Idealogically Blinkered

Now that's a great turn of phrase. George Will is fine form this morning and it is hard to tell if he is still a conservative but there are a few clues. His article in Newsweek could have been written by any barking moonbat (and has, just not as eloquently) and over at the WaahPoo, with less than two weeks before the election, it has occurred to Mr. Will that voting might not be as efficient or as accurate as one might have hoped.

While I'm not fond of Duck! Cheney, the bloom has definitely come off the rose for Mr. Will.

In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, "If you had to take back any one thing you'd said about Iraq, what would it be?" Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: "I thought that the elections that we went through in '05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have ... I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature."

He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence. Worse, in the full transcript of the interview posted online he said the big impact he expected from the elections "hasn't happened yet." "Yet"? Doggedness can be admirable, but this is clinical.

Anyway, what Cheney actually said 17 months ago was that the insurgency was in its "last throes." That was much stronger than saying we were "over the hump" regarding violence. Beware of people who misquote themselves while purporting to display candor.

Cheney's either a liar (!) or delusional, either way it doesn't make a difference to the dead. And that's a no-brainer.

Speaking of no-brainers...

Having fixed Iraq and New Orleans, the federal government's healing touch is now being applied to voting. As a result, days -- perhaps weeks -- might pass after Election Day without the nation's knowing which party controls the House or Senate. If that happens, one reason might be HAVA, that 2002 bit of federal helpfulness.

By fixed, does he mean spayed and neutered?

Today's political climate -- hyperpartisanship leavened by paranoia and exploited by a national surplus of lawyers -- makes this an unpropitious moment for introducing new voting technologies that will be administered by poll workers who often are retirees for whom the task of working a DVD player is a severe challenge. Furthermore, an election is, after all, a government program, and readers of Genesis know that new knowledge often brings trouble. So we should not be surprised if, on Nov. 7, new voting machinery does what new technologies -- dams, bridges, steamships, airplanes -- have done through history: malfunction.

Now that is definitely the truth. The upcoming election is like being in a time machine and watching the Titanic leave on her maiden voyage or the Hindenburg approach in New Jersey. Not good.

I do have a bone to pick with one paragraph where he uses a false conclusion to justify the biggest mistake in this nation's history and then glosses over damage to the country for the last six years. What he thinks doesn't make any difference, is what brought us to the brink of economic, military and cultural ruin in the first place.

The lesson that should have been learned from Florida was: In Florida, as in life generally, one should pursue as much precision as is reasonable -- but not more. When, as very rarely happens, a large electorate, such as that state's 6.1 million voters in 2000, is evenly divided, the many errors and ambiguities that inevitably will occur during the marking of millions of ballots will be much more numerous than the margin of victory. That is unfortunate, but no great injustice will be done, no matter who is declared the winner in a contest that is essentially tied.

No great injustice will be done? Have you looked at the results of that "decision"? Did you read the article you just wrote in Newsweek? I think those idealogical blinkers kicked in for you again.