Scoundrels, Knaves, and Fools

• Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill found an eager audience for his new book criticizing the Bush Administration. CBS TV's 60 Minutes gleefully pounced and gave O'Neill the bulk of its Sunday program January 11 to make his case. The claim that made Lefties happiest was O'Neill darkly saying it was evident "from the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go." A "Gotcha!" Moment, indeed. 60 Minutes opted not to present any of the ample evidence lying about that would have shown O'Neill's claim to be a non-story. None of the Big Talking Heads in the days following brought us an opposing view, either. Finally, syndicated columnist Kathleeen Parker (Orlando Sentinel ) weighed in with the news that the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which Sick signed into law October 31, 1998, made it official U.S. policy that Saddam was a bad guy and should be removed from power in Iraq. It seems fair to contend that O'Neill's revelation that Dubya wanted from the get-go to rid the world of Saddam ought to be encouraging to the American people, not alarming. My hunch is that Lefties will not get much traction, nor will O'Neill, with this tactic.   (January 15, 2004)
• Lefties will screech about Dubya's "recess appointment" of Judge Charles Pickering to a federal appeals court position. Pickering's nomination had been blocked for several years by Democrats. But this provision in the law is an old one and was used most recently by Sick himself in the Bill Lann Lee Unpleasantness . Before they go ballistic, Lefties should remember that one of their sacred icons, legendary liberal judge Earl Warrren, was a recess appointment, too. (January 17, 2004)
• The Man Whose Oldsmobile Couldn't Swim lashed out again last week at Dubya, accusing the President of lying about Iraq. Though millions of Americans believe Teddy and hang on his every word, Kennedy's accusing anyone of lying is a non-starter. Mary Jo Kopechne might be alive today if Teddy himself had not been a liar, a coward, and a scoundrel at Chappaquiddick. (January 17, 2004).

Five Bucks Says Mary Jo Would Have Preferred A Life Jacket

•  "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." --Charles Pierce, writing in Boston Globe Magazine in 2003, nominated as one of 2003's "Ugliest Media Quotes" by Brent Bozell III, in FrontPageMagazine.com. (January 17,2004)

What Is The Difference Between Helen Thomas And Bella Abzug?

• "This is the worst president ever. This is the worst president in all of American history." --Helen Thomas, member of the press corps covering the White House, 2003.
• "Nobody I know voted for Nixon." --Pauline Kael, 1972, writing in the New York Times of her bafflement at Richard Nixon's landslide election win over George McGovern, a Democrat.

Bode's Sleuthing Somehow Misses Tawana

• Ken Bode, CNN's impartial, unbiased media analyst, and the Pulliam professor of journalism at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, wrote a column published in early January in the Indianapolis Star dealing with the "don't-stand-a-chance" candidates in the Democratic primary. The column was noteworthy for what it left out. Bode put Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun in his Don Quixote Brigade, and offered interesting anecdotes about their lives and backgrounds leading up to their campaigns for president. He noted that Kucinich's family was dirt-poor and his father died with his first welfare check still in his pocket uncashed. He characterized Moseley-Braun's candidacy as partly one of redemption, as she sought to rebuild her image and political credibility so damaged by charges of corruption, which she believes caused her to lose her 1998 bid for re-election to Congress. Bode's dogged research into Sharpton's background curiously missed uncovering, however, the single most notorious aspect of Sharpton's adult life, the famed Tawana Brawley Unpleasantness. It is inconceivable that Bode was not aware of this, and it is inconceivable that his omission of it was not a conscious choice. This is a wonderful example of how history is written and how news is slanted and spun.   (January 15, 2004)  
• My favorite line from Dubya's State of the Union speech last night was when he mentioned 15 or so nations helping us in Iraq and said it was difficult to explain to them what American critics meant when they demanded that we internationalize things in Iraq. It was soul-satisfying to see that grotesque pig of a human being, the vile and despicable Senator from Jabba The Hutt, rolling his eyes and squirming in his seat throughout the speech. Had I been the sound man in the booth, I'd have played Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Mary Jo And The Oldsmobiles every time the television camera zoomed on him. (January 21, 2004)
• You know former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's book smearing Dubya has no legs when a legendary Lefty like Michael Kinsley of Slate magazine finds it silly. In a January 20 column on the topic, Kinsley says, "The only solid punch he lands on President Bush is unintentional: What kind of idiot would hire this idiot as Secretary of the Treasury?" (January 20, 2004)

• "If the political class fought the nation's problems as tenaciously as it fights term limits, America would be a paradise by next Tuesday." --George Will , writing in the Washington Post
• Centuries ago when California Congressman Meadowlark Condit was engulfed in an intern scandal of his own--the poor thing turned up dead in a Washington park--someone did a study of how often the news media identified Condit as "a Democrat" in their news coverage. The answer: less than five percent of the time. Condit eventually lost his re-election bid and disappeared from public view. Here's a beautiful footnote: who did Condit replace when he was first elected in 1998?   The legendary Tony Coelho, also a Democrat, who resigned his seat amid scandal of his own (but who later returned to respectability and a seat at the big table as Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager).
• Time for new federal legislation to complete half a liberal mantra. Wacko bleeder columnist Al Hunt, writing in the Wall Street Journal, February 5, casually tossed off a bit of jingo we've heard a billion times from Lefties. Referring to Dubya's tax cuts, he calls them "disproportionately for the rich." My proposed legislation will activate anytime any reference is made to "tax cuts for the rich" or any conceivable variant thereof. The speaker will be required to add, after the word "rich," the clause, "who disproportionately pay taxes." Simple. Fair and balanced. Guaranteed to drive Lefties crazy.
• Ralph Nader is going to run for President again. Good! (February 22, 2004)

• This morning's paper brought the sad news that Dubya's dog, Spotty, a 14-year-old English springer spaniel, has been put to sleep by the family veterinarian. Dems will have a field day with this. They'll brand the Bush family merciless, godless, rightwing wacko killers. PETA howlers will be marching in the streets. The veterinarian who recommended this is probably a goddamned Republican, too.   (February 22, 2004)
• No matter how many primaries the Democrats have, the notion persists that Hillary is lurking in the weeds, keeping her options open, making plans to storm the convention, just in case. . . (February 23, 2004)

