President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market . . . The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

Washington Post
Social Security Push to Tap the GOP Faithful
January 14, 2005

The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas . . . only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd.

Adolph Hitler
Mein Kampf
1925

via - Wiskey Bar

Lots of brouhaha on the news about Christian values yesterday. I caught a bit of Meet the Press with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Al Sharpton, Jim Wallis, Dr. Richard Land . - Religious Leaders Clash on 'Meet the Press'.

A discussion of just war criteria came up regarding the Iraq war. I'm not a Christian, but I've read the new testament. I must of missed that just war piece of sermon on the mount.

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.

and then Jesus paused, wrung his hands and spake,

However, if we feel someone might happen to have weapons of mass destruction, then Blessed are precision guided missiles and mini nukes.

Amen

I later caught Rev Falwell and Rev Sharpton on CNN at the airport while waiting for my plane. Here is Al Sharpon's final reply to Rev Falwell, "I preach the gospel of the good book, and the book says to love." I'm not so sure these guys have the same book.

I click a link to werenotsorry.com (via - scribbling.net), and then slip into a deep depression that resolves to find me drunk and crying in the fetal position behind a dumpster just outside of Tijuana...no es bueno.

Bitter Pill's post election roundtable:

Angry Liberal: It's those shovel headed fools in North dakota, don't they know that we know best for this country.

Pundit: If only democrats knew how to talk to the people. They talk down to them and tell them what to think. That is why they lost the election. The democrats need to take the complicated far reaching multi faceted political, social economic and international issues, and boil them down into a simple message of black and white, good and evil. Like the right did.

Conservative: uh, our, err, guy won. we are...so..um...happy. If the democrats only knew how much we like George Bush. We do, we really like him. I'm tellin' ya, he's...um...great.

Neo-conservative: The people have spoken loud and clear. We have been mandated by the people to enact our policies. Even if we didn't want to, we are now obligated by the masses to do what we want. We ran on a platform of the people, that's why we won. We gave them a simple frightening message of god and terrorism. That's what the people wanted.

Joe Smith, plumber, Toledo Ohio: That Kerry was kinda flipin' an a floppin' and he looked French, and Bill O'Rielly said he was a traitor. So I voted for Bush.

Mary Smith, accountant, Joe's wife, Toledo Ohio: I liked Senator Kerry, it's just that I am afraid for the future of this country, and I am afraid of another terrorists attack, and I just wasn't sure I could trust Mr. Kerry.

Reverend John, Tempe Arizona: John Kerry supported the gay agenda, and he spoke for the murder of millions of unborn babies. He would have driven this country into a place of dark dark sin.

Mark, programmer, Brooklyn New York: I assumed that Americans were as unhappy and scared about the direction this country was heading as I was. I thought that the legacy left by the past four years, a presidency that I felt had divided and hurt this country more that I have seen in my lifetime, would outweigh the messages of fear and morality. I hoped that humanity would win out over fear. I was wrong.

The good Dr. post some interesting numbers related to wartime elections.

<snip>

No wartime president has lost an election. Following are the victory percentages for each wartime election in the 20th-21st Century

World War 1
Woodrow Wilson won by 3.1 %

World War 2
Franklin D. Roosevelt won by 9.9 %

Korean War
Dwight D. Eisenhower won by 10.5%

Vietnam War
* John F. Kennedy won by .2 %
Lyndon B. Johnson won by 22.6%
Richard M. Nixon won by .7 %
Richard M. Nixon won by 23.2 %

Iraq War
George W. Bush won by 3%

Bush had the lowest percentage of any wartime presidential victory, except for Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 over Hubert H. Humphrey. The closeness of the election during World War 1 can be attributed to the unpopularity of that war, due to a significant number of german immigrants in the US and a sweeping sense of isolationism.

Vietnam was probably the most unpopular war, and Nixon probably the most unpopular president in history, and that can account for Nixons close race, but what does that tell us about Bush and Iraq?

* - Not really a war yet, more of an "gulf of tonkin affair"

Sources:
Encyclopedia Britannica
CNN

</snip>

This doesn't explain the loss of seats in the house or the senate, and the gay marriage bans for that matter, but interesting non the less.

In related news, anger stocks make huge gains in this morning's trading.

Today a new term is born: chate * - where the loving and smite-full hand of God helps guide the righteous and wealthy to a land where the almighty governs and the people are filled with an insatiable desire for fundamentalist conservative judges. A land where the middle class becomes an unsightly memory from our heathen past, where homosexuals are driven back to their closet and the heady word of god fills the fizzy little brain of The President with thinly veiled hate and distain for anyone who believes otherwise.

God bless America, indeed.

* origins [Middle English, from Old French urscrewed] the merging of church and state into one biblically forged abomination. And some hate throw in for good measure

Is this the kind of freedom and liberty we are sowing today in America?

Red state or blue, north or south, voters around the country found at least one thing they could agree on yesterday as proposals banning same-sex marriage were winning in all 11 states where the issue appeared on the ballot.

- Same-Sex Marriage Measures Succeed Washington Post

I have no comment about the election today, and I have nothing even quasi political to say. I am pretending that nothing is happening. I'm going to my happy place. I need to find my happy place...

Holy fucking faith based misdirection Batman.

The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

Park Service Sticks with Biblical Explanation for Grand Canyon - Peer News

- via wonkette

Also in the news, the Bush administration is drafting legislation requiring any science teacher when asked the question "Why is the sky blue?" to also provide the alternative answer, "Because Jesus is looking down upon us from heaven with his big blue eyes." When asked what if a child is Jewish or Muslim President Bush responded, "Well, the sky ain't brown now is it, heh heh."