Top Ten for 2004

As we begin the new year a look back is in order.  With that in mind I've decided to publish The Libertarian Leanings Top Ten events for the year 2004. 

Number Ten:  It should come as little surprise that this one makes the top ten but coming in at number ten, the weblog Libertarian Leanings, Ruminations of a New Hampshire Republican with decidedly libertarian leanings, was born. On April 25, 2004 I made my first entry, Dems heed the words of Vince Lombardi, an essay about that which is most prized by the Democrats: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". Along the way I've had two of my posts published. The House in Windsor appeared in the Windsor Journal of Windsor Connecticut, and Beautifully Articulated Incoherence was published in the Manchester Union Leader on the day before the 2004 Presidential election. It has been great fun and highly therapeutic, and of course reverberations of this event have been felt world wide.

Number Nine:  Elections went forward in Afghanistan.  In the space of three years Afghanistan went from a country where public executions were conducted in sports stadiums for crimes like adultery, to a country where millions lined up to choose a democratically elected President, Hamid Karzai. Oddly enough, the importance of this election was reported but not widely celebrated in the mainstream press.

Number Eight:  In another victory of ballots over bullets, a fraudulent Ukrainian election was overturned.  The win by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich which came amidst charges of voting fraud, was overturned and in the ensuing re-run of the voting Viktor Yushchenko came in with 52% of the vote.
"The most common trick was "carousel" voting, in which busloads of Yanukovich supporters simply drove from one polling station to another casting multiple false absentee ballots.
In another brazen fraud recorded by observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, voters were given pens filled with ink that disappeared, leaving ballots unmarked and invalid."

Number Seven:  Nomination of John Kerry. Mainstream Media in a display of muscle flexing ditched Howard Dean and rallied to the cause of John Kerry. Dean's primal scream may have done the trick. He was the sentimental favorite, particularly of the anti-war left which it seems had infiltrated almost all of mainstream media. But the effect of the scream was to make Kerry appear the more electable, and the 2004 Presidential election was about liberal media exerting their influence and getting their man elected. Once they figured out who their man was. Of course, they still haven't figured out who their man was.

Number Six:  Rise of the Blogosphere. This has often been misinterpreted as the beginning of the end of Mainstream Media. But while alternative sources of news arise, traditional reporting will never go away. No, what the bloggers bring to the table is perspective, and very often it is very expert perspective. The internet and web publishing have made it possible for voices to be heard that in the past would have been ignored. The power of the mainstream press has always been the power to choose the news by exercising the power to ignore other voices. It has recently become clear that this power has been exerted with a view toward promoting personal political agendas of media personalities. Recognition of bloggers' ability to challenge that power and make those voices heard anyway, came when Time Magazine name Power Line, Blog of the Year.

Number Five:  The Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918, setting records and banishing past demons along the way. The road to the 100th World Series went through Gotham where generations of New England baseball fans saw their dreams shattered. As the American League Championship Series entered the bottom of the ninth in game four, it looked like a repeat performance with the Yankees in the lead and their top closer on the mound. They needed just three outs for a second consecutive trip to the World Series, but the unthinkable happened. The Red Sox tied the game and went on to win it in the tenth. From there they just "ran the table". Three straight wins over the Yankees and four straight over past nemesis St. Louis Cardinals and the Red Sox came back to Boston with a World Series trophy. The Curse was Reversed.

Number Four:  The Indian Ocean tsunami is the most devastating natural disaster in recent history. It was the biggest story at the end of 2004 and it continues to be the biggest story as we go into 2005. It's staggering. Up to this point the number of people lost is greater than the population of any New Hampshire city. Seven of the ten New Hampshire counties have smaller populations. There have been over 123,000 lost and that's only from the effects of the waves. Disease could up the ante significantly.

Number Three:  Yasser Arafat died.  There may be hope for peace in the Middle East now that Yasser Arafat has passed away.
"In early 2001, at the conclusion of talks instigated by outgoing President Bill Clinton, Arafat rejected a deal offered him by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that would have given the Palestinians the entire Gaza Strip, 95 percent of the West Bank, Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and control of the Temple Mount in the heart of the holy city.
Arafat reportedly balked because the offer did not give the estimated 2 million Palestinian refugees the right to return to ancestral homes inside Israel. He also said signing the deal would be akin to signing his own death warrant."
Spoken like a true terrorist leader, it's for others to do the dying.

Number Two:  Dan Rather shot himself and CBS in the foot this past year when he resorted to forgeries in hopes of unseating a sitting president. CBS has yet to come forward with results of its internal investigation into how 60 Minutes could have used falsified documents in a nationally televised hit piece on George Bush's years in the Air National Guard. In a story about which no one cared in the least, Dan Rather attempted to show that Bush received special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard 35 years ago. It was the reporting of this event by Power Line and other blogs that revealed that the documents displayed on the CBS News web site could not have been produced by the typewriters of the day. More importantly this revealed the extent of dishonesty to which mainstream media would resort in the pursuit of their agenda.

Number One:  The number one event of 2004 was the re-election of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States. In an election campaign that was a surreal replay of the 1992 defeat of George H. W. Bush by Bill Clinton, mainstream media pulled out all the stops in reporting every scrap of bad economic news. From derogatory attacks on the President to the hopelessness of military action against the terrorists, the press was in full campaign mode. But actual news was oddly out of step with reported news, and the Blogosphere played its part in making the public aware of the disconnect. In what I consider the most important election of my life time, average Americans won out over elitists. The result is that we have hope now for peace in the Middle East where we would otherwise not. We have hope that the economy will continue to grow instead of being stifled by arbitrary taxation. We have hope that freedom will continue its advance in the world instead of being starved for support by an elitist press and the vacuous political hacks they support. We have George w. Bush instead of the vacuous political hack John Kerry.

Each year has its share of tragedy and this one is certainly no exception, but on balance, it's been a pretty good year.

Comments

[Scott]

Fantastic list, Tom. Belated congratulations on having your commentary published in the U-L in November; it was a very well written and coherent piece. I'm proud to say LL is among the handful of blogs I now check every day.

[Scott]

Also, I think the emergence of the blogosphere could rank higher than 6th.

[Tom Bowler]

Thanks. I'm quite honored to hear that you check in every day. I'll do my best.