Rather's Blather

• There's a website for everything these days, and one's been set up to monitor Dan Rather's blatherings. It's especially alert for spin. This week's sampler includes a classic example of the "liberal bias in the news" which conservatives complain about and liberals stoutly deny exists. Here's how Dan phrased what he was obviously casting as "bad news" when he told listeners February 25: "For baby boomers worried about job cuts, pension reductions and 401(k) losses, here comes another political kick in the wallet. Alan Greenspan, the influential Republican (italics mine) chairman of the Federal Reserve, today recommended cutting Social Security benefits for future retirees." Two weeks earlier, when reporting "good news" (well, good for just about everyone but Democrats), Rather said on February 11, "On Wall Street today, stock prices soared following reassuring words from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan about the U.S. economy and interest rates. The Dow posted a triple-digit gain." My life's experience with news about any Federal Reserve Chairman is that his or her political affiliation is rarely a consideration in any stories except those speculating on whether an incoming President will retain or fire the existing chairman. Offhand, I can't recall any story where the Chairman is normally identified by party affiliation. Yet Rather chose to identify Greenspan as a Republican in a negative story, but omitted a party label in a positive story. It was a choice, not an accident. The only thing missing in the site's account was the result of a Nexus search to see how many times Rather has ever used the word Republican or Democrat in describing a Federal Reserve chairman. Visit www.ratherbiased.com for the whole sickening litany of it. (February 27, 2004)
• "We are just as much a part of this coup as the rebels, the looters, and anyone else." --Charles Rangel, Congressman from New York, on ABC's This Week program hosted by George Stephanopolous, on the topic of the coup in Haiti. The ever-demagoguing Rangle later added, "One thing is clear--if you are the elected president of another country, don't expect the United States to observe the rule of law. " (February 29, 2004)
• Meanwhile, the French Army has at last found a task it's up to. It is guarding Haiti's exiled leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now lounging in the Central African Republic. UN approval was not sought, amazingly enough. (March 4, 2004)
• The Indianapolis Star provided a wonderful example of news slanting on March 10. CIA director George Tenet had testified for several days before a Senate Committee investigating American intelligence available in the run-up to the Iraq war, and whether that intelligence had been twisted and misrepresented by Dubya. The Senator from Chappaquiddick, Teddy Kennedy, led his Democratic colleagues in a tough grilling of Tenet. The Star's front-page headline read: ''CIA Chief: Iraq Info Misstated." A complete reading of the text revealed that Tenet referenced three instances where he thought the intelligence didn't support conclusions the Administration reached from it, but those had already been disclosed and Tenet did not deem them of much significance. Only those who struggled through to the last paragraph learned that Kennedy asked Tenet directly if he (Tenet) thought the Administration has misrepresented information about Iraq to justify going to war. Tenet's answer was, "No, sir, I don't." The Star's headline falls a bit short of neutrality. (March 10, 2004)
• Part of the Left's incessant drumbeat is complaining about the Bush administration's forbidding camera and film crews to record the unloading of bodies of Iraq war casualties from American planes landing at Andrews Air Base. They hint that somehow the public has a right to see these things. Their bitching isn't about anyone's right to know. It's about partisan political warfare against Dubya . They want to have the images broadcast to damage Bush. (March 27, 2004)

• The Chicago Tribune on April 6 printed a large (4 columns wide by about 6 inches high) color photo taken in Baghdad at an angry gathering of "supporters" of Moqtada Sadr, media-described as a "radical cleric" which we take to mean a religious leader. Many of the "supporters" are brandishing automatic rifles. They are bearing aloft a huge poster of Sadr. An accompanying Tribune story detailed how Sadr and hundreds or thousands of his "supporters" are heavily armed and holed up and vowing to resist the holy one's arrest on a murder warrant issued by Iraq's provisional government. The story, and particularly the photo, brought back images from my childhood in Scorched Corners, and my indelible memory of how we never saw a local minister on the streets or in the pulpit who wasn't heavily armed --packin' heat--or surrounded by a mob of armed acolytes. There is some sort of cultural disconnect here, between an American image of religion and "clerics" and the Islamic counterpart. I could be wrong about every last syllable of this, but to me the Middle East scenes depict gangs of thugs and criminals, not religious figures. (April 6, 2004)

May I Borrow Your Life Jacket? No--Make That Two!!

• Newsweek offered an adoring puff piece ("Boys From Boston") in its March 15 edition on how lucky John Kerry is to have Senator Teddy Kennedy providing wisdom, expertise, and spiritual guidance for the upcoming presidential campaign. It reported on Kennedy in a public speech praising Kerry's heroism and bravery in Vietnam when Kerry went back to save a comrade's life so that "no one is ever left behind." The irony of that didn't escape reader Stephen Perez of Wethersfield, Connecticut, who wrote the editor to note how peculiar it was for Teddy to say such a thing, since he himself is legendary for failing to go back to save Mary Jo Kopechne from drowning in his sunken automobile at Chappaquiddick, oh so long ago but not forgotten. (April 6, 2004)
• Citizens of Basra are said to be blaming American and other international forces for failing to protect them from terrorists who set off four car bombs in their city, killing 70 or so innocent citizens, among them 16 school-age children. The terrorists, in this tortured non-thought process, had nothing to do with it. More proof that potential Democratic voters can be found everywhere on earth. (April 22, 2004)

Sick Thumps Pope In First Printing Derby

• Sick is said to be "still writing his long-awaited memoir" but pre-pub fever is mounting, according to USA Today, which reports breathlessly that the first printing will be 1.5 million copies--"topping the initial printing for Pope John Paul's III's 1994 best seller, Crossing The Threshhold of Hope." And why shouldn't Sick be leading the pack?--he's getting more nooky than the Pope! (April 27, 2004)
• Top Dems are said to be secretly despairing over the Kerry candidacy for president. He won't carry five states, they are said to be saying. Hearkens me back to the pitiful Bob Dole candidacy in '96. The comparison falls apart, though, when you remember that Dole was up against perhaps the greatest politician in world history, the legendary master, Sick Willie. John Kerry, on the other hand, gets to run against an inept buffoon. Take heart, I'm counseling my left-leaning friends, Your Boy With The Long-Faced Easter Island Mask will do just fine come November. (April 28, 2004)

