November 04, 2004

Leave it to our British "cousins" across the Big Pond for the nice long view on our election:
Bush returned in triumph

President George W Bush pledged to unite the nation in his second term in office yesterday after his Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry conceded defeat following a dramatic climax to one of the more bruising campaigns in American history.

"America has spoken," Mr Bush told ecstatic campaign workers near the White House. "There is no limit to the greatness of America."
 
Pledging to seek the support of those who voted for his defeated rival, Mr Bush sought to put the acrimony of the past year behind him as he revelled in unquestionably his greatest triumph.

Aides said he felt jubilant that after his victory by 51 to 49 per cent of the popular vote he at last had an indisputable mandate to govern.

Four years ago he won his first term amid bitter wrangling after losing the popular vote by 500,000.

His victory also healed a 12-year-old familial wound: Mr Bush has never forgotten the pain of his father's defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992 after only one term in office.

Mr Bush told his supporters that he felt "humbled by the outpouring of support" for his candidacy.

With Mr Kerry's supporters in mind, he said: "I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.

"A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one constitution, and one future that binds us.

"And when we come together, and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."
[...]
With Mr Kerry's supporters in mind, he said: "I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.

"A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one constitution, and one future that binds us.

"And when we come together, and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."
[...]
But for Democrats, his words would ring hollow. In 2000 he said he would be a "uniter not a divider" and then pursued a single-minded agenda of conservative issues.
[The poor Brits!
Even the relatively conservative Daily Telegraph has to get in a dig for Liberalism.
President Bush tried his d*mndest to heal the partisan rift in the Beltway, but the Dims just wouldn't let him.
It's past time for them to do some reaching across the aisle.--Jen]

For Mr Kerry it was the end not just of an impassioned nine-month campaign but of a lifelong ambition to gain the White House. For two heady hours on Tuesday night exit polls DNC-planted push "polls" suggested he would defeat Mr Bush.
[Thank God I was busy doing something else and wasn't one of the hapless [Lefty] bloggers who fell for this last-minute Democrat trick!--J.T.]
[...]
At dawn yesterday there was still a chance that the election would follow the acrimonious route of the poll in 2000 when disputes in Florida ended in the Supreme Court. After an agonising night with the results trickling in, all hinged on the result in Ohio, which for months had been seen as the key battleground. With most of the votes there counted Mr Bush was ahead by about 130,000.

Victory in Ohio would give him the majority of seats he needed in the electoral college. But Democrats had vowed to contest any remotely close results and at 2.30am Mr Edwards said there would be no concession that night, hinting at legal challenges.

For a few hours the prospect loomed of a post-election limbo, as it emerged that the Democrats were considering insisting on counting provisional ballots, which are given to voters who move house. This could have taken 12 days.
[...]
But it soon became clear that it was all but statistically impossible for him [Kerry] to make up the shortfall by the outstanding provisional ballots. In the middle of the morning Mr Kerry made his three-minute telephone call to Mr Bush to concede. The president told him that he was an "admirable worthy opponent" who should be proud of the campaign he had run, the White House said.
[I want to give credit where it's due: John Kerry is a bigger person and a more gracious loser than Algore ever thought about being and thank God for it!
I don't think America could have survived another recount like 2000 and I'm grateful to the Kerry/Edwards team that they chose not to draw this out!
Also, I'd like to send a big shout out to my fellow citizens in Ohio and Florida, for bringing Bush home with their smooth voting!--Jen]

For Republicans there was much to celebrate. As well as retaining the White House, they picked up at least three more seats in the Senate,
[Make that 6, for a net gain of 4, but now Lincoln Chaffee is threatening to do a "Jim Jeffords!"]
entrenching their control on Capitol Hill. An added boost was the defeat of Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate.
[Oh, yeah!
The defeat of Tiny Tom was almost as sweet as President Bush's win...!
I gave money to John Thune's campaign to help make this happen and it was some of the best money I've spent this year.
And yet, in some dark, twisted way, I think I'm gonna miss Tom...--Jen]

Mr Bush now has the chance to pursue the war in Iraq with renewed vigour as well as his conservative economic agenda of tax cuts.

Tony Blair called Mr Bush to congratulate him.

