HYPOCRISY IS THE HOMAGE...

that vice pays to virtue.

The White House has criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plans to stop in Syria during a Middle East trip that began Friday. "We discourage members of Congress to make such visits to Syria," said White House deputy spokeswoman Dana Perino. "This is a country that is a state sponsor of terror." Pelosi is scheduled to meet with Syria's president next weekend, according to Syria's ambassador to the United States

********************************************************************************
Yes, Syria is a state sponsor of terror. I'm sure that George Bush is mentally ticking off the names of the countries that sponsor terrorism as he arranges for the next White House visit of the Saudi Clown Prince turned King and his next visit with Bandar Bin Sultan of Shit. No doubt Donald Rumsfeld warmly agrees with Ms. Perino's sentiments as he looks back fondly upon his visits to Iraq, replete with photo-op handshakes with Saddam Hussein himself.

The White House cannot tell members of Congress where to go (only we the people - allegedly - can). Nixon visited China and Reagan went behind the Iron Curtain, and somehow, the world survived. The mere act of visiting a country that sponsors terrorism doesn't make the visitor a terrorist. Halliburton just moved its headquarters to Dubai. Are we to believe that the next time DICK Cheney pays the company a visit, he is acting as a "terrorist?" What's next? Calling all of the Board Members of The Carlyle Group terrorists because of that group's numerous connections to terror? The GOP doesn't care about winning the struggle against Islamothugism. Instead of its getting off the pot, it is a mere pot, that is calling the kettle black.

HATE BASE

I don't know who John Stoole Gordon is, but this is an excellent post:

