Scoundrels, Knaves, and Fools

• Within hours of the “Hawkeye Cauci” (as Rush Limbaugh calls the Iowa caucuses) two Democrats who are at least well-qualified by life experience to serve as president—Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Biden—dropped out of the race. Meanwhile, many of the cartoon figures who should never be allowed anywhere near the office but are running for it nonetheless are doggedly soldiering on. This is a very strange and depressing spectacle.  (January 4, 2008)

Floatation Devices

• The cable TV talk shows—especially Chris Mathews’ Hardball and CNN—were in near hysterical awe January 28 with the big news that The Senator from Chappaquiddick was backing Barack Obama in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination. Pundits outdid themselves in assigning historical, tidal importance to the move.  It may indeed boost Obama’s chances, but here’s a word to the wise for the young senator from Illinois:  Don’t be going for any evening automobile rides with Teddy unless you’re wearing your life jacket or have an inner tube in the back seat.  (January 28, 2008)

• Seeing Teddy, all florid and blubbery, up there onstage with Obama reminded me of a flight of imagination from yesteryear. It was early January of 2001, during the confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft, Dubya’s nominee for attorney general, and one of the left’s super-demons. The networks offered heavy coverage, knowing that Ashcroft would be trashed endlessly. Well, there on the evening news was Teddy pontificating in the spotlight, all cameras on him, lecturing Ashcroft about—of all things—morality, veracity, truth, honoring the rule of law.  Imagine!—the Senator from Chappaquiddick, lecturing on topics like that.  I remember watching, and wishing, oh so fervently, that I could be Ashcroft, on the witness stand but with a jam box. And as soon as Teddy finished I’d smile sweetly, punch the “Play “ button, and out would roar “Bridge over Troubled Water” by Mary Jo and The Oldsmobiles.  And as soon as the song ended, I’d announce that my first act as attorney general, should I be confirmed, would be to re-open a federal investigation of The Chappaquiddick Unpleasantness.  Better than dyin’ and goin’ to heaven, I say.  (January 28, 2008)

Tweaking Hildy's Commercial

• A few days before the March 4 Texas and Ohio primary elections, Hildebeest launched a now famous “red phone at 3 a.m.” television commercial which helped turn the tide in her favor.  Osama’s campaign missed a glittering opportunity to turn this one back with devastating effect. He simply could have re-broadcast her video, but tacked on a subtle alteration at the end. This time Hildebeest would answer, listen a few seconds, then nudge the covers behind her and whisper, “Sick. Sick. It’s for you.” Then she would throw back the covers to reveal a crudely fashioned body shape made from rolled up underwear and blankets, topped with a canteloupe nestled on the pillow wearing a white “Bill” wig. Hildebeest’s classic shrill shiek of anger—“He’ll have to call you back—he’s downstairs with an intern!” would follow, then a cut to black as the phone slams down and cursing erupts. . .Then a crawler across the bottom reading:  “This is the ‘White House experience” you’ll get when you vote for Clinton.”

The ‘Obama Spend-O-Rama’ Amendment

• If Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, doesn’t ever do another dang thing in office, he’s made my honor roll.  On March 12, Allard joined the front ranks of my all-time dirty tricksters list by introducing a very special amendment during 2009 budget discussions on the Senate floor. He called it the  Obama Spend-O-Rama Amendment, and challenged his ridiculous colleagues to vote for it. The amendment was quite simple: it merely proposed funding 111 of the 188 spending proposals made so far by Obama in his campaign for president. The cost? $300 billion for the first year, $1.4 trillion over five years.  Allard said this was all his staff had time to analyze and compute costs for, but that they’d be working on the other 77 and every additional one Obama adds as the happy days roll by. Some dirty rotten Republican troublemaker calculated that Sick Willie’s 1993 tax increase jacked up taxes by $241 billion over five years. That makes Osama over five times the tax hiker Sick was. The Dems will never allow a vote on this, though.  Truth in budgeting is too much for any politician to bear. The news media mostly avoided this amusing little story, except for Human Events, which gave it huge play in its March 17 edition.  (March 13, 2008)

• “Definition of a “superdelegate”: A mechanism used by the Democratic Party to protect itself against democracy; see also Politburo.”—Letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune from Robert DeGrand of Gurnee, Illinois.  (March 16, 2008)

Nothing Like Watching Them Take The Bait.

• Rush Limbaugh has launched Operation Chaos, and surely millions of Dittoheads must be pursing its objectives: Cross over and vote in Democratic primaries; Let the Clintons bloody up Obama politically, since our side won’t do it; Prolong the Democrat primary battle; Enjoy liberals tearing each other apart; Drain the DNC of campaign cash; Annoy the drive-by media.  Rushbo’s website—I have been there, and it’s an inspiration--bristles with taunts and twitters at lefties. There’s “Operation Chaos” merchandise galore—hats, jackets, T-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs.  He’s having such a rollicking good time driving liberals crazy.  Already, some lefties in Ohio are threatening to sue him for “sponsoring election fraud,” and the talk shows are bringing on consultants to assure us Rush is having no impact, none at all. (March 21, 2008)

Snipergate

• One constant in this turbulent world is we can always count on the Clintons. The latest is Hildebeest’s demonstrably hallucinatory account of a 1996 trip she made to Tuzla, Bosnia, as First Lady during the Sick Administration, into which she dropped allusions--in several March campaign speeches--to her airplane corkscrew-diving into a battle zone amid sniper fire, then running, head ducked low, to safety across the tarmac after landing. Her enemies quickly visited the archives, unearthed both written and film accounts of her visit, which revealed her embellishments to be fantasies. The CBS film archives yielded actual footage of Hillary walking unhurried off the plane to be greeted by her hosts. The pilots of the plane scoffed at her account and said they never would have landed had there been any danger. This film quickly made it to the Internet and was viewed by several million people within hours. Hildebeest, when confronted with this evidence, insisted she was correct and  added even more erroneous details. Finally, she told eager reporters that she “misspoke,” (code for: lied and got caught) then shrugged and added that she guessed that made her human. It makes her a Clinton, certainly. Priceless!  (March 27, 2008)

• But what I want to know is: Why is it misspeaking when Hildebeest does it, but lying when Dubya does? 

Truth Deficit Disorder?

• Where, oh where would be without the ornery press--snoopin’ around, asking dangerous questions, thrusting—of all things!!--facts up in our faces, sorting through the blizzard of crap the spinners slather us with each day, finding precious nuggets and linking them together in ways which cause us to exclaim, “Dang! I wish I coulda remembered all that stuff!” My emotions precisely after stumbling upon a delightful article by Michelle Malkin in the March 31 edition of Human Events.  Her interest piqued by Hildebeest’s March brouhaha over sniper fire in Bosnia, Malkin dug into the steaming pile and came up with these beauties from the archives: this is the Mrs. Clinton was insisted for more than a decade that she was named after the famous mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary, though she was born six years before he became famous for scaling Mt. Everest in 1953; who told an NBC reporter that daughter Chelsea was jogging about New York city when 9/11 occurred, though Chelsea later publicly stated she was in a friend’s apartment watching the events on television; who stated she “helped start” the federal Children’s Health Program, though its original sponsors said she fought the initial bill and had no role in writing the legislation;  who bragged that she was the first to call the Darfur disaster a “genocide”, though several other senators used that term in 2004 and Hillary’s  “genocide” statement was made in 2006;  who claimed to have organized instrumental meetings in Belfast and  “helped to bring peace to northern Ireland,” even though the key negotiators  said she was “totally invisible,” “cheerleading,” and a “wee bit silly”; who blamed her Bosnia “misspoke” on sleep deprivation, but who gave her account not once but three times in this spring’s campaign (at speeches in Dubuque, Waco, and Washington, D.C.) and also included it in her  2003 autobiography. And this Malkin account doesn’t even include the fabulous White House years, when the legendary Clinton lying squad was in full flower. Malkin’s conclusion is that Hildebeest has a “life-long adversarial relationship with the truth.”  (March 31, 2008)

• Chelsea must suffer from this disorder, too. At a March appearance in Bloomington,Indiana, she was asked about the Tuzla sniper fire, and she responded by saying, “We  were well-protected by our United States military and the United States Secret Service.”

• Still another Clinton campaign lie emerged Friday, April 4, when Hildebeest regaled an audience with her sad tale of a poor, pregnant woman in southern Ohio, whose sad story she claimed to have been told by a local deputy sheriff. The woman didn’t have any health care insurance, Hildebeest said, and was turned away not once but twice from a hospital because she could not pay a $100 fee. Subsequently, the child was stillborn, and two weeks later the woman died, too. The villains were obvious: Dubya, McCain, unbridled capitalist greed, Republicans who viciously and cruelly oppose universal health care. Within 72 hours of Hildebeest’s speech circulating—alas, somebody had it all on tape—the woman’s family came forward, and so did hospital officials, to dispute the story and report that the woman did indeed have health insurance and was under the care of a local gynecological clinic during the entire episode.   When will this poor pitiful serial liar—Hildebeest--learn that fact-checkers are now listening to every last syllable she utters?  (April 7, 2008)

• If McCain wants to really put the heat on the Dems, he’ll pick Condoleezza Rice for his running mate.  (March 21, 2008)

• There’s an eternity till the November election. Can we hold our noses that long? If you added Hildebeest, Obama and McCain all together you wouldn’t have one truly outstanding candidate. Dems should feel worse than Republicans. Obama is a glib but empty suit, whose qualifications for the office are stunningly weak or absent, though no one seems to notice or care. Hildebeest is, well, Hildebeest--with monster negatives and a shrill, strident persona. McCain ought to be running as a Democrat, and is, except for his patriotism and understanding of the external dangers facing the country, thoroughly uninspiring. What’s shaping up is what nearly always does: not a soul you want to vote for, nothing but people you want to vote against.  (April 4, 2008)

• The Hildebeest Story is pretty much already in the historical record, there for all to see.  So all we get are variations and recyclings from the Clintons, nothing really new. Obama, though, is different. Comparatively little is known about him, and his early success has been built upon that. I have a hunch, though, that there are going to be more and more damaging revelations about Obama and his bride as the months roll on. Either Hildebeest will see that they are leaked, or the Republicans will (McCain won’t—he’s one of the brotherhood).  And so voters will be faced with having to rationalize their support of Obama in the face or mounting evidence that he is far, far different from his self-presentation.  Millions will be up to the task.  We all have do it—disregard evidence we don’t like. Only the candidate names are different (April 11, 2008)

• The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold Indiana’s voter identification law. The national Democrat Party and the ACLU had sued, claiming that requiring voters to identify themselves was an unfair burden, discriminatory, and an outrageous denial of a voter’s right not to identify himself. They lost at every level and kept right on appealing. This was never about fairness or undue burdens, anyway. It was about preserving the best possible environment for voter fraud, which is the Left’s special preserve, and in the interest of the power elites of both parties. Now that the Supremes have ruled, the next challenge will be to see that the political class enforces the law. (April 29, 2008)
• Indianapolis Star reporter Robert King did an uncommonly energetic job of digging out information this spring when word seeped out that Andre Carson, a Democrat and a Muslim running for the 7th District Congressional seat held for years by his grandmother, the late and legendary Julia Carson, was returning a $1,000 campaign donation from one M. Yaqub Mirza. King discovered that Mirza, a Herndon, Virginia, business executive, has splashed a lot of money around to politicians in recent years--something not unusual in itself but of more than passing interest lately since Mirza’s home and office were raided during a federal investigation of terrorism-financing by several Muslim foundations, one of which Mirza served as an officer. Mirza was not charged in the probe. King’s well-researched article served the public well.
• “The winner of the Democratic primary is always the candidate who does the best impersonation of an American.”—Ann Coulter, April, 2008.
• A late April poll of voters showed 67% of them don’t trust Hildebeest to be honest. Can it really be true, after all these decades, that significant numbers of the public are coming to their senses regarding this creature? No matter how gloomy things look, I’m sticking with my original prediction that she’ll get the Democrat presidential nomination. Not until I personally see her corpse nailed to the floor with a stake through its heart will I believe this long national nightmare is over. (May 2, 2008)
• Indiana Representative Phil Hinkle made the mistake of sending out a voter survey early in the year. In April he foolishly released the results: 80.6% favor limiting state budget increases to no more than the inflation rate; 91.6% favor fining employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants; 77.2% want welfare recipients to be randomly drug-tested; 67.4% want term limits for state legislators; 85.2 % favor requiring a two-thirds “super-majority” vote by the state legislature in order to raise state taxes, and 85% favor requiring voter approval of large local construction projects (for example, schools, jails, libraries) that would be paid by local property taxes. Poor Phil and his colleagues have quite a load of things to ignore. (May 3, 2008)

