Is that blood I smell?
So today our American cousins go to the polls for their
mid-term elections to decide the balance of power of Congress. Let’s be clear here:
a) It won’t shift very far and b) both sides have already got their scapegoats should they fail to win/retain the majority.
Should the Democrats (or “traitors” according to right-wing mudslinger Ann Coulter) lose they will blame dodgy voting machines (a survey by Gallup last month showed that only one in four Americans is “very confident” his or her vote will be accurately counted) or the fact that that, by sheer coincidence, the announcement about Saddam’s sentence was made so close to the election.
Should the Grand Old Party (or “corrupt corporate lackeys” according to left-wing mudslinger Michael Moore) lose, they will most likely start by turning on one of their own before turning around and blaming the general lack of patriotism.
Whichever way the result goes, expect a huge two year battle for the presidency to kick off by about Monday morning. And it’s going to be an ugly one. There’ll be blood in the water before the primaries.
In the spirit of that classic film Brewster’s Millions, I think America should vote for ‘none of the above’.
From an Economist article this week:
“…More troubling, however, is the much larger number of lawmakers—nearly all of them, in fact—with perfectly legal conflicts of interest. A congressman has the power to “earmark” funds for a specific project. He can insert the earmark into a big, fat, unrelated bill, in the hope that it passes without anyone reading it. And he can accept campaign donations from the beneficiaries of his largesse, so long as no favour is explicitly traded. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, the number of porky earmarks has exploded under Republican rule, from 1,439 in 1995 to 13,997 last year. Congress’s response to recent bribery scandals has been to impose footling restrictions on lobbyists. But the only effective way to curb corruption would be to trim the pork.”
Pretty appalling really that they can get away with doing this sort of thing. Congress sounds like it needs to clean its act up.
Looks like the Democrats have the majority they need in both Houses.
Saw Hillary whining her sickening Victory speech “God Bless New York & God Bless America”.
Yeurgh!
But a Republican here in the UK was surprisingly balanced about it (probbly why she has been banished here to the UK)- saying that it has been unusual in the past of a party to have a majority in all houses AND the Presidency, so this result is just swinging the balance back to neutral like it should be.
A refreshingly moderate view I thought.
But what do I know eh?!
It is true that, latest by the mid-terms, it is very very rare to have the same majority in the House, the Senate and the White House. It’s not politically correct, but everyone knows it to be true: The GOP has been riding a wave since September 11th and it’s just hit the beachhead.
The difference is, the Dems had no real message this time around other than “We’re not the other lot!”. They’ve got two years to come up with a proper platform for Hillary.
Whoops.
And now Donald has quit!