"President Bush's re-election comes at a critical time," he said last night.

"A world that is fractured, divided and uncertain must be brought together to fight global terrorism."

Stockmarkets in Britain and America surged as investors welcomed a second term for Mr Bush.

Wall Street analysts expressed relief that uncertainty had been removed, betting that tax cuts and other business-friendly policies would continue.

The Dow Jones index rose 101.30 points to close at 10137.00. In London, the FTSE 100 index closed at its highest level since June 2002, up 25.3 points at 4,718.5.

Here's some fun Bush Victory 2004 facts:

I was in bad shape yesterday from staying up so late on Election Night and with the change of seasons here in Dallas and the stress, I've been trying to get a cold, but all I could think of was the Doxology:
Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
This victory is so sweet for all of us who love and support President Bush and his fine Administration.
It healed the wounds of Election Recount 2000 and put the cherry on the sundae of 4 years of hard work for Bushies like me!
To the other almost 60,000,000 Americans who joined me on Tuesday in standing with President Bush, thank you and God bless you!
The republic is saved once again.
To God be the glory!

November 01, 2004

The American Thinker's Herbert E. Meyer makes tomorrow's choice a clear one for us all: Vote Bush to keep America safe, free to pursue happiness... and alive.

One big question

Sometimes an entire political campaign can be encapsulated in one big question.  The trick is to figure out what this question is, and to ask it so clearly, and so often, that no voter in the country can pretend that he or she didn’t hear it.  If you get it right, the question answers itself so fast that neither ideology nor party affiliation can stop the correct answer from popping into every voter’s consciousness.  And, as the old saying goes, you cannot unring a bell.  Ronald Reagan did this brilliantly in his 1980 campaign to unseat President Carter when he asked, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”  The inescapable answer was “no,” and Reagan won the election handily.

Here’s the one big question of tomorrow’s presidential election: “Which candidate does Osama bin Laden want to win?”

Admit it: the answer popped into your head even before you started reading this sentence.  And if the answer popped into your head, so too will it pop into every other voter’s head.  And well it should, because Osama bin Laden has made it very clear – most recently in that videotape released on Friday -- that his objective is to kill as many Americans as possible, by whatever means he can: hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings, pouring botulism into our water supply, setting off nuclear devices in our cities.  We may think there’s a huge difference between a pro-life, pro-gun, people-matter-more-than-flowers Christian conservative and a pro-choice, repeal-the-Second-Amendment, save-the-spotted-owl secular liberal.  But to bin Laden and his fellow radical Islamists, both are infidels and both deserve equally to die.

Knowledgeable translations of the full eighteen minutes of Osama bin Laden's latest tape indicate that he may even be attempting to intervene in our election on the side of Kerry: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."  The invaluable MEMRI website adds:

The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all American people as if they're the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections."
[Living in an overwhelmingly pro-Dubya state, I guess I'm doomed as are the rest of my fellow Texans!
Well, don't mess with Texas and this means you, too, Bin Laden!
And isn't this threat to the 50 states yet another instance of OBL using Michael Moore's talking points?
Remember how MM wondered why the 9/11 hijackers hit the WTC when it was "filled with people who didn't vote for Bush in 2000?"--J.T.]

It’s obvious that President Bush understands we are in a global war for our very lives, and for the survival of western Civilization itself.  Cut through all the words, focus on the action, and the president’s strategy for winning this war is clear: to keep fighting until the last terrorist is dead and the Mideast is no longer a seething cauldron of anti-American hatred.  Has the war gone as smoothly as we hoped?  No, it hasn’t.  Have we made some stupid and serious mistakes along the way?  Yes, of course we have.  But in just three years the President has thrown al Queda out of its base in Afghanistan, removed that country’s ghastly Taliban regime from power and organized the first democratic election in Afghanistan’s history.  In addition, he has brought Pakistan on-side, shut down the nuclear-weapons bazaar that country’s weapons chief had been running, and forced Libya to surrender its own nuclear weapons and thus cease to be a global threat.  Saddam Hussein is gone in Iraq, and while that country has a long way to go before our efforts there bear fruit, the upcoming January elections hold the promise of more stability than this violent and unstable land has ever known and even the promise of a democratic Iraq.  (Just saying “democratic Iraq” takes the breath away and – more to the point – scares the you-know-what out of Syria and Iran.)

President Bush says that if we re-elect him, he will keep going.  Indeed, even Senator Kerry concedes that if we re-elect the President we will get four more years of the same approach to fighting this war.  On the other hand, if we elect Senator Kerry, he will – well, what will he do about fighting a war in which our enemy’s objective isn’t merely to defeat us, but to destroy us?  Again, cut through all the words and the answer is obvious: he will cut and run in Iraq, play footsie with France and grovel at Kofi Annan’s feet in hopes of putting our country back into the UN’s good graces.

Gentle reader, if all this is too blunt – too bad.  There are people out there whose objective is to kill us all, and on Tuesday either we will elect as President and Commander-in-Chief the candidate these people want – or the candidate these people fear.  And there is really no question as to which candidate is which.  The only question is whether the majority of Americans is capable of facing reality, however unpleasant and frightening reality may be.

It’s a mystery why President Bush, who has learned so much from President Reagan, hasn’t asked the one big question that would cut through all the blather and focus voters on what matters most, or arranged for his surrogates to ask it.   But there is still enough time left to get cracking and ask the big question to as many voters as possible.  Talk with your neighbors and your colleagues at work.  Send out some emails, and make some phone calls.  And when you’ve done that, go ahead and make a sign that says, “Which candidate does Osama bin Laden want to win?” then hold it up as close to your local polling place as the law allows.

It could just make the difference.

Can't say it any better myself!
Osama is for Kerry.
I hope that you, gentle reader, pull the lever tomorrow for Bush so that we can fight on to victory and win this war.
If we didn't need Osama's help to urge us who to vote for tomorrow, it certainly was a timely reminder of the real EVIL and the death cult he and his IslamoFacist followers represent.
V for Victory follows "W" in the alphabet now.

PROMISE KEEPER

TOMORROW, America will decide who will lead our nation for the next four years. For the future of my family, my country and the principles I have based my life upon, I'm walking into the voting booth and pulling the lever for President Bush.

I am voting for George W. Bush because he has shown me that he has the resolve and the strength to fight and win the war against terrorism. In this year's presidential election, the first held since the attacks of 9/11, the most important election in our lifetime, these qualities have never been more critical.

I'm voting for President Bush because I was the commissioner of the New York City Police Department on 9/11 and I watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center, and take the lives of 23 of my cops, 37 Port Authority officers, 343 firefighters and almost 2,400 innocent civilians. And three days later, George Bush was at my side, and standing shoulder to shoulder with the grief stricken heroes still searching for survivors. He stood with us at the site of the worst attack in U.S. history and delivered a promise we desperately needed to hear — that the madmen responsible for this evil "would hear from us."

I'm voting for President Bush because he fulfilled that promise in three months, breaking the Taliban and al Qaeda's hold on Afghanistan and turning a terrorist breeding ground, responsible for training more than 20,000 fanatics, into a democracy, where the first presidential vote in Afghan history was cast by a 19-year-old woman.

I am voting for President Bush because he understands that there will be no easy victories in the war against terror.

Someone guided only by political winds, someone whose vision is narrowed by the fear of controversy and criticism — someone like John Kerry — might have closed the book with the fall of the Taliban.
[I not so sure that Kerik isn't giving Kerry the benefit of the doubt even here.
Kerry is such a peacenik, appeaser and capitulator, that I'm not close to being convinced that as CiC, he would have used military force to oust the Taliban. We'd probably still be negotiating with them now under a "President Kerry" and he'd have been one of those guys who'd file a lawsuit against OBL.--Jen]
After all, Sen. Kerry has shown as much in his votes against liberating Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, his vote to reduce our nation's intelligence budget one year after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, his repeated votes to slash our military and weapons systems.

But the president stood at the gravesite known as Ground Zero and saw with his own eyes the death and devastation that terrorism leaves in its wake, the children whose fathers and mothers would never come home, the parents that now had to bury their sons and daughters. And in that moment he understood what John Kerry cannot grasp — that our nation cannot endure another 9/11, that we can't afford to be defensive in the War on Terror, that the next plot might not be against our skyscrapers but our schools, that the next Madrid could be Penn Station and the next Beslan, Russia could be Bayonne, New Jersey.