Taking One’s Cue From El Rushbo: The Aftermath

• Question: “Is there any way to quickly change public records to show me as a Republican? I just chose a Democrat ballot in the primary election and the stench is killing me. Thanks.” Answer: I think you’re doomed until the next primary, unless you can pull off a black bag job. Sorry. You will have to bear the stain. It may prove indelible. It is between you and the God of your choice. I recommend yet this afternoon that you find a quiet table—with your back to the wall--and order a drink or drinks of your choice. Then you might consider joining me in rehab. We use a quiet, discreet little facility outside Palo Alto. You will be surrounded by the quiet murmuring of monks. Your daily regimen will include intense and expert counseling, and several hours of soul-cleansing work in the garden or woodworking shop. This will help take your mind off the foul deed. You’ll be served bland meals of grains, fruit, soups, and gruel (thin, of course). Dinner is followed by vespers and meditation. The halls outside your spartan but functional room will be continuously bathed in soothing, soft Gregorian chants and the tinkling of wind chimes. With your commitment and any luck at all, you’ll be able to return to your family and friends on the outside within three or four months. By secure e-mail I am providing a number to call. I can assure you that the initial darting is painless. It will occur within 30 minutes of your call, and in a private place, so there will be no embarrassment when you are whisked away. You will regain consciousness at the facility, all cares eased, all memory erased. If it is any comfort to you, my bride, Peaches, and I just finished voting, too. We stopped at St. Pius XII Church of the Holy Cash Flow both before and after voting to receive absolution. For a modest fee, it was granted. This will not remove the stain, only help us endure it. We both took lefty ballots. Peaches voted for Obama. I voted for Hildebeest. Ultimately, I took my cue from El Rushbo—I wanted to participate in Operation Chaos. We will arrive at the facility this evening with hopeful hearts, and we look forward to the pleasure of having you join us in recovery. (Signed) Cordially, Covenant House. –Advice to a colleague who crossed over to the dark side to vote in the Indiana Democrat Primary and then realized that public records now show him as a “registered Democrat.” (May 6, 2008)

The Ranting Rev

• When films clips emerged of Obama’s mentor and pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, ranting against America and other demons from his Chicago church pulpit, Obama glibly dismissed them by saying the material had been taken out of context. Big mistake. Within days, the talk shows and cable channels were flooded with lengthy film clips of Wright’s sermons—The Glenn Beck Show, for example, devoted an entire hour to playing and discussing them—and it was quickly obvious the Ranting Rev was fully in context. Soon after, Wright himself inexplicably went on a media tour, speaking before the National Press Club in Wonderland, D. C., and at a Detroit NAACP meeting. More rants, damnations, chirps, squeaks and twitters, all on film and all over the network news. Obama and his surrogates then began complaining that they were just sick and tired of the media obsession with Jeremiah Wright and wasn’t it time to move on to the really, really important business of the country? Then, conservative troublemakers pointed out that Obama sat in Wright’s church listening to this stuff for 20 years and didn’t get tired of it, so why can’t we hear it replayed for 20 years before we’re required to get tired? Excellent question, and of course, no answer from Obama. The damage to the Obama campaign will be difficult to quantify. But combined with other slips and gaffes, and with more and more revealing probes into his background, the Free Pass For The Messiah days of the Obama campaign may be over. America will benefit from this, though Obama won’t. (May 8, 2008)
• When everything which can be said has been, I suspect it will make no difference at all, and that Obama will be elected President. The Mother of All Dirty Tricks by The Clintonistas excepted, I can foresee nothing stopping the tidal wave of cultlike fervor carrying Obama. It is so bizarre than one can even feel sympathy for Hildebeest. Only scant months ago she was the presumptive nominee by near-universal acclaim. How it all slipped away will surely torment her, Sick, and their followers all the days of their lives. (May 15, 2008)
• Meantime, The Ranting Rev, who promotes himself as a tireless, fearless advocate for the poor, the downtrodden, the hapless victims of Evil Whitey, has retired to a $1.6 million mansion with over 10,000 square feet of floor space in a gated community in a Chicago suburb whose population is 98 percent white. (May 8, 2008)
• “. . .for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.”—Michelle Obama, aspiring First Lady, on the campaign trail, Spring, 2008.
• Truly bizarre ads touting “green” causes have begun appearing this spring in the slick magazines and on television. They pair mostly political figures seated side-by-side and apparently are designed to convince us even the two major political parties agree on the Gorenian global warming jeremiads. One ad features Newt Gingrich beaming at Nancy Pelosi; another pairs Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson. Unanswered is the obvious question: Why would any self-respecting person ever agree to appear in public with the likes of Nancy Pelosi or Al Sharpton? (May 1, 2008)

No Wonder We Can’t Find Him — He’s Running For President!

• Osama Obama. Barry Obama. Obama bin Laden. Barack Hussein Osama. Saddam Obama. Barack Obama. Obama Hussein Osama. Quick! Which one is correct? (May 14, 2008)
• Lefties go ballistic every time anyone uses Obama’s middle name (Hussein). But they’ve been silent for years about the millions of media references to Hillary Clinton’s middle name (Rodham). Time to ask the question: Why is uttering Hillary Rodham Clinton OK but Barack Hussein Obama a capital crime? No evasions, no deflections: Just answer the simple question. (May 15, 2008)

Teddy’s Final Cuddle With Mary Jo

• Word leaked today that the Senator from Chappaquiddick was hustled off to Massachusetts General Hospital where, it is hoped, he will promptly expire. May I be the first to propose that he be buried wearing his ceremonial neck brace in a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88, upside down, underwater, in the sludge just off the Chappaquiddick Bridge? (May 16, 2008)
• One of the carefully overlooked and awe-inspiring stories of the presidential campaign is a masterfully executed political dirty trick by the Hildebeest. This occurred in January during an early Democrat debate. Deep into the thing, Hildy casually dropped her “slum landlord” line, about “an old friendship forged on the streets of Chicago” in the early 1990s between Barack Obama and a locally dubious character named Anton “Tony” Rezko. That was it. No shrill harangues, no finger-wagging—just that offhand remark. Followers of conservative publications and talk radio already knew of the Tony Rezko Unpleasantness, but it had not then broken into the sunlit uplands of the big mainstream media coverage. Hildebeest’s “R-bomb” proved irresistible, though, and within a week or two the Chicago Tribune ran a big front-page story on it. It will be difficult for others not to follow suit, but they’ll be up to the challenge. Rezko himself will remain in the limelight as his corruption trial unfolds in a Chicago courtroom. Inevitably this will prove detrimental to Obama’s transcendent image. And it will be only one of numerous similar stories which will mysteriously emerge as the months roll on. The Clintons are chronic complainers about “the politics of personal destruction” (meaning unflattering true stories about the Clintons) but so seldom get credit for their own ability to counter-attack. The Rezko story is down-and-dirty politics at its finest. The spirits of Dick Tuck, Lee Atwater, Murray Chotiner, Don Segretti, Sid Blumenthal and countless other operatives are in the air, and we should pull up our Barcaloungers and watch in awe. (May 18, 2008)

And They'd Put You to Sleep, Too

• “. . .if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf (because) nobody’s buying it.”—Tom Davis, Republican Congressman from Virginia, in a 20-page memo to his GOP colleagues warning them that “the Republican brand is in the trash can” as the Fall elections approach.

So. . .Big Gub’mint’s Twice As Greedy As Big Oil

• Part of the Left’s mantra is its shrill shrieking about the “obscene profits” of this big business or that one. Big Oil is one of its favorite current demons. Odd, then, to read an op-ed feature in the Sunday Indianapolis Star by John F. Gaski, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame, which points out—so irreverently!—that the industry-wide oil company profit on a gallon of gasoline sold is 25 cents but the Sun God of The Left—government—takes at least 50 cents a gallon in taxes. Oooooooooooh, not what we want to hear at all. Someone’s going to have to sit down with Professor Gaski and straighten him out. (May 18, 2008)

Boris Johnson, Mayor For Life

• “If you vote for the Conservatives, your wife will get bigger breasts and your chances of driving a BMW M-3 will increase.”—Boris Johnson, newly-elected Tory (conservative party) Mayor of London, in a 2003 speech, which was resurrected during the spring, 2008 campaign. Johnson ousted the far-left incumbent mayor, “Red Ken” Livingston. (May 18, 2008)
• My favorite Obama boo-boo to date is his promise made to a Beaverton, Oregon, campaign crowd that he would campaign “in all 57 states.” Rush Limbaugh—all-seeing, all-knowing, all-sensing El Rushbo—cackled sinisterly about it a few days later. Obama’s foes leapt to a conclusion that this was a Freudian slipup--an inadvertent reference to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which has 57 member states (and 3 observer states) and that coupled with Obama’s real or alleged connection to the Muslim religion combined for a truly malevolent connotation. Supporters joined the internet and print babble and offered a plausible defense: that Obama was merely tired and misspoke. The candidate’s speech is on Youtube, and the Snopes.com website, which investigates urban legends such as this, concludes this was merely a (benign) verbal slip-up. (May 22, 2008)
• How long can it be before Hildebeest decides to sue the Democrat Party to obtain justice? Soon she will have no alternative but to go to court to demand that every vote be counted, and to prevent her party from forwarding an illegitimate candidate to the national election this fall.

Two Supremes In The Offing?

• Scary Idea Of The Week: A Washington Post pundit speculated that Obama, to get Hildebeest to bow out of the race and not sue for justice, could promise her that, if elected, he would nominate her to a Supreme Court position. This would put Hildebeest on the shelf (and remove the danger she presents to him) for eternity. What a crowning blow it would be to the Left’s enemies! And if President Obama gets to fill two Supreme Court vacancies, he can give the second one to Sick Willie. Perfect! (May 22, 2008)

Red Meat From McClellan

• The cable TV talk shows feasted on red meat last night when word broke of former (from 2003-2006) White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s angry new book criticizing many in the Dubya Administration. Larry King brought in two leftwing spinners to shout down his lone conservative defendant, Ari Fleischer (McClellan’s boss and predecessor as press secretary). Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews hammered into the night on their shows, and the airwaves were jammed with the liberal mantra, “Bush lied, Cheney lied, Rove lied, Libbly lied, Rumsfeld lied. They all lied. Lied! Lied! Lied!” This morning’s Associated Press account, however, reported that McClellan’s book contained a prominent disclaimer that “I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people.” I heard not a single mention of this by any of the howling spinners on TV the night before. It didn’t fit their agenda. (May 29, 2008)
• “It could have been a hell of a lot worse. They could have sentenced me to spend the rest of my life with Martha.”—John Mitchell, or a quote attributed to him “while joking with reporters,” included in a Wall Street Journal review of a new book on Mitchell (The Strong Man, by James Rosen). “Martha” was his wife. Mitchell, who was Attorney General of the United States in the Nixon Administration, spent 20 months in federal prison after his conviction in the Watergate scandal, making him the highest ranking executive branch official ever to serve prison time, though not the highest ranking person who should have. (May 25, 2008)

The Worst News Of All Is Good News

• In May, American military deaths in Iraq reached their lowest point in four years. The Associated Press actually wrote a story about it and the Indianapolis Star printed it. The naïve reader may have thought that was the story, but the Star’s headline, a full page in width, set ‘em straight. It read: Many Fear Lull In The Death Toll Won’t Last. (June 3, 2008)
• And so now we have the delightful spectacle of the Democrats, after nearly a decade of screaming about the injustice of Weird Al winning the popular vote but not being crowned President, pushing aside their candidate who won the popular vote (Hildebeest) to give the nomination to the guy who won the most delegates. There’s no weirder place on the planet than this beautiful, beautiful party--though the UN is a close contender (see next item). (June 7, 2008)
• The UN General Assembly, obviously concerned about being one-upped by the Dems in the Global Hypocrisy Derby, retaliated by naming as its new president Miguel d’ Escoto, a leftist Catholic Priest, Lenin Prize winner, and former Nicaraguan prime minister during that country’s rollicking 1980s Sandanista era, then selecting the government of Burma as one of the Assembly’s vice presidents. The ruling thugs there are famous lately for refusing to allow foreign aid supplies to reach hundreds of thousands of their own citizens devastated by a May cyclone. The Wall Street Journal may have been the only media outlet which even noticed this. The Journal described it as “a sick joke,” and noted that the United States raised not a single peep of protest, either real or symbolic, during these latest shenanigans. (June 7, 2008)

The Finest Gub’mint Money Can Buy

• Fox News produced a fascinating TV special (“Porked: Earmarked For Profit”) on the congressional earmarks scandal. It featured a clever caper engineered by now retired House Speaker Dennis Hastert (a dastardly Republican) which funneled $205 million to a strange central Illinois highway construction project called The Prairie Parkway. Fox host Chris Wallace reported that the proposed highway runs within two miles of 69 acres of land once owned by something called the Little Rock Trust. Some dogged sleuthing eventually revealed that none other than Dennis Hastert was one of the owners. The land was sold to a developer a few months after Dubya proudly came to central Illinois to sign the bill in Hastert’s presence. Hastert miraculously shared in a $2 million profit, according to Fox, though he owned the land less than one year. The show also featured the antics of Democrat Congressman Paul Kanjorsky of Pennsylvania, who funneled over $10 million in earmarks to companies operated by four nephews and his daughter. An outside consultant, who worked with the family members, described the experience to the Fox reporter as “like collaborating with the cast of Loony Tunes.” The company (Cornerstone Technologies) went bankrupt, the earmark money gone and a million or so in bills unpaid. Kanjorsky, via e-mail, called the Fox report nothing but another attack “by the Republican smear machine.” That should get him off the hook. Congressman Ken Calvert of California was run up the flagpole, too, for his role in aiding several similar projects which happened to be quite close to land he owned. Fox said Calvert sponsored earmarks which drove up the value, then sold his land in less than a year at a fat profit. Fox contacted a few of their Washington co-conspirators for their opinion. All either refused to comment or said there was nothing unethical or illegal about any of this. Of course. Not in their world, anyway. (June 8, 2008)

Peggy's Toast

• “America dodged a bullet. . .Mrs. Clinton would have been a disaster as president. Mr. Obama may prove a disaster, and John McCain may be, but she would be. Mr. Obama may lie, and Mr. McCain may lie, but she would lie. And she would have brought the whole rattling caravan of Clintonism with her—the scandal-making that is compulsive, the drama that is unending, the sheer, daily madness that is her, and him. We have been spared this. Those who did it deserve to be thanked. May I rise in a toast to the Democratic Party.”—Peggy Noonan, author, columnist, and former Reagan speechwriter, writing about what she presumes is Obama’s victory in the Democrat primary election struggle, in the Wall Street Journal’s June 7-8, 2008, edition.

