Bush, and I suppose Blair, are making stabiity, imposing the rule of law, and ending corruption the chief benefits they intend to extend.

This is nothing less than a reassumption of Kiplings's Burden: of course it is exactly what the world needs. We may pick up again the task of extending the benefits of our way of life which we abandoned in the last century as a result of German insanity and Communist plotting.

Of course there will be resistance. I happened to see a brief television interview yesterday of some Black Studies professor who said that whatever happens Africa must keep "self-determination"--racist moron! I wonder if, after the cultural transformation of Africa this fool will be honest enough to drop his phony Arabic slave-master name and re-take his liberator name.

Lou -- LOL

OJ -- HE IS WHO CLINTON WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. If that's supposed to make me feel better, it isn't working.

David: Bush & Clinton ran very, very similar campaigns. Remember that Clinton's whole '96 campaign was based on "family values", a sad joke to be sure, but he certainly knew how to get himself elected.

Bush is going to nominate a rock-solid conservative and s/he's going to be confirmed. Why? Because McCain holds the reins in the Senate and McCain really needs social conservatives to be happy if he's to have any chance at getting the '08 nomination. Of course, knowing McCain he'll probably squish out on the next vacancy in an attempt to get himself back in the good graces of the nation's editorial boards...

b. Clinton "certainly knew how to get himself elected"? If you mean he knew how to get Perot to enter the race, take 19% of the vote away from Bush, leaving 43% for himself, then you're right, he did know how to get himself elected.

I still think there was some kind of a deal with Perot. His candidacy was a bit too convenient and without it, I don't think Clinton would have been elected in 1996 either. Dole was a very weak candidate, but without Perot, I think he would have won.

erp,

When Dole got the nomination essentially without opposition, it was obvious the fix was in.

dole looked like a warmed over cadaver, in '96. it was extremely selfish of him to run.

He was the best candidate and might have won had Perot pulled out.

David:

It's not meant to.

Gramm was the only GOP candidate with a shot. He would have held the social conservatives and his economic policy would have had appeal in the suburbs. What the GOP did not need and does not need is a road company Nixon, like Dole, as a standard-bearer.

As long as a sufficient proportion of that $8.6 billion is for military operations in Darfur, Zimbabwe, etc, then I'm on board.

I like Phil Gramm--he was a 30% candidate nationally. Too cracker.

what if jeb had run in '96 ?

Wasn't even a governor until '98.

bart. I do like to keep up, but I was totally unaware of a fix, unless by "fix" you mean that among the gentlemanly Republican politicians of that day, the nomination was Dole's to refuse. He not only didn't refuse, he did the honorable thing by resigning from the senate.

The campaign was so lackluster, the only thing I remember about it was thinking that if Dole made a commercial quoting Edmund Burke and then denouncing Clinton chapter and verse and enumerating his many non-sexual sins, he might have picked up a couple more votes.

erp: Like I said, Clinton knew how to win elections--be the most conservative candidate in the field. If there was indeed some sort of deal with Perot, then my point is proven even more--be the most conservative candidate in the field, and recruit a 3rd party candidate to siphon off GOP votes. There hasn't been a dirtier pol in the last few decades than WJC. What's amazing is that no one has ever turned on him, either during the impeachment days or now that he's out of office...

Killing Mugabe is the best investment Bono or Bob Geldof could make. But it seems the US and/or Blair won't do it. Ditto for the Sudan.

oj,

You really should at least try to get out of the Eastern Time Zone once in a while. You'd find there are lots of really intelligent people who talk slowly and even (gasp!) drawl. Dole's ideas on the economy were little more than warmed-over Nixonism(subsidies for my friends, higher taxes for everyone else). Newt Gingrich had him properly pegged as 'the tax collector for the welfare state.' And by his own admission, DOle's greatest piece of legislation was the Food Stamp Act, which is designed to create a taxpayer subsidy for food processors and wholesalers. Whether any poor person actually gets fed is purely incidental. His 'Road to Damascus' conversion to supply-side economics didn't impress anyone. More typical was his support for Old Bush's decision to break his 'No New Taxes' pledge. Dole has never seen a tax increase for people who don't employ K Street lobbyists that didn't make him cream in his pants.

