Wednesday, December 22, 2004
As Christmas and New Year's Day Approach
The editor of this blog will use the holiday downtime to crank out some long-promised longer items, but will update if made sufficiently irate by events.
May you and yours enjoy this holiday season.
|posted by Jim on 10:17 PM|
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"Merry Christmas" is now right-wing propaganda?
Slate's Surfergirl complains:
So it's official: The new gauntlet-throwing catch phrase from the right is "Merry Christmas" (can't you just see Eastwood saying it from behind the barrel of a gun?). Apparently, uttered in the right context—like on Fox News—those four syllables no longer convey simply holiday cheer, but a red-state/blue-state, my-god-is-better-than-yours challenge: I've got your "happy holidays" right here, buddy.
This trend has been emerging all over the television dial: Last week on Scarborough Country, there was Pat Buchanan's distinctly testy-sounding "Merry Christmas" in answer to a guest from the American Atheists association who wished him a happy "winter solstice."
There is an alternative approach to offering greetings of the season taken by feminist Gloria Steinem: "Whatever you celebrate in this season -- Christmas or Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Chanukah or the Winter Solstice," but that would require sending out a lot more holiday cards during this busy time of year.
|posted by Jim on 10:04 PM|
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Washington State and Puerto Rico Not So Merry This Christmas
Once people know the number they need to reach to win a disputed election, the temptation to cheat seems overwhelming. Just ask residents of Washington State and Puerto Rico. The close governor's races in both places remain mired in dubious litigation with no final resolution seems likely before 2004 ends.
Washington State's King County "a Democratic stronghold, the biggest county in the state and the last to report results from the statewide hand recount that began Dec. 8" has magically found over 700 ballots uncounted:
During the hand recount, county workers found 573 ballots that elections officials say were mistakenly rejected because of a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the computer system. Workers then searched a warehouse and found 150 more overlooked ballots from voters with last names beginning with A, B and C.
(One can't help but remember Ballot Box 13 and its 202 "missing" votes that put Lyndon Johnson in the U.S. Senate in 1948.)
Meanwhile, the race for governor of Puerto Rico remains unsettled even after two appeals to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals. Litigation over voter intent in Puerto Rico has continued since November 2, when the Statehood Party, having lost by a margin of 3,380 votes, disputed up to 28,000 ballots cast for the Commonwealth's candidate.
The solution to this problem offered by liberals is, you guessed it, yet another government agency: "The United States has no nonpartisan national elections commission to ensure fair and equal treatment of all voters." As if federal employees, a group as thoroughly Democrat as the staff of the Democratic National Committee, could be expected to do anything but make rules which benefit their side. Their idea of a "fair" ballot would read: "To vote for the Democratic ticket, circle the picture of the donkey."
The conservative solution is to accept that any election system run by human beings is likely to fall short of absolute perfection and that days of recounts and lawsuits are just as likely to lead to crowning a "winner" elected by fraud or legal legerdemain as they are a legitimate choice of the people.
|posted by Jim on 10:02 PM|
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Judge: AZ Can Deny Some Benefits to Illegals
A federal judge has cleared the way for Arizona to begin enforcing Proposition 200, which allows the state to deny some benefits to illegal aliens, rejecting a lawsuit by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).
Now it is up to the state Legislature to pass a bill requiring state and local agencies to enforce the measure.
Looks like it's time for Mexico's President, Vicente Fox, to crank up his new lobbying campaign.
|posted by Jim on 10:01 PM|
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Hispanics Opt for English, First
"Children of Hispanic Immigrants Continue to Favor English" announces the New York Times: "The report found that 72 percent of Hispanic children who were third-generation or later spoke English exclusively."
Worth noting is that this assimilation still took place despite the best efforts of the bilingual education lobby and their allies at The National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Also worth noting is that an audit of the Spanish-language newspaper, Hoy, which claimed to be America's fastest growing Hispanic daily, found that "average weekday single-copy sales had been overstated by more than 28,000 copies, or about 62 percent."
It is in this context that Richard Nadler's NRO column on the Hispanic vote needs to be reviewed. People like to be asked for their vote and politicians should feel free do so in Spanish-language media if they wish. But most Hispanic voters, especially Republican-leaning Hispanic voters, aren't watching Univision or reading Hoy. Ads discussing GOP views on gay marriage or a strong national defense, in English, are likely to have a much better bang for their buck among both Hispanics and Anglos.
|posted by Jim on 4:55 PM|
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Honesty, However, Remains Optional
"[A]nother unwritten rule says the [UN] Secretary-general must speak French--because France will presumably veto anyone who does not." "A Guide to Who Will Follow Kofi Annan," TNR Online, December 8, 2004.
|posted by Jim on 4:48 PM|
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