However hard he labors at wishing away the serious legacy of conservative racism, homophobia, and nativism, John Steele Gordon—for all his powers of the pen—can’t make it so.
Let’s begin by grounding this argument in good historiography. We are, after all, a history Web site, first and foremost.
Over the past 20 years, a host of scholars have written extensively on the central role that race-baiting played in the rise of the conservative right.
Dan Carter’s work on George Wallace (The Politics of Rage), that unrivaled merchant of hate, demonstrates that Wallace was, in fact, an important gateway politician who helped many opponents of racial integration , both North and South, make the move from the Democratic party to the Republican party.
Matthew Dallek’s fine book on the 1966 California gubernatorial election, The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics, is very persuasive in its argument that Reagan played heavily on popular opposition to residential integration in order to defeat the incumbent, Pat Brown. Similarly Thomas Sugrue’s absolutely indispensable work on Detroit, Origins of the Urban Crisis, goes a long way in demonstrating that popular, white working-class opposition to neighborhood integration helped bring down the labor-Democratic party coalition in Michigan, a point that Stephen Meyer makes in a national context in his important book, As Long As They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods.
Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, in their seminal study of 1970s and 1980s politics, Chain Reaction, reveal the clever, but not always subtle, way in which GOP operatives have used issues like taxes, crime, and welfare to appeal to raw race prejudices.
More recently, my friends Kevin Kruse, a Princeton University historian and author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, and Matt Lassiter, a history professor at the University of Michigan, and author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South, have shown how deeply bound up were race antagonism and the rise of post-1960s conservatism. Both of these books are essential reads for anyone wishing to know more about how the Republican party achieved its monumental rise to power after 1968.
So I’m sorry, Mr. Gordon. But unless all of America’s leading experts on the rise of the conservative right are wrong, race-baiting has been a central part of the conservative project for at least 30 years, and probably longer. It’s not the only component of conservatism, but it’s a central one.
We needn’t necessarily take a crash course in the recent historiography of race relations to prove the case. The newspapers make the same point about conservative intolerance—and here the intolerance isn’t always directed toward African-Americans. It reflects a general conservative problem with pluralism.
Gordon writes, “the notion that conservatives, either in general or the ones Mr. Zeitz quotes, exhibit a tendency ‘to lament (or ridicule) a world where women, African-Americans, immigrants, and gays and lesbians have full citizenship rights’ is, to be charitable, a liberal fantasy.”
Let’s examine my liberal fantasy.
Exhibit 1: Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Senator John McCain—a widely respected conservative figure and erstwhile critic of the religious right—explained that he thought “the Christian right has a major role to play in the Republican Party” and further acknowledged his own plans to speak next month at Liberty University, a fundamentalist institution founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell. Falwell, I needn’t remind Mr. Gordon (who claims not to need a history lesson on . . . anything), has identified the Antichrist as a male Jew, has claimed that Jews are to be consigned to hell, and said of the tragedy that was 9/11: “...feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” So, does this make John McCain an “agent of intolerance?” (McCain’s words, not mine—directed at Falwell during the 2000 campaign.) Nope. It just means that a prominent conservative is comfortable getting into bed with an agent of intolerance, and it further means that Falwell continues to enjoy a prominent place in the conservative coalition. Mr. Gordon may wish it weren’t so. But it’s so. He may wish that Jerry Falwell weren’t an important American conservative. But he is.
Exhibit 2: Until March 2000, Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist institution in South Carolina, banned interracial dating on campus. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently doing academic research on the roots of the conservative right and have had extensive—and very satisfactory, professional—dealings with the BJU library archivists, whom I’ve found to be generous, exceedingly good at their jobs, very well-versed in the history of evangelical Christianity, and altogether very pleasant to interact with.) This didn’t stop George Bush and a host of other Republican candidates from speaking at the university. Does this mean that George Bush winks at intolerance? By Gordon’s rules, no. By mine, yes. Does this mean that a prominent conservative institution until very recently opposed, in the most literal way possible, racial pluralism? Yes. Sorry, Mr. Gordon, but you can’t argue your way around it.
Exhibit 3: Let’s review the utterances of prominent conservatives on the question of civil equality. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had this to say in 2004: “The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power. . . . That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.” South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint has argued that gays and lesbians should be banned from the teaching profession. The list goes on and on. In effect, gays and lesbians are to conservatives what African-Americans were 20 years ago: foils. Get working-class citizens to identify as heterosexual first, and working-class second, and you can peel off their votes.
Conservatives like Mr. Gordon—or defenders of conservatism like Mr. Gordon—should to spend less time denying the self-evident truth and more time purging their ranks of professional haters. I’ve never said there wasn’t a principled conservative argument to be made on just about any issue. My contention is simply that modern conservatism has been laced with hatred, and it has stubbornly refused to accommodate itself to religious, sexual, gender, and racial pluralism.
When Mr. Gordon and those like him turn a blind eye to this legacy, they do so at their own risk. Yes, hate plays well in politics, and sadly, history has shown that it’s too often a winning strategy. But with hundreds of thousands of Latinos (an increasingly important electoral demographic group George Bush has intelligently tried to court, despite opposition within his own party) currently taking to the streets to decry the GOP immigration-restriction bill, and with super-majorities of young Americans indicating support for gay marriage, the future of conservatism looks bleak if the movement doesn’t get right with pluralism.
John Steele Gordon can cover his eyes, but it doesn’t make the rest of us blind.

INHERIT THE BIGOTRY

Henry Drummond: Can't you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind! "

Judge: I hope counsel does not mean to imply that this court is bigoted.

Henry Drummond: Well, your honor has the right to hope.

Judge: I have the right to do more than that.

Henry Drummond: You have the power to do more than that.

(Judge holds Drummond in contempt)

-Inherit The Wind (1960)

DICKUS SPEAKUS

The House's 218-212 vote to set a deadline for exiting Iraq was met with a typical GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRL response from Snarl:

"They're not supporting the troops. They're undermining them," Cheney told a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition at the oceanside Ritz-Carlton hotel in Manalapan, Fla., about 60 miles north of Miami.

I'm sure that the three people at this meeting felt privileged to bear witness to such an insightful comment. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Since Cheney does not believe waterboarding is torture, I have an idea as to what would support the troops: waterboard him. If nothing happens to him, no harm done - after all, it's "not torture." If something does happen to him, well, then - that's an "unanticipated side effect" that we didn't know about, and will lead us to do everything in our power to prevent it by banning the practice, which will in turn help ensure it's not used against our troops, thus supporting those troops, right?