Putting Teddy In The Penalty Box

• Karl Rove, here is your assignment, should you choose to accept it. Hire one college kid for $50,000, $75,000--whatever it takes. Tell the lad he has one assignment from now through Election Day: shadow Senator Teddy Kennedy 24-7-365, wherever he goes. Everytime Teddy appears in public, you pop up in the front row or anywhere in his view, and you hold up the sign I am giving you. It bears one word: Chappaquiddick. You are to say nothing, ever. Only hold up the sign. Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick. Over and over and over again, endlessly, silently rebuking, world without end, Amen. (May 1, 2004)
• The world watched two cultures and their dueling videos for days on end in early May. The sickening images and accounts became a drip-torture. Mogo got a few words in edgewise as I ranted over this morning's paper, noting in a keen insight that the contrasting scenes--of Americans abusing prisoners in Iraq and of terrorists beheading an American civilian--pretty well summed up the two cultures: ours resembles a cheap porno show; theirs is barbaric beyond our comprehension. Guess who wins, if we don't wise up? (May 13, 2004)

Chappaquiddick

• ". . .Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management." --Senator Teddy Kennedy, commenting on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. (May, 2004)
• Our mistake was taking prisoners in the first place. The war against terrorism should be a no-prisoners war. All taking prisoners does is give liberals and America- haters something else to screech about.
• Nobody on our side has yet had the courage to stand up and say what should be said. It's a war. People get hurt. If we have to rough up prisoners to get intelligence, well, then, they're gonna get roughed up. No apologies to anyone--other than to American citizens, for not fighting this war relentlessly enough.   (May 20, 2004)

Self-Snookered

• Dubya's been snookered again--this time by his own hand--and somehow it's remained mostly off radar. A two-paragraph story buried inside the May 19 Indianapolis Star noted that on May 18 Senate Republicans and Democrats made a deal. The Dems agreed to allow votes on 25 non-controversial (code for: they meet the Left's standards) Bush appointments to district and appeals courts which they've been blocking for months. In exchange, Dubya has agreed not to use his constitutional power to make recess appointments while Congress is not in session. I've seen no other mention of this story. Lefties must to be howling in laughter. Bush has thrown away his only trump card. Conservatives, on the other hand, are used to seeing their side outmaneuvered.   (May 19, 2004)
• "Having Bill Clinton speak at Ronald Reagan's funeral would have been like having Courtney Love speak at Mother Theresa's." --Don Imus, New York radio talk show host, replying to plagiarizing pop historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, a guest on the Imus In The Morning show June 11, after Goodwin had argued that Sick Willie should have been invited to speak. (June 11, 2004)
• The 16-million member Southern Baptist organization has voted at its annual conference in Indianapolis to withdraw from the World Baptist Alliance. Why? Because it feels the World Alliance "leans too far left" and has "taken on an anti-American tone." The action means the world organization loses about one-third of its funding. Good! (June 15, 2004)
• The utterly preposterous U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, a Democrat wonderfully representing Indiana's 7th Congressional District, joined a few other lefty loonies (not least among them the redoubtable Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and the elephantine Jerrold Nadler of New York) in signing a letter to Kofi Annan formally requesting that the United Nations monitor the November presidential elections in the United States. Democratic high-hats may try to distance themselves from such nonsense, but there's no escaping the fact that these are Democrats at work in the fields of their Lord. The Indianapolis Star buried the story on page 18 in its July 4 edition. (July 4, 2004)
• The Democratic call for UN surveillance of our elections received the barest whisper of coverage from the national media. A Democratic friend who avidly reads the New York Times says he saw nothing there about it. Dan, Tom, Peter, Larry, and the rest of the big slipstreamers either missed it or gave it a wink and a yawn. I saw or heard none of them screeching about it in my daily traipsing through TV and newspapers. Yet when a conservative dares criticize the UN, the Left piles on, screaming bloody murder.

Timesspeak

• Whoopi Goldberg, appearing at a big Dems fundraiser in Manhattan, was quoted in the New York Post July 9 saying this about John Edwards' youthfulness: "He looks like he is about 18. I'm going to card his ass tomorrow." The New York Times offered its own slightly sanitized version the same day: "'He looks like he's about 18,' she said later, joking that she would check his identification before serving him a drink." (From The Weekly Standard, July 19, 2004)
• Vice President Cheney got in a minor dust-up with the execrable Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor recently. Had something to do with Leahy's comments about Cheney's relationship with Halliburton, the left's Demon Capitalist of The Present Epoch. Eager reporters quoted the Veep telling Leahy to "Go f---- himself." Cheney later confirmed that was what he said, and added that he felt a whole lot better after having said it. Good! Leahy is one of the most vicious partisan Democrats at large. I wish I could have been in Cheney's place. (July 15, 2004)

Socks 'n' Skivvies Loaded--Briefcase, Too!

• Sick's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, has admitted taking classified secret documents from a secure "reading area" to his home. Berger stuffed some documents in his socks and underwear, and carried out others in his briefcase, no questions asked. The documents dealt with a secret memo on terrorism written for Sick. Now, certain pages have mysteriously disappeared. The press has been curiously disinterested in what is legitimately a national scandal. Imagine the furor if a Bushoidian had been the filcher. My bet is this story will be quickly buried by the press. (July 26, 2004)