It’s The Clinton, Stupid

• Clintonistas bit off their own arms and legs and devoured their own children in their mad pain-frenzy over Hillary’s primary election defeat. A million excuses were given, but the one that seemed to me to make the most sense was childishly simple. The Wall Street Journal summarized Hillary’s road to second place trenchantly in its June 4 issue. Several columnists (Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan) said it, and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack apparently told Hildebeest this way back in January on the eve of the Iowa cauci—ultimately, people just don’t like her. (June 4, 2008)

No Arms, No Legs, But Still Comin’ At Ya. . .

• With the Clintons, however, nothing is ever over. And as long as they are alive, they will be thirsting, maneuvering, plotting, getting coiled and ready for a comeback. A comment this spring by Dennis Miller on his radio show aptly described this phenomenon. Miller told a caller that his vision of the Clintons was that even if Hillary Clinton had no arms and legs, she would still be using her stomach muscles to crawl across the stage toward you. We should remember this each time we get to feeling smug and comfortable with the notion that Hildebeest and Sick are out of this race, or any other, ever. (June 15, 2008)

Except, Of Course, Mary Jo’s. . . .

• “He has done more for the health care of others than just about anybody in history.”—Barack Hussein Obama, praising The Senator from Chappaquiddick, when word leaked of Teddy’s tumor. (June 16, 2008)

Ooops! Wrong Metaphor!

• “He’s sort of Horatio at the bridge.”—Paul S. Grogan, President of the Boston Foundation, quoted in the New York Times praising The Senator from Chappaquiddick and comparing him to the Roman warrior, when word leaked of Teddy’s tumor. (June 16, 2008)

Don’t Build It, And They Will Come (And Vote)

• In a ruling not celebrated by lefties, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by environmentalists and others—primarily the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife—seeking to block construction of the proposed 670-mile fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. This was also bad news for America’s political ruling class, which desperately does not want the wall built or illegal immigration ever boldly addressed (they all vote, you know). Now they’ll have to think of a new way to not build it. (June 24, 2008)
• Lefties gearing up for their Denver convention have a crisis already. They want to give 15,000 volunteers a fanny pack and a baseball cap but—strict orders from on high!—the gifts must be made from organic cotton by union labor and made in the USA. After a nationwide search by its merchandise team, the word has come back: no can do. Neither product exists which satisfies all three sacred conditions. The leadership is demanding that this convention will be the most exquisitely sensitive and the greenest ever, so the problems have just begun. It will be a beautiful spectacle, rivaling the Dems’ legendary 1988 Convention’s “Star Wars Bar Scene” for its grotesqueness quotient. (June 25, 2008)
• B. Hussein Osama is the Democrat Party’s present-day version of Chance Gardner, but with a higher IQ. Gardner, a character played by Peter Sellers in the savagely satirical 1979 film, Being There, was elected President, despite having no qualifications or credentials for the office. (June 29, 2008)
• One supremely overriding challenge and goal confronts the Obama presidential campaign: to minimize what the public learns about him and his views. The more details which become public, the less chance Obama has to win the election. Simple as that. (June 30, 2008)
• This is years late, but it’s time to pay honor to a Rush Limbaugh phrasing that is classic: “the drive-by media.” This is Rush’s terminology for the liberal, mainstream media’s reflexively shallow coverage of the news. It’s quite close to a perfect metaphor. (June 30, 2008)
• Two years ago gasoline was around $2.00 a gallon. Now it’s over $4.00. This occurred under a Congress controlled by Democrats. Have you heard anyone blame the Democrats for this? I haven’t. (June 30, 2008)

And Speaking Of Nanny States, BHO And His Bride Are Promising Us One

• “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. . .that you come out of your isolation. . .Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”—Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist, quoting Michelle Obama’s remarks made earlier this spring on the primary campaign trail—unless, of course, Charles has made all this up out of thin air—in a column published in the Indianapolis Star. (July 18, 2008)

Sorry, Phil, Truth Is No Defense

• Phil Gramm, a top adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, has resigned because of the uproar over his recent observation that the United States has become a “nation of whiners.” (July 18, 2008)
• Rush Limbaugh regularly observes on his radio show that he’s “having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have,” and almost every day offers a demonstration of it. Today, it was a short quip just before a commercial break. He told his listeners he’d be right back after “a short windfall profits break.” Priceless. (July 24, 2008)

Gimme an H. . .Gimme a Y. . .Gimme a P. . .

• Glenn Beck leaked word to America last night that the Dems have again been caught with their knickers down. Democrat poohbahs, in their deal with the City of Denver to host this summer’s Democrat convention, get to buy gasoline from the city’s tax-free pumps. While the rest of us—and especially the poor, the downtrodden, minorities, the disadvantaged, and other victims the Dems claim to love so much—get to pay full price, Democrat elites get a special deal and save 50 cents or so per gallon. With Senator Chris Dodd’s sweetheart mortgage, Charlie Rangel’s special deal on rent-controlled apartments in Gotham City, and assorted other minor league grifting coming to light, it’s a veritable Hypocrisy-O-Rama on the Left. (July 24, 2008)

You Mean the Bowel Evacuation Part?

• “The most important reason Gore should be Vice President is that he’s suffered and learned. He has the temperament some of us reach on our death beds. . .”--Columnist Margaret Carlson, quoted in the September, 2008, issue of The American Spectator in its “Current Wisdom” section.

Obama's Prunes

• The Reverend Jesse Jackson, still a race-hustling preposterosity after all these years, fell into the old “hot mike” trap in mid-summer, and it cost him points. Jesse, apparently not realizing his microphone was “live” while he sat waiting for an interview in Fox News studios, muttered to another guest that that danged old  Barack Obama was “talking down” to blacks and that he, The Rev, would like to cut off his (Obama’s) prunes. Then he gave a little clenched fist grunt for emphasis. This was soon broadcast all over the world and Jackson issued the standard phony apology. Behind it all is the terrible truth for Jesse—his days as the leading black spokesman are over. He has been replaced by a younger, more charismatic black leader—The Transcendent, The One, The Redeemer, Obama—whose message of hope and optimism is replacing the Jackson/Sharpton mantra of black victimology. Jesse, many decades too late, has become irrelevant.  (July 25, 2008)

• “The Democrat Party may fantasize about being Europeans. The American people don’t.”—Rush Limbaugh, commenting on his radio show about B. Hussein Obama’s recent world tour.  (July 28, 2008)

• “Celebutards.”—Rush Limbaugh, coining a collective noun to encompass the typically low-wattage celebrities who endorse mostly liberal, leftist politics (examples: Paris Hilton, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Jennifer Garner, Gwynneth Paltrow, and countless others.)  (August 4, 2008)  

Why is Contempt A Crime?

• The headline struck me for its oddity: “Panel Cites Rove For Contempt,” it read.  Well, yes, they’ve got it right, and Karl’s not the only one with a raging case of it. So where’s the crime? Why is he being “cited” for it? The House Judiciary Committee, in full witch-hunt mode under Democrat control, is fighting mad that Karl Rove and others have failed to comply with its order to come up and testify about alleged crimes of the hated Bush Administration. Seems to me the citation should be for something else they’ll have to dream up—“contempt” just doesn’t fit. Millions of us have contempt for Congress, and more should have. How about calling Rove’s offense “failure to roll over”? That would be much more accurate, and would allow the rest of us to have our contempt and not be jailed for it. (July 31, 2008)

Prosecuting Congressmen Could Be A Year-Around Full-Time Job If We Were Serious About It

• Late July brought the news that America’s reigning Sultan of Earmarks, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens—a dastardly Republican, mind you—has been indicted on several felony counts filed by federal prosecutors.  These include accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of “gifts” in the form of renovations to his home, not reporting them as required by law, and then lying about them to federal investigators.  Stevens, 84, has been in the Senate nearly 40 years, and is renowned for his delivery of earmarks—including the famous “Bridge to Nowhere”—to his home state. His colleague, Congressman Don Young of Alaska, is also under investigation for alleged fundraising irregularities, at least some of which are said to involve the same “donor” as in the Stevens case—VECO Co., a big oil services contractor. Stevens, who is running for re-election this year, said he was innocent of every last syllable of the indictment, and demanded a quick trial  (before Election Day) so he can clear his name. If he’s innocent, he should go free; if guilty, he should be sent to prison.  (July 29, 2008)

• A wonderfully savage e-mail circulating in late summer made a devastating (at least in some of our eyes) comparison of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the June, 2008, Iowa floods.  A dozen or so pictures from Iowa showed those were no mere mud puddles:  a gas station under four to five feet of water; a dozen houses and buildings washed downriver and piled up behind a bridge; cattle swimming, farms and subdivisions under water, a railroad bridge underwater; rowboats moving casually past homes with water midway up to the roofs. Then are asked the cosmic questions:  Where are the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons to raise millions to restore downtown and aid victims? Where are the media watchdogs asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem, asking where the FEMA trucks and trailers are? Why isn’t the federal government relocating people to free hotels in Chicago and Minneapolis? When will Spike Lee say that the federal government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines? Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks? Where are the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets? When will we hear from Governor Chet Culver that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it? Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage, complete with reports of cannibalism? Where are the people declaring the George Bush hates white, rural people? How come in two weeks you will never hear about the Iowa flooding again? (August 13, 2008)

• Bet money on this:  if Obama wins the election, it will be because he was a superior candidate; if he loses, lefties will blame it on racism.

• “Barack knows that we have a hole in our souls.”—Michelle Obama, aspiring First Lady, in a campaign trail sound-bite played by Rush Limbaugh for his audience of millions. (August 19, 2008)

And If Sick Ever Dies, Chelsea Can Ascend . . .

• Why not Weird Al Gore for B. Hussein’s running mate? Obama could serve eight years with Al back on training wheels. Then Weird Al could inherit the throne—with Hildebeest as his vice president! Finally, Hildy could have an eight-year spin!  By this time, the Dems could have repealed the two-term limit on presidents and Sick Willie could return to spend the rest of his life in the Oral Office. Would that fulfill everyone’s destiny, and rid us of these meddlesome creatures?  (August 19, 2008)

“Fast Eddie” Lives! —He Lives!!

• A beautiful, beautiful character from the last century popped up in a recent Chicago Tribune article:  former Chicago Democrat Alderman Edward J. “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak.  For nearly two decades—1971-89---Vrdolyak was an almost daily newsmaker in Chicago. He was glib, a wheeler-dealer, a high-steppin’ strutter seemingly always involved in one scandal or another, and always emerging unscathed. Not so in 2008. His trial on fraud and bribery charges has been set for early November. He is accused of helping to engineer—in retirement, mind you—a kickback scheme involving the 2004 sale of a building which yielded Fast Eddie a $1.5 million fee.  Frankly, it’s just great to see that he’s still out there slithering around. He’s 70 years old and still makin’ Chicago proud.  (August 8, 2008)

Dragging The Drive-Bys, Kicking And Screaming . . .

