Today's Daily Schadenfreude: Peggy Noonan

Former Reagan speechwriter and ongoing Reagan casket humper wanna-be* Peggy Noonan -- I'm pointing and laughing at you today ... I mean, I like pointing and laughing at you all the time, but today you get special recognition as I'm reminded of a typically slobbering, grotesque column you wrote in the Wall Street Journal following the 2004 election. You remember it, don't you, Nooners? It's the one where you said:

The Democrats have lost their leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle. I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.

An old, rancid pile of dog vomit is more desirable than you, Peggy, and twice as intelligent.

I'm not going to "savor" anything that you suggested in that column, Peggy -- not your allegation that the "nonelites of Old Europe" celebrated Drunky McStagger's election; not your suggestion that people who worked hard for Kerry (as I did) were paid volunteers like the "Hessians of King George III's army;" and especially not your drool-covered adulation of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Gag.

No, instead, I'm going to savor the fact that what, according to you, the Democratic Party spent in 2004 will be bringing us our next president. That's right, Peggy -- President Barack Obama. I hate to mix metaphors regarding stupid wingnut pundits, but: Suck. On. That.

Oh, and Peggy? Suck on this, too: today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

(h/t res ipsa loquitur)

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* Seriously. Read just about anything Noonan's written, especially about Reagan. It's disgusting. If it weren't for the fact that Nancy Reagan was so busy humping her late husband's casket at his funeral, Nooners would have been all over it.

Are Republicans losing their grip on The Wang™?

Well, according to that bastion of journamalism, the Wall Street Journal (whose relatively lame headline I took the liberty of improving), we may have the bastards on the run here in Florida. Now, I don't necessarily buy that myself, but let's see what the article has to say.

According to the Journal's Corey Dade, Democrats have been picking up ground in Florida by attracting more unaffiliated voters and by reaching out to Latinos, especially Cuban-Americans in Miami.

Other indicators make clear that Republicans are likely to face a tough contest to retain Florida this fall. On Tuesday, although no Democratic candidate actively campaigned in Florida, 1.7 million voters participated in the Democratic primary -- 189,890 less than in the hotly contested Republican race.

The state's roughly 10.2 million registered voters are divided among 4.1 million Democrats, 3.8 million Republicans, 1.9 million nonaffiliated voters and about 400,000 minor-party members.

Between the fall of 2006 and the end of 2007, Democrats added a total of nearly 17,000 voters, while Republicans lost nearly as many, according to party registration numbers.

Perhaps the election of a social moderate, Charlie Crist, to the governorship really has had some kind of trickle-down effect:

Republicans have controlled Florida politics for a decade by knitting religious and social conservatives in the northern panhandle and Cuban Americans in the south with moderate suburbanites across the center. Political power flowed from Governor Jeb Bush and delivered the pivotal edge his brother, George W. Bush, needed for two terms in the White House.

In the razor tight 2000 election, Florida's 25 electoral votes tipped the balance for Mr. Bush to take the presidency. Four years later, Mr. Bush carried the state with a comfortable five-percentage-point margin.

"They are going to have to work hard," Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said of the Republicans. Nonaffiliated voters, he said, "are 22% of the electorate. The Democrats have actually been doing better than the Republicans in increasing their numbers. I think it's a leading indicator."

Of course, time will tell. Although I have every reason to believe that Florida will be blue in November, in my opinion the article focuses too heavily on the presidential race. As long as the state legislature has its overwhelming Republican majority, and as long as we keep putting Republicans in the Governor's Mansion and voting in ridiculous tax cuts, the wingnuts will continue to have the edge here.

Is there reason for optimism from the left? Sure, especially if Clintobama carries Florida in the fall. But I've been a Floridian for too long to put a lot of stock in short-term political trends here. Check back with me in a year or two ...

(h/t to the lovely and talented res ipsa loquitur)

WSJ: "Is Florida Over?"

Interesting front-pager in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend. If you missed it, the Journal asks rhetorically whether Florida is "over" as a retirement and migration destination ... with the reason given being the economic crisis chronicled here previously and created by the Republican leadership in the Legislature.

The Journal quotes snowbirds and transplants who gradually have been driven out of America's Wang™ by higher property taxes, ridiculous housing costs, spates of hurricanes, and the state's chronic failure to keep pace with the enormous growth of the last several decades. (See graphic; click for larger version.) Indeed, many of these people are finding it attractive to relocate to southern states other than Florida, which are capitalizing on the trend by offering economic and cultural incentives like retirement tax breaks.

But for Americans on the move, Florida has become a less-appealing destination. Moving company Atlas Van Lines brought 6,700 families into Florida last year and took 8,000 out, the first time it has moved more out than in. The number of people from other states who switch to a Florida driver's license is down more than 8% from last year. And the state's crowded schools actually lost students last year, prompting many counties to cut back on their construction schedule and, in some cases, look to close schools. While foreigners continue to arrive at a rate of about 100,000 year, migration from inside the country is slowing.

Florida's pull has been weakened mostly by rising costs. Though real-estate prices are now falling, the median price for an existing single family home, at $231,900 remains 64% more than five years ago. That kind of price appreciation has increased property taxes, especially for newcomers and for snowbirds, whose primary residence is out of state. Florida is also recovering from a spate of hurricanes that have pushed up already high property-insurance rates. A two-tier tax system hits newcomers and part-time residents harder than long time homeowners.

Florida is also dealing with new competition. Looking to tap the economic boost seniors can give, many of the South's less-expensive, relatively warm states have been reaching out to seniors and fiddling with their tax laws in the hope of grabbing more retirees. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is pushing to exempt all retirement income from taxation as a way to attract and retain retirees.

"Instead of everyone making the assumption that they're going to move to Florida, now it's more of an open playing field," says Dave Schreiner, national vice president at Pulte Homes' Del Webb communities.

These trends continue to be ignored by our Republican overlords in Tallahassee, just as I described in my last post. More and more, Florida is becoming an unreasonably expensive and inconvenient option for people of all ages and walks of life when considering migration. As the Republicans continue to decimate our schools, our tax structure, and our overall economy, the state increasingly is at risk of becoming a "poor sister" in comparison with our more progressive-thinking neighbors. Indeed, I shudder a bit when I realize that I'm forced to call Georgia under its neo-Confederate governor Sonny Perdue (R-19th Century) more "progressive-thinking" than Florida ... which should show you how far we've fallen.

And yet, we keep electing these morons to office. One can only hope that the worm turns in 2008.