Category: Politics

Overall, the turnout looks higher than expected, according to the Washington Post:

Election officials said they expect the final results to show a higher-than-expected turnout among the nation’s 14 million eligible voters, although Sunni Arabs are believed to have voted in much smaller numbers than the Shiites or Kurds.

But allegations are surfacing about vote-counting issues in Mosul:

Sunni politicians complain that voting irregularities in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city with a mostly Sunni population, deprived many Sunni Arabs, as well as Kurds and Christians, of their right to vote. The election commission has sent a team to Mosul to investigate.

It’s probably not as bad as Seattle, but these things do have to be investigated.

New York Times says polling places in Kurdish parts of mainly-Sunni Mosul were closed:

A member of the election commission, Safwat Rashid, a 59-year-old lawyer from Sulaimaniya, in the Kurdish region, was evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate. The figure has been see-sawing as a result of protests being fielded by the commission about irregularities in the voting and in some of the counting. There was also a dispute in Mosul involving large numbers of would-be voters in mainly Kurdish districts who had found polling centers closed, or with too few ballot papers to accommodate an unexpectedly large number of voters. “Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now,” Mr. Rashid said.

This is too much like Seattle, home of the Great Northwestern Coup of 2005, for comfort.

Instapundit makes a couple of salient points:

Another blast from the past: Harry Reid used to support Social Security reform: “Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector.”

Interestingly, so did FDR: “In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, ‘Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,’ adding that government funding, ‘ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'”

Now that’s a real blast from the past. Is it “ultimately” yet?

Indeed, and our condolences for his being fired from The Apprentice last night. Better luck next time and all that.

The first ten percent of votes counted in Iraq show al Sistani’s United Iraqi Alliance comfortably ahead of Allawi’s ticket, by about a 3-1 margin. LA Times has the same story, but WaPo, USAT, and WSJ are silent; not as silent as Riverbend who still hasn’t acknowledged any election took place, but silent about the numbers.

Perhaps ole Riverbend’s in Marin County after all.

UPDATE: OK, the WaPo has updated with an AP version of the same basic story as the others, just a little less emphasis on dead Marines than the sensationalist LA paper.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that overall turnout was higher than expected. Bummer, lefties.

Bush gave a confident, solid, and somewhat uplifting speech on two important themes, while Democrats offered a laughably sad rebuttal consisting of a Vegas politico bleeding for the children and a Frisco pacifist pretending to rattle the saber for national defense while main-lining botox.

Forecast: 50 years of Republican government.

For a more elaborated review, see Jeff Goldstein, and for a more emotional one, see Roger L. Simon:

Like him or not, George Bush has done something never before done in human history by anyone I can think of — bring democracy to a faraway country that didn’t have it by force of his own will (because there’s no way this would have happened had he not been elected). No one, not even Roosevelt, can say as much.

Polling-wise, 86% had a positive reaction.

Mickey Kaus sees the silver lining in John Kerry’s dismal and pathetic appearance on Meet the Press:

P.S.: Patriot of the Week Award goes to Sen. John Kerry for appearing on Meet the Press and being just as petty, negative, solipsistic (“I laid out four steps”), self-serving, inarticulate and semi-delusional as his many reluctant supporters feared he might be in office, thereby allowing millions of Democrats and independents to feel more comfortable with their president and putting in place the preconditions for a vast, bipartisan coming-together surge of national unity! … A deeply satisfying performance. … He could have been good! But no–he chose instead to sacrifice his own popularity for his country. …

Good point.

More good soul-searching from a recovering Bush-hater:

Maybe you’re like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started — not to the point of joining any peace protests, but at least letting people know where you stood.

You didn’t change your mind when our troops swept quickly into Baghdad or when you saw the rabble that celebrated the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue, figuring that little had been accomplished and that the tough job still lay ahead.

Despite your misgivings, you didn’t demand the troops be brought home immediately afterward, believing the United States must at least try to finish what it started to avoid even greater bloodshed. And while you cheered Saddam’s capture, you couldn’t help but thinking I-told-you-so in the months that followed as the violence continued to spread and the death toll mounted.

By now, you might have even voted against George Bush — a second time — to register your disapproval.

But after watching Sunday’s election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?

It’s hard to swallow, isn’t it?

…

But on Sunday, we caught a glimpse of the flip side. We could finally see signs that a majority of the Iraqi people perceive something to be gained from this brave new world we are forcing on them.

Instead of making the elections a further expression of “Yankee Go Home,” their participation gave us hope that all those soldiers haven’t died in vain.

Obviously, I’m still curious to see if Bush is willing to allow the Iraqis to install a government that is free to kick us out or to oppose our other foreign policy efforts in the region.

So is the rest of the world.

For now, though, I think we have to cut the president some slack about a timetable for his exit strategy.

If it turns out Bush was right all along, this is going to require some serious penance.

Maybe I’d have to vote Republican in 2008.

For sure, dude.

Iraq the Model wraps up the election.

All of the early coverage suggests the Iraqi elections were a smashing success, with terrorist impact on turnout minimal at best. If this news holds up, it’s a huge victory for democracy, Iraq, and yes, the Bush administration.

See Friends of Democracy – Iraq Election News for up-to-the-minute news without the usual spin.

You don’t want to get George Will all riled up:

…Someone like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, the hysteric (see above) who, hearing Summers, “felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow.” And, “I just couldn’t breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill.” She said that if she had not bolted from the room, “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”

Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute’s contrition?

Hopkins’s sufferings, although severe, were not incapacitating: She somehow found strength quickly to share them with the Boston Globe and the “Today” show, on which she confided that she just did not know whether she could bear to have lunch with Summers. But even while reeling from the onslaught of Summers’s thought, she retained a flair for meretriciousness: She charged that Summers had said “that 50 percent” of “the brightest minds in America” do not have “the right aptitude” for science.

A nice conclusion to a week of false consciousness about science, gender politics, and the human brain.

Here are the 13 dissenters on the appointment of Dr. Rice to Secretary of State:

Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Reed (D-RI)

There are some real legislative giants in this list, aren’t there? Bobby Byrd’s anti-Rice vote goes down in history alongside his unmatched opposition to both Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall.