Do you like pictures of construction sites?

I used to walk by this place all the time. It’s the county courthouse in Morristown.

Big dig in Morristown: Huge oil tank removed at courthouse

I would have *so* enjoyed watching this. When I was little I would spend summers watching big construction projects. I even took a picture once a day for a month when they built the big car garage in the center of town.

The pictures are quiet colorful. Considering that it was raining actually brought out the fall colors.

This, by the way, is the court house where some famous court issues were handled, including the Karen-Ann Quinlan coma / “right to die” case before it was sent to the state supreme court. (The wikipedia article has the picture of her that I remember being on the front page of the newspaper nearly every day of the trial. I was a newspaper boy back then, but too young to understand the issue.)

How I learned to love victory and stop worrying about Karl Rove

la_directora commented on my LJ:

I don’t know, there are just a few small details in the whole process that make me think that somewhere in a back office at the White House, Karl Rove is rubbing his hands together and saying, “Now I’ve got the Democrats right where I want them.” [emphasis mine] I’m just hoping that it’s pure delusion on his part, and that we really are having as good a day as it seems.

That puts a much better, more visual, description of what I was trying to say. (Gosh, la_directora, have you considered a career in the visual arts? :-) ).

But then I realized, Karl Rove’s “power” is a myth. He’s only won in easy situations, but was good at telling everyone that it was a difficult situation. Look at the evidence:

• Texas Governorship: had a bigger name candidate.
• 2000: Lost to a candidate with no charisma, and someone else bailed him out (Jim Baker going to the supreme court)
• 2002: Dealt an easy hand thanks to 9/11
• 2004: Only won by 1-2% against a UNPOPULAR person
• 2006: Lost both house and senate (ironically, they then dropped Rummy, which if they had done 4 weeks earlier would have saved the election).

The book “Bush’s Brain” reveals that Karl Rove is the kind of person that in highschool would should up for debate club with a huge stack of index cards to intimidate the opponent, who didn’t know they were all blank. It worked. And it worked in 2000, 2002, and 2004. I think we’ve figured this out now and he’s less effective.


( Article in TNR that made me realize a lot of this. They recommend we rejoice at this victory, not worry ourselves to death. )

Remember what Republicriminals did to Clinton in his last 2 years!

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061120&s=trb112006

In Clinton’s concluding years, the GOP played a brilliant game of good cop-bad cop. In Congress, the Gingrich revolutionaries waged an all-out effort to emasculate the Clinton presidency. After initially dwelling on Clinton’s Whitewater land deal, the White House Travel Office, and other political minutiae, the GOP in 1998 tried to use Clinton’s lies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky to remove him altogether.
 It was kamikaze politics. The public loathed the partisan warfare and, in the 1998 midterm elections, punished Republicans at the polls. But the GOP didn’t give up. In 1999 and 2000, it blocked virtually all of Clinton’s initiatives--from a prescription-drug benefit to a minimum-wage hike to a post-Columbine push for gun control. Even on foreign policy, where presidents usually gravitate late in their administrations, the Republican Congress kept Clinton on a tight leash. The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And, with U.S. planes in the sky over Kosovo, it defeated a resolution supporting the war effort and tried to block funding for the peacekeeping that followed. GOP Senator Mitch McConnell even admitted that, when it came to Clinton’s agenda, the Republicans pursued a “strategy of not letting any critical mass develop before the election.” 

Though, after reading the entire article I had this thought: They need to work on passing laws that would make Barack look good so he can beat Hillary.