• The big mainstream media drive-bys were finally forced to cover the John Edwards Unpleasantness when Edwards himself confessed to ABC that he had, indeed, had an affair said to have involved consensual sex with a person not his wife. There is an illegitimate child involved, but Edwards swears he’s not the father. The supermarket tabloid, The National Enquirer, flushed out and began reporting on this story about a year ago and in mid-summer 2008 filmed Edwards at a California hotel where the woman was registered. As rumors grew and grew, the drive-bys offered their typical weak whimpers about just not having any evidence, no proof, and certainly no willingness to pick up a so-called “story” by the utterly trashy and irresponsible Enquirer. Those with sufficient memory could recall, though, that the drive-bys exhibited no such reluctance to tackle and exploit a similar Enquirer expose in 2006. But then, of course, the subject was the antichrist Rush Limbaugh’s abuse of prescription drugs, not a precious left-wing presidential candidate, John Edwards. (August 10, 2008)

Have We Left Anything Off?

• “. . . his big ears, his mother, his father, his grandmother (unless he does), his wife, his preacher, his terrorist friends, his voting record, his religion. . . appeasement, color, lack of color, race, the bombers and mobsters who are his friends, his schooling, his (middle) name, his lack of experience, his income, his flag pin.”—Rush Limbaugh’s list of things about Barack Hussein Obama which we are not allowed to talk about, offered in a May 16, 2008, monologue on the Rush Limbaugh Show, and recounted in an article about Limbaugh in the July 6, 2008, Sunday New York Times Magazine.

• McCain stupidly answered a gotcha question about how many homes he owned and the Dems and their press partners are having a field day attacking him for it. When B. Hussein Obama bought his home in a Chicago suburb he received special financial assistance from a now convicted Chicago felon, Tony Rezko, the Dems and their media partners were nowhere to be heard from, and they still are. (August 25, 2008)

• Both the Indianapolis Star and a national political pundit on a weekend TV show have editorialized on what Indiana Senator Birch Bayh should do now that he was not chosen to be Obama’s running mate and Senator Joe Biden was.  Bayh’s resume, it is said, is too thin, too limited, too undistinguished. He needs to become a leader in some area of national policy—take a cause and make it his own. He needs to take chances, be bold, lead in pushing through landmark legislation. It seems fair to ask why Obama was not held to such a standard. His resume and achievements are notably less “distinguished” than Bayh’s, yet Obama is deemed well-qualified by his party to have the world’s most important job.  Surely, this is someone’s idea of a joke. (August 25, 2008)

Stealth Dirtbag

• The legendary Michael Moore’s handlers have given him a makeover in time for the Dems’ big convention.  He’s going stealth on us. An ad in today’s Star features a large picture of the Democrat icon. He has shaved, and wears a warm smile. His hair is neatly cut, puffed and trimmed, and he is a wearing a clean, untorn T-shirt adorned by an American flag pin. Heightened vigilance is advised. (August 26, 2008)

Betcha The Kopechne Family Noticed It

• Sources close to the bowels of the Democrat National Convention report that both the opening scene and the closing scene of a video tribute to the aging and idolized Senator from Chappaquiddick, which was broadcast on national television from the convention’s opening night floor, featured a backdrop of . . . water. This is priceless to the googol power.  (August 26, 2008)

• A couple of the boys got in a minor dustup over what kind of car the Senator From Chappaquiddick was driving when he sailed off the bridge and into the bay with poor Mary Jo inside.  One of them thought it was a Buick. But reliable sources insist it was a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.  (August 26, 2008)

• “Do you think voters really want to see (in the White House) a couple who are faithful to each other?”—Katie Couric of CBS News, on the opening night of the Democrat convention in Denver. She asked this question of a fellow journalist, Jeff Greenfield. No one yet knows why. (Greenfield answered, “Yes.”) (August 26, 2008)

The Republicans Have Already Tried This—And It Works!

• “The Democratic Party would nominate Daffy Duck (for president) if they thought he would win.”—Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show Åugust 26, 2008.

• “They remind me of a degenerate criminal, which is what Kennedy (The Senator from Chappaquiddick, Teddy) is . . .”—David Horowitz, speaking about Democrats assembled at their convention in Denver. (August 27, 2008)

• “John Edwards has been banned from making a speech at the Democrat National Convention for having an affair and lying about it. So. . .Bill Clinton will be speaking in his place.”—Anonymous, sent to me by a friend on the far frontier, under the heading, “The Democrat party’s newly developed, keen sense of morality.” (August 27, 2008)

Among The Third Rails For BHO . . .

• There are several areas of potentially devastating danger for the B. Hussein Obama campain.  Foremost among them is a fuller, richer account of his relationship and dealings with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, both former—and to this day unrepentant—terrorists. Also waiting to be mined is the record of Obama’s associations and dealings with the Chicago Democrat political machine, arguably the most corrupt political organization in the United States.  It will be up to conservatives and the McCain campaign to unearth and circulate these stories. If they do it well, and there is, in fact, anything damaging to report, McCain could win the election. Whether they’ll be up to the challenge remains to be seen.  (August 28, 2008)

Sarah Is As Ready As B. Hussein Is

• McCain’s choice of first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee is a startling move. ABC’s George Stephanopolous’s first reaction was to note that the key question for any vice-presidential candidate is, “Is he or she ready to become president?”  George promised that “that’s where the Democrats will immediately go” on this, because her lack of “readiness” is so obvious. This could be true, but, alas, how can the Democrats make this an issue when their candidate for President is so unqualified, so inexperienced, so lacking in credentials? I’ll bet they find a way. (August 29, 2008)

Marking The Territory . . .

• A left-leaning friend complained recently about people who use Barack Obama’s middle name—Hussein—when referring to him. Thinking he had caught us in a moment of troglodytic right-wing hypocrisy and the politics of personal destruction, he asked why we didn’t use McCain’s middle name.  “Easy,” came the reply. “Using McCain’s middle name wouldn’t damage the Left. Using Obama’s reminds everyone of his Muslim connection—no matter how slight or irrelevant--and the widely perceived notion that the Left is soft on national security. Remember, this is about destroying the enemy, seizing complete control of the money pot and vast patronage opportunities. It’s about getting our guys in power. It is total war, fought domestically. So we use whatever works. And “Hussein” works.”  His muted reply was, “I fear you are correct.” (August 20, 2008)

Sandy Skated Free—Why Can’t Alberto?

• Alberto Gonzales, the former U.S. Attorney General, will not be prosecuted by the Justice Department for improperly handling (he stored them in his office and took some home) classified counterterrorism documents. Lefties will scream bloody murder about another rightwing demon getting off the hook, but they will be ignoring how Sandy “Scissorhands” Burger, Sick Willie’s special agent, purloined and destroyed classified documents and skated away free. 

• Obama’s choice of Joe Biden has lefties chirping, and no wonder. The National Journal rates Biden the third-most liberal Senator, and Obama is somewhere in the top five.  The press has barely noted this huge lurch to the left, probably on the theory that if they’re real quiet, we won’t notice. Meantime, lefties rant about McCain being nothing but more of the (Bush) same, but ignore the fact that this is exactly what Biden, who’s spent 35 years in Washington—more than McCain—represents.  As has been noted, without hypocrisy, many of us would have nothing to do at all.  (August 31, 2008)

Shep’s Prunes

• Shepard Smith almost lost his prunes at the GOP Convention. It was the second or third night of the big St. Paul shindig. Shep, as his colleagues jocularly call him, was interviewing Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow. He asked her a question. Debbie gave a bold non-answer, spewed Demo talking points instead. Shep pointed out that she had not answered the question and asked it again. A second time Stabenow deflected, did not answer. Shep, bless him, came back a third time, and was in the middle of again pointing out she had not answered his question when—all of a sudden—a cloud passed over young Shep’s face. He froze. Viewers could tell he was listening intently to an inner voice, the one coming out of his earpiece. Then it dawned on us—Shep had been interrupted by someone else—presumably his superior—up in the control booth, and was being ordered to back off the chase. Debbie finished her third brilliant spin/deflection. Shep said, “Thank you for joining us,” and the screen cut to a commercial. Shep wore a thoroughly chastened look when he returned. Too bad, because political guests routinely do not answer questions but instead chant mantra, and the typical journalist interviewer would never dream of challenging the spin and coming back after them. Most would not even know they’d been spun. Well, Shep has learned his lesson. There’s no market at Fox or anywhere for that kind of thing.  (September 3, 2008)

• Two banshees from Code Pink infiltrated the GOP convention on its last night, and came roaring down the aisle toward the stage, to make America even prouder of the Democrats. Security people intervened and the two lovelies were hauled out—angry as wet hens, of course. Next day, it was revealed—rather reluctantly, I thought—that the hecklers had obtained their passes into the building “from the media.”  As far as I know, nobody has ever revealed which media fed them the passes. That’s key information. Wonder if they’ll ever tell us.  (September 4, 2008)

• Newt Gingrich provided a beautiful “In Your Face” Kodak Moment for conservatives watching the GOP convention.  Ron Allen, a floor reporter for MSNBC, corralled Gingrich for an interview, and Allen quickly zeroed in on the left’s attack on Sarah Palin’s qualifications to serve as vice-president. Newtie listened politely, and came blazing back with a stinging rebuttal showcasing Palin’s achievements and concluding, “I’ve never seen Obama do a single thing except talk and write books. Tell me one thing you think Obama has done.”  Allen offered not a single thing, muttered something about “I’m not going to argue with you,” and bailed out with a hurried “Back to you, Keith (Olbermann, the cable network’s fulminating co-anchor up in the big booth).”  It’s almost impossible to imagine how different the public dialogue would be if conservatives went on offense like this in every single confrontation with the media. I can’t think of a single conservative other than Newt who’s even tried it. (September 4, 2008)

Chris and Keith Put On Leash

• Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, the twin kingpin anchors of MSNBC, have been removed from all live election news coverage for the remainder of the campaign, the cable network has announced. Both may be used as commentators but will not appear in a “news coverage” role. Their nightly “opinion” shows will continue.  Hysterically rabid partisanship from Olbermann and a lesser degree of it from Matthews precipitated the move.  MSNBC and its parent, NBC, thus acknowledged what many have long charged: that partisan bias was increasingly infecting their masquerade as “news” reporters. This is truly a rare moment in journalism. (September 8, 2008)

McCafferty Plays It

• “(this) doesn’t make a lot of sense—unless it’s race.”—Jack McCafferty, CNN’s sassy, outspoken commentator, remarking on recent polls showing near dead heats in the presidential race between Obama and McCain, and letting us know he thinks racism is the only conceivable reason Obama isn’t running far out in front.  (September 15, 2008)

Issues, Issues, Issues: Veering Toward Surly Early

• A recent New Yorker magazine article on Keith Olbermann’s career was enormously helpful as we digested the post-convention “demotion” for Keith and Chris. Things apparently veered toward the surly early for Keith. His parents were advised when he was a teen-ager that “a private education might be best” for the lad (this surely is code for something, but the author gave no further hint of what), and, lo, Keith was soon enrolled in a private high school. Olbermann graduated from Cornell University in 1979 and his first job was with UPI radio in New York. Within two years he was fired, after an argument with his supervisor. He went to CNN in 1981 and self-describes his three years there as “a continuing pitched battle,” typically involving disputes between Keith and his bosses over how to do the job. He left CNN and worked at a Boston TV station for three months, then moved back into his family home, unemployed. Next he worked at KTLA TV in Lost Angeles, where his big mouth and free spirits continued to aggravate supervisors. He joined ESPN in 1992 and left after five years. A colleague was quoted saying Keith “didn’t burn bridges, he napalmed them.” His next job was at NBC, where he lasted one year and quit. He joined Fox Sports in1998 but was soon fired and the remainder of his contract bought out. His boss there said of Olbermann, “He’s crazy.”  In 2003, Olbermann was hired by MSNBC where his personality and attacks on “enemies” (typically conservatives and Republicans) have become increasingly strident. The New Yorker’s consensus seemed to be that Olbermann is bright, inventive, clever, outrageous, talented, boiling with anger at political and cultural opponents, and the type of personality diplomatically described as “difficult to work with.” Keith has “issues,” in the modern parlance.  (September 9, 2008)

Burying The Immigration Unpleasantness

• Have we noticed that the matter of immigration has virtually vanished from the public dialogue as the campaign has moved into its final months? This is no accident. Democrats and Republicans are united in their burning desire to avoid addressing the issue.  A wonderful clue came along a few days after the party conventions ended. The Indianapois Star ran a story about a computer analysis done by an independent business of all the major convention speeches. The speeches were entered into a database, then searched by a computer program to calculate the number of times a specific word or phrase was uttered.  Examples were the words Iran, Iraq, Social Security, environment, oil drilling, energy crisis, immigration, Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden, Bush—the usual demonology. Except for a couple of obscure terms which were not uttered at all, the lowest number of mentions for each party was for the word “Immigration”–one by a Republican speaker, three times by a Democrat. (September 7, 2008)

