10/31/04

By Bob Patterson

On the morning of Election Day, in the year 2000, CBS radio news carried a report about the preparations for the TV coverage of the two candidates that night.  There was no incumbent so most folks would assume that all the networks would be using two crews with one team covering each candidate.  According to the story, the number of crews in position at Bush’s ranch outnumbered the ones station near Gore’s home, about 5 to 1. 

In 1980, on Election Day, this columnist had to call the photo division for a national news wire service (hint: first one when they are listed in alphabetical order.)  During a lull in the conversation the chatter in the background indicated that at noon PDT, they were going to move a picture of President Carter crying when he heard the news that he had lost the election.

Keeping in mind that sometimes (to mix metaphors) the fat lady kicks on third down, we will make the call at The World’s Lazy Journalist HQ.  Bush wins.  Who are we going to endorse?  Bush, of course.

He said he was a uniter and everyone agrees this year’s election is important.  John Kerry concurs on many issues such as a marriage is between a man and a woman, and their must be no “cut and run” policy in Iraq.   

Wasn’t Bush great at the site of the World Trade Center?  Didn’t he say the right thing?  Wouldn’t Kerry have started out “This reminds me of the time I was in Vietnam and…”?

Bush didn’t waste any time.  He immediately put Osama bin Laden on the list of people we’re gonna get.  Not just Osama, but the whole lot of ‘em.  Bush said that whoever helped the guys who did 9/11 were going on the list.  Bush put all those folks in Fallujah who desecrated those American bodies on the list.  Bush put Rev. Sadr and all his buddies on the list.

[I don’t think he put Ahmed Chalabi on the list, but if it is ever proved that Ahmed did something other that alleged funny money caper, then he will go on the list immediately.]

Kerry charges that Bush let Osama escape when the Al Qaeda leader was in the Tora Bora area.  He didn’t take him off the list.  Like O. J. searching for the real killer, once Osama got on the list, Bush and his henchmen will continue the search forever.  He will either be caught or die with his name still on the list.  (There was one guy who was on the FBI ten most wanted list so long they figured he must be dead, so they took him off the list.  Osama can’t hope for an out like this.  Osama is on the list and he will either be caught, or killed, or he will remain on the list until the day he dies.)

Kerry charges that Bush didn’t plan the invasion of Iraq correctly.  That’s the Pentagon’s job.  They drew up their best shot and Bush went with that.  Is Kerry going to go over to the Pentagon with maps and use a riding crop as a pointer? 

Kerry charges that Bush’s team messed up and lost 380 tons of explosives, at Al Qaqaa, to looters.  At the time, the troops were busy looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, not barrels of trinitrotoluene (TNT) and so on.  They were afraid that the WMD’s would escape.  What did Kerry expect?  Did he think that he Army should have conducted extensive inventories block by block as they advance toward Baghdad?  Time was of the essence and they didn’t have time to count all the items in all the warehouses in Iraq.  They made quick checks for WMD’s and then continued on toward Baghdad.  They are soldiers not bean counters or stock clerks.

The Kerry surrogates at the Wall Street Journal have charged that Bush let Abu Musab al-Zarqawi escape from Iraq.  He can run, but he can’t hide.  His name is on the list.

Paul Krugman, in his column in the New York Times on Friday, October 29, 2004, ridiculed Dick Cheney’s assessment of Iraq as a “remarkable success story.”  The American journalists in Iraq stick around the Green Zone and only talk to Americans.  If they think they want to disagree with the press handouts, why don’t they go out and get the “man on the street” angle to the story?  Is Krugman even in Iraq?

President Bush is running on his record of fighting terrorists. Some pro-Kerry folks (on 43^rd St. in NYC?) are upset that no one has been convicted for being a terrorist or being an accessory before or after the fact.  People are on the list.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.

During this current election season, there have been some harsh spin critics (those rascals in the 43^rd St. junta, again?) who have assessed Bush’s campaign rhetoric as lacking an acceptable level of factualness and have gone so far as to imply some examples qualify as fibs.  Do they want to send a man, who is addicted to avoiding a lie, into negotiations with foreign leaders?  How good would it be if someone always just blurted out the truth?  They would never be able to pull off a fake-out maneuver and get the US a better deal. 

There have been several terrorist videotapes, including one featuring Osama bin Laden himself, released this week which maintain that the terrorists will strike the USA.  They are trying to frighten American voters so that they won’t vote for Bush.  That makes voting for Bush the best way that individual American voters can personally do something that will show they are against Osama.  It’s called reverse psychology.  Voters who know he wants them to vote against Bush, can repudiate the terrorist leader personally with their ballot choice.

In an effort to maintain full journalistic disclosure, this columnist will again remind readers that if Bush is reelected as president, we plan to reap direct financial rewards by immediately offering “3^rd for W” T-shirts urging a new Constitutional Amendment eliminating presidential term limits.  Consequently we will have a fiduciary motivation for encouraging George W. Bush to provide tax breaks for folks earning over $200,000 per year.

With that in mind, we urge one and all to vote to put George W. Bush back in the White House. 

If Osama bin Laden wants to maintain a moratorium on terrorism until Bush is replaced in the White House, reelecting George W. Bush term after term would be to the advantage of the USA.  Hence the elimination of presidential term limits is of paramount importance.  Heck, with the German concept of “chancellor for life,” we could put the whole terrorism issue on “hold” for a long, long time.  The president seems to be much younger and healthier than Osama.  Who do you think, logically, would win a wait-and-see standoff?

[Voters in California are faced with several ballot issues.  Our philosophy is vote “yes” on the odd numbered ones and “no” on the even numbered ones.  With that method, you don’t have to read up on all the issues, and years from now, if someone asks how you voted on ballot measure number x, you will immediately know if you voted Y or N.]

In his novel Dr. Bloodmoney, which was copyrighted 1965, Philip K. Dick wrote:  “After all, I’m part of society too, part of the civilization menace by the grandiose, extravagant miscalculations of this man.  It could have been – could someday be – my children blighted because this man had the arrogance to assume that he could not err.”  Could he have been thinking of Kerry when he wrote that?

Now, if the disk jockey will play Ray Wylie Hubbard’s song “Screw You, We’re from Texas,” from his album titled Growl, we’ll mount up and charge on out of here as if we were the Quantrill’s raiders of the political scene.  As the California Governor says: "I’ll be back."   Hopefully that will be next week with a new column.  Until then have a week worth recounting.

Copyright © 2004 – Robert Patterson