Writing on the Double Yellow Line

Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Name:
Location: Illinois, United States

Monday, July 16, 2012

One Man, One Vote, One Time

One Man, One Vote, One Time 
©2012 Ross Williams


Headline:
Voter Fraud in Rangel Primary? 

Article Synopsis: Charlie Rangel, a Harlem Democrat Congressman, faced a legitimate primary challenger for the first time in decades, and he nearly lost the election. The challenger, a state representative, has requested a recount, and the challenger’s supporters are demanding federal investigation into voting “irregularities”. Among the irregularities cited are 70 polling stations where Rangel was not polling well having zero votes. 

The Fix Is In: Charlie Rangel has been in Congress since 1970, and coming from a district in which Republicans are nearly as scarce as they are in Chicago, the Democrat primary is the only legitimate chance to unseat him ... if the Democrats in his district believe he should be unseated.

And the Democrats in his district would appear to believe so.  Charlie Rangel was the Democrat Congressman from NY who was convicted by the House of Representatives [in a heavily partisan vote] of ethics violations in 2011 for years of fraudulent use of campaign funds for private use – stealing money from campaign contributors, in other words. His punishment was censure; he was told “don’t let anyone catch you again.” 

This occurred almost concurrently and exceptionally ironically with the Anthony Wiener scandal – the Democrat Congressman from Queens, just across the river, who had “sexted” a woman pictures of himself wearing boxers; Wiener’s wife was not pleased, naturally, but fellow House Democrats were livid that...

It’s unclear what they were livid about, but they pressured Wiener to resign. He did so, and his district went Republican in the special election. Charlie Rangel steals money from Democrat voters and it’s fine with House Democrats, but Anthony Wiener tries to seduce a strumpet and it’s not. 

Conclusion: It was apparently not fine with enough Democrats in Rangel’s Harlem and Bronx district to learn that Rangel had been fleecing them for up to 40 years. Where are the votes from the 70 precincts, Charlie? Dijja steal them too? 


Headline: Mexican Leftist Claims Fraud in Presidential Vote 

Article Synopsis: Pre-election polls indicated that the leftist candidate, Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, would come in well behind the conservative candidate, Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had lost its 70 year monopoly on Mexico’s presidency in 2000. They lost to the moderate conservative National Action Party. When Obrador lost narrowly in 2006, which he also attributed to fraud, he called on his supporters to flood Mexico City and riot; they did so – for months. 

Corruption ‘R’ Us: The reason the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI as it is known in Mexico, was unelected in 2000 is because of their history of institutional corruption; they played favorites. The government was given to the moderate conservatives, who were found to be no less corrupt, falling immediately into bed with the drug cartels. ...not to mention playing favorites.

Twelve years and 50,000 Mexicans dead in their drug wars – many of whom were not actually gang members or drug dealers – the Mexican voters have discovered that all their political parties are corrupt, but at least the PRI wasn’t owned by the hoodlums who shoot up markets and behead dozens of their competitors at a time, and leave their bodies on main street for the morning rush hour.

Besides, the PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, looks like a youngish Desi Arnaz Jr. Obrador instead looks like a pasty, pudgy laborer and has explained that the lynching of police officers by drug gangsters is a “tradition” of “the people” and doesn’t need to be prosecuted. He also denounces the use of Mexican military forces in controlling the drug gangs, supports the black [read: illicit drug] market as legal and should be protected, and salutes his supporters with a Sieg Heil.

Conclusion: The pollsters all found that Obrador would lose by 12% to Nieto; the election showed that he lost by 7%. Obrador claims this difference is the result of a conspiracy between the pollsters and PRI to show Nieto as the foregone winner and suppress the socialist vote; the pollsters suggest that people changed their minds.

In truth, the answer is much more obvious: a significant number of people cannot bring themselves to admit that they will vote for a socialist who openly works for the drug gangs. In other words: they lied to the pollsters. The Sieg Heil thing probably doesn’t help.


Headline: Democracy May Be Fleeting in Egypt

Article Synopsis: The Hoover Institute, a Conservative/Libertarian think tank housed at Sanford University, has come out with an analysis piece saying that the recent election of a Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, coupled with 80% of Egypt’s parliament being in the hands of islamists at least as strident as Muslim Brotherhood, may mean that Egypt will create another muslim theocracy out of democratic means. Condoleezza Rice chimed in with further worries.

No! Really?! Keep up, Hoov; I’ve been saying this since before the female journalist was raped by a gang of revolutionaries in Tahrir Square.

It’s only taken others over a year to realize that this Muslim Brotherhood is the same Muslim Brotherhood which:
1] orchestrated a coup in the 50s
2] later attempted a few coups against Nasser
3] assassinated Sadat in the early 80s
4] created not one, but two terrorist groups, including the one which:
5] has provided al Qaida a lot of its best talent, including Doc Ayman, the guy who made bin Laden’s ineptitude semi-plausible.

All anyone in the blinkered west has been able to see is that Muslim Brotherhood – boo hoo hoo – has been prohibited from running for any office in Egypt since Mubarak came to power after the assassination of Sadat, and that means that Mubarak is a gratuitous bully.

