Isn't it interesting?

Yesterday, AWol campaigned for former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swann, who is the Repug candidate for governor in Pennsylvania. And guess what! AWol said some stupid things.

You know, one of the issues that hurts people a lot is property taxes. People struggle to own their own home. One of the things we stand for is ownership. We love it when somebody opens the door to the place they live and says, welcome to my home; this is my piece of property. We stand strong for the ownership society. It's harder to own a home when you're property taxes are going up too high. It's good to have somebody running for governor who says, I hear the problems you have when it comes to owning your home, and I'll do everything I can to cut your property taxes, as well. (Applause.)

I used to tell people this: Education is to a state what national defense is to the federal government. Education must be the number one priority of your governor. And it is the number one priority for Lynn Swann. See, one of the reasons he's decided to run is because he's concerned about an education system that's not educating every child. Sure, it educates some children. But we want an education system to educate every child.

Two paragraphs in his speech, one after the other. Any connection? Well, from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, 57.3% of Pennsylvania school funding is local, and 93.9% of that comes from property taxes. So Bush (and Swann, apparently) want to cut the source of 53.8% of school funding while pretending to improve education in the state. Let's hope he means it when he compares it to national defense--it's way past time to start cutting THAT budget.

He goes on to babble about standards:

It's amazing what happens when you have low standards. Guess what happens. You get low results. It's what I call the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you don't have high standards, you get lousy results, particularly in some neighborhoods.

Actually, that last sentence isn't the soft bigotry of low expectations--it's just plain old bigotry.

There's a pitiful practice in some schools that say, you're too hard to educate, we're just going to shuffle you through. It may be the color of somebody's skin, or somebody's demographics that says to somebody, we're just going to quit on you. That's not right. It's not good for Pennsylvania. It's not good for the United States.

The poster child for the evils of social promotion is living proof of that last sentence, as he says it.

Veterans of World War II and Korea would tell you we were able to measure progress based upon miles gained, or based upon tanks destroyed, or however people measured war in those days.

"Hi. I'm staff sergeant Joe Smith, veteran of Korea. Let me tell you how we measured progress in that war. We measured progress in that war however we measured it in those days."

And there's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They're not bad people when they say that, they're decent people. I just happen to believe they're wrong.
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I believe a system of government that encourages people to participate, and a government that says, we respond to your will, ends up creating a hopeful alternative to resentment and hatred.

Latest CNN poll:"Sixty-one percent, however, said they believed at least some U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year...Asked about a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 57 percent of poll respondents said they supported the setting of such a timetable." So, he praises governments that respond to the will of the people, but to the majority of the American people he says only that "I just happen to believe they're wrong."

It gets worse.

Isn't it interesting today that the most violent parts of the world are where young democracies are trying to take root? Isn't it interesting that Hezbollah would attack Israel, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, try to destabilize the Middle East so that Lebanon doesn't get to be a strong democracy and starts to try to turn the world against Israel? Isn't it interesting that the young democracy of Iraq is the place where the enemy is trying to stop the progress? That should tell the American people the following things: One, we face an enemy that has an ideology that can't stand freedom; and secondly, as freedom progresses, it changes the world for the better. Otherwise, the enemy wouldn't be trying to stop it.

In other words, the overwhelming failure of his policies is conclusive evidence of their success! Doublethink just doesn't get any better than that.