I am voting for President Bush because he understands this threat, and he has responded, building from the ground up a Department of Homeland Security that links 22 agencies and 180,000 federal employees together into a single, unified effort, and an Information Network that puts them in direct contact with another 700,000 law enforcement officers nationwide.
[I've thought many times during and after the RNC that President Bush and his team haven't made enough of his creation of DHS.
For all the yapping the Democrats have done about "seeing the terrorist threat," like the a$$-covering we've heard from Richard Clarke, Clinton, Gore and even Kerry, it's obvious that none of the attacks that happened on their watch, such as the first WTC bombing, moved them to do anything real at all about the Islamist death threats to us.
Even worse, the Gorelick "wall," erected to protect Dem politicians like Bill Clinton, Gore and Kerry from being discovered to have been the recipients of ChiCom campaign cash, made an effective sharing of information between law enforcement agencies impossible for purposes of thwarting terrorism.
This doomed our "first responders" to handling terror attacks as domestic "crimes" and one might even say "nuisances" as Kerry has, to be prosecuted the same way we do drugs and prostitution.
A "President" Kerry would have us return to this practice, you can almost bet on it.--Jen]

For the first time, these brave men and women were given a national strategy to follow, one that is focused on intelligence and warning, transportation security, and defending against catastrophic events. And to make sure they had the tools to do the job, President Bush tripled the Homeland Security budget and delivered the Patriot Act,
[Complained about most recently by Osama himself just days ago...!--J.T.]
which allowed these officers to share information in a way they had never been able to before, to uncover terror cells in Lackawanna New York, and foil terrorist plots against the Brooklyn Bridge.

I am voting for President Bush because he understands that if we don't fight the enemy at their source with soldiers and tanks we will end up fighting them in our cities with cops and firefighters. John Kerry says wrong war, wrong time, but forgets to mention the thousands that Saddam Hussein murdered, the rewards he paid to the families of suicide bombers, the terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi he sponsored and harbored.

I spent four months in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I saw the brutality he left behind, the hatred for America he cultivated, the threat he was building. I know our world is safer now that he is gone.

When I cast my vote, I am going to remember these moments. I am going to remember what I lost on 9/11, and how I felt on that morning. I'm going to reflect on what I would have thought on that day if I had heard someone like John Kerry speak to me about global tests, about nuisances, about how this day "didn't change me much at all."

And then I am going to vote for President George W. Bush.

Bernard B. Kerik served as the 40th Police Commissioner of the New York City Police Department and as Interim Minister of the Interior and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq.

If you're still undecided at this point or are inexplicably thinking of voting for Kerry, I hope you'll take Bernie Kerik's example and remember how you felt on Sept. 11.
Which man do you think will do "whatever it takes" to prevent another such black day from happening in our country?
Bush, who looks at the badge of the Port Authority policeman George Howard who was killed on 9/11 and thinks about what he can do every day as President to keep America safe, or John Kerry, who said that Sept. 11 "didn't change him at all" and who took 40 minutes on that day figuring out what to do (sitting in the U.S. Capitol building which was a target)?

October 31, 2004

FULL TAPE AN OSAMA A WOE SHOW

Osama bin Laden doesn't seem nearly so cocky in the unedited version of a videotape aired on al-Jazeera, complaining that the manhunt against him has hampered al Qaeda.Osama bin Laden's newest tape may have thrust him to the forefront of the presidential election, but what was not seen was the cave-dwelling terror lord talking about the setbacks al Qaeda has faced in recent months.

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.
[Excellent news!
But you don't suppose he's pleased with the violence and intimidation perpetrated by the Democrats here in the States, do you?
Surely it cannot be that the election in Afghanistan will be more smooth than our own!--Jen]

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military's unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
[More great news!
And we thank not only our terrific military, but that of Pervez Musharraf's Pakistani forces, as well.
One of these days very soon, Osama's luck is going to run out and he will be killed or captured, if he hasn't been killed or seriously hurt already.]

