Billy, We Hardly Knew Ye
As I was struggling with my latest musical composition, "Variations on a Phrase From Joe Walsh's Guitar Solo in 'Hotel California,'" it occurred to me that, just as they don't make guitar players like Joe Walsh any more, they don't make politicians like Bill Clinton any more.

The Unconscious Message Sent By the Left
Democratic spokespeople might have gotten the Democratic "message" out, they also sent subliminal messages which arguably negated the conscious messages they intended to convey.

Teddy the K
Teddy ("Are there two p's in Chappaquiddick?") Kennedy recently uttered the mother of all liberal moral equivalencies when, at the height of the media-driven Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse brouhaha, he declared "Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."

Republican Organization, Strategy, and Tactics
Potentially juiced exit polls and other as-yet undiscovered election chicanery notwithstanding, what really won the election for President Bush was the fact that the Republican National Committee and the Republicans' chief political strategist, Karl Rove, simply out-politicked the Democrats.

Death of a Jackal
Yasser Arafat is dead. Long may he stay dead, and long may the murderous ideology for which he became an international spokesperson suffer in the wake of his passing.

Were the Exit Polls Juiced?
It occurred to me very early on election night — as Brit Hume and the Fox News Channel analytical team expressed befuddlement at the fact that afternoon exit polls seemed to point to a stunning Kerry victory, while actual election returns made it clear that Bush was at least holding his own and very probably doing quite well, thank you — that those exit polls might have been "juiced," to use the term that has become current to describe athletes who cheat by using substances such as steroids to enhance their performance.

Some Notes On Liberal "Values"
It's hardly a secret that the political left, which includes most American Democrats, shies away from the term "liberal" these days.

The Business of State
The air has been let out of the balloon of the election-fraud-conspiracy retribution threatened by Democrats, except, of course, for the continued embarrassing railing of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the Air America retro-"movement" jocks.

Concerning What's Left of Kerry's Candidacy
This August 2, 2004, USA Today news item reflected the head-scratching that Democrat operatives have almost certainly been doing over the passing strange poll results in the month following the Democratic National Convention: "Pollsters and strategists are puzzling over Kerry's failure to get a boost from a convention that even critics acknowledge went almost precisely as planned."

Reframing the Conflict in Iraq
It is becoming more and more evident — and this is something we could not have known until we had deposed Saddam Hussein and begun to deal with the forces which reorganized and redeployed themselves after his fall — that those committed to realizing power through inflicting death and destruction will likely persist in the form of Iraqi "insurgents" for the foreseeable future.

Are DemsFinally Starting to Get It?
While Republican initiative and bold strategizing certainly played a significant role in their winning the election decisively, other factors, including what can be described as the cast of the liberal mind, certainly also weighed heavily in determining the election's outcome.

Why Conservatives Need Carville, Moore, and Rather
I can't recall a more blatant instance of someone who aspired to a position of significant political power allowing himself to be misled by operatives who so clearly do not have his interests at heart.

Those Democrat Mistakes Just Keep Comin'
One of the mistakes Democrats made during the 2004 election was to categorize people who voted for George W. Bush in very broad-brush, single-issue terms.

Core Beliefs? Try Core Fears
By late Monday evening, the approximately 120,000 participants in some 1,900 Democratic caucus meetings throughout the state of Iowa's 99 counties had expressed their preferences, and we now have a better idea of which set of Democrat core fears prevailed.

The New Imperialism
Leftists everywhere decry America's "imperialism," seeing our liberation of Iraq, for example, as a disguised attempt to gain control over one of the middle east's most important sources of oil rather than as an attempt to give democracy a foothold there.

Debunking the Myth of Global Warming
One of the reasons it's so hard to take environmental scientists seriously is because they sometimes, in unguarded moments, reveal their true agendas.

Merry Christmas? You Bet!
I sense that the tide is beginning to turn against the values (or lack thereof) which left-leaning liberals have relentlessly promoted to, not to say forced down the throats of, a majority of Americans for the past half-century or so.

A Quarter Century of Disinformation
One thing John Kerry's insistence on focusing attention on his and George W. Bush's military records has done is to bring to light the perpetuation of a campaign of lies and disinformation that has been waged in and by print and broadcast media.

Thoughts on the Memogate Scandal Report
On March 4, the report based on the results of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William H. Pickle's investigation into the "theft" of Democratic documents from a computer hard drive by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staff members was released.

Lessons of 'The 'Lion King'
One of the things that has struck me, in the wake of events since the 9/11 atrocities, is that there are lessons to be learned from "The Lion King" that apply to the United States' approach to international policy and to protecting its citizens.

The AIDS Conundrum
While many political activists hold drug companies responsible for the suffering of AIDS victims worldwide because of alleged profiteering, in fact, activists themselves bear a significant portion of the responsibility for the very suffering they work to alleviate.

Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots, and Other Innocents
Since as far back as the 1920s, Americans, engaging in what they think is idealistic protest against American "imperialism," are in fact reaching out to the enemy.

New Fiction From Bill Clinton and the New York Times
A couple of candidates for the Ignobel Prize for Fiction have surfaced in the past week or so, just in time for the summer beach reading crowd: Bill Clinton's My Life and the New York Times' reporting on the 9/11 commission findings.

Re-electing George W. Bush
Recent polls indicate that John Kerry holds a slight lead in more than half of the so-called "battleground" or swing states, where the dizzyingly sophisticated political strategists are concentrating both their polling and advertising resources.

Henry Kissinger and War Crimes Trials
In a recent article ("Let Libs Try Saddam Hussein"), I suggested, only half in jest, that a group of conservatives was being considered to question Saddam Hussein in a trial setting as part of a "reality TV" program concept being considered by two major networks.

The Reign in Spain Goes Mainly Down the Drain
A recently revealed Al Qaeda internet posting from December indicates that the terrorist organization fully intended to use one or more bombings in Spain to influence that country's election.

Through the Political Looking Glass
You've heard of strange bedfellows, but have you noticed just how strange the bedfellow situation is becoming in the 2004 Presidential campaign?