philosophic, and theological advances have changed. They have not. It is not just that we have not yet devised a way to create pictures of these things and get rid of words. . . it is the very ability of words to describe but not be reduced to our experience as easily as an image or icon must. Our failure to give our children the gift of language dooms them to serve those who have it, I fear.

Illiterate people are doomed to be slaves with souls stamped by tyrants to follow the will of those with words.

Yesterday the Republican Senate campaign was irritating with its foolish and humorless anti-Ford web site.

Today the Left was wicked when it decided to help spread vile rumors about a Republican Senator. This married grandfather denies the accusations and since there is no evidence for them . . . we shall have to accept his denial as an act of justice.

These two days sum up the problems of the two parties. Republicans have standards by which they can be judged. They sometimes foolishly fall short of those standards. The party of Lincoln should never run the “Fancy Ford” web site. It mocks their better angels.

Republicans are like your Uncle who is a terrible party guest, apt to say boorish things, but a great businessman. If you want to throw a great bash, leave him home. If it is time to invest your money, call him on the phone.

We are War on Terror and it is time to send the grownups back to Washington. They have been chastened by the scare we have put into them and know to keep their focus on the Big Issues (the War, culture of life judges, and the economy).

Nobody can accuse Democrats of being hypocrites, because they have become so libertine that there is no standard left to fail. Their only core value is hating Bush and Bush will never run for political office again. Their one or two grownups irritate them, so they decided to send Joe Lieberman packing.

When this generation of Democrats (ah for Truman!) are wrong, they are not just boorish, but vile. Leftists in 2006, following in the proud tradition of Leftist parties everywhere (ask your Polish friends about outings under Communism) have decided power and winning are the only standards. While they are slandering Republican grandfathers to end Republican control of Congress, Islamic fascists are planning the end of republican government. While sniggering in the corner of the Internet about train station trysts, terrorists plot assaults on our cities. While the Left whispers from their Blogs about human weakness, Bin Laden plans to impose Islamic law on them.

The Christian notion that nobody lives up to their ideals (Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner!) works in the Libertine Left as a justification for having no ideals.

I have great respect for the Old Left of Joe Lieberman. . . with its idealism on Civil Rights. I venerate the memory of the Civil Rights leaders even though I know some of their flaws. We are all flawed, but the new Libertine Left trumpets those types of flaws (in Republicans though not yet in the Civil Rights leaders thank God), rejoices in them, because it stills (for a moment) their own nagging doubts . . . the still small voice of conscience. Naked power has become their only god and the “good” that will be done fades further away.

Their first sacrifice is their own noble idealists, like Joe Lieberman, and even a grandfather who gets in their way must be slandered.

It is the old story that we saw in Russia only with no physical violence used (except against the silent unborn, sick, and old) . . . as those people who were idealistic, but wrong are shoved aside by those who are simply wrong. They use the poor for power. They talk justice for power. The Left in America, in Europe, and in Asia is about power by any means and I hope Americans do not trust them with it this Fall.

An American in Paris . . . and Britain XI: The Biggest City in the World

Hay-on-Wye is the biggest city in the world if the ideas contained in a city available for purchase measure the size of the city. Actually they don’t, but it feels that way when you are in this nearly perfect place which is dedicated to books. . . used, hardly used, and new in mounds and shelves and barns without a Noble.

Hay-on-Wye contains the most used bookstores I have ever seen in one place. In the Age of Amazon, it is quaint to get excited about the ability to shop for hundreds of used books in person, but it is just more fun to touch the books you are buying . . . or to spend hours grazing over the stacks of books.

I am confident that I could have gotten it all on-line, but where is the joy in that?
(more…)

I am a big fan of Jim Dobson and his work with families. This blog has defended him against unfair attacks in the past, but he should avoid this kind of statement:

“I don’t believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon but that remains to be seen, I guess,” Mr. Dobson said on a syndicated radio program hosted by a conservative commentator, Laura Ingraham.

This is a cagey way of speaking. It does not endorse the attitude and later in the interview Dobson says some nice things about Romney, but this statement is a sad reminder of the “I am afraid America is not ready for a (pick an oppressed group) for (pick a high level job)” used to telegraph feelings about a group in the past.

This argument has a nefarious history in American politics. It allows the speaker to appeal to the prejudices of his followers while staying clear of them himself. I am confident Dobson (a good man) had no intention to do this, but it is a good example of accidentally falling into a dangerous language pattern that will allow his critics (and they are many) to paint him in bigot’s colors. Dobson is not so narrow and it would be a shame for him to allow the old-media room to attack.

So my advice: Oppose Romney for political reasons or if you oppose him for his religion, do so openly and not in the guise of “those other folk will not.” If you must make the argument that Evangelicals will not vote for a Mormon, do so using actual statistics to avoid the appearance that you are telegraphing your audience without stating your opinions (thus avoiding the need to defend them).

