Posted on 04/13/2005 12:17:59 AM PDT by alloysteel
It looks like Teresa Heinz Kerry is rubbing off on her husband. And on Sen. Hillary Clinton. For the Republican Party, this is a very good thing.
You'll recall that last month, Mrs. Heinz Kerry put on her shiniest tinfoil hat and blamed the Democrats' loss in November on rigged voting machines. As reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mrs. Heinz Kerry openly questioned the election results and fixated on areas of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes. "Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Mrs. Heinz Kerry intoned, and it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."
Cue the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" soundtrack. And keep the mashed potatoes away from Mrs. Heinz Kerry.
Asked for evidence of her "mother machine"-hacking theory, the ketchup heiress refused further comment. Glitches happen. And no technology is fool-proof. But unhinged Democrats have obsessed on the fact that the chief executive of Diebold, the leading vote machine manufacturer, is a Bush supporter in order to turn inevitable errors into a nefarious Vote-Swallowing Grand Master Plan.
The mother machine theorists also cite the discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies to bolster their suspicions. But as liberal journalist David Corn pointed out, "screwy exit polls do raise questions, but they are not proof of sabotage. And left-of-center accusers have promoted contradictory theories." On the one hand, they accuse Diebold and other vendors of "put[ting] in the fix via the paperless touch-screen machines." On the other hand, they claim that conspirators in Florida rigged "optical-scan voting, not electronic touch-screen voting." Or is it both?
A Unified Mother and Father Machine Convergence Conspiracy?
Back on planet Earth, Corn notes that scholars at Cornell, Harvard and Stanford dismissed the Florida fraud allegations as "baseless." And the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found "no particular patterns" relating to voting systems and the final results.
Immediately after the election, John Kerry avoided the deepest fever swamps of the crackpot Left. But Teresa's kooky pillow-talk has apparently taken effect. On Sunday, Sen. Kerry dredged up allegations of Republican trickery and voter scare tactics in a speech before the League of Women Voters: ''Last year, too many people were denied their right to vote, too many who tried to vote were intimidated.''
Kerry activists made much hay about the long lines and shortage of voting machines in swing districts. But their lawsuit in Ohio based on those claims was dismissed. And as Mark Niquette of the Columbus Dispatch told ABC's "Nightline," "if you talk to the election officials here in Franklin County, they'll tell you, the main problem was there just weren't enough machines overall, that even Republican-leaning precincts had long lines."
Not a peep, by the way, from Kerry about the far loonier intimidation tactics of Democrats Gone Wild -- from the drive-by shootings targeting GOP headquarters across the country, to the union mobs who stormed the offices of Bush/Cheney volunteers, to the anti-Bush thugs who burned swastikas onto Republican homeowners' lawns, to the paid Democratic staffers charged with slashing the tires of 20 Republican get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day.
Singing from the same hysteria-promoting hymn book in Minnesota this week, Sen. Hillary Clinton further stoked Democratic madness. Sarcastically praising the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sen. Clinton pounced: "I believe that the right to vote and the obligation to count all the votes should be promoted not just in the Middle East, but in the Middle West! And in the Northeast! And in the Southeast! And in every. Corner. Of. The. United. States. Of. A-MEH-rica!"
The crowd went wild. Sen. Clinton continued: Too many minorities and college students have been "denied an equal right" to vote, she exclaimed. (Her "moderate" solution? An election reform bill that allows illegal aliens! And felons! And people without IDs to vote!)
The Democrats now seem to believe that the road to the White House is paved with paranoia. Well, let them keep babbling about "mother machines" and stolen votes. The evil genius Karl Rove himself couldn't have come up with a better plan.
I have to wonder: Aren't there ANY rational RATs out there to tell these nuts what fools they are making of themselves and their party? Aren't there ANY RATs who aren't part of the lunatic fringe? This is getting embarrasing to watch.
Ooooh ooooh ooooh.
Nasty mental image.
Unnnnnnngh.
Hey, buddy! Get tired of bombing Dresden? :>)
Even more embarrassing to watch is the lockstep of the legions of the Left falling in behind Herself.
As if Herself were the ONLY possible candidate for the Left to rally around.
At this point, John Edwards is almost aced out, and John Kerry is just as funny to watch as a lame man with a rubber crutch.
Yeah, they're really screwed. The only viable candidate they have is hillary, if you can call that "viable". Maybe "inevitable" is more apropriate.
For the most part, entrants into the political race for President, whose only experience in office is within the legislative branch, are not prepared to understand or assume the role of President. A person who has been governor of even a modest sized state is much more prepared for the challenges and duties of both campaigning for and serving as President.
The fact that Herself was probably the most capable and proactive member of the regime of the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001" puts Herself in good stead with those who confuse the exercise of power with an illusion of good judgment, but does not mean that Herself learned much about leadership during the interregnum.
"Aren't there ANY RATs who aren't part of the lunatic fringe?"
No, it seems like there really aren't any more. This is a party who took the extraordinarily unserious propagandist Michael Moore as their Aquinas, that's how bad it really is for them.
And to this day they continue to blame their losses on fraud and trickery, they seem unwilling to once even consider that maybe the problem is their message, or lack of message. It is like they are stupid enough to believe their own flattering press. And it just all, taken together, convinces one that they are too STUPID to run the country.
I certainly hope they keep it up.
The Clinton's know exactly what they are doing. They are still the shrewdest operatives in the Donkey Party, and will do what it takes to get the nomination. After getting the nomination they will start shunning most of the deluded nutcases who helped them get the nomination. Typical Clinto m.o. Get support from certain people, and when they are no longer needed, stab them in the back and/or dump them.
The problem is not so much stupidity, as it is sheer incompetence.
Most Democrats have never served is a command position in a theater of war, so they have little or no comprehension of what a military force is really supposed to do. For that matter, very few Republicans today have served in any meaningful way in any of the armed services, but many, if not most have some appreciation for the application of military power. More importantly, that the military power is only an extension of diplomacy, the iron hand in the velvet glove, backing up the brokered deal between nations, not its substitute when negotiations fail. And as such, the military must be at an ever-ready state to remind the representatives of foreign governments that we mean to hold them to their promises.
Democrats have accepted promises from foreign governments at face value, and are inevitably distressed when the other side won't "play by the rules". The response for the Democrats is then to say, "OK, we will change to rules so you won't HAVE to be punished for not obeying them before."
And they end up distressed and disappointed once again, as they retreat further and further.
One day, there is no place to which retreat is any longer possible.
Shhh!.."never let the fools, know their fools"..its' fun (and sad) to watch...and beside, many (conservative Democrats) have become DINOs.
"...Hillary's turgid musings and ramblings."
Turgid is a most perfect and accurate word to describe her rhetorical style, very good!
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