Bully, yes; gratuitous, no. Muslim Brotherhood has been trying to turn Greater Islamia into a theocratic dictatorship for over a century. A theocratic dictatorship which is:
1] opposed to the existence of Israel
2] hence, opposed to a peace treaty with Israel
3] opposed to women’s rights – of any kind
4] opposed to muslim land being sullied by infidels
5] hence, opposed to tourism
6] also hence, opposed to religious minorities
7] not to mention just about everything invented since the 12th century
8] including democracy.

But, but, but, ... they were elected democratically! That means they are pro-democracy!

That means squat. Megalomaniacs – individuals or institutions – use whatever means available to further their aims. When Hitler figured out that putsching in Munich beer halls wasn’t going to work, he ran for office. Once in a position to prevent competition, he did so. We’re seeing nothing less here.

Conclusion: Muslim Brotherhood is the main power structure in Jordan and Syria, both, behind the government. Syria’s government is on the verge of collapse – guess who’ll be setting up shop when it does? Then guess who’s next? More cynicism and less credulity, if you don’t mind.

No! Really?

Obvious Explanations
©2012 Ross Williams



Headline: Gay Cruise Turned Away by Morocco

Article Synopsis:
A Holland America cruise sailing the Mediterranean, chartered by gays and lesbians, was turned away by Moroccan authorities in Casablanca; it sailed to Spain instead. Moroccan tourist officials insisted it was not prevented from docking. “We don’t ban cruise ships here,” the Tourism Minister said. He then said future ships would be welcome.

Reaping the Crops Sown in Arab Spring: Morocco is one of many Arab and Arab-like nations to undergo one form or another of revolution during the fantastically-named “Arab Spring” where idiot American neophytes, who universally equate populism and democracy to the political equivalent of woodland faeries and water sprites petting their rainbow-hued unicorns in fields of heather, but the reality is that when the majority of a nation’s people are comfortable with dictatorship ... they’ll elect dictators.

The odd thing is that Morocco already had a dictator – a king. But he ruled with the wrong iron fist; his hand was fairly westernized, but the majority of Moroccans are islamists where homosexuality is a crime punishable by mere jail if the chief islamist is lenient. It’s death, otherwise. I realize that many of the most benighted American neophytes will quibble with that because – they will claim – being muslim does not equal being islamist.

Yet when asked to explain the reason why the Arab Spring elections universally elected islamists and in Egypt, the most liberal and westernized Arab Spring nation, by a rate of at least 4:1, they have no answer except to call their interrogator a racist. This is what happens when you leave some people to their own devices: they sell themselves into slavery.

Conclusion: There are three requisites for islamism to acquire power democratically:
1] islamist politicians to run for office;
2] islamist voters to cast votes for the islamist candidates
3] non-islamist leaders to be goaded or guilted or manipulated into allowing elections where the outcome is assured: transfer of dictatorship.


Headline: White House Declares Health Care Debate Over

Article Synopsis:
White House spokesman Jack Lew insisted that the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare was the final word for it, and the subject now becomes jobs and the economy. He also declared that contrary to what the Supreme Court decided, it still isn’t a tax, it’s only a penalty.

End of Discussion! ...or not: There are two [inappropriate] ways of justifying Congress making laws they are not properly authorized to make:
1] the Interstate Commerce Clause
2] the Tax and Spend Clause.

If ANY milk is sold across state lines, then Congress has the authority to control how ALL milk must be handled and processed ... and they do. It doesn’t matter if you buy your milk from the farm next door. It is by the courts lumping all commerce together this way that has given Congress the latitude to control virtually all commerce in the nation.

One major exception has been insurance. Insurance, for over a century, has been ruled to be a state issue only. Health insurance included. Insurance cannot be sold across state lines; the argument used in front of the Supreme Court was that by virtue of being a nationwide reality, it was effectively an example of interstate commerce.

Most of the High Nine, during arguments, asked repeatedly if the fee was a tax. Obamacare loyyers said no it was not.

The ruling last week shot the interstate commerce argument to ribbons and declared that Obamacare was acceptable only because it was a tax, not the “penalty” it was claimed to be. It had to be one or the other: either a legitimate instance of interstate commerce, or a tax that Congress could spend how it wanted.

Its supporters touted a losing argument, denied the winning argument was valid, and the idiot High Nine gave it to them anyway.

Conclusion: And they’re still upset? They won [so far, in much the same way segregationists won with Plessy, I figure]; why are they quibbling about how? It couldn’t be that they’ll now have to explain the one-point-seven trillion dollar middle-class tax in an election year, could it?


Headline: Death Row Inmate Planned Suicide by Oyster

Article Synopsis:
A Connecticut man sentenced to death for the grisly murders of a woman and her two teen-aged daughters began a letter-writing campaign admitting to killing more than a dozen others. He had hoped to be able to parlay information on those other murders for food, oysters specifically, to which he is deathly allergic.

The Postman Always Rings Twice: He had hoped to cheat the hangman. Or the electrician. Or the phlebotomist. Connecticut uses one of them.

At any rate, his failed attempt to manipulate his way to suicide he is attributing to the will of god keeping him alive so he can continue to think about what he did.

Conclusion: Where is separation of church and state when you need it? God has no place using the state to deny him oysters. Keep god out of our prisons: give the guy oysters.