Well, Certainly The Democrat Heart, Anyway

• John Kerry uttered the most unintentionally honest words we’ve heard from a lefty in years recently when, following appearances by Whoopi Goldberg, Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange and other celebrities at a Radio City Music Hall fund-raiser in which they trashed Dubya with foul-mouthed epithets, he said that Whoopi and Company had “captured the heart and soul of America.” (August 1, 2004)
• Headline we’ve seen a hundred times or more since the Iraq Unpleasantness began: GI’s Killed in Roadside Bombing.  Question: When are the commanders going to tell our boys to travel off-road?
• And following closely behind in the worst news department was word from Iraq that a ceasefire had been called and the seige of a so-called “holy shrine” in Najaf suspended.  Holed up in the shrine are various gangsters the media insist on describing as “followers of the Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr.”  Our silly strategy allows them to periodically kill a few of our guys, then issue a call for negotiations when we surround them. Twice--in Najaf and earlier in Fallujah--this has happened and the thugs have slipped the noose. I’d pay money to know which American officer or politician is responsible for this loony-on-its-face tactic. So far, nobody on our side will ‘fess up.  (August 15, 2004)
• A citizen has gone to the trouble to inspect FEC records to compile data on the political contributions of journalists. He found facts on over 100 journalists at 50 publications. The count confirms what we know intuitively. One journalist (from Time magazine) donated money to Ralph Nader; two (one from Forbes and one from the Washington Times) gave to the Republican National Committee. All the rest--97% at a minimum--gave to Democratic candidates. Not a single one gave a single penny to Dubya.  Shown these statistics, an assistant editor at Newsweek said the meaning was obvious--the media “want Kerry to win.”  (From National Review, August 9, 2004, edition).
• I have a hunch we won’t be hearing a whole lot more from Teresa Heinz-Kerry, the bride of candidate John Kerry. They ran her up the flagpole at the Democratic convention and the verdict seems to be that she and her cartoonish, bizarre convention speech were a disaster. The Dems will throw a tarpaulin over her, but she can keep writing checks.  (August 25, 2004)
• Teresa called an insolent Pittsburgh Press reporter a “scumbag” when he persisted in asking questions she didn’t like. The New York Times did not get huffy about it and criticize Teresa, however, as it did when someone labeled Sick Willie a scumbag back in those rollicking 1990s.  Indeed, the media generally seemed to find nothing inappropriate in Heinz-Kerry’s choice of words.  (August 31, 2004)

It's OK When We Outsource, But Not When You Guys Do. . .

• John Kerry has been thundering lately about the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign lands. He insists this is all the fault of the Republicans, but apparently is not aware that 70 percent or more of all the R. J. Heinz Company (the source of his bride’s fortune)  jobs in the world are located outside the United States. Gotta love this.  (August 26, 2004)

Imagine This: Democrats Waving The Flag, Hugging Soldiers

• As we lurch down the election campaign backstretch, we are confronted with one of the great paradoxes in the nation’s history: The Democrats nominating a Vietnam War veteran for president and spending their entire convention praising military service and waving the flag on the one hand, and on the other hand trashing an opponent who did what millions of Lefties themselves did--rode out the war in a safe shelter (National Guard service or exile) provided by influential friends and supporters.  All this from a party famous for hating soldiers in the 1960s and 70s and which has spent the last four decades and several generations in anti-war and anti-military postures.  Who would ever have thought they’d live long enough to see Democrats admiring the flag or supporting the military? (September 1, 2004)

Oooooooh. . .Savage!

• Savage Nation, a talk show based in San Francisco and hosted by Michael Savage, has been added by WXNT-1430 AM in Indianapolis. He is what his name suggests--savagely blunt and outspoken. He comes closer than any of the others to expressing my thoughts about politics, our culture, and our so-called “war against terrorism.”  It’s hard to tell which side--Republicans or Democrats--he has the most contempt for. He surely does loathe liberals, though. But I’ll bet no more than I.  (September 1, 2004)

• Two Bush-Kerry debates have been confirmed by each side’s handlers, but a third, planned for Washington University in St. Louis, may be snubbed by Dubya.  Dems will screech bloody murder. But wait!--Sick declined to participate in one of three in the 1996 race.  Surely it’s OK for Dubya to do the same.  (September 3, 2004)

A Surprise For Chris--Zell Fires Back!

• Long-time Democrat Senator Zell Miller of Georgia blew his cork after his wonderfully invigorating speech at the Republican Convention.  He was to be a guest afterward on MSNBC’s Hardball show hosted by Chris Matthews. I missed the live event but saw many film clips of it, most famously those where Miller said he wished he could challenge Matthews to a duel, and back-talked Chris to “get out of my face.” There was also an angry promise from Miller that he wasn’t going to let Matthews do to him “what he did to that young woman a few weeks ago.” This was a reference to author and columnist Michele Malkin, a Matthews guest famous for her outspoken criticism of the nation’s lax immigration policies. Matthews interrupted Malkin repeatedly as she tried to answer a question, and, in my view, behaved disgracefully to his guest. Miller had apparently seen that fiery episode and was bristling with anger at Matthews over it.  I say three cheers for Miller. It’s long past time a guest fired back at the shrill, often-obnoxious Matthews. (September 2, 2004)

• Miller’s harsh criticism of Democrats unleashed a storm of invective from Dems and Kerryites within minutes of his speech. Miller was accused of having an alcohol problem by one liberal radio show host. Others accused him of being mentally unbalanced, of betrayal, paranoia, conspiracy, and more.  A wonderful boss of mine years ago in the newspaper business told me something which applies here. He said that when you’ve got ‘em mad as hell at you, you can be pretty sure you’re on the right track.  Zell Miller told the truth about his party, and they’re hysterically angry about it.  Good.  (September 2, 2004)

• If Kerry doesn’t win this election, Democrats are going to need to do some soul-searching.  Bush is one of the most inept, incompetent presidents of my lifetime and, worse for him, almost nothing has gone right in his first term.  He is supremely vulnerable. He was equally preposterous in the 2000 race against Gore. If the Democrats can’t win under these circumstances, whatever ails them may be fatal. The fact that they’ve put up two candidates like Gore and Kerry may be proof of it. Of course you could argue the same about the Republicans, who’ve most recently placed Bob Dole and George W. Bush before us. Unfortunately, one of the parties has to win. (September 1, 2004)

• More bad news for the Big Slipstream Media: the Fox TV Network drew 7.3 million viewers for Dubya’s speech at the Republican convention, compared to second-place NBC’s 5.9 million viewers. Fox’s 5.9 million the night before exceeded the combined total of ABC and CBS. (September 7, 2004)

