Summa Minutiae

Fred, so far

Fred Thompson is doing well in the presidential polls, I figure for two reasons: 1, he can think consecutive coherent thoughts all by himself, and 2, he can express those thoughts in complete, grammatical and engaging sentences. That's more than most of the other candidates can accomplish in a day. Thoughts and sentences, kids - that's all it takes nowadays.

Posted by Bill White at 8:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Campaign for government programs

Catholic Charities' Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America got a lot of play in Peoria's diocesan newspaper this week (link will probably be dead next week). I've looked around in the reporting & websites for a clear definition of what they're trying to reduce, but I haven't found it. Seems to me there are many kinds of poverty. Ours, for example: our income is probably over the poverty line but everything is eaten up by debt slavery. Others have few debts but little income; some are mentally ill and unable to handle whatever finances they receive; others spend everything on addictions - gadgets, meth, stuff.

As Lisa eloquently put it yesterday, "Well, they could cut our poverty in half!" Which I'm sure is one thing they won't be doing.

Posted by Bill White at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Campaign to increase poverty

Looks like Congress is about to raise the minimum wage by two dollars & something. Didn't the Democrats campaign on helping poor people? I can just hear Butch Wagner, my old employer at the gas station in Findlay, "Hell, I can't afford to pay that!". Look for increased unemployment among the poorest of the working poor. Thanks, Democrats.

Posted by Bill White at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doing God's work in the heartland

Eric Scheske is hard at work; how about you? Everyone has to pull his own weight if we're going to get this theocracy established.

Posted by Bill White at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I am not that Bill White

Time for the annual disclaimer now that the other Bill White, the neo-Nazi columnist for Pravda, is making the news again. I'm the Catholic Bill White from central Illinois, he's the nutty Nazi Bill White from Maryland.

Posted by Bill White at 11:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mr. Bush's speech in summary

Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute took a look. at President Bush's speech, and his analysis rings true. Mr. Masugi, a student of Harry Jaffa, sees the larger sweep of American history and has accurately placed the speech within that picture.

LATER: It seems that one nice side-effect of Mr. Bush's speech is that it was so good it's getting people to examine some previous above-average inaugural speeches as a series of expositions on the meaning of America. Some recent inaugural speeches were so insipid they came and went without leaving a mark.

EVEN LATER: WFB notes the confused language in Mr. Bush's speech.

Posted by Bill White at 6:08 PM | Comments (0)

Not bad

Via Mr. Riddle:

You Are a Religious Republican

You make up the conservative, Christian, dedicated core of the Republican Party. You believe it's important for religious people to stand up for their beliefs in politics. And for you, this means voting your conscience - which almost always means voting Republican. Your pet causes include the sanctity of life, school vouchers, and prayer in school.

Posted by Bill White at 7:18 PM | Comments (1)

"Illinois Passes Controversial Child Screening Plan"

From the Psychiatric Times. This is a big issue on the homeschooling lists.

Posted by Bill White at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

Red counties, blue counties

From USA Today:

Posted by Bill White at 9:19 AM | Comments (1)

The missing "youth vote"

Pundits are wondering what happened to the youth vote that was supposed to turn out for Sens. Kerry & Edwards. Millions of youths could have voted if they hadn't been murdered in their mothers' wombs. Care to rethink your support for abortion, Senators?

Posted by Bill White at 4:00 PM | Comments (1)

Preview of 2008

Will it be George Bush vs. John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barak Obama? After all, President Bush's first term begins in January 2005 if the Democrats were right and he hasn't really been the president these past 4 years. Selected, not elected and all that.

Eight. More. Years!

Posted by Bill White at 1:49 PM | Comments (0)

Those classy Democrats

No, really! I cruised the TV coverage last night half-hoping to see exploding liberal heads, tears, depression. Nope. Aside from one bedraggled reporter on CNN who looked like her cat had just died, the ones I saw were even-handed, even impartial. Even Dan "forged docs" Rather turned in an impressive display of journalistic professionalism. It would have been mighty easy for any of them to turn vindictive or bitter, but I saw none of that.

Ann Althouse (guestblogging at Instapundit) makes a good point about not gloating too much about our victory.

Posted by Bill White at 10:44 AM | Comments (3)

Hey - there's Mom!

