Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

Live from Ottawa, President Bush addressed Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s concerns about the U.S. refusal to import Canadian beef because of a Mad Cow Disease scare. The President said that he wanted to lift the restrictiongs, but…

“There is a bureaucracy involved. I readily agree that we’ve [USA] got one.”

Then it is past time for that bureaucracy to go, Mr. President. When the bureaucracy becomes an excuse for government’s bumbles, it is deleterious to the nation, and in this case, post-Chretien normalization of our relationship with the north.

Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Indiana), speaking this morning on FOX News Sunday about the election situation in the Ukraine:

This story is important, perhaps the greatest story in the world right now.

This one comes from Tony Adamici, president of the New York City chapter of Pink Pistols, a group of homosexual firearms rights advocates, speaking on The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC this morning:

“I don’t think being progressive-minded means you check your right to self-defense at the door.”

Actually, though, removing guns from society is one of the central tenets of progressivism/liberalism, and the movement is not a “big tent.”

(A look at the Pink Pistols’ web site, however, shows them endorsing Libertarian candidates for various offices. While the Libertarian Party certainly pledges to defend the right to own and carry guns, they are most certainly not progressive in the sense Adamici used the term.)

From Elizabeth Bumiller in Monday’s White House Letter, out of the New York Times

President Bush appears to have picked his new cabinet with the view that he has plenty of friends and doesn’t need to make new ones.

She is complaining of the lack of opposition from the three new cabinet members and the new White House counsel. (She didn’t mention Stephen Hadley at the NSC, who is also likely not to strenuously decry White House policy.)

What sort of dissent have past Presidents had from their cabinets? I’m think primarily, of course, of President Clinton, but one would think a noisy opponent as a Presidential advisor would be speedily replaced. Colin Powell, of course, was part of the President’s team.)

British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a joint appearance with President Bush:

“As long as I remain prime minister of our country it will carry on being strong - not because that’s in the interests of America simply or in the interests of the international community, but because I believe passionately it is in the interest of Britain.”

“Here, here.”

This one from political (elections) analyst Charlie Cook, from Tuesday’s Off to the Races e-mail column:

You have to give enormous credit to the Bush campaign, which unquestionably was the best planned, best executed presidential campaign ever. … [Those who ran BC04] deserve the political equivalent of an Academy Award for running a campaign that always anticipated the next two or three moves down the chess board and were ready for anything.

Cook credits especially the turnout effort. The Kerry campaign met their turnout goals, but BC04 easily surpassed them.

I added the bold to the type in the paragraph above, of course, and that’s no small praise coming from Cook.

This one is from Stuart Rothenberg, quoted recently by Knight-Ridder about JF kerry’s future political role. (At Kerry’s concession speech last week, his aides made sure the local, Massachusetts press got the best seats.)

Here’s Rothenberg:

“This is a party without a messenger,” said analyst Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a political newsletter. “He may adopt that role.”

Don’t laugh. JF would be the ideal messenger for today’s Democrat Party, in that the party has no message and neither did he.

When Kerry first seemed to have secured the Dem nomination last winter, I noted that he was a terrible candidate for the Democrats but he wasn’t really anything of which to speak except some mediocre junior Senator who wanted to be President.

“The Ultimate Null,” I called him.

And that’s exactly what the Democratic Party is right now. They aren’t anything, and all accounts have them working overtime right now to figure out what they want to be.

Kerry’s the perfect spokesperson for that bunch.