At Last, Something The Dems Are Willing To Drill For In Alaska

• Within days of Sarah Palin’s becoming the Republican vice-presidential candidate, the Democrats air-dropped some 30 lawyers into her home state of Alaska to commence search and destroy operations designed to unearth damaging information to use against Palin, according to Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. These swat teams have fanned out to Anchorage, to the state capital, Juneau, and to Palin’s home town of Wasilla. The Democrats are back in their natural element now—the politics of personal destruction--and that’s comforting. One positive outcome of this will be that if there is anything unsavory or damaging to Palin, it will be unearthed by the Dem Dirt-Diggers (September 9, 2008)

• Was anyone else surprised at the scant coverage given the hoodlums, protestors, and rioters at both party conventions?  Television gave us a few film clips, but with precious little narrative. The national print press essentially ignored them, even when police raided a house in St. Paul identified as the lair of the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee. There they found Molotov cocktails, bags of urine and feces (to be thrown—or the left’s trail mix recipe?), toxic solvents, explosive materials, and other goodies and, one breathless TV reporter said, “even plans to kidnap delegates.”  It was reported that over 800 people were arrested, and there was plenty of TV film of hoodlums breaking store windows, fighting and throwing items at police, destroying property—but no attempt to identify the perps, their organizations, or whose politics they claimed to represent.  Lazy, chicken-hearted journalism at its finest.  (September 7, 2008)

• ABC’s George Stephanopolous was interviewing Obama about the smears and accusations being tossed back and forth in the campaign, and after Stephanopolous pointed out that, contrary to Obama’s claim that McCain had been claiming Obama was a Muslim, McCain had not, in fact, done so. . .Obama then replied, “You are absolutely right, John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. . . .”  Suddenly, silence. Then Stephanopolous could be heard softly saying to Obama, “your Christian faith. . .” Obama then completed his sentence, backtracking to say, “my Christian faith. . .”  (From an audio sound bite played on the Rush Limbaugh program, September 9, 2008)

Punishment, Obama-Style

• “Look, I got two daughters—nine years old and six years old. . .I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”—Barack Hussein Obama, as quoted in a September 12, 2008, column by Patrick Buchanan, who reports that Obama made this remark “near the end of a town hall meeting in Johnstown, Pennsylvania,” in response to a woman in the audience who pled with Obama to stop abortions.

Oops! Cheesy Charlie Caught With A Hand In . . .

• New York Democrat Congressman Charles Rangel finally ‘fessed up September 10 that he had failed to report to the IRS “years worth of rental income” on a beach property he owns in the Dominican Republic. Charlie is 78, has been at the gub’mint trough for decades, is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the nation’s tax laws, and claims he simply never knew the details of his mortgage on the property, how much rent he received from it, or that the income should have been reported to the IRS.  His lawyer said Charlie will file amended returns and end up owing about $10,000 in federal, state, and local tax.  It was announced that a “forensic accountant” would also be hired to help untangle Charlie’s “error-prone” tax returns over the last 20 years. Rangel said he regrets the matter, but all these mistakes in judgment should not mean he has to give up his chairman’s position. Of course not. Only a Republican should.  (September 11, 2008)

Oooooh . . . Charlie’s Bride Must Keep A Sloppy Checkbook

• Within a few days of the revelations of Rangel’s Dominican Republic Rental Property Unpleasantness, it was reported that in 2004 the Congressman’s bride bought a Florida condo for $350,000 and sold it a couple of years later for over $400,000. Rangel, however, got the condo’s value rather remarkably understated on public financial disclosure forms he was required by law to file. On those, he valued the Florida property—which cost him $350,000, remember—at “between $50,001 and $100,000” on the first report. On the second year’s report Rangel said the condo’s value was “between $100,001 and $250,000.” Just honest mistakes, surely.  (September 16, 2008)

. . . And A Car, Too!!!

• And within a week of Charlie Rangel’s “rental income” irregularities, intrepid reporters found and photographed a vintage automobile owned by Rangel which was being permanently stored in the special House of Representatives (free) parking garage, in direct violation of House rules on member use of the garage.  When Charlie got wind that reporters were onto this scam, he quickly arranged to have the car towed away—but not quickly enough. Fox News showed the pictures on national TV. (September 18, 2008)

The Things We Do To Get Elected

• Obama and McCain agreed to a one-day campaigning truce to visit the 9/11 site in Manhattan together, and to appear separately that evening at Columbia University for a “forum” on the single topic of “public service.” The questions from co-hosts Judy Woodruff of PBS and Rick Stengel, editor of Time magazine, stuck to the topic for a brief period, then began shading into political questions with an edge—designed to harpoon McCain (who went first), it seemed to me—that reflected the silliness and partisanship of the setting.  McCain held his own, at least, and even got in a stinging reply to a question about what he would do to promote national service. After listing steps he would take, he paused, and almost as an afterthought, suggested that perhaps even the great university on whose stage they were sitting that very moment—Columbia University—could do its part by reconsidering its ban on allowing the ROTC and military recruiters on its campus.  Boos surged up from the audience. (Later, when Obama was discussing this topic and called Columbia’s ban “a mistake,” the crowd was silent.)  This is, after all, an elite university which welcomes the likes of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose regime executes homosexuals and inflicts various depredations on women and others) to its campus, but won’t allow an American military recruiter to set foot there. Why McCain would dignify such a place and such people with his presence is beyond my comprehension.  (September 12, 2008)

• Each day, it seems, the press trumpets a new attack on Sarah Palin and her family by Democrats and their agents and fellow travelers. This is encouraging at one level. It’s strong evidence that lefties remain fully in the grip of the terrible, terrible hatred, anger, and hypocrisy that consumes their lives. There’s a great danger that people in one crucial slice of the electorate—the 10 or 20 percent “undecided” who will determine the winner--will not be taken in by the Democrats’ politics of personal destruction. Lefties are betting their entire stake they’ll buy in. (September 13, 2008)

• Lurching through the checkout lane at my friendly, neighborhood Twisted Sister Supermarket the other day, I noticed the latest National Enquirer with front-page headlines screaming about Sarah Palin’s “secret affair,” the secret assorted addictions and police records of her son, the terrible secret of her pregnant daughter, and much comma much more!  We know from experience that the Enquirer is as reliable as many of the big drive-bys, but I have just one request here:  Since the drive-bys dodged picking up the Enquirer’s John Edwards Unpleasantness expose for a year, shouldn’t they cut Palin a year’s grace before piling on?  (September 13, 2008)

• “Palin Derangement Syndrome.”—Medical term quickly coined by conservatives to describe the paroxysms of fury and foot-stamping suffered by liberals at the mere mention of Sarah Palin’s name or the sight of her, still alive.  (September 15, 2008)

• “Verdict? McCain normal. Obama odd.”—Peggy Noonan, describing in a Wall Street Journal column her take on the conclusion reached by citizens who viewed the televised Rick Warren interviews of John McCain and B. Hussein Obama from California’s Saddleback Church in late August.  (September 13, 2008)

• “Most crucially, the snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don’t like about the left.”—Peggy Noonan, in a Wall Street Journal column Sept. 13, 2008, remarking on the Democrats’ “atom bomb” attack unleashed on Sarah Palin within a few days of the GOP convention, in which party dirt-diggers spread salacious rumors about her religion, her newborn child, her husband, “then the ritual abuse of (her) 17-year-old (daughter),” who is unmarried and pregnant.

Ooops! Forgot! Lefty Nutballs Get To Choose His Running Mate!

• From the wonderfully spooky, far left precincts comes word that one its most fervent anti-Bush websites, The Huffington Post, is calling John McCain “a traitor. . .who should be tried for treason” for selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. (September 16, 2008)

• A fellow named Jacob Weisberg in 2000 wrote in Slate, an online magazine, that John McCain was the most “cybersavvy” of all the (then) presidential candidates. Today Weisberg is a big Obama booster and now mocks McCain as “flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer.” We must not have had computers back in 2000.  (September 16, 2008)

• “It’s extraordinary,” Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said, “that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.” That silly remark was included in a sparkling column by Jonah Goldberg in the September 17 Indianapolis Star, and was followed by Goldberg’s notation that Sick Willie himself sent exactly two e-mails in his eight years in the Oral Office. Obama TV ads have been ridiculing McCain’s supposed inability to use a computer. Goldberg helpfully points out that one reason might be that the North Vietnamese broke his fingers and both arms during McCain’s over five years in captivity in Hanoi, and that’s made it a little difficult to use them to fly over a computer keyboard. (September 17, 2008)

Not The Sort Of News Lefties Want Circulating . . .

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, freshly bailed out by the gub’mint, have given millions of dollars in political contributions. According to El Rushbo, Senator Chris Dodd ranks first and Senator B. Hussein Obama ranks second in “most dollars received” from the big federally-backed mortgage giants.  Both are Democrats.  (September 17, 2008)

• Freshly Rediscovered Factoid:  A Boy Scouts color guard was booed when it appeared at the 2000 Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia. (September 18, 2008)

Looks Like No Deal

• I tried to make a deal with a moderate lefty the other day, and I failed. The proposed deal was that if he gets to claim that experience and credentials don’t matter when I criticize Obama for lack of them, then I get to say they don’t matter when he claims Sarah Palin doesn’t have them.  “Wait a minute,” he said, “Obama was selected in a series of primaries and caucuses. Palin was appointed.  Big difference.”  I tried to parry. I could see no (relevant) distinction at all in the fact that one was “elected” and the other “appointed.” The former simply meant that millions of Democrat voters felt credentials were not important, while the latter meant that only McCain, who chose her, did.  Either the criticism applies to both, or it applies to neither. Can’t get ‘em to agree, though. (September 18, 2008)

• Democrat surrogates had a pretty big week. First came photographer Jill Greenburg, hired by Atlantic Monthly to do a cover shoot of John McCain for a big article the magazine planned. Unknown to McCain, she doctored the pictures to make McCain look “as bad as she possibly could,” and posted some of the worst versions—including one of a maniacal-looking McCain with blood smeared over his mouth and chin and fanglike teeth--on her personal website. The magazine used one of the less grotesque pictures, and when the story came out, said it would refuse to pay Greenberg for the work. Then someone hacked into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail and circulated some of the contents. The FBI was said to be interested in a Tennessee college student whose father is a Democrat State Senator in that state. The lad reportedly fled when the FBI came knocking. His roommates have been subpoenaed and material confiscated from the dorm room.  Finally, a Saturday Night Live skit hinted darkly—and repeatedly, to make sure we got it—of incest in the Sarah Palin family.  No outcry from an Obama campaign apparently content to let its minions act out their dark obsessions. (September 22, 2008)

Inconvenient Facts

• Joe Biden told a campaign audience that paying higher taxes was a patriotic thing to do. Bad mistake. He opened the door, and within days rightwing media conspirators had rounded up the last 10 years of Biden’s financial and tax return records and published some details from them. It wasn’t pretty. The Weekly Standard, for one, noted that eight years ago when Dick Cheney was a vice presidential candidate he was ripped from hell to breakfast by the New York Times for his level of charitable giving, which the Times felt was miserly. The Standard noted that the Cheneys over 10 years averaged charitable contributions equal to 2.14 percent of adjusted gross income (the national average was about 2.0 percent). The Bidens’ 10-years of returns showed average annual income of $245,000 and an average annual charitable donation of $369--or less than two-tenths of one percent (.0015 percent) of adjusted gross income—making the Cheneys at least four times more generous than the Bidens. There was not even one year in the 10 when Biden reached one percent.  To make it worse, the Standard reported that in 2006 and 2007, John McCain’s returns showed donations equal to 27.3% and 28.6% of AGI. The Obama returns showed giving of 5.8% and 6.1 percent. (September 25, 2008)

Alcie’s Still At The Trough!!

• The name had vanished from the public eyeball—mine, anyway--for several years until Sept. 25, when it came roaring back: Alcie Hastings, the legendary Alcie Hastings, impeached as a judge, but re-elected time and again as a Democrat Congressman from Florida. Alcie, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was the featured speaker midweek at a gathering of Jewish and black representatives and cut loose with a racist diatribe against Sarah Palin. The mini-rant earned him a moment on the Rush Limbaugh Show, the segment where daily idiot soundbites are highlighted. Nobody was there to stand up and ask Alcie about his own sterling record, but just to hear the name, know he is still out there, utterly without shame, feeding at the public trough was enough to make mine a sparkling day.  (September 25, 2008).

. . . And So Is William “90 Grand In My Freezer” Jefferson!!