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil.
[Hmmm.
More Democrat talking points that Osama has taken from Fahrenheit 9/11.
I do hope that Michael Moore and his good friends in the DNC are honored.
As for OBL's yapping about President Bush 41, this is apparently "new" for Osama and Osama experts find it interesting.]

The tape also sparked some concern that an attack aimed at disrupting Tuesday's election may be planned.
[Or is the threat of an attack enough to do the job, after the Madrid bombings in March?
Good Lord willing, there won't be an attack between now and Tuesday night and these threats will be seen as empty and impotent.--Jen]

But those who have seen the tape have said there was no specific information regarding an attack.

"We are taking this very seriously," said one counterterrorism official. "This is cause for great concern and we are certainly going on higher alert because of this."

The Terrorist Threat Integration Center, a joint FBI-CIA intelligence-gathering organization, has drawn up possible attack scenarios for officials to look out for — based on information gathered from communication intercepts and interviews with al Qaeda detainees.

The most extreme of those scenarios includes a multi-pronged biological- and chemical-weapons attack; more airline hijackings; assaults on financial institutions with the use of car and truck bombs and an attack similar to the Madrid subway bombing in march.
[Heads up, my fellow citizens, and be alert!
Your watchfulness may be the very thing that stops an attack!]

Many believe that the ringleader of any possible attack is Adnan Shukriagumah, a 28-year-old Saudi-born Guyanese man who grew up in South Florida.
[Poor Floridians...hurricanes, Recount 2000 and now this?
Hope they get a break and the whole thing goes smoothly all over the country, but especially in the Sunshine State.]

A $5 million reward has been offered for Shukriagumah, who has bomb- making skills, is trained to fly commercial jets and has been linked to Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta.
[Notice that Osama mentioned Atta on this tape by name, thus definitively linking OBL, Atta and 9/11, if you had any doubts.
I've heard Dimocrats as recently as this week doubting the links between the 9/11 hijackers, Osama and AQ.]

Intelligence reports say Shukriagumah has hooked up with the El Salvadorian street gang, MS-13, which is known to be very adept at smuggling drugs and people into the United States.

As President Bush has assured us, our Border Patrol has been beefed up and is working harder than ever to stop illegals and bad guys from getting in the country, but I'm still convinced that the system needs major help and will get that after President Bush is re-elected to a second term.
Because the Media (as epitomized by Al Jazeera) has chosen not to run all of this tape, the public isn't hearing some of what they need to hear from America's biggest enemy, but the key impressions of the tape still stand:
President Bush is prosecuting the WOT effectively and "smartly" and Osama's either asking for mercy or he wants a "hudna" (Islamic ceasefire).
He implies that he would give us peace if we'd call off the war...primarily by electing Kerry on Tuesday, but don't you believe him, America!
If OBL isn't dead yet (and the intell agencies have not confirmed that it is he), then this plea to call off action against he and AQ is proof enough that we're winning the war and should press on to victory rather than let up.
Depending on how you look at it and whether you're a coward or a courageous patriot, the Osama tape was an ad for Kerry (in the case of craven cowardice) or an ad for President Bush, giving us the proof we need that we're doing everything right!
Vote to re-elect President Bush on Tuesday; if Bin Laden isn't dead yet and 25% of AQ remains uncaptured or unkilled, we still have work to do.
And for those whiners who say that this tape will help to recruit more jihadis, I repeat my contention that OBL doesn't look like the "strong horse" in this tape and there remains the indisputable fact that AQ hasn't been able to pull off a major attack in the U.S. since 9/11.
On a dark note, this means that OBL has to pull off a major attack here soon to look like a "player" at all.
Several analysts think that his mention of Lebanon in the excerpts of the tape that were broadcast indicates that the baton is being passed to Hizbullah, which is based in Lebanon/Syria.
This might also indicate that OBL is in Iran.
Iran not only hasn't given up their state sponsorship of Islamist terrorism, but they flaunt it.
With 2 members remaining in the Axis of Evil, we still have victories to achieve in the future, but all in all, I'd said that a President Bush-led America hasn't done half bad in waging this new war for the past 3 years.
Clearly, the President needs a mandate to finish the job--Let's give it to him!