Gramm would have engaged Clinton on tax cuts and increasing prosperity. He was a successful vote getter in a diverse state. He was the only candidate in the race who could have legitimately claimed Reagan's mantle.

b. You think the 900 FBI files in the Clinton's possession and the dozens of mysterious deaths of people in their orbit have something to do with nobody turning on them. They are protected.

Check out this little throw-a-way item in the New York Daily News. Jonesing? Anyone know what that means?

bart:

Yes, those are the Republicans who win, just as drawling Democrats do.

"The Clintons are protected."

Even assuming that it was ever true, (and there is some rather hard to explain circumstantial evidence), who is protecting them now ?

Is there someone in the Bush administration willing to kill to keep the Clintons' secrets ?

It's more likely that we've already heard the worst about the amoral and totally self-centered Clintons.

bart, your cynicism is refreshing in an odd way, like getting an overdose of gamma rays. Toxic, but bracing.

The Food Stamp Act and school lunch (and breakfast) programmes do, in effect, create a subsidy for the agricultural industry and food processors, and one can, at the margins, legitimately quibble with how the programmes are administered, what the menus consist of, and who is eligible to participate.

However, the bottom line is that millions get fed, mostly minors, many of whom actually would be malnourished or even starve without such largesse.
That doesn't seem to be too great a burden for the richest nation in the history of humanity.

Who's protecting the Clinton's? The media of course and people who are afraid of them. No, I don't think we know everything. I think there's a great deal more to be known about the Clinton's that was swept under the rug while the media obsessed about Monica's dress.

Dick Morris and Ed Klein and their tell-all books are further smoke to be blown into the eyes of naive voters. Get everyone talking about another ridiculous episode of Bill Clinton's endless adolescence, so that the public will forever dismiss any charge against them as being just about sex.

Bush has wisely stayed out the fray. No matter how much he may know, he has nothing to gain by exposing them.

Michael,

Do you grocery-shop?

One can regularly see people on food stamps buying TV dinners, brand-name products, including cookies, candies, etc. All of this costs a premium, a subsidy that goes from my pocket directly to Archer-Daniels-Midland and others.

What we should be doing is something quite simple. The easiest way to feed people is to give people food. We should have public-private partnerships where people go to pick up actual food. They would get rice, beans, ground beef, chicken, generic canned tuna, vegetables, fruit, some salad vegetables. No frozen pizza, no premade frozen veggies at 3 times the cost of generic, no Fruit Rollups. If, given the fact that I'm a childless single with a nice income and asset structure, I can be a coupon shopper, so can they.

The school lunch program is even a bigger scam. The easiest way to handle this problem would be to hand out MREs or to create nutritious airplane-style meals, made in a central facility and reheated in schools later on. No more junk food at lunch. If you want a slice of pizza or a Big Mac buy it yourself. If kids don't want to eat the food, let them starve. When I was a kid, if my parents made a meal I didn't want to eat, I had the option of eating it anyway or not eating. There is no reason why the little snotnoses who infest our schools can't be faced with the same choice.

erp,

I've been wondering that myself. The real scandal of the Clinton years was the way in which American military technology was made readily available to the PRC and others who might sell it to places we don't want it to go. However, I'm firmly convinced that both parties are in that scam, so all people in a position to do something decided to focus of trivia like Slick Willie boffing some fat dumpy intern.

Clinton's initial backing came from the Dixie Mafia, best exemplified by the Stephens brothers of Little Rock. Also, what was a PRC operative like Charlie Trie doing with a Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, hardly a mecca of technology, science or cuisine?