• Rep. William Jefferson, the cartoonish Louisiana Democrat, is still in office and valiantly fighting a 16-count federal indictment on charges of bribery, racketeering, fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice. By appealing everything every step of the way, Jefferson, indicted in June of 2007, has now assured that his trial date won’t occur in time to further damage his tattered reputation with the locals.  The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Jefferson is asking an Appeals Court to throw out 14 of the 16 counts (it has not returned its verdict), and that the presiding federal judge has announced that a December 2 trial date (previously set) was unlikely to be met.  Jefferson is in a Democrat runoff November 4, which he is expected to win. The general election will be December 6.  Local wags predict Jefferson, whose Wonderland, D.C. apartment was raided by federal officers who found $90,000 in cash in his freezer, will be re-elected.  (October 14, 2008)

• Peggy Noonan is the best political writer at large in the country. She has a regular column in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. Her insights are sharp, her writing style is concise, fresh, and direct. She’s been following the campaigns since last winter and has observations I’ve seen nowhere else. Her column is a national treasure. (September 26, 2008)

• It takes a while, but sometimes the media actually dig it up. The Wall Street Journal in a September 25 article on Countrywide Financial Corp.’s sweetheart loan program—officially called “Friends of Angelo,” to designate a special group of people close to Angelo Mozilo, former Countrymark CEO—listed half a dozen examples of “friends” who got cut-rate interest deals and Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd was one of them. Dodd got a five-year loan of $506,000 at 4.25%. By total coincidence, he was and is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the financial industry. When confronted with these facts earlier this spring, Dodd told reporters he knew nothing about his mortgage and had no idea he was ever given any special treatment. (Later, a Countrywide employee contradicted this claim, saying that Dodd and others were told of their “special rates.”)  Other familiar names listed were former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines (two loans totaling $1.9 million) and former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson—one of Obama’s top advisers—who landed $971,650 for five years at 3.875%. They, too, said they have no idea they ever received any special treatment. Nothing will ever happen as a result of these revelations—not even shame or embarrassment—but at least they are a part of the public record.  (September 28, 2008)

• Watching a full week’s television coverage of the clown show on Capitol Hill—our government trying to cope with the stock market and financial system collapse—was at once hilarious, sickening, deeply depressing, and an embarrassment to our nation. Peaches and I watched endless hours of it and concluded that there’s not a soul out there in Wonderland, D.C. or Wall Street who understands what’s happening, who has the faintest idea of how to stop it, that the American people are being lied to daily about the origin, the severity and gravity of the situation, and, finally, that Congress is a vast whorehouse full of sleazy, craven, hypocritical grifters. Oh, and it’s again obvious that Dubya should never be allowed to appear and speak anywhere in public. (October 3, 2008)

• Bailout II, the second version finally passed by Congress at the end of a week’s bawling and squealing and—above all—“sweetening,” should have been a moment of sorrow for the nation, but it was not. Why sorrow?  Because at an hour of crisis supposedly threatening the entire nation’s future, Congress could not resist stooping to load up the bill with treats for favored constituencies. As usual, this was done in the dead of night, and since panic conditions prevailed, few in the media had even a chance to examine the bill’s fine print, where all the crimes against the rest of us are hidden. Only in the days after, were there any reports—and not many, mind you, because at bottom the media are lazy, too—of the earmarks and goodies. By which time it was too late.  (October 3, 2008)  

Another Capitol Hill Obscenity

• The House quickly passed Bailout II and fled town. Dubya signed it immediately—before anyone could have a second thought, or even a first—and both sides trotted out their spinners to flood the TV and airwaves.  Within hours of its passage, stories began to float about this goodie or that one which had been buried in the huge bill. California announced it could not sell its short term debt and was facing its own crisis. Its former governor, Jerry Brown, was on the air suggesting that the federal government should bail out California, too.  It will be some time before the full text (said to run over 450 pages) is examined and all the surprises unearthed. One would be a fool not to be filled with dread at the precedent this legislation sets, and what hideous jokes and consequences lie ahead for the citizenry.  (October 3, 2008)

Hidden Goodies For ACORN

• The first Big Wall Street Bailout Bill contained a multimillion dollar handout to ACORN, the corrupt voter registration, vote fraud and political activism experts long a Democrat subsidiary and Friend of Obama. That such an obscenity would be hidden in the bill tells us all we need to know about the Democrats who put the money in and the Republicans who went along with it.  They tell us it was removed from the second version.

A Daily Special On The Hill

• “. . . a crap sandwich.”—John Boehner, Republican Ohio Congressman and House Minority Leader, describing the first attempt at a “Wall Street Bailout Bill” which was defeated by a 228-205 House vote.  (September 29, 2008)

Two Decades? More Like A Thousand

• “No one is blameless. Two decades of crapulence by the political class have been prologue to the era of coprophagy now upon us. It is crap sandwiches as far as the eye can see.”—Jonah Goldberg, columnist, commenting on the current Wall Street financial crisis.  (October 1, 2008)

• Genial Lou Dobbs, host of a CNN evening news and talk show bearing his name, has developed quite a following for his outspoken approach to issues, and especially to the clown show on Capitol Hill. Hours after the first Big Wall Street Bailout Bill was voted down in the House, Lou said that CNN reporters had contacted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and The Business Roundtable, both with big headquarters and lobbying offices in Washington, to ask them why they hadn’t been warning the public about the current financial mess. Dobbs said both organizations protested mightily, and said they had, in fact, been warning us. When asked if they could provide even a single example or proof they had done this, neither organization could do so, and both refused to be interviewed on Dobbs’s show. Dobbs is almost alone among the punditry in his vigorous denunciation of each day’s sad parade of scurrilous behavior and hypocrisy from the ruling and political elites.  He is a national treasure. (September 29, 2008)

There’s Nothing Quite Like A Public Record

• El Rushbo—the Maha Rushie--is too, too ornery. On his radio show the day the House voted down the big Wall Street bailout bill, he put together and played—several times--- a stream of sound bites taken from a 2004 House finance committee hearing on an investigative report on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac activities. The report, prepared by a $158,000-per-year OFHEO (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) bureaucrat, Armando Falcon, Jr., outlined in considerable detail the scandalous and criminal activity going on in those agencies, and offered a clear warning of the danger to the financial system which they threatened. (The report and Falcon, by the way, were praised by the Washington Post in its December 28, 2004, edition.)  Limbaugh’s sound bites captured committee members attacking the report, attacking Falcon, and defending both the agencies and their executives. Democrat Rep. William Lacy Clay of Missouri accused Falcon of “playing politics” by uncovering crimes and said the report was a “political lynching” of Franklin Raines, the executive who later was found to have been involved in a $200 million fraud involving falsified signatures and the shifting of expenses to another period so he and others magically became eligible for huge bonuses. The legendary Maxine Watts, a Democrat from California, said, “We don’t have a crisis” at the agencies and specifically praised the superb leadership of Raines. Congressman Greg Meeks, a Democrat from New York, attacked the regulator—even said he was “pissed off” about it--for writing the report. Rep. Ed Royce, a Democrat from California, called the report a “political witch hunt.”  Congressman Artur Davis, a Democrat from Alabama, echoed Royce and the others. Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said, “I don’t see anything in the report that raises safety and soundness issues.” Raines himself told the committee the subprime assets in question were “riskless.”  All the sound bites came from C-SPAN archives of the hearing and are available to the public—even the drive-by media. (September 29, 2008)  (A Post Script: One of these people, Artur Davis of Alabama, later changed his position. In a statement released in October, 2008, Davis said: “Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”)

• “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”—U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, responding to a question from a Forbes magazine reporter asking how the Treasury Secretary (Hank Paulson) had arrived at the amount he proposed American taxpayers pay to bail out the Wall Street financial crisis perps. (From Jonah Goldberg’s column in the Indianapolis Star) (October 1, 2008)

• “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ”—Joe Biden, Democrat Senator from Maryland, while being interviewed by CBS’s Katie Couric on the campaign trail. Couric did not point out to Biden that (a) FDR was not president in 1929 when the stock market crashed, and (b) television was not available in American homes until a decade or more later, nor did she ask even one brilliant follow-up question of Biden. Couric’s response to Biden’s bizarre observations was, “Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden’s strong suits.” (From Ann Coulter’s column published October 1, 2008)

• “Responsible government is impossible under the present system.”—Mark Steyn, in an online column for National Review, the day after the Senate passed a (second) gussied up Wall Street bailout bill, heavily larded with unrelated goodies and surprises—essentially all unknown to the 99 Senators who voted on the legislation and likely had not even read the bill.

• Torrents of media babble on the second big Obama-McCain debate. Nobody wants to face the truth: these debates are a joke and a fraud, and American citizens are not being educated by them. They do, however, serve to keep a large portion of the public sedated and under the delusion that there actually are informative debates, and that they are in humble service to the great, transparent system of American government. (October 5, 2008)

• They could hold a thousand debates and poor John McCain would not win a one of them. He is painfully outmatched in this format. Obama is smooth and fluent and glib, an expert public speaker. McCain is a series of grimaces, tics, twitches, stilted sentences, stumbles. He misses obvious openings for tough follow-up questions. He fails to pursue opportunities which beg for exploitation. He won’t get nasty and rough, and I doubt he could do it effectively, anyway. His campaign has been fitful, erratic, disorganized—in a word, incoherent. McCain is as bad, in his own way, a public speaker as the embarrassing Dubya. None of this necessarily means McCain’s ideas or policies are inferior. It’s just that he can’t effectively communicate them—whatever they are. Thus Obama has an easy time of it, never has to defend himself against a coherent, relentless opponent. He can get away with empty ideas clothed in compelling rhetoric. Few in any audience ever notice, because the questions are puffballs, the follow-up doesn’t exist, and it’s always time to move on to the next commercial break.  McCain is doomed. He and Bob Dole are the two most inept Republican candidates of my lifetime.  (October 17, 2008)

McCain Has A Brilliant Future: Standup Comedian

• The very evening of the day I wrote the above note of despair over McCain’s poor “debate” skills, he gave the speech of his lifetime at the Alfred E. Smith Foundation Memorial Dinner in New York, where he and Barack Hussein Obama were honored guests. McCain’s roast in a prepared speech was wickedly funny and seamlessly delivered with the comic timing of a master. Conservatives everywhere must have groaned, and wondered, Where has this guy been for the last year?  I think the earlier observation still stands. In debate formats against Obama, McCain is sadly outclassed. Last night he far outdid his left-wing opponent in a format he’s much better at.  Incidentally, Obama in his speech, revealed that his middle name was not Hussein, but Steve. (October 17, 2008)   

Nothing Drives A Liberal Crazy Like Religion

• We are entering the final slaughter-them-all assault phase of the presidential campaign. My e-mail box is peppered daily by increasingly strident, enraged messages assailing McCain and Palin—especially Palin’s religious component. Lefties are snorting hysterically about their enemies talkin’ in tongues, snake-handling, self-lashing with whips and branches, eyes rolling back in heads, foaming at the mouth at the altar, people actually believing what the Bible says—you know, crazy, demented, dangerous stuff like that. You get the feeling that to a modern liberal no greater sin can be committed than believing in God--though they seem to have no objection to the enlistment of God by Islamic terrorists. (October 9, 2008)

Let’s Start A List: Barney, Chris . . .

• One of my tiny little dreams came true today. I’ve felt since news of the big financial crisis broke that few things were more important than identifying and prosecuting the actual people who did this to us, and imprisoning those found guilty.  Today, at a McCain-Palin rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a woman who said she was a realtor stood up and asked McCain that very question—“Will you assure us that as President you will take immediate action to investigate, prosecute, and the name the names of those responsible?”  McCain swore that he would, and said, “. . . and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd are two of them.”   Let’s hope McCain and Palin stay on the offensive on this and many other issues. (October 9, 2008)

Me, Me, Me, Me, Me . . .

• Pollster Frank Luntz, now well known for his “focus groups” of “undecided” voters, has been all over television as the presidential campaign has heated up.  Volunteers who claim they are unbiased and undecided are wired up and monitored as the candidates blab on. The “science” of this, to the extent there is any, is interesting, but what the volunteers reveal about themselves, and about the voting populace, is a sorrowful matter. Their comments in Luntz’s post-debate interviews, mostly follow the same theme: What’s the candidate going to do for me?  Rarely does anyone show any interest in what might be good for the nation. (October 13, 2008)

Supporters Try To Inspire The Candidate—There’s A Clue In There

• As the campaign entered its last three weeks, TV presented several sound bites of citizens in the audiences at McCain-Palin rallies standing up, taking the microphone, and expressing great anger and exasperation at—especially—McCain. Why? Well, because they think McCain is conducting a lousy campaign, and is way too soft on his opponents. I happen to agree. McCain’s campaign is floundering and his supporters are dispirited. This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows politics.  McCain is a mediocre campaigner—barely more exciting and effective than Bob Dole, the worst Republican candidate of my lifetime. (October 13, 2008)

Must Be Sumpin’ In That 16th District Water!

