Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Is the Bushies' house of cards beginning to crumble? There have been a number of minor stumbles recently, but the image that keeps coming back to mind is of the new Senate Majority Leader Frist performing diabolical and fatal medical experiments on stray cats that he pretended to adopt. This really creates one of those vivid images that ought not to be associated with one of the main figures of "compassionate conservatism". Frist has "apologized" for his "young and irresponsible" mistakes, but it still creates a very strong afterimage that is quite distinctly different from the afterimage Clinton's apology left behind. I think this is quite capable of haunting him, of becoming a rallying cry that will greatly hinder the Bushies. The kind of problem that casts long shadows, and puts a different perspective on everything else. Was Frist really trying to help Africans when he did surgery there? Or were these just more learning experiments with reduced liability risks? Or maybe they were just acts of contrition for his old stray-cat-killing days? All sorts of unpleasant questions arise.

Really hard to believe that the Bushies would have picked Frist to replace Lott if they had been aware of this skeleton. This isn't like Dubya's own AWOL record which can mostly be controlled and manipulated in the media. This is something that Frist has publicly acknowledged, confessed to, and apologized for. Apologies notwithstanding, how many Americans really want the Senate to be led by someone who was EVER capable of such acts?

Losing two Senate Majority Leader's would be hard to regard as a victory, though of course all electoral politics is just a matter of timing, and plenty of time to recover before the next elections, sham though they may be. Was recently reading about how widespread the no-paper-trail electronic balloting has already become. It's already quite common enough to have influenced the last elections. Any power will eventually be abused, and right now the power of these electronic voting machines is controlled by the Bushies. Looks like the last major safeguard, the exit polling, will be permanently eliminated, too, according to the latest reports.

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As a blogger from before there were blogs, I've concluded what I write is of little interest to the reading public. My current approach is to treat these blogs as notes, with the maturity indicated by the version number. If reader comments show interest, I will probably add some flesh to the skeletons...