• Kofi Annan. Terry (Global Crossing) McAuliffe. The ACLU. Save The Children. Save The Whales. Greenpeace. Jimbo Carville. Al Gore. The UN Human Rights Commission. UNICEF.  Ted (The Man Whose Oldsmobile Couldn’t Swim) Kennedy. Lewis Lapham. Barbra Streisand. Alec Baldwin. Michael Moore. Al Sharpton. Ed Asner. Sean Penn. Hillary Clinton. Sick Willie. Paul Begala. Julian Bond. The Democratic National Committee. Jacques Chirac. Carol Moseley-Braun. Gerhard Schroeder. Noam Chomsky. Maureen Dowd. Sidney Blumenthal. Patrick Leahy. Molly Ivins.Tom Daschle. Nancy Pelosi. Julia Carson. Ramsey Clark. Anna Quindlen. Eddie Bernice Johnson. Cynthia McKinney. Jerrold Nadler. Sheila Jackson-Lee. Maxine Waters. Patrick Leahy. Charles Rangel. George Soros. --Partial List of Lefties We’ve Not Yet Heard Screeching About the Murder by radical Islamist terrorists of 369 people, including over 100 children, in Beslan, Russia,  on September 1, most of whom were eager to weigh in when an American Soldier put a pair of women’s panties on the head of an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison.

• At least the Iraqi prisoners still have their heads.

• The University of South Florida has agreed to allow a female basketball player to wear Muslim clothing on the basketball court.  Andrea Armstrong, a Muslim convert, had quit the team and surrendered her athletic scholarship after her coach informed her she had to wear the same school uniform the rest of the team wore, instead of long pants, a long-sleeved top, and a head scarf Armstrong requested. A local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) took up the cause and a mid-month meeting between it,  Armstrong, and the university resulted in the school agreeing to allow the Islamic attire and reinstate the scholarship. NCAA rules devote five pages to uniforms but do not address “religious issues,” according to an Associated Press report in the Chicago Tribune. The NCAA does require all players on a team to wear the same uniform. USF says it will ask the NCAA for an exemption which will allow Muslim players to wear their own uniforms. I have heard not a peep of protest from either right or left on this truly ominous story.  Given the abject gutlessness of our courts, politicians, institutions and society in these matters, I see several logical next steps evolving: requiring all Armstrong’s teammates to wear the Muslim uniform, or, in addition, requiring all fans attending USF basketball to wear it. And that will only be the beginning. (September 13, 2004)

The Last Honest American?

• “But I like to play both sides of the street. I also give money to the Democrats; I like to protect myself. . .I just don’t want to pay taxes.” --Bobby Kotick, described as a “cocksure young Los Angeles-based CEO” (of Activision computer games) by The New Yorker’s intrepid Lillian Ross, who interviewed him and other big-money donors during the Republican national convention in New York, quoted in the magazine’s September 13 issue.

• Political Party platforms “are for partisans and ideologues. . .practically nobody reads them. . .But they are useful as indications of what the activist base of a party can and cannot stomach.” --Charlie Cook, political analyst of National Journal, quoted in The New Yorker magazine’s September 13, 2004, issue.

Unbridled Capitalist Heinz-Kerry

• The pressure became so great, writes author Judith Thurman in the September  27 issue of New Yorker magazine, that finally Teresa Heinz Kerry released details of her 2003 tax return--and when she did, they revealed that she made $5.1 million of income in 2003 and paid an effective tax rate of 11.1 percent on it. Not a single screech of outrage has been heard from the left about this example of unbridled capitalist greed.  (September 25, 2004)

• The New Yorker didn’t report comparative data for Dubya and his wife, but others have. The Wall Street Journal noted in its October 11 edition that the Bushes paid taxes at a 30% rate on their 2003 return (on one-tenth the income of the Kerrys), and completed the picture by reporting that the Kerry’s rate on their combined income was 12.8%. As before, bleeders were silent about this bad news.

Little Teeny Kodak Moment

• One of Tim Russert’s staples on his Sunday Meet The Press program is to put up a recent (the more embarrassing to the guest the better) quotation on the studio screen, read it aloud, and ask his guest to respond. He tried it today on General John Abizaid, commander of American forces in Iraq, and it backfired. Tim quoted an American official saying that additional military forces would be available in Iraq in time for the scheduled January elections, and stopped there. I can’t be sure, of course, but I have a hunch Tim thought he had a Gotcha! going, and was expecting to harpoon Abizaid and get him to confess that more American troops were to be poured into the Iraq quagmire.  But--Yikes!--Abizaid had done his homework. He calmly said to Russert, “If you will look at the next sentence of that quotation, which was cut off, you will see that they are going to come from Iraq.”  Give credit to Russert for poise: he didn’t bat an eye and went on smoothly.  I looked at the quote Russert used, and it indeed stopped without adding that the fresh troops would be Iraqi troops. (September 26, 2004)

• Joe Kernan and Mitch Daniels, opposing candidates for governor of Indiana have released their 2003 federal tax returns for scrutiny and this tidbit was noted by the Indianapolis Star: neither candidate checked the box designating that $3 go to the national presidential campaign fund. A reminder, I submit, that when it comes to politicians, watch what they do, rather than what they say. Here are two who are showing sound judgment on at least one topic. (September 26, 2004)

How About A B-S Meter, Nailing The Candidates' Shoes To The Floor, And Michael Savage Asking The Questions?

