Reflections on 2004

What a year! I must say I’ve enjoyed myself immensely. When Matt did me the honor of inviting me to write on this blog, I never imagined what an important part of my life it would become. The invite was back in September of 2003 and my first post, rather prescient if I do say so myself, appeared on October 20, 2003. From that day to this, it has been my immense pleasure to come here day after day and put out my thoughts – some of our readers have been kind enough to send me a line lauding me for my efforts, and for that I am eternally grateful. Its nice to know that in some small way you are having a positive effect on other people.
It was a year of massive ups and downs – as a political blog, our primary function was to cover the political scene; but as economics, culture and the war intersected with political matters, we ended up covering just about everything except the Peterson trial. In the dark of night, from time to time, I must admit that sometimes I doubted the ultimate outcome. Mostly I was staunch, but every now and again a confluence of bad news from Iraq, weak news on the economy, a couple bad polls and my naturally depressive nature would combine to make me lose heart – fortuantely, our Democrats always came to our rescue.
When Matt was roughed up by some Democratic union thugs in March, it told me that there was desperation on the other side…after all, Matt is just this guy who runs a blog, certainly not someone with the power and influence of a Democrat-dominated union; but they saw his existence as an affront and a threat. People who are headed for a win don’t beat up their critics.
And so it went through the whole year – you could always count on the Democrats to help us out; even at the worst moment of the campaign, after the first debate when the MSM was having an orgasm over what it was pumping up as a Kerry victory in the debate, we here at Blogs for Bush sat serene, knowing that Kerry’s Global Test was going to kill him politically. The MSM ignored the phrase for the most part and it took the blogosphere to really make them pay attention to it. This, to me, was really when the blogosphere became “real”; Rathergate made the bigger splash, but when the MSM was incapable of putting it away for Kerry because of blog commentary post first debate, we knew we were on to something with our blog.

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Disposing the “Sluggish Economy” Myth

All through 2004 we heard the endless mantra from the MSM and the Democrats that our economy was sluggish – The Wall Street Journal now asks the question: sluggish compared to what? (annoying, but free, registration required)

we live in a world economy, so when headline writers use the word sluggish, we have to ask: Sluggish compared with whom? According to the November forecast of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, gross domestic product in the U.S. is expected to increase by 4.4% in 2004. Elsewhere, the OECD predicts growth of 4% for Japan, 2.7% for the U.K., 2.1% for France and 1.2% for Germany. For the 12-country euro zone, the figure is 1.8%. To put matters in historical perspective, the last time Japan, Britain, France and Germany had growth rates at or in excess of 4.4%, the years were 1990, 1994, 1989 and 1991, respectively.

There is much more in the whole article, but the essential point is already made; compared to everyone else out there, we’re doing very well – and a deeper look into the data indicates that we’re doing better compared even to our own past best performance (overall growth in Clinton’s best years was 4.25%, a little less than our growth this year). The unfortunate thing about this is that no matter how good things are, as long as a Republican is President we’ll have to put up with this sort of reporting – just another cross the bear, as it were.

Senator Lieberman on the Iraqi Elections

Making us all once again wonder why he sticks with the moonbats of the Democratic Party, Senator Joe Lieberman reports on what he saw on his recent trip to Iraq:

WASHINGTON Dec 30, 2004 ó Sen. Joe Lieberman, traveling in the Middle East Wednesday, said there is strong support in Iraq for the Jan. 30 election, and postponing it would only be a victory for the insurgents.
In a telephone call from Tel Aviv, Israel, the Connecticut Democrat said conditions in Iraq, including an increase in trained Iraqi security forces, have improved since his last visit in July. And he said the escalating violence aimed at intimidating Iraqis to postpone the election or not vote is not working in most of the country.