• Remember Mark Foley? He was the Republican Congressman from Florida’s 16th District who resigned from Congress in disgrace when he was caught in a Congressional page scandal. Well, the Democrat who replaced him, Congressman Tim Mahoney, is now snared in a scandal of his own. He’s unjustly alleged to have paid a former mistress (Patricia Allen, then a Mahoney aide) $121,000 to shut up and go away.  Some spoilsports have suggested this might constitute—gasp!--a bribe. Maloney campaigned and won the seat in the November, 2006, election on a promise to restore integrity and ethics to politics. But—dang!--somehow this story leaked out. Dem bigwigs met in private with Mahoney, who is married. Nancy Pelosi has ordered an ethics committee investigation, and lefties dove for cover. They’d hardly settled into their bunkers when, within 24 hours, another story erupted. This one said Mahoney had engaged in a second affair, this time with a high-ranking Martin County official around the same time.  (October 14, 2008)

Ooooooooooooooh. Wicked!

• Question: What do Osama bin Laden and Barack Hussein Obama have in common?  Answer: They both have friends who’ve bombed the Pentagon.—El Rushbo, The All-Sensing, All-Knowing, All-Feeling Maha Rushie, on his radio show October 15, 2008.

• Obama, The Redeemer, told a plumber at one of his rallies the other day that he, Obama, believed the federal tax system should be used to “spread the wealth.” (October 14, 2008)
• Barack Hussein Obama’s friend, William Ayers, was briefly cornered by Chicago Tribune reporters at Ayers’ office on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus this week, but had little to say. His office door was decorated with, among other items, pictures of Che Guevara, Malcom X, and convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. (October 15, 2008)
• “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.”—William Ayers, Weather Underground terrorist bomber and now “just a guy who lives in Obama’s neighborhood,” after learning that all federal charges against him had been dropped on a technicality, quoted in an early 1980s interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier.

How About The ‘Shadow Cabinet,’ Then?

• Obama has begun running radio ads assuring Americans that he, Obama, will not be giving a position in his Cabinet to the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber and guy from the neighborhood he barely knows, William Ayers. (October 15, 2008)

Slip-Slidin’ Away . . .

• Peaches and I have failed miserably this political season, despite a jocular spirit of fellowship and goodwill, in all attempts to get our Democrat  acquaintances to acknowledge even tiny scraps of information which reflect negatively on their political idols. Their instant, reflexive response is to either deny the information is true, or to deflect the question and spin it into a counter-allegation or an unrelated subject.  Like their real-life operatives blanketing television across the nation, they successfully resist being pinned down on anything. Now and then, their replies are so eerily alike that we leave convinced they’ve been to Democrat Spin School seminars to acquire their talking points, or perhaps get them daily by e-mail. Lately, we’ve tried another tack.  We preface our question with, “I know that you deny the following allegations down to their very last syllable, but for purposes of this conversation, please assume that they are true,” and then we ask our question:  “If these allegations are true, would it matter to you?” They bristle, sputter, and rapidly morph into spin mode, and that is the end of that.  We know ours is a hopeless cause. Because the truth is, it doesn’t matter to them. They proved that by defending Sick Willie for eight consecutive years, and continue doing it to this day.  But we’ll soldier on, somehow.  (October 15, 2008)

• “ACORN is to fair elections what the late Frank Perdue was to chickens—deadly.”—Unidentified guest (a talk show host from a Baltimore television station, first name Tom) on the Lou Dobbs Tonight show on CNN October 14, 2008.

Strap It On, Lads!

• Last winter at a “Full Kevlar” power breakfast at a tony suburban Indianapolis LePeep with some liberal acquaintances, each of us placed upon the table a slip of paper bearing his prediction for the Fall 2008 election. Mine read: Obama by a 56%-42% margin. Months have passed and within a few weeks we vote. I’m willing to stick with something of that order—say, 55-45 at a minimum.  “Full Kevlar,” by the way, is the security level declared in advance of each such power breakfast. The level is a function of the meeting agenda. It rises to a minimum of “Full Kevlar” whenever politics are to be discussed. This means all participants are advised to present themselves clad in full body armor—with their usual side arms, of course.  (October 17, 2008) 

• Trying to make a point that the drive-by media all think alike, The Maha Rushie—El Rushbo in street parlance—today played seven consecutive sound bites of big media political gurus saying almost exactly the same thing in exactly the same words. In this case, they all accused McCain of “going negative” and “turning people off “ (code for: the in-the-tank-for-Obama media people) the instant he brought up the subject lefties desperately don’t want to talk about: BHO’s association with William Ayers.  It was hilarious hearing them all chanting it, one after another.  (October 16, 2008)

   

Mr. Oil For Food Scandal Speaks . . .

• Kofi Annan, the corrupt and ridiculous former president of the UN, was quoted today saying that an Obama victory would be “phenomenal” for the world. (October 16, 2008)

• Colin Powell announced today he is backing BHO for president.  This is news?  Powell is a Democrat and always has been. He served under false pretenses—claiming to be a Republican, or allowing others to say and believe he was—as Dubya’s Secretary of State. This is the first honest thing he’s done politically in a good while. (October 19, 2008)

• While the big media drive-by media are orgasmic that Colin Powell’s finally formally aboard with Obama, only an occasional crackpot conservative has noticed that Powell’s son, Michael, is endorsing John McCain.  (October 20, 2008)

Sorry, Character Is Not An Issue

• McCain and Palin supporters and the conservative punditry are still blanketing the television yack shows and media outlets to pound away at the notion that Steve Obama’s many relationships with people and organizations of questionable motives, behavior, and beliefs somehow translate to a “character issue” for Obama himself. They’re wasting their time. Eight years of the Clintons proved definitely and for all time that Democrats and their vast constituencies—at least half America’s population--don’t care about character and will not allow it to be an issue. Righties are dreaming if they think it will ever count to these people.  (October 19, 2008)

• ACORN will prove to be among the great cover-up stories of the 2008 campaigns. This subsidiary of the Democrat Party has had its offices raided by the FBI, is under investigation in at least a dozen states, and has been linked to the subprime mortgage scandal. Its employees and officials have been charged with voter registration fraud, and ACORN has submitted hundreds of thousands of fraudulent or suspicious voter registration forms this year in states like Ohio, Indiana, Nevada and others. This is one of the great political scandals of our era, and Democrats are assiduously at work defending ACORN and denying all allegations. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has helped the Democrats by ruling that the Ohio Republican Party has no legal standing to sue the State of Ohio to enforce voter registration laws and procedures--some of which the Ohio Secretary of State (Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat), has admitted she is not enforcing. (ACORN has submitted at least 200,000 “suspicious” new voter registrations in Ohio). There will be a lot of Republican huffing and puffing and foot-stamping, but ultimately they will have neither the will nor the resources to halt this tidal wave of corruption favoring Democrats.  A few ACORN-ites will be thrown to the wolves to pacify the rabble, and then the media will pronounce the matter ancient history—time to move on to a brave new world.  (October 20, 2008)

• “They tied themselves to the deck of the Titanic.”—David Brooks, New York Times columnist, on Meet The Press October 19, 2008, referring to a McCain staff decision, made last winter, not to use a “maverick” theme, but to run a traditional-style campaign--one tied to the Republican Party. (October 19, 2008)

A Little Peek Behind The Curtain . . .

• “. . .there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax. . .at a point down the road, to recover some of this money.”—Barney Frank, Democrat Congressman, during an interview on CNBC by Maria Bartiromo, who noted that if a second economic stimulus bill is passed “there will be a lot of things to pay for (in it)” and then asked Frank if he would be encouraging Obama to reduce some of his announced big spending plans. 

• Last night on the Mike Huckabee Show (yes, Fox News has given Mike his own show, on weekends), the host offered a tiny snapshot to the emerging ACORN Voter Registration Upleasantness Said To Be Unfolding Across America. He had as guests two young people who are part of it : Freddie Johnson, registered in Ohio 72 times by ACORN, and Mercedes Maggitt, registered 20 times in Ohio.  Both admitted it to the nation.  I can’t help wondering how many of those Maggitts and Johnsons will get to vote in Ohio in a couple weeks. (October 20, 2008).

• AOL ceaselessly runs polls to see how we feel about things: Britney’s implants, Lindsay’s drug bust, Alec’s tantrums, the latest clodhopper kicked off Dancing With The Stars,--you know, the really important business of our lives.  Today it was about political crankiness and right-wing nutballs—right up my alley. I voted, then—always curious—checked the poll results.  At four o’clock in the afternoon, they were: 1) Do you think liberals are anti-American? (11,115 votes cast, 63% No, 37% Yes); 2) Does negativity (presumably “negative campaigning”) influence your vote? (9,579 votes, 51% Yes, 49% No); 3) Do you think Obama supporters are Socialists? (9,537 votes, 55% No, 45% Yes); 4) How important is the notion of patriotism to your vote? (8,684 votes, 60% Very, 20% Somewhat, 20% Not At All).   (October 22, 2008) 

Another Shining Moment For The Left

• Code Pink sent a coven of its shrill harridans to disrupt a speech being given by Karl Rove in San Francisco at a mortgage bankers meeting, and one of them, said to be named Janine Boneparth, tried to handcuff Karl and make a citizens arrest for treason. She was somehow escorted offstage and five in all were removed from the building.  (October 22, 2008)

• Adam Lerrick, a professor economics at Carnegie Mellon University, had some fun with facts this week in a Wall Street Journal column titled “Obama and The Tax Tipping Point.”  He crunched a few of the promises made in Obama’s  big tax and spend plans for America in an attempt to answer the cosmic question: “What happens when a majority of voters are net beneficiaries of government?”  2006 Census data, the latest available, show that 220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million—40 per cent—paid no income taxes. Zero. Lerrick says that that figure will jump to 49% when Obama’s “refundable tax credits” are doled out and remove 18 million more voters from the tax rolls. Lecker says that at that point, 24 million more voters will pay a bare minimal amount of income tax—less than 5% of their income and less than $1,000 annually.  Lerrick foresees ever-increasing numbers of people who pay little to no tax,leading then to increasing tax rates and a downward creep of tax brackets to snare more and more of “the rich.” These will work as disincentives to work and entrepreneurship, until America arrives at a “tipping point”—the place where more than half the voters receive more in government handouts and benefits than they pay in taxes. Those people, naturally, will continue to vote their self-interest (more benefits) and will increasingly, in a democracy, outnumber the tax-paying group. Once that point is reached, little of good for the country can ensue, Lerrick opines.  My personal hope is that what will happen is what happens in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged: the producing class simply goes on strike. Lerrick seems to believe that the tipping point might arrive during an Obama administration. But then, what does he know? (October 22, 2008)

Drew’s ‘Gotcha! Moment’ Bites Back

• The first sentence in Byron York’s article on Sarah Palin in the October 20, 2008 issue of National Review reads exactly (italics mine):  “Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or—or, well, all of the above.”  Not long after the article appeared, CNN’s Drew Griffin saw it and must have smelled red meat. In a high profile interview with Palin, the transcript of which has fallen into the hands of the enemy, Griffin popped this statement on Sarah: “The National Review has a story saying that, you know, “I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.”  This of course is not what the story said at all, and Griffin surely knew it. He had dropped the key opening phrase, “Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president. . .” and built his Gotcha Moment on the completely distorted remainder.  Palin, no doubt to Griffin’s astonishment, didn’t blubber and stammer. Instead she went instantly on the counter-attack, asking Drew two or three times who wrote that story. Griffith had no idea who, and himself beat a flustered retreat to other topics. Within 24 hours Griffin was back on CNN admitting he had altered the context of the National Review’s opening paragraph and offering the absolutely silly explanation that he did so because he “wanted to keep the interview moving.” However, neither he nor CNN directly apologized. This is a classic example of how media bias operates. Victims of it should fight back vigorously the moment they realize they are in its presence—no holds barred, no prisoners. (October 23, 2008)

Lenin’s Dream

• “Their pensions go first.”—Joe Biden, red-meating the crowd at a Colorado campaign rally. Joe promised the roaring throng that he and BHO would wage a full-scale attack on corporate greed, and vowed to target executives of failing companies who drew big salaries.  (October 25, 2008)

• Peaches and I kicked off this last week before the big election with some early voting at a tony suburban Hard Cheese precinct.  She went dressed as Minnie Mouse. I went as Bullwinkle. We were greeted with jaunty cheers. The atmosphere was festive, though reminiscent of a day room party in One Flew Over The Cuckooo’s Nest.  We zipped through and out the door in less than 15 minutes—no questions asked!  We’ll give it a few more forays as the week runs out, then get ready for a hectic Election Day. We’ve got plenty of costumes and matching voter registration documents, just in case some troublemaking prick asks. (October 27, 2008)

Good! Let’s Hope He Gets Prison

• Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the dastardly Republican Sultan of Earmarks, got the surprise of his life when a federal jury convicted him of seven counts of making false statements to conceal some $250,000 of campaign gifts from an oil company executive.  He faces a maximum of 35 years in prison, but will appeal and either get the verdict overturned or, if it’s upheld, be given only probation due to his esteemed status and age (84).  He is running for re-election and had hoped the trial verdict would not be delivered till after the nation votes November 4.  Tough break. John McCain promptly said Stevens should resign, in amusing contrast to the Democrat Party, which has spent the last 15 or so years defending Sick Willie but demands Stevens resign right this instant. Stevens has been at the Senate trough for over 40 years.  (October 28, 2008)

The Joke, However, Is On Us

• “Senate rules do not bar convicted felons from serving.”—from a Lost Angeles Times article on the jury conviction of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who apparently can remain a Senator even if sent to prison.

