REMEMBERING BOB HOPE
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder’s Stand Up for Bob Hope:
Thanks for intelligent Bob Hope article. He lived too long to get his props. Jackie remembers and I do too.
— unsigned
REPUBLICAN IN GAME
Re: George Neumayr’s Here’s Arnold!:
I enjoyed your article very much. You are soooo right. Arnold is a Democrat with an R after his name. What is the Republican Party thinking? I pray he doesn’t get endorsement from the majority. As a conservative Republican I am hoping that Gray Davis holds on to the Governorship!!
— Anna Davis
Hatfield, PA
George Neumayr writes, “The party is so rudderless it is content to field candidates Kennedys can vote for.”
Actually, that would be “must vote for” in this instance. Also, I’m not so sure “rudderless” applies, at least not in reference to the GOP –it is the current administration that has lost their rudder, how else to explain a successful recall initiative for the first time since the option was made available?
Here’s betting that Arnold does a fine job (tough to do worse from what I read) if he’s able to shrug off the dirt, which is being assembled in earnest as I type, and win the election.
— Mark Hessey
Belmar, NJ
I read the Los Angeles Times almost everyday and watch the news for several hours everyday, mostly cable news, and don’t even know who Tom McClintock is.
— unsigned
MARRY ME
Re: Enemy Central’s Terminator Limits:
Since when is Katie Couric worried about signs that a politician committed infidelity? Make that a wannabe politician, from Hollywood for God’s sake!
Indeed, it is a shame that Arnold didn’t marry her and get her off the air.
— Dan Martin
Pittsburgh, PA
ANGERS AWAY
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Look Back in Anger:
Ever since Ronald Reagan kicked Jimmy Carter’s gang out of the White House, Democrats have seemed a bit peeved. Now that conservatives have cornered the market on intelligent political debate, they seem positively peeved. So, I concur with Mr. Tyrrell’s assessment of Howard Dean and his supporters. I must question, however, his assertion that Senator Lieberman is cut from different cloth and is motivated by considerations of principle and policy. One need only remember, in his vice presidential campaign, the tortured reasoning as to how his religious beliefs were consistent with his support for maintaining the legal status of partial birth abortion. Some principle — some policy!
— L. Lovett
Mr. Tyrrell seems to have the captured the essential Howard Dean. Yes, he is the Democrats’ Demoncrat but he’s also more. Having watched him in politics up here for the last 20 years, I have seen just how he really is. It is not just opposition to Republicans that drives him, since he has appointed RINO’s to state positions. It is opposition to American values which drives him. He can’t stand the fact that people do not need Government to solve their problems (controlled by elitists like him), or that people look to a higher authority (religion) to guide their lives, or that people might even know how to manage their own money better than the “guv’ment”.
Yes, Howard Dean is one of those angry demoncrats who can’t stand the fact that the unwashed masses may think for themselves. He is arrogant, self-centered, and as people will soon realize, quite ignorant for a supposedly highly educated person, but that is because his own ego has overridden any common sense he may have possessed. Dean has just arrived on the national political scene from seemingly nowhere, but we up here in “nowheresville” have suffered under him (as governor) since August 1991. In fact the only good thing he has done for Vermont was to leave it.
— unsigned
I watched “The Editors” only occasionally because it was painful — the editors usually sided with Dean no matter how inane his pronouncements. Starting in the ’60s, I listened to the CBC (the Canadian government’s national broadcasting network, from across the Detroit River in Windsor) mornings and evenings as I drove to work. In the beginning I remember hearing outrage, although moderate and civil, that the U.S.’s handsome but amoral President, John Kennedy, had been caught mocking the moral rectitude of John Diefenbaker, Canada’s Prime Minister from the western prairies, and that the Seafarers’ International Union had sent an American gangster, Hal Banks, to head its Canadian affiliate. Later , Johnny Wayne and Frank Schuster parodied “Damn Yankees” in a CBC television skit in which Schuster arrives in an explosion of smoke to offer Wayne, a Toronto Maple Leafs’ goalie, the Stanley Cup in exchange for his soul, saying ” I come from below, from the depths of hell,” and Wayne answers “You’re from Detroit?”