Hey, Dick, you want to support the troops? Resign or have another heart attack or both. Hate is not a national security policy and neither is feeding troops bacteria-infested food and sewage-strewn water so that your pockets can be lined some more.

THE BARE MINIMUM

Notes Craig Crawford,

"Bush and his team don’t have to be malfeasant to be held accountable or subjected to vigorous debate for possibly attempting to manipulate federal prosecutors to do their political bidding — even if they had every right to do so. It would set a dramatically low standard for performance to argue that presidents can do whatever they want, so long as they do not break the law."

We see with this latest scandal yet another instance of the G.W. Bush two-step: 1) trying to claim nothing wrong was done, while 2) lying about what was done at the same time. If nothing wrong was done - nothing illegal, nothing sleazy, nothing immoral - was done, why lie about it? Answer: so you can (hopefully) retain the "moral high ground" over a public for which you have nothing but contempt. (After all, if you're not convinced that you are superior to the unwashed masses, it becomes more difficult to treat them like garbage). And/or, because you can.

Goebbels' famous remark about "The Big Lie" revealed more about the lied-to (or lie-ee) than the lie-or: only the biggest lies will work (implying that the li-ee is not completely brainless), and the public will brainwashedly appreciate your cutting to the chase, by the way. After all, who wants to be told a lie whose telling constitutes a waste of time for both lie-or and lie-ee?

While his strategy certainly showed contempt for the lie-ees of the world, so does the Bush strategy: lie about all of the little stuff as well as the big stuff because it DOES NOT MATTER whether the public is stupid; the public does not matter at all when the matter is one that cannot be used to scare it to death, make it hate the Democrats, or be exploited for political advantege. This attitude prizes the act of lying qua lying - as opposed prizing what lying accomplishes -brainwashing the lie-ees. One might almost describe the attitude as cynical - but then again, cynicism requires a level of thinking that would naturally cause one not to embark upon such a campaign of equal-weight lying in the first place.

WISHING I WAS THERE....

During today's hearings on global warming, global warming denier James Inhofe was asking Al Gore questions, but didn't want to hear the answers because he thought the responses would take "too much time".

Barbara Boxer then explained to Inhofe how things work in Senate now.

Boxer: "You're not making the rules. You used to when you did this, you don't do this anymore. Elections have consequences."

PRINCE ALBERTO

Alberto Gonzales, that mealy-mouthed, weaselly, effeminate though gay-hating, low-talking, mumbling, sneaky, shifty-eyed, lying piece of shit, may find himself out of a job soon - either because the President will fire him or because he will resign (if the latter is what the media tells us what happened, the former is really what happened).

If Ashcroft wiped his ass with the Bill of Rights, Gonzales saved up a lifetime of diarrhea from under-digested refried beans and dumped it over the entire text of every Constitution he could find. This man is the worst Attorney General in the history of the United States, easily - yes, easily - beating such worthies as John Ashcroft, Harry Daugherty and Edwin Mieskite.

I hope both he and that fat bloviator Karl Rove are subpoenad to testify about the latest series of White House disgraces. If they refuse, I am not sure that a Constitutional Crisis will have been created, but public outcry will become so intense that sheer strength of inertia will cause at least one of them to be forced out. Maybe George W. Bush can even lie and state that either or both are doing a fine job, and then fire either or both the next week. Oh wait... Why do that when there's not an intervening election? Because this President is a sociopath.

If he and Dick "GRRRRR" Cheney were both removed from office, I wouldn't shed a tear, but if they were not removed, that scenario would still provide a great source of pleasure because they have not been humiliated enough yet. They have not been disgraced enough yet. Historians - some of them, anyway, are still debating as to whether Bush or Millard Fillmore is the worst President in history. Bush's conservatism of fraud has not been exposed fully because the Fox News dimