After watching Gray Davis make his speech on the recall effort last night, I had to lie down for a while. All the spin that was coming out of his mouth made me dizzy. (Video at C-SPAN.org or Text archived at MikeLehmann.com) In his speech, Davis claimed that this recall was just the latest in a line of attempts by Republicans to “steal elections Republicans cannot win.” Davis went on to say, “It started with the impeachment of President Clinton, when the Republicans could not beat him in 1996. It continued in Florida, where they stopped the vote count, depriving thousands of Americans of the right to vote.” First, President Clinton was impeached because he lied while under oath in a court of law. As the Chief Executive, the President is supposed to uphold the law of the land. Clinton clearly did not do this. What he did do was lie in court. As for the Florida debacle of 2000, it was the Democrats that wanted to count only the counties that were heavily Democratic. It was the Democrats that kept insisting on recount after recount, only in areas that would increase Gore’s vote count. The truth is the votes were counted. They were counted several times.
“Here in California, the Republicans lost the governor's race last November. Now they're trying to use this recall to seize control of California just before the next presidential election.” The only reason Davis won reelection last November is that Davis was able to hand pick his opponent. In California primary elections anyone can vote. You need not be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary. Democrats stuffed the ballot box and got a Republican candidate that Californians hated more than Davis. Now Davis is complaining about spending “$65 million of [California’s] hard-working tax dollars” to pay for this election, even though he continues to spend millions on programs for illegal aliens. He’s granted in-state tuition rates to illegal Mexican immigrants, costing California millions.
“Call me old fashion, but I believe when an election is over, the people have spoken and it's time to get to work and do the public's business.” Tell me this Gray Davis, are the people only allowed to speak every four years?
“There are many reasons to be against this recall. It's expensive, it's undemocratic, it's a bad precedent, and it almost certainly will breed more recalls.” Expensive? Only now Gray Davis is staring to complain about the cost of various state activities. Undemocratic? This is one of the most democratic processes that can happen. It’s an election. That’s what a democracy is all about, electing the people you want to run the government. It would be easy for me to run for something, know I’m going to loose, and start complaining about how the process is “undemocratic.”
“But my friends, if any of the Republicans in this recall campaign criticized the way we dealt with the energy crisis, you ask them specifically what they would have done to keep the lights on.” I wouldn’t have bowed down to environmentalist pressure and would’ve built more and more efficient power plants such as nuclear power plants. I wouldn’t have spent money on programs that benefit only illegal immigrants; I would’ve spent that money on upgrading power lines and power relay stations. Gray Davis also said, “In California, not a single light has gone out in the last two years.” There is no way that that is the truth. The power goes out from time to time. Not a single light? Come on Gray Davis, stop lying.
Davis continued with all of the “rich people are bad and need to pay more taxes” and “reproductive rights” Democratic talking points later in his speech. He also blamed “right-wing forces” for being behind the recall and blamed Republicans for “trying to steal additional congressional seats in Colorado and Texas, overturning legal redistricting plans.” I could go on, but I don’t know if I have enough web space to finish my complaints. Gray Davis knows his gubernatorial days are numbered. We’re going to see him taking more and more extreme left-wing measures in an effort to make it more difficult for whoever replaces him to fix the state of California. Gray Davis will certainly make things worse for California before whoever replaces him can make it better.
They were riding the bus home. In an instant, that peaceful ride turned into a scene of utter hell. A 29 year old father of two with a demented hate turned himself into an instrument of destruction. Within seconds, 20 were dead and more than 100 were wounded. Many of those killed and wounded were children coming back from a trip to the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most holy sites. This was just the most recent act of terrorism perpetrated against the innocent people of Israel by Palestinian murderers. (Washington Times)
I ask again, why are there still negotiations going on with these terrorists? Their motivation is not to have an independent Palestinian state, their motivation is to push Israel into the sea. I wrote a rant on this subject on January 6th, so I won’t go too in depth on this tonight. But I am sick of hearing people speak of the “poor Palestinians” and all of the awful things that Israel does to them. I say again, Israel targets militant Palestinian terrorists. Palestinian terrorists target innocent Israeli civilians. There is talk now of this latest attack “derailing” the U.S. backed “Roadmap to Peace.” I hope this not only derails the Roadmap, I hope Israel withdraws from this plan and throws the Roadmap out the window. There is no intention for militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to cease the killing. In order to defeat an enemy willing to kill themselves to kill you, you have to use any and all tactics that you can think of.
Put yourself on that bus today. Just try and imagine the fear you would feel being on or near that bus that was blown up by someone thinking he was doing God’s work. Imagine if you son or daughter, your niece or nephew, your brother or sister, imagine if someone you knew and loved was on that bus today. Imagine how you would feel if you came home one day to find your entire family was killed because they were on the wrong bus at the wrong time. Imagine if your family was killed for no reason, except for the hate that one group of people feels for another.
After a two month long hiatus of not having to think and just letting things that bother me go by without complaining, something has finally gotten enough of my goat to get me thinking again. Today, 50 million people in the northeast were affected by the largest power outage in the history of the United States. (Massive Blackout Cripples Northeast at FoxNews.com) Yes, it was a record power outage and yes, it affected nearly one fifth of the population of this country. But did ABC really need to preempt all of their prime time programming to cover the power outage? Did all of the 24 hour news networks such as CNN and Fox News really need to spend all of their time covering this power outage? For one, if you weren’t affected by this, you aren’t going to care that much about it. Even if you have family in the blackout area, are you really that concerned for them? After all, it’s just a power outage. And if you were affected, and you didn’t have a generator at home, you’re not going to be able to watch the coverage on television anyway! Only the people unaffected by the blackout could watch the coverage, and we don’t care as to when the power is going to be back on in Queens.
I can’t even count how many power outages I’ve been through in my life. They happen from time to time. But if you were watching any of the coverage, the correspondents made it seem as though no one else has ever lived without power, and that an outage is such a rare occurrence that no one is going to know what to do when the power does go out.
The power goes out now and then. It happens. Just settle down. Live with it.