• A 32-page “memorandum of understanding” spells out the rules for the presidential debates beginning this week. Cox News Service got a copy and there are some beauties in there. Dubya and Kerry may use paper and a pen or pencil of their choice to take notes, but the “writing instrument” must be pre-approved by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which will keep custody of the devices and place them on the podiums. The television cameras will be locked into place (bolted to the floor, presumably) but may “tilt or rotate as needed.”  No camera shots will be allowed of anything other than the candidate who is speaking and the moderator. But here’s my favorite: “The rules specifically allow each candidate to unleash an unlimited number of spinners into the media center after the debate.” (September 26, 2004)

• Cartoonist Gary Varvel scored another ace in the September 22 Indianapolis Star. Playing off a Dubya speech to the United Nations earlier in the week, Varvel’s cartoon was labeled “Response to Bush’s Speech” and featured 16 creatures resembling chickens seated in tiered rows beneath the UN seal and banner. In front of each was a sign indicating country of origin: France, Scare de Pance, Republic of Yikes, Germany, Toomany, Middle of Nowhere, Pluto, Mars, Turkey, Ham, Eggs, China, Plastic, and so on. All wore a blank expression and sported dilated pupils, except for the Ham delegate, whose head was covered by a cooking pot. Wonderfully wicked!  (September 22, 2004)

Yeah, But He’s Our Liar

• Lefties are still obsessed with their claim that Dubya has “lied to the American people” about Iraq and other matters.  This remains a real howler, coming as it does from a party which spent the better part of a decade defending the lies of its icon-god, Sick Willie. (September 26, 2004)

• Notice how the Sandy Berger Unpleasantness has vanished from radar?  (September 27, 2004)

• Here it is the end of September and there’s been not a moment’s substantive public discussion about John Kerry’s worst nightmare--his U.S. Senate record. Kerry’s handlers have kept it buried and the Bushoidians have allowed it to happen. Should Kerry win, it will be recorded as one of political history’s most brilliant campaign successes. (September 29, 2004)

Or Sick And Monica And The Bongos And That Big Cigar. . .

• “. . .their old (leadership) model--a picture of FDR sitting beside Winston Churchill--has been supplanted by one of Jimmy Carter sitting beside Michael Moore.”  --Noemie Emery, in the October 11 National Review, opining on the decline of the modern Democratic Party and the spectacle at its July national convention which saw ex-president Carter inviting Moore to join him in Carter’s private box.  (October 11, 2004)

Things We Know Intuitively Department

• We’ll not hear them bragging about it, but Democrats are feverishly at work in the fields of the Lord this fall, canvassing jails and  prisons across the country to register felons to vote. A recent study (noted in Newsweek’s October 11 issue) by two professors (Chris Uggen at the University of Minnesota and Jeff Maza at Northwestern) shows that seven out of 10 felons vote Democratic.  (October 12, 2004)

• So far the conspiracy of silence holds for both parties and their media lackeys. Neither party will seriously address immigration and border security even though polls show about 70 percent of Americans consider these major issues. (October 13, 2004)

• Big Oil. Big Tobacco. Big Food. Big Pharmaceuticals. Big Boogeyman. Big Christian Right. Lefties screech ceaselessly from their Antichrist list, warning us of the evil ghouls threatening to destroy this great nation. How come we never hear about the really big one--Big Lawyer? Oh, I forgot. It’s their Antichrist. --Passing thought on reading a George Will column in which he noted that as of mid-September the largest single contributor to the current American political campaigns is--big stunner--lawyers, who’ve spent $132.4 million--73 percent of it on Democrats. Will compared that to the big demon we hear about seemingly every day from lefties--big oil and big gas, which have donated $16.7 million (81 percent of it to Republicans). (October 14, 2004)

At Least Pierre Kept His Promise

• Pierre Salinger died over the weekend in France, right where he belonged. A longtime Kennedy family confidante and former press secretary for President Kennedy, Salinger was one of those peculiarly modern celebrities who was famous for being famous. He was so upset at the results of the 2000 presidential election that he kept his promise to leave the United States if Bush won. Bush did and Pierre and his wife fled to France. At least he had the integrity to keep his promise, unlike Hollywood and celebrity leftists such as Alec Baldwin and Barbra Streisand and others, who promise to leave but don’t. (October 18, 2004)

• Lefties just can’t let go of their obsession over Dubya’s alleged derelict National Guard service. The scene they paint is plausible, of course, based on what we know about how the world works. There were millions of young men--a few of them even rumored to be Democrats--who pulled strings, used family connections and the influence of powerful and important friends to game the system and hide out to avoid military service during the Vietnam War.  All I expect is that the same contempt be expressed toward all of them, not just conservatives and Republicans. The legendary Sick Willie grew up to be one of them, after all.  (October 18, 2004)

• I believe Dubya will go down as one of the worst presidents in history. But he is not John Kerry, nor is he Sick Willie or many others. I pose this question to Bush’s critics: How do they explain giving Clinton a free pass but chastising Dubya?  The question answers itself. Until society roundly condemns all such people on both sides of the aisle, then our public life is nothing more complicated than, “Yeah, he may be the Antichrist, but he’s our Antichrist.”  Our politics is light years from the Athenian hillside ideal, where informed, reasonable citizens gather to discuss the issues of the day and resolve them on the basis of what’s best for the nation. What we have instead is a grotesque whorehouse where humanity’s very worst traits thrive and rule the day. (October 18, 2004)

• Here’s a weather report I’d like to hear for Fallujah: Temperature 5,880 degrees; visibility, zero; salt depth over the Sunni Triangle, four feet. (October 27, 2004)

• Surveys consistently show around 70 percent of Americans feel immigration is a major issue. Yet neither party will touch it.  Aside from the obvious--illegal aliens and legal immigrants vote--the rest of the avoidance is a mystery. There’s something going on our politicians don’t want us to know about.  (November 1, 2004)

• My nominee for the Most Obnoxious Presidential Campaign Personality of 2004: Ron Reagan, the over-the-top arrogant son of the late President. A close second: Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. (October 28, 2004).