Look whose picture is on the table in the family residence at the White House:

U.S. President George W. Bush seen in the residence of the White House in Washington, November 2, 2004 as he gathers with his family to watch the results from the 2004 presidential elections. REUTERS/Jason Reed

More pictures in the "Continue reading..." link:

Posted by Bill White at 9:56 AM | Comments (8)

County results

Here are our county results. Keyes did pretty darn well here. Not a bad place to live, eh? If I recall correctly, Piatt County has a larger ratio of farmland to urban development than any other Illinois county.

Posted by Bill White at 11:44 PM | Comments (3)

The lineup

I have 6 blogs open in my browser. Whenever I have a chance, I reload and read each one for new election news. TV news? Don't be silly. Newspaper? I might buy an ink-stained dead tree tomorrow for grocery ads.

• Powerline
• Little Green Footballs
• Instapundit
• PoliPundit
• Kerry Spot
• The Corner

This probably ain't healthy, is it? Athanasius has the right idea. I'll be glad when it's over.

Posted by Bill White at 10:58 AM | Comments (1)

White Family Children for Truth

Our own little 527 group, White Family Children for Truth, is gearing up to vote today. We were discussing the election this morning when Sarah, 6, said, "We're going to vote for George Washington!" I pointed out the difficulty there, and Christopher, 7, began listing other possible choices. First on the list was "James Carter", so I pointed out that difficulty with that and worked in a little vocabulary lesson with two new words, reprehensible and ignominious. After a reminder that Mr. Carter is a Democrat, Sarah declared, "We don't vote for Democrats - they like to kill babies." Can't argue with that.

I don't think I'll shush her over at the township hall where we vote :-)

Posted by Bill White at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)

Meet Barak Obama

I said I'd avoid blogging about politics, but I'll make a short small exception for local politics. Meet pro-abort Barak Obama here. He's an Illinois Democrat running for the U. S. Senate against Catholic politician Alan Keyes.

Posted by Bill White at 10:50 AM | Comments (2)

Go away, I'm busy!

Sheesh. If the Vice President is going to plug your website in a nationally-televised debate, you might want to buy a few extra servers to handle the extra traffic.

Server Error in '/' Application.
Server Too Busy
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Server Too Busy

Posted by Bill White at 7:54 PM

Farewell, Senator Kerry

Me, too: I'll blog no more about Mr. Kerry forever (except maybe once on November 3rd after Mr. Bush's reëlection :-).

Posted by Bill White at 11:47 AM | Comments (4)

The pessimistic Mr. Core

E. Lane Core hits 'em out of the park nearly every at-bat, but this one is a foul tip into the stands:

In the presidential election, Nov. 2, 2004, Bush-Cheney will carry at least five states that right now are considered to be a lock for the Democratic ticket; and, at least two-thirds of the "battleground" states will be carried by the Republican ticket.

I'm a little more optimistic. Remember you read it here first: this election will be a Republican landslide of a magnitude somewhere between Nixon-McGovern (11 electoral votes to the Democrats) and Reagan-Carter (49 electoral votes to the Democrats). Also remember that you get what you pay for here at Summa Minutiae.

Surely it's more difficult for a man entangled in three decades of self-contradition to be elected in the Blog Era than it was before blogs. There are too many independent experts willing and able to check every last statement and report their findings. Blogs and the internet: must be a House of Bush conspiracy. Perhaps Al Gore was stretching the truth when he said he invented the internet.

UPDATE: This all assumes, of course, that Senator Kerry will still be the Democratic presidential candidate in November and that his campaign doesn't sink under the weight of his lies. Who would replace him? Senator Edwards?

Posted by Bill White at 6:32 AM | Comments (9)

Good for one free ride

I've read bits of Sen. Kerry's acceptance speech. As with other folks, the part that leapt out at me was "if we're attacked, by golly I'll respond!" or somesuch. This simply hands our enemies a coupon good for one free attack on the United States, redeemable after President Kerry's inauguration. You'd think the charnel-house of lower Manhattan, the rubble-filled craters smoking for weeks, would be a little harder to forget.

Vide, in case you've forgotten that bright cloudless Tuesday morning. And in case you haven't.

Posted by Bill White at 6:28 PM

White and Whiter

Calling the Curt Jester:

Has it occurred to anyone that the new Democratic presidential ticket, millionaire Senators Kerry and Edwards, might be called the "White and Whiter" ticket, along the lines of the "Dumb and Dumber" movies (which I haven't seen so the comparison may not be apt)? Of course, you could say the same about the current Republican ticket but then people expect that of Republicans.

Or, considering the reputedly vast fortunes of Senator Edwards and Mrs. Heinz-Kerry, we might call them the "Rich and Richer" ticket.

In other news, real he-men sweat while hugging their buddies. We can't see Senator Kerry's left hand in that photo, but fortunately Senator Edwards is using his right hand to form the International Sign Language phrase "Eww, I'm hugging a guy."

Posted by Bill White at 1:47 AM | Comments (2)

For the record, it wasn't Kerry

Did Senator John F. Kerry fail to vote with 99 other Senators against the Kyoto treaty? Well, that's not how it happened. Or, welcome to Bill's online application for employment at snopes.com.

The Kyoto agreement was signed by Mr. Clinton but never introduced to the Senate for ratification:

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/italy/03/29/environment.kyoto/

The vote referred to was the Senate's 95-0 approval of the Byrd/Hagel Resolution which said, in effect, "Kyoto? We ain't doing that!":

http://rpc.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/Gwupdate-mw.htm

The votes are recorded here:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=105&session=1&vote=00205

The senators who did not vote are:

Feinstein (D-CA), Harkin (D-IA), Grams (R-MN), Bryan (D-NV), and Reid (D-NV).

It's also entertaining to read the CNN report for content. How did they get a reputation as a serious news outfit?

Posted by Bill White at 12:17 AM

Pardon me a moment

... while I blog about politics. Admitted but unindicted war criminal John Kerry is demanding (in his roundabout way) that President Bush apologize for the despicable behavior of American prison guards in Iraq. That's fine, but how about an apology from Senator Kerry for his own youthful spree of murders, torture and other assorted atrocities committed in South Vietnam? He's admitted to them, but we haven't yet heard an apology.

Posted by Bill White at 4:53 PM | Comments (5)

Irish Elk gets to the heart of the matter

Regarding Senator Kerry:

As a Catholic, you perceive divinity in a piece of bread. Is it such a leap to discern humanity in an unborn child?

Posted by Bill White at 6:16 PM | Comments (1)

Rummy!

Now what's more fun than veneration of the coolest guy in government, Donald Rumsfeld? See the complete collection of Rumsfeld Fighting Techniques, read his enigmatic poetry, find some good stuff in Rumsfeld's Rules, and thrill to his martial arts tournament!

Posted by Bill White at 12:58 AM

"I don't fall down."

The latest of John F'n Kerry's escapades shows the ultimate reason he's not fit to be President - he's a jerk. From the New York Times:

The image-conscious candidate and his aides prevailed upon reporters and photographers to let him have a first run down the mountain solo, except for two agents and Marvin Nicholson, his omnipresent right-hand man.

His next trip down, a reporter and a camera crew were allowed to follow along on skis - just in time to see Mr. Kerry taken out by one of the Secret Service men, who had inadvertently moved into his path, sending him into the snow.

When asked about the mishap a moment later, he said sharply, "I don't fall down," then used an expletive to describe the agent who "knocked me over."

That's how Sen. John F'n Kerry treats a man pledged to give his life to defend him.

Posted by Bill White at 4:13 PM | Comments (1)

Oh, that foreign leader

Not long ago John F'n Kerry was boasting that he had the support of some international leaders. Here's one, complete with endorsement and anti-Semitic remark. This appears not to be a joke.

UTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad endorsed Democratic contender John Kerry (news - web sites) in the U.S. presidential race Thursday, saying he would keep the world safer than President Bush (news - web sites).

"I think Kerry would be much more willing to listen to the voices of people and of the rest of the world," Mahathir, who retired in October after 22 years in power, told The Associated Press in an interview.

"But in the U.S., the Jewish lobby is very strong, and any American who wants to become president cannot change the policy toward Palestine radically," he said.

Mahathir, who was one of the most outspoken leaders in the Islamic world, also said the March 11 train bombings in Spain demonstrated that the Iraqi war has aggravated international terrorism and raised hostility toward Washington and its allies.

Posted by Bill White at 6:10 AM

Derbyshire on Congress

A new American Citizen takes a fresh look at Congrefs

Posted by Bill White at 5:13 PM

Daz Cox vs. John F'n Kerry

My friend Daz in Peoria has an interesting scoop about JFK's campaign spending, and it's made The American Spectator.

Those were the days. There's a bit more Steel Teeth here.

Posted by Bill White at 9:32 AM