Thinking about the election

Professor Death got a lot of folks stirred up with his pre-mortem for the Republican majority yesterday, but from my POV the anger is more than a little misplaced. Conservatives who are piling on Reynolds for being a "bad coach" have misjudged him as badly as the KosKidz who slam him for being an Administration shill. As long as I've been reading Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has made it very clear that he's a libertarian first and a supporter of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party only insofar as it supports the things he supports: personal liberties, a booming economy, and since 9/11, the war on Islamic fascism. So expecting Reynolds to line up with a bunch of politicos who seemingly have done everything they could to kick the ball away for the last five years, and driven even reliable partisans like John Hinderaker to despair doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They're not doing the things he thinks need doing; why should he vote for them or support them?

Every one of the gaffes he's listed can be laid at the door of the party leadership, which will deserve no thanks if the GOP somehow manages to prove the pollsters and the futures markets wrong, pull off a successful ground game next month, and hold onto a majority in the House and Senate. I would add to the list, by the way, the inexplicable loyalty the White House showed to Senators Spector and Chafee, a pair of RINOs who did everything they could to make trouble for the Administration on pretty much every issue they could, Why W and Rove backed those two against more conservative challengers is utterly beyond me, and certainly Chafee and Spector have shown themselves ungrateful at beast and treacherous scum at worst.

It's possible that W and Rove are right to be optimistic, that the base will look at the possibility of having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, John Conyers in charge of the Judiciary Committee, and Charles Rangel in charge of Ways & Means, hold their noses, and pick the R candidate as the lesser of two evils, but Reynolds is right: it didn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't have to be.

Thinking about the election

Professor Death got a lot of folks stirred up with his pre-mortem for the Republican majority yesterday, but from my POV the anger is more than a little misplaced. Conservatives who are piling on Reynolds for being a "bad coach" have misjudged him as badly as the KosKidz who slam him for being an Administration shill. As long as I've been reading Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has made it very clear that he's a libertarian first and a supporter of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party only insofar as it supports the things he supports: personal liberties, a booming economy, and since 9/11, the war on Islamic fascism. So expecting Reynolds to line up with a bunch of politicos who seemingly have done everything they could to kick the ball away for the last five years, and driven even reliable partisans like John Hinderaker to despair doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They're not doing the things he thinks need doing; why should he vote for them or support them?

Every one of the gaffes he's listed can be laid at the door of the party leadership, which will deserve no thanks if the GOP somehow manages to prove the pollsters and the futures markets wrong, pull off a successful ground game next month, and hold onto a majority in the House and Senate. I would add to the list, by the way, the inexplicable loyalty the White House showed to Senators Spector and Chafee, a pair of RINOs who did everything they could to make trouble for the Administration on pretty much every issue they could, Why W and Rove backed those two against more conservative challengers is utterly beyond me, and certainly Chafee and Spector have shown themselves ungrateful at beast and treacherous scum at worst.

It's possible that W and Rove are right to be optimistic, that the base will look at the possibility of having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, John Conyers in charge of the Judiciary Committee, and Charles Rangel in charge of Ways & Means, hold their noses, and pick the R candidate as the lesser of two evils, but Reynolds is right: it didn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't have to be.

I'm getting closer to my home

There was apparently some misunderstanding about when I was supposed to head over to Chez stuckintraffik and hook up with him and redmartel to talk shop and a little RP prep as well; S thought he'd told me noon, and I assumed we'd be getting together sometime this evening because as far as I knew there was nothing in Heaven, Hell or Earth that could pry redmartel loose from a television on Sunday afternoon, him being a big NFL devotee and all. So we were both wrong. *shrugs*

It wasn't a total waste of time. I got most of the dishes done, bagged up the kitchen garbage, and did a little more cataloging of the books in the bedroom. (I'm up to 136 books, which brings the grand total to exactly 400.) Once I'm done with the shelves, there's a couple more boxes in the bedroom that I need to go through, maybe two or three more out here in the living room, one in the coat closet (mostly baseball books, I think) and maybe some scattered books amongst the boxes in the kitchen. Well, I have my Tuesday nights free now, so I should be able to finish the whole grand project in another couple of weeks. It would speed things up if I remembered to bring home my sync cable from work so I could copy the data on the TX onto the working copy in my thumb drive here at home, so I'll put that on the to-do list. Another, more long-range project will link book reviews from here to the list, but first I have to sort out the book reviews from the movie and restaurant reviews, which could kill a few afternoons and evenings all by itself, Internet permitting.

I should re-set my preferences on Teachers-Teachers.com so they select only for the openings in Virginia. Looking at all the openings in Baltimore and P.G. County is depressing the shit out of me. They need teachers with my skill set, but from everything I've heard and read about those school systems and how they're run, it would be like taking a job in DC. No, thank you. Not even with a free flak vest, helmet and shotgun. I'm way too old to play cannon fodder for the stupid educrats running those schools into the ground, and way too much of a cranky old bastard to play their PC games.

I'm getting closer to my home

There was apparently some misunderstanding about when I was supposed to head over to Chez stuckintraffik and hook up with him and redmartel to talk shop and a little RP prep as well; S thought he'd told me noon, and I assumed we'd be getting together sometime this evening because as far as I knew there was nothing in Heaven, Hell or Earth that could pry redmartel loose from a television on Sunday afternoon, him being a big NFL devotee and all. So we were both wrong. *shrugs*

It wasn't a total waste of time. I got most of the dishes done, bagged up the kitchen garbage, and did a little more cataloging of the books in the bedroom. (I'm up to 136 books, which brings the grand total to exactly 400.) Once I'm done with the shelves, there's a couple more boxes in the bedroom that I need to go through, maybe two or three more out here in the living room, one in the coat closet (mostly baseball books, I think) and maybe some scattered books amongst the boxes in the kitchen. Well, I have my Tuesday nights free now, so I should be able to finish the whole grand project in another couple of weeks. It would speed things up if I remembered to bring home my sync cable from work so I could copy the data on the TX onto the working copy in my thumb drive here at home, so I'll put that on the to-do list. Another, more long-range project will link book reviews from here to the list, but first I have to sort out the book reviews from the movie and restaurant reviews, which could kill a few afternoons and evenings all by itself, Internet permitting.

I should re-set my preferences on Teachers-Teachers.com so they select only for the openings in Virginia. Looking at all the openings in Baltimore and P.G. County is depressing the shit out of me. They need teachers with my skill set, but from everything I've heard and read about those school systems and how they're run, it would be like taking a job in DC. No, thank you. Not even with a free flak vest, helmet and shotgun. I'm way too old to play cannon fodder for the stupid educrats running those schools into the ground, and way too much of a cranky old bastard to play their PC games.