(more…)

An American in Paris . . . and Britain X

British people often laugh at American Christian reverence for C.S. Lewis and American Christian academics are generally sensitive to this laughter. Nothing makes an American academic more insecure than the well modulated sneers of his British counterpart. Americans are (it appears): loud, overly religious, patriotic in a brash way, and uncritical of their own nation. Lewis was from that sad period of British history when too many Brits were also jolly, pious, proud of their island nation, and willing to fight for King and country. Lewis is a bit of the crazy old uncle who managed to survive the Second World War only to linger too long. If he had lived longer he would sneered at Blair’s Britain making sarcastic comments about “Cool Britannia,” the Millennium Dome, and other far reaching cultural changes.
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An American in Paris . . . and Britain IX: On Seeing Julius Caesar: Shakespeare and the Noble Tyrant

Hugo Chavez rolled up to the podium at the United Nations and did what modern tyrants in the making do.He ranted and he roiled up the crowd by hating George Bush, but he fed nobody, helped no one, and gained nothing.

He is the people’s god, of the moment, hated by the worthless rich of his own nation, though the fact that bad men hate him does not wash him clean of his sins. Stalin’s hatred of Hitler did not make Hitler one bit less wicked, though Stalin was a very wicked man. And yet there is some part of America that wants to believe in Chavez . . . our home grown left moans after him this generation as their grandparents did after Castro. He is so forthright, so manly in his bright uniforms, and so sure that he can flog the rich and help the poor . . . and everyone knows the poor in Venezuela need helping.

(more…)

I have read the Pope’s address which stirred up so much fuss which seems to be more than many American papers are willing to do.

The obvious question is to wonder about how easily our foes are baited by a very clever pontiff. Is there a radical Moslem with a sense of irony? When they threaten to kill the Pope for “saying” that they are violent, don’t they get a bit concerned about how that appears?

My new idea for capturing Bin Laden is for President Bush to announce that if he does not come out of hiding soon that he is a big, fat scared-y pants. Bin Laden is sure to do it on the same swift reasoning being shown by radicals in the Middle East today.

The second less obvious set of questions hinge on fears about media education when some American papers and reporters are shocked to discover that (perhaps!) the Pope believes Islam is wrong. Next they will be discovering that Catholics send out missionaries to offer people the chance to convert to Christianity and not to Islam! Ever!
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My mother bought it and it lives in my memory like an evil dream. It was lemon yellow and made of polyester that would not die. It was a leisure suit for boys and it could not be destroyed.

At last I outgrew it, but it could have lasted forever looking just as lemony with orange glowing buttons. It lives still in my memory, but I may recover with some fashion therapy. What it could do was throw off little pills of itself. . . each an indestructible piece of itself that could not be detached from the whole without destroying it. But if you did cut it off carefully with a clever tool that K-Tel would sell you on late night television, the pill would glow on its own in the waste can. You can be sure that all the leisure suit pills in the world still exist buried out of sight in the dumps of the world.

It is a frightening thought.

It has become fashionable on the blog-o-sphere to call Mr. Ned Lamont, slayer of Jewish Senators, an empty suit of clothes.

And there is some virtue in it, for Ned Lamont is an empty suit filled with the hot air blown his way by Michael Moore, the Daily Kos, and whatever leftist tripe he still remembers from college days. His thoughts are not just undigested, for he seems to lack the internal mental organs needed to digest thought, but almost random. If his wine-and-cheese crowd friends suddenly supported the War, Ned Lamont would support it with a change so intellectually effortless that it would be nearly impossible to notice it.

That is not what is interesting about Ned Lamont since Ted Kennedy has spent a lifetime without thinking for himself the scion of a rich family who pretends to have made it on his own. Half the Democrat Senate consists of rich white men who are sorry for being rich, white, and male in a superior self-satisfied way.

No instead what is frightening about Lamont is his potential staying power. His naive views are ugly, in a world where anti-Semites run nations they are even dangerous, but come packaged in a sunny exterior that appears capable of discharging little mental pills into our political system for decades.

He is young and has the rich kid health and confidence that means he can go forever. Send Lamont to the Senate this time and we may see him there for the rest of our lives. . . slowly evolving into the Teddy Kennedy of the twenty-first century.

He is Leisure Suit Lamont and he may live forever in the Senate.

Below is one pill discharged from the leisure suit mind of Ned Lamont. . . with my comments in italics. Long after his Michael Moore/Daily Kos creed will have been utterly out grown by the body politic, he will go on glowing in the Senate discharging his fuzzy warm wisdom to us.

(more at Middlebrow…)

One of the oddest notions now alive on the ‘net is that Evangelicals support Jewish persons because they want to bring on the End Times. Says the leftist hater of Evangelicals to obvious evidence of Evangelical love of all things Jewish, “You cannot give Evangelicals credit for their support of Israel, because they really want all Jews to become Christians or die at the end of the world that Evangelicals are hoping to trigger.”

Now this is just a lie, or at best guilt by association, but it is the kind of lie that leads a great many Americans to dislike their religious neighbor. “Those Evangelicals are all Ned Flanders! So weird and such clever anti-Semites, pretending to love Israel and Jews so that they can kill them!” While figures like Flanders are funny, and often deflate Christian wind bags, such stereotypes become harmful when they are almost the only media image of Evangelicals . . . and then slander is mixed into this pop culture version of forty percent of the population: Evangelicals are shallow and scary!
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U.S. Lags Behind Europe, Japan in Acceptance of Evolution
Thursday, August 10, 2006

. . . as usual my comments are in italics.

The following is a delightful Fox story shot through with evidence that those arguing for Darwin still don’t get it. They keep trying the same “our opponents are stupid” and “mainstream religion is for Darwin” arguments. . . but have made little progress.