I will write more this weekend when it's not already midnight, but in the meantime, let me say that Bush's claim that he has a mandate is laughable. Reagan had a mandate. Clinton could argue he had a mandate. Bush has a mandate only insofar as he was elected rather than appointed this time. Which is to say (thank you Wendy for pointing this out) the Compact OED defines mandate this way: "the authority to carry out a policy, regarded as given by the electorate to a party or candidate that wins an election." Did everyone catch Bush's claim "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it"? And this one is truly horrifying. It reads almost like an Onion article from the title ("Bush Unlikely to Keep All Promises"--ya think?) to the wish list of agenda items ranging from eliminate social security to drill for oil in Alaska. Did you know that if they placed fuel efficiency limits of 3 miles per gallon we would save as much oil per day as they could extract from our National Wildlife Refuge?
Sigh.
Anyway, it's late and I have to go to bed. I only just came in off the ledge today around lunch time. It gets tiring to keep passing the open windows. If I didn't send it to you already, you should read the post To My Friends From Other Places. One of the Rons forwarded it to me today and I tracked it down on the web. I'm a fan.
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