The Most Honest Thing Bob Beckel Has Said In The Entire Campaign

• “I hope they don’t release till after the election.”—Bob Beckel, Democrat consultant, on Fox News October 28, referring to the announcement that the Lost Angeles Times has obtained—but swears it will not release—a  videotape of B. Hussein Obama at a 2003 “farewell dinner” for then Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, who is the co-founder of an organization calling itself the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which supports the PLO terrorist organization. The more that’s known about Obama, the worse it is for his candidacy.  (October 29, 2008)

The Door Is Wide Open And The Brotherhood Beckons For Ted

• “Senate rules do not bar convicted felons from serving, and it would take a two-thirds vote to expel Stevens if he were reelected. The (Senate) has not expelled anyone in more than a century.”—from a Lost Angeles Times report on Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ corruption conviction. (November 1, 2008)

Anecdotal Evidence

• For about a month leading up to the election, I listened to 4-5 hours a day of talk radio and would estimate that Obama ads outnumbered McCain ads by at least 20-1 daily during that period. There were many days when an Obama ad would run during every obscene profits break for hours on end, and there were no countering McCain ads. None. Money talks. (November 3, 2008)

• The 2008 election was a perfect storm favoring Democrats.  Obama had huge advantages in every category: money, media bias, organization, coherence, celebrity, ability to articulate an idea, even the course of events. McCain was simply awful as a campaigner:  he repeatedly failed to exploit opportunities, he was inarticulate, incoherent, under-financed, never stirred the hearts of even those in his own party. The outcome was inevitable. Now Republicans are banished to the wilderness where they so richly deserve to be. It’s not implausible to see a future where conservatives are permanent fugitives in America’s remote wilderness areas, clad in rags and living in caves and catacombs, subsisting on seeds, tubers, insects, whatever water they can squeeze from native vegetation and whatever small animals they can capture with snares or slingshots; trembling, emaciated creatures in burrows hiding from periodic liberal raiding parties sent out from the great urban areas they control to terrorize, capture, or kill them. 

Obama Family Footnote

• Late, oh so very late, in the campaign, it was somehow learned  (by a British newspaper, The Times) that Obama has an aunt named Zeituni Onyango living illegally in the United States. She was ordered to leave the U.S. four years ago by an immigration judge, an Associated Press story said, but must have consulted with Al Gore and decided the order had no controlling legal authority, for she ignored it and set up shop in a Boston public housing project, where she lives today. Obama himself told the AP he did not know his aunt was living in the U.S. illegally, and added that he believes that “laws covering the situation should be followed.” This is a story worth following, but don’t count on the drive-bys to do so. (November 4, 2008)

Perp Watch Update

• A clarifying note about what the legendary Senator Ted Stevens faces:  If he refuses to resign and returns in January, 2009, to Wonderland, D.C., for the new Congressional session, his 99 collegial co-conspirators can refuse to seat him--if they can muster a majority (51) vote. If that fails and he is seated, it would then take a two-thirds vote (67) to expel Ted, a fuzzy, lovable convicted felon, from the swarm’s midst.  Back in Stevens’ lair in Alaska, he has defiantly informed us he is not resigning. He has appealed his conviction. Resolving that could take a year or more.  The other 99 Senators ought to take a cue from Senator Obama and just vote “Present” if the Ted Stevens Unpleasantness comes up for a vote. (November 7, 2008)

Who Can Argue That Turnabout Is Not Fair Play?

• “For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president. Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.”—Ann Coulter, in her post-election analysis column. (November 6, 2008)

• One of the oddest election night scenes on television was of Obama onstage in Chicago’s Grant Park amid a sea of flag-waving, cheering, weeping supporters as his vice-presidential running mate, Joe Biden, came forward. The camera gave us a big, bold shot of Biden approaching, then switched to a side view as Biden covered the last 15 or 20 feet, beaming, with his right hand outstretched in the handshake position. The two of them shook hands, hugged, back-patted, then turned to wave to the ecstatic throng. Throughout this entire sequence—approach, hug and pat, turn and wave, then stand together waving-- Biden beamed joyously. Obama was stone-faced, not a flicker of a smile, lips pursed.  I saw this several times in replay and nothing changed. Most peculiar.  (November 4, 2008)

• Less than 48 hours into my post-election binge vomiting came an invitation to attend a charity auction in a dressed-for-the-1950s mode.  I told the host I was hardly in a mood for any false gaiety, but would consent to attend if I could come as Vlad The Impaler at a Democrat National Convention, moving through the crowd with my broadsword swishing. That would really boost my spirits, I said. Silence. I heard the phone drop and clatter, and then a strangled squeak of a sound. I took that for a no deal, and hung up.  (November 6, 2008)

• Charles O’Byrne, chief of staff for New York’s governor David Patterson, has been accused of failing to file federal tax returns from 2001-2005. His lawyer told eager reporters that “non-filer syndrome” was the culprit. This rare malady, the shyster said, afflicts “very high-functioning people” who have no trouble performing most of life’s tasks, “but there is something they can’t do, and many times that causes them not to be able to file their tax returns.” The feds didn’t buy in. O’Byrne had to scrape up $300,000 to settle, and was forced to resign as well.   National Review magazine commented that a little jail time and seizure of all O’Byrne’s assets might have provided a cure. (November 14, 2008)

Slinging It Far And Wide For Mr. Bridge To Nowhere

• We’ve been deprived of the beautiful spectacle of witnessing the Senate’s first convicted felon returning to Wonderland, D. C., to be seated—Alaska’s 85-year-old Ted  (Mr. Bridge To Nowhere) Stevens has officially lost his bid for a seventh term, and is retiring. He is appealing his felony conspiracy conviction on all seven charges of lying about gifts on his financial disclosure forms. Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat, will replace him. Stevens got a standing ovation after his farewell speech from the Senate floor. He told adoring colleagues he was confident that God had more work for him to do. Robert “Kleagle  Bob” Byrd,  the doddering, 91-year-old senior Senator from West Virginia and Stevens’ legendary fellow earmarker, struggled up from his wheelchair to sob a personalized version of a famous Irish blessing, and told Ted, “I love you.” Senator Dingy Harry Reid called Stevens “a lion.”  Senator Daniel Inouye urged Stevens to “stand tall.” Senator Norm Coleman praised Stevens for “the love that’s in his heart.”  Senator Orrin Hatch recounted how he loved it so when Stevens wore his Incredible Hulk tie—to work. It went on and on like this, this merry band of grifters, cowards, and wheedlers pulling up bucket after steaming bucket from their deep—indeed, bottomless--wells of hypocrisy, and throwing it all over themselves and the hallowed chambers. (November 17, 2008)

You Could Knock Me Over With A Feather

• The preposterous Democrat from Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District, William “How’d That 90 Grand In Cold Cash Ever Get In My Freezer, Anyway?” Jefferson, has lost his bid for re-election. Jefferson, whose Wonderland, D. C., abode yielded $90,000 to raiding federal agents who looked inside his freezer, has been indicted on assorted charges including bribery and money laundering. He lost by a slim 50-47 percent margin to a Republican attorney, Anh “Joseph” Cao, who will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. (December 6, 2008)

Ben Stein’s Lonely Voice

• Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch have been left stunned by the recent devastation of their 401(K) savings plans, stock market investments, and other life’s efforts to obey their superiors. The damage so far runs into the trillions of dollars. The clowns who pass for our leaders seem to come up with a new bailout plan every day—but so far nobody’s bailing out the average American left holding the bag of sewage. Ben Stein, writing in the November 2008 issue of The American Spectator, is the first person I’ve run across who has put these feelings into print (except for some loon on this website back on October 26, 2008).  I quote him—Ben Stein-- extensively. Referring to the “mortgage crisis and related derivatives,” Stein writes, “. . . I think it was all a huge conspiracy. Cunning men created these faulty mortgage bonds. Cunning men sold them to the public. More cunning men sold them short. Then they ultimately created derivatives around them that created a financial Doomsday Device, to paraphrase (Warren) Buffett.” Turning to his own case, he continues, “ . . . and now because of major incompetence on Wall Street and (what I am sure is) a conspiracy to wreck the financial system, I am losing a huge chunk of my savings. This is no accident. This was human misconduct on a titanic scale . . . I wonder if there is a crime based on economic treason. If not, there should be.”  And then he gets to the core of it for most of us. “Everyone told us to save. We did save. They told us to save most in the stock market. We did. We diversified. Nothing worked, except  having it in Treasury bonds or guaranteed CDs. We citizens didn’t do anything wrong and we got looted fantastically. The system has been hollowed out by thieves and gangsters in pinstripe suits. And Henry Paulson just sat there sucking his thumb and asking for even less regulation and Chris Cox did the same over at the SEC . . . It is almost unbelievable the damage the finance people have done. Never in peacetime has so much damage been done to so many by so few . . .Treason. Or something like it.”  (December 1, 2008)

• Television news is jammed every night with strident comment about the financial disaster facing the country, of committee hearings in Wonderland, with silver-haired eminences emerging every few hours to announce a new bailout plan. Entire states are now in line, begging for handouts. But in spite of the yacking throngs, one thing we don’t hear a soul calling for is the identification, apprehension, indictment, trial, and conviction of the perpetrators. I really doubt this is a political matter. I think both Democrats and Republicans are involved in this disaster and up to their eyeballs in it. They’ll do anything in their power to keep us distracted while they slither to safety. There won’t be any justice in this until the perps are rounded up and made to pay for it.  (December 1, 2008)

• “ . . .shills, hacks, pussycats, apologists, professional liars, sellouts, and suck-ups.”—a short list of roles played by the big mainstream media in support of the B. Hussein Obama campaign, as iterated in the December 8, 2008, edition of The Weekly Standard magazine.

Not A Chance, Joe

• “Indeed, as the weeks have passed since the election, I’ve felt—as an urban creature myself—less restricted, less defensive. Empowered, almost. Is it possible that, as a nation, we’re shedding our childlike, rural innocence and becoming more mature, urban, urbane . . .?”—Joe Klein, lefty columnist, bloviating in the November 24 issue of Time magazine.

And Don’t Forget Eight Years of Dubya In Between!

• “In 1996 it was Bob Dole’s turn to run for President, and. . .(he) ran the worst campaign in memory. In 2008, it was John McCain’s turn. . .(and his) campaign was no better than Dole’s.”—Jed Babbin, writing in the November 10 issue of Human Events.

• “In recent years I have come to think that some of the worst people in the United States have gone to Harvard or Yale Law Schools: Mr. and Mrs. Eliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. William Clinton, and countless others . . . these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead.” –Joseph Epstein, in the December 8, 2008, issue of The Weekly Standard.

Memo To BO: Lose The Cap

• A newsfilm clip a couple of days before Christmas showed president-elect Obama wearing a baseball cap—at least the bill was forward-- as he came down a ramp to an airport tarmac. Somebody’s got to reach Obama and tell him this silliness is beneath the dignity of the office—what little is left of it, anyway. He should stop it by inauguration day.  (December 23, 2008)

• MSN.com ran a poll inviting the rabble to give Dubya’s eight-year presidency a letter grade. Over 240,000 of us had “voted” when I checked. Dubya got an “A” from 12%, a “B” from 17%, and a “C” from 10%. Sixteen percent gave him a “D” and 45% said “F”.  I said “D.” His presidency is a sad mess to contemplate, and I doubt history will be very kind to him.  But there will always be this for the Democrats to stare at in the mirror: Dubya beat their very best (Gore and Kerry)--and did it twice. Nothing can ever erase that.  It should humble lefties, but it won’t. (December 31, 2008)

• Dubya’s legacy? Fred Barnes, writing in The Weekly Standard, makes a case that Dubya accomplished some positive things. Barnes will be a lonely guy. We do know that thanks to Dubya and the current incarnation of the Republican Party, a whole generation of young Americans came of age linking them both to ineptitude, mismanagement, and incompetence. It will be a long time, if ever, before this damage is overcome. The Republicans belong in the wilderness for a very long time.  (December 31, 2008)

Nanny State-O-Rama

• Obama wants to postpone the switchover from analog to high definition television signals because, he says, there are too many people who have not yet filed for a free government coupon (worth $40) to help them buy a converter box. The change has been scheduled for years to occur in February, 2009. Obama’s plea is a keen, though unintended, insight into the state of decay, decadence, and sheer indolence of American society as a pathetic 2008 rolled to a close. (December 31, 2008)

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