Yeah, But He’s Our Clown

• Dubya is inept, inarticulate, clownish. He’s done a terrible job of explaining and defending his actions. He’s made ample mistakes, both serious and stupid. He has failed to hold his subordinates accountable. He has a disgraceful spending record. He’s been a coward in failing to veto a single piece of legislation. He gave away his single most powerful trump card--recess appointments--in the fight with Lefties over judicial nominees. He’s allowed his political enemies time and again to go unchallenged. He has failed to ask citizens for any significant sacrifice in the war against terrorism. He is painfully inarticulate in public speaking settings. He may go down as one of the most inept presidents in history. None of this is enough to make me even consider voting for John Kerry. Once more on Tuesday I will go into the voting booth to vote against rather than for a candidate. I will choose Bush, the least ridiculous of two unsatisfactory choices.  How this nation of 280 million people survives while forwarding the likes of Ford, McGovern, Carter, Dukakis, Dole, Sick Willie, Dubya, John Kerry for the most important office in the world is beyond my comprehension. We survive in spite of our candidates, and ourselves.  (November 1, 2004)

• I sorely missed the cartoonish presence of Al Gore as the campaign wheezed through its final days. Where was he? Sick Willie crawled out of heart bypass rehab to stump for Kerry. But Al was nowhere to be found. Off pouting somewhere, no doubt, adjusting his Valium drip.  (November 1, 2004) 

One Pig, One Buffoon, One Box

• Most Grotesquely Appropriate Democratic Moment of The Campaign: Michael Moore sitting beside Jimmy Carter in the ex-President’s private box at the Democratic National Convention.  (November 1, 2004)         

The Pig’s Unhinged. . .           

• “Moore, the vulgarian who made the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11,” is unhinged by his loathing of Bush--and of the country that has now re-elected him.”  --George Will, suggesting in his first post-election column that the Democractic Party ought to “purge its Michael Moore faction” if it ever hopes to regain credibility with the broad mass of American citizens. (November 4, 2004)

Perfect Revenge

• Lefties screeched and screamed about how this election was going to hinge on jobs, on the economy, on the war in Iraq, on Dubya’s incompetence, and on his lies to the American people. But within hours of the Dems’ stunning defeat, surveys revealed that the crucial factor cited most often by voters--22% of them--was “morality issues”--the most dangerous territory of all for Democrats.  And these individuals, so wildly reviled and ridiculed by the Hollywood crowd, voted 4-1 for Bush and were credited with “sealing the deal” in hotly-contested Ohio, where church-goers and evangelical Christians made up one-quarter of the population.  More than a few of them must have remembered what the Dems taught us in the 90s, too--that lying under oath or any other way just doesn’t matter, and since Sick Willie got a pass, they gave one to Dubya, too. (November 3, 2004)

Al And Jesse, Frog-Hoppin', Jimbo Steamin. . .

• The red phone rang at 8:52 a.m. Election Day.  It was Professor Turmail, my political correspondent. He was off-radar, but I was nonetheless quickly able to obtain a fix on his position in Deerfly, a bucolic village in remote northern Indiana. He was despondent. Don’t give up on this just yet, I counseled. Overnight satellite photos were showing widespread “hot spots” spreading across Ohio. There were hundreds of thousands of areas of “disturbed earth,” all of them at cemetery sites. Truck convoys were reported hauling freshly unearthed caskets toward Ohio’s major cities where, it was being speculated, the corpse-inhabitants would be allowed to vote in heavily Democratic precincts. Have you picked up the Ninth District bulletin yet? I asked him. No? Well, the Ninth District Court of Appeals had already ruled this morning that these corpses--if indeed they were corpses--were “in line” when Ohio polling sites were illegally closed. Bracing news, indeed!  As the professor hyperventilated, another report came on-screen. I related it to him. Interstates leading into Ohio were jammed for hundreds of miles by Al Sharpton-led convoys of protestors seeking justice and the right to have every last vote counted. Al and Jesse Jackson Himself were frog-hopping across the tops of vehicles up and down the lines, exhorting the troops to new heights of frenzy. Dan Rather was the first of the Big Three network anchors on-scene. He was moving along the convoy, hanging from the side of his big CBS black helicopter, megaphone in hand, shouting over and over, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”  to the puzzled throngs on the ground. Another report had Jimbo Carville steaming upriver (the Mississippi, and now the Ohio) in a heavily-armored Democratic Swift Boat, towing a string of barges jammed with illegals and a massive cargo of baled, pre-marked, chad-cleaned paper ballots. The Kerroidians were on the march! Turmail by now could speak again. He said he had to hang up. He would be in the field, communicating via back-channel only. I knew he was heading for Ohio. (November 2, 2004)

• November 3, 2004, was Day One of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Bet money on it.

Kerry's Gracious Concession Spares Nation Right-Wing Coup

• “I think if Kerry were to win this in a--in a tight race, I think there’d be an attempt to mount a coup, quite frankly. . .I mean the right wing is not going to accept it.” --Old Mr. Fair-Minded Unbiased Moderation Himself, Bill Moyers, on public television election night, quoted by Washington Post columnist Geoge Will. (November 3, 2004)

• Sick Willie emerged from rehab at the end of election week to tell eager reporters that the Democrats lost because they failed to “connect with American values.”  Call him disingenuous. I’ll argue the Dems lost because they have made that connection. Sick himself set the table with his sleaze-o-rama presidency. He convinced Americans that whoring in the White House, lying under oath, and assorted other character malfunctions and deficiencies were merely business-as-usual. If The Party of Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Al Sharpton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney, Carol Moseley-Braun, Jimbo Carville & Co. wants to go anywhere, it’ll have to disconnect from the American people, or find some new values. (November 4, 2004)

• Illinois wasn’t a hospitable place for Republicans this election, but it produced a character dear to all our hearts, and a staple in American politics: the high-spirited but hopeless and loveable Don Quixote Candidate. Such a man was Raymond “Spanky” Wardingly, a 69-year-old retired clown (perfect!) who took on the legendary Democratic Congressman, Bobby Rush, and got blasted again for his troubles.  Wardingly ran against Rush in 2000, and again in 2002, and has never exceeded 16% of the vote.  He told a Wall Street Journal reporter he spent no more than $300 for his campaign, “mostly for signs.”  A similar character traipsed around Bloomington, Indiana, in the late 1960s and into the 1970s in the form of a Mr. Sterrett Robinson. He drove a battered old car, hand-painted, with a cheap plywood “Robinson for Mayor” sign on top. Robinson himself wore a little crown, and deserved better than the less-than-1% of the vote he typically got. (November 4, 2004)   

He Apparently Couldn’t Write, Either

• A 25-year-old Georgia Man, apparently distraught over Dubya’s re-lection, drove to New York City and committed suicide at the World Trade Center Ground Zero site. A shotgun was found near the body, but no note accompanied it. Andrew Veal’s mother told authorities her son was really upset over Dubya’s triumph.  (November 8, 2004) 

• One fairly amazing thing to consider in the election’s aftermath is this: The Dems lost by choosing the pick of their litter, John Kerry. And he had to snatch the nomination from the grasp of the preposterous Howard Dean. Imagine how much worse the outcome would have been with Dean the nominee.