The CBC’s attitude seemed to change in the ’70s with the rise of the influence in national politics of the French from Quebec — the Canadians elected their own attractive amoral Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, albeit, in contrast to JFK, a credentialed intellectual. Now the CBC’s tone was derisive of America’s politics and culture — one Montreal-based commentator made fun of Amy Carter’s looks.
Today, the CBC and Canadians are a long way from when the network would defend “Dief, The Chief” against the smart-alecky jibes of JFK. The radical cabal failed in the U.S. in its coup attempt, succeeding only in causing the resignation of Richard Nixon, ironically perhaps more their man than the conservatives’. (In fact, the coup may have failed because Americans recognized that Watergate could not be laid at the door of genuine conservatives.) However, in Canada, blowing up a similar tempest in a teapot, the cabal literally destroyed Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian voters have no real alternative to the leftist Liberals.
Is it paranoiac, to fear that lurking behind this vacuous little man, Howard Dean, is the roiling Marxist international conspiracy?
— J. R. Wheatley
GRAY COMEDY
Re: Chris Reed’s Davis Without Blinders and George Neumayr’s Beyond Delusion:
Two stories about the man in this state that I most hate in the same day! Amazing! Thanks to both Reed and Neumayr for shining the light on Davis’s moldy mushrooms that he so likes to hide. Our put-upon governor is discovering that it is not he, but our state, that is put-upon. He was firmly in the driver’s seat throughout this debacle, and now that he’s repeatedly smashed us into the sides of buildings, it’s time to take away the car keys.
Thanks for explaining the situation so clearly to those East-Coasters who may not be getting the whole picture. It’s easy to say that Davis isn’t responsible and that we should just put up with him for the rest of the term when you don’t live here. YOU try paying a tripled car tax this next year.
— S. Palmer
California
Not being a resident of California, I can enjoy the humor of the recall election perhaps more than its citizens. Here is a segment of a Fox News web site article:
Meanwhile, the man at the center of the political turmoil in California — Gov. Gray Davis (search) — will turn up Friday night for a live interview on HBO’s “Real Time” (11 p.m.). Davis may have agreed to appear on the show as the result of an op-ed column written by Maher that was published July 24 in the Los Angeles Times.
Maher, who did not endorse Davis in the piece, nevertheless came out against the recall drive which threatens to shorten Davis’ term as governor.
“Maybe he’s a lousy governor, but he was the one elected by voters who bothered to show up at the polls. Their efforts shouldn’t be undone by disgruntled shoppers signing a petition on their way out of Target,” Maher wrote.
I’ve often thought Bill Maher to be a bit of a nutcase as well, but his quote represents the best humor heard from him in decades.
— Rich Renken
Chesterfield, MO
MORE CLUES
Re: Bill Croke’s Clueless in Cody:
The column on the cluelessness of Americans reminded me of a joke which fits the bill.
An American couple are touring Canada by car and get lost. They see a farmer up ahead, plowing his field. The wife says to the husband: “Ask him where we are.” They pull up to the farmer and the husband says: “Excuse me, but we’re lost, where are we?” “Saskatchewan,” says the farmer. “Boy, we’re really lost,” says the wife. “He doesn’t even speak English.”
— Pete Brittain
Sandpoint, ID
BUMBLERS VS. GAMBLERS
Re: Jed Babbin’s Betting on the RSGs:
As usual, Jed Babbin is correct. It amazes me how fast Congress, that body of pure genius, can call an idea “doo-doo” but fund their proven social program failures for decades at the cost of billions.
These were the same people that said, “If man was meant to fly he’d have wings,” laughed at Jules Verne (a what engine in a submarine? What the heck is nuclear?), H.G. Wells and even Gene Roddenberry (Oh yeah, like we’ll have those little communicators in our pockets only the size of a, ah, ah, ah, cell phone). I even remember that every time we went to Disneyland and visited the Home of the Future or the GE Theater (back in the 1960s) there would be naysayers laughing at a video phone, microwave oven and built-in vacuum cleaners.