Now, for our Democratic readers, I’d like to point out that what you have here is a report from an intelligent man who is not a fan of President Bush who has actually gone to Iraq and seen how things are going – this, to make it clear, is very different from a Michael Moore who sits in his pizza-box cluttered apartment spinning conspiracy theories and then putting out a film disconnnected from any semblance of reality. The former is worthwhile, the latter is worthless. What you have to do is learn the difference between the two – go out to a farm and start by having a farmer explain the difference between sh** and shinola.
As to the subject at hand, I agree with Senator Lieberman – the Iraqi people by deed are opting for a democratic future, the terrorists with their barbarism are only managing to kill but not to change minds and the coming vote next month will seal the fate of terrorism. Thank God we’ve got a President who can lead, soldiers who are brave and dedicated, and at least some Democrats who can see things as they are.
Hat Tip: Stranded on Blue Islands

Liberalism’s Great Failures, Part I

Public schools – has there ever been a more disasterous idea in human history? The basic concept is actually ok – try to provide basic education to all children so you’ll have a more educated, enterprising populace leading to a better, more prosperous society. It is, as usual, in practical application that this very liberal idea falls flat on its face.
Among the many problems with public education is that it is conducted at the whim of political pressure. Whomever can gin up the most pressure on the politicians will have their way with what the public schools actually do. One might like to think that a selfless spirit of doing what is best for the children is what motivates public school activities, but that is to ignore large donations from unions who’s membership staffs the school, large construction firms who build and maintain the schools and varied special interest groups who look upon the gathered children as the perfect laboratory for their social engineering schemes.
Public schools are the personification of liberalism – comprising at once all of the high ideals and all of the distressing reality. We all know how many of the kids at the end of 12 years of public school can’t read, but what passes mostly un-noticed is how those who can read lack just about all the basic knoweldge they need to be considered educated. Twelve years, thousands of hours, are spent by children in the public school system and I’ll bet 90% do not know the significance of the words “monotheism”, “stoic” and “scholasticism” – words of very great import in the history of their own civilization, crucial to understanding the nature of the human condition. After twelve years they’ll probably know how to use a condom and how to balance a checkbook, but are they really educated?
The fundamental problem with public schools is the fundamental problem with all liberal ameliorative efforts – they are predicated upon the false notion that everyone has the same abilities and desires. The immediate failure that such thinking creates never makes liberalism rethink its views but, instead, to change the standards until the failures may be classified as success. Thus the plain fact that public schools never really educated the masses of children intended has lead to a steady reduction of the standards to the point where functional illiterates are considered educated, high school graduates. An additional problem is that this massive government program feeds upon itself – basing its budgetary requirements on the number of children in the system, it is loath to lose a single child regardless of how ill-suited the child is for eduction – the most disruptive child is kept in class not because it helps the child but because it helps the budgetary bottom line.

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The Truth Will Come Out, Always

Those of you who have read my stuff over the past year know that my endless mantra about figuring out what is going on is to watch what people do rather than what they say. People will say the most amazing things, but they’ll generally do what is good for them, or what they perceive is good for them. An example of this was back during the election while the Democrats were pushing the “gloom and doom” and polls ostensibly discovered a great deal of anxiety about the economy among the American people – meanwhile, these same anxiety-ridden people were buying houses and cars at a record clip. They might have said they were worried, but they were doing things indicating great faith in the economy. Now we have another example.
The MSM/Elitist mantra is that all is going to heck in a handbasket in Iraq – a “burgeoning” insurgency and growing violence are making life impossible in Iraq and casting doubt about the elections coming at the end of January. This is what people are saying…but what they are doing is returning to Iraq from refugee camps:

The UNHCR is to close several camps for Iraqi refugees in Iran because more than half of the 202,000 exiles have returned home.
The UN’s refugee body said 42,000 out of 50,000 Iraqis at the centres had left since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Six out of the UN’s 22 camps in south Iran are empty and another two are due to close by the end of the month.
The agency has discouraged repatriation because of insecurity in Iraq and the border-crossing is riddled with mines.
About 107,000 refugees have left Iran since the former Iraqi leader was removed last year.

What is really funny is that the UNHCR is discouraging people from going home – they are so wedded to the MSM/Elistist worldview that they are denying reality and trying to keep Iraqi’s in miserable refugee camps rather than wanting them to return to the new, free Iraq! The plain fact of the matter is that the security situation must be well in hand or the camps would be filling up rather than emptying out. Certainly, there is fear of terrorism in Iraq – but on balance things must be good. What people are doing confirms this.
Just another example of how you have to look way past the headlines and the pictures in order to find out what is going on.