• And to think--Dubya was re-elected without the help of The United Nations!

• It’s beyond me how any rational Democrat could look at that pack of eleven clowns who fought for the nomination and claim they don’t understand how the party ever got in such a pickle.

• If I had to bet money on who’ll be firebombed next in the Political Incorrectness Derby it would be Brian Tomcik of Indianapolis.  Brian, in a November 10 letter to the Indianapolis Star, took sharp issue with a whiney column by Star reporter James Patterson, whose first post-election rant included the tiresome repetition of the tiresome liberal mantra about sinister forces conspiring to deny blacks their right to vote, or confuse them into filing spoiled ballots. Tomcik would have none of it and closed his salvo by noting that “Patterson’s drivel about how a majority of spoiled ballots were cast by blacks does nothing more than imply that blacks are too stupid to cast a vote correctly.”   Ooooooooooh. This will earn Brian a visit from the Lefty Thought Police, when he will learn that truth is no defense.  (November 11, 2004)

• We began hearing it within moments of Kerry’s concession: Lefties saying Dubya now had to reach out to heal a divided nation.  This is code for: give up what you just won and adopt their positions on things. This is baloney. The Democrats lost. It’s their turn to reach out and do the healing.

• Off radar forever, I’ll bet: CBS’s promised big internal investigation into Dan Rather’s use of forged documents in its “October Surprise” story about Dubya’s national guard service.  CBS investigators will no doubt run into O.J. Simpson, who’s still out there trying to find Nicole’s killer.    
• And joining the CBS investigation and the Sandy Berger Purloined Papers Caper on the roster of Stories Most Likely To Be Buried is the UN’s wonderful Oil For Food program scandal. You know, the one involving Kofi Annan and some other UN dignitaries, plus the governments of France, Germany, Russia and others.

• A few conservatives have been heard crowing about the GOP’s new 55-45 Senate margin.  It’s deceiving because it’s a soft 55. So-called “moderates” like Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter and a few others have been known to stray from the reservation. When it comes to party line voting, the Republicans are closer to 50 solid votes than 55.

A Hunch: English Is Not Judy's Primary Language. . .

• “No, a tie is actually when you tie.”  --Dino Rossi, shortly after being certified the (Republican) winner by 42 votes in the first (there’ll have to be more, until the desired result is achieved) recount of the governor’s race in the state of Washington, in reply to these two absurd questions by the absurd Judy Woodruff of CNN: “Are you the winner? Or was this more of a tie?” (Reported in the December 27 issue of National Review).  (December 20, 2004)

Nor, Apparently, Is It Charlayne Hunter-Gault's. . .

• And Dino Rossi’s rejoinder (above) was so good that it inspired National Review to remember two more wonderful examples: first, the late Congressman (and entertainer) Sonny Bono’s reply of “Well, it’s illegal, isn’t it?” when asked about illegal immigration; and then William F. Buckley’s reply to the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault (beware of any female bearing a hyphenated last name--danger that way lurks) who asked Buckley, after he had gone down in an undersea vehicle to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, why what he had done wasn’t “grave robbing?” Buckley’s reply was, “Because it’s not robbing graves?”  Wish I coulda been there.

And Just So 2004 Doesn’t Get Away Without Logging Their Names For The Historical Record. . .

• Eleven Congressional Democrats signed and sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, most recently famous for presiding over his organization’s Iraq Oil For Skimming Scam, asking Kofi to dispatch UN observers to an Axis of Evil nation to monitor the United States’ 2004 presidential election. The letter cited typical demons from the left’s vast pantheon--Florida’s still-dangling chads, voter intimidation, harassment and disenfranchisement--every last bit of it, curious to tell, directed against Democrats--and other looming plagues masterminded by the forces of evil (and we know who They are). The authors told Kofi that the rights of citizens were in grave danger. The UN, no doubt with deepest regret, replied that the organization normally did not meddle in electoral affairs unless requested by an election authority or a national government. There are no known reports of any of the UN’s blue-helmeted legions skulking about on Election Day, so the rest of us may deduce that a crackpot letter from 11 loonies from the Left fell short of UN intervention standards. For the record, here are the names of the letter’s signees: Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas); Julia Carson (Indiana); Jerrold Nadler, Edolphus Towns, Joseph Crowley, and Carolyn Maloney (all of New York); Raul Grijalva (Arizona); Corrine Brown (Florida); Elijah Cummings (Maryland); Danny K. Davis (Illinois); and Michael M. Honda (California). These reprehensible clowns should be hiding in shame, but are not.  (December 31, 2004)

Come On, Dino, Give it Up. . .           

• And at year’s end,  the Washington Secretary of State--a Republican, of all things--declared the Democratic candidate, Christine Gregoire, the winner in Washington’s still-contested governor’s race (the declared loser, Dino Rossi, is considering calling for a new election, since this one was so danged close). As near as we can tell, the votes were counted three times, or until they reached the desired result. Rossi won the original election by 261 votes. Rossi won the first recount by 42 votes. At this point a batch of previously unnoticed ballots were found in a Democrat district, a court ordered that they must be counted, and this second recount produced a 129-vote margin for Gregoire. She was quoted in a New York Times account December 30 saying that the “most accurate count of the three” was the final one, which gave her the victory. (December 31, 2004)

An Opportunity Lost

• Dubya missed an unparalleled opportunity at year-end when, in the days following the catastrophic tsunami disaster in Asia, he failed to go on national television and propose that France and Germany lead a Coalition of The Timid  to staff and pay for the recovery effort. With UN approval, of course. (December 31, 2004)

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