They were just as negative when JFK announced we would put a man on the moon and they are the same today with the Strategic Defense Initiative and missile defense. Thank goodness Presidents Carter and Reagan were able to keep the stealth project secret or they’d be poo-poo’ing that doo-doo too.
Then to add insult to their stupidity they tell us, with complete detail, about the utopias they can create with just the right government agency and the perfect, fully funded budget. Hillary’s socialized medicine scheme was more complicated and impossible than anything DARPA would come up with. And what drives me nuts is that thirty to fifty years of history shows the naysayers are always wrong and the social engineers always fail miserably.
Fortunately DARPA is much smarter than the average one of us and I like to think they floated this trial balloon knowing full well the private sector would jump at the idea and I’m convinced they will.
— Greg Barnard
Franklin, TN
IN CLOSING
I absolutely agree with the arguments advanced and the conclusions drawn by David Hogberg in his article entitled, “Bush in Deep Doo-Doo — Not!“
For this reason, I would like to share with you and David the following analysis — an analysis that I recently posted at www.freerepublic.com:
Despite weeks of unprecedented Democrat/elite media attacks, President Bush earned a 60% approval rating (36% disapproval) in the most recent USAToday/CNN/Gallup poll — a result within the margin of error of every Gallup poll taken since June 1 [Someone tell Dick “Chicken Little” Morris that the ‘polling’ sky is NOT falling, at least not on the President!]
NOTE: I wanted to publish the Gallup polling results as a counterpoint to the polling results that the media will be OVER-publicizing tomorrow: Pew Research Poll (think Madeleine Albright).
According to the Pew Poll (7/14-8/5), the President’s approval rating has fallen to 53% (vs 37% disapproval). Two quick points about Pew’s results:
1.) the bulk of the polling data was generated during the (politically) unstable period immediately during/after the ‘yellow cake’ nonsense AND the release of negative economic/jobs data. HOWEVER, since the last week of July, EVERY major poll has shown the President’s ratings either stabilizing or rising!
2.) Pew overweights Democrats in its polling analysis. While it doesn’t actually publicize its weighting formula, one can discern the inequitable treatment of Democrats vs Republicans by quickly averaging the approval ratings Pew does release. In this recent poll, Pew indicates that 91% of Republicans approve of the President’s job performance; 30% of Democrats approve; and Independents are evenly split. If Pew used an equitable distribution of Republicans/Democrats, the President would actually have a 60% approval rating (JUST LIKE GALLUP)!
INTERESTING POLLING DATA:
The media just LOVES emphasizing the President’s re-electability numbers vs a GENERIC Democrat — a completely meaningless match-up.
Against REAL opponents, the President invariably eclipses the 50% benchmark and enjoys double digit leads over ALL Democrat opponents (including Hillary)!
Examples:
FOX NEWS/OPINION DYNAMICS POLL 7/29-30/03
GWB 55% Dean 27%
GWB 54% Kerry 35%
GWB 52% Clinton 35%
MASON DIXON POLL: FLORIDA 7/29-31/03
GWB 51% Graham 39%
GWB 58% approval rating vs Graham’s 47% approval rating
[NOTE: GWB earns a 58% approval rating even though Mason Dixon uses a weighting formula in Florida that skews 48% vs 43% Democrat : Republican]
QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY POLL: CONNECTICUT 7/23-29/03
GWB 47% Lieberman 44% (Lieberman: 51% approval rating vs GWB: 54% approval rating)
GWB 53% Dean 38%
GWB 53% Clinton 38%
QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY POLL: PENNSYLVANIA 7/30-8/4
GWB 60% approval rating (vs Rendell at 51%; Specter at 57%; Santorum at 56%))
GWB 54% Lieberman 38%
GWB 55% Kerry 37%
GWB 57% Dean 34%
BOTTOMLINE: Recent polling data suggests that the President is in excellent political shape, particularly when one considers that he is in the third year of his first term — a time when most president’s are languishing with approval ratings in the 40% range (e.g., Reagan: 44% Clinton: 49%)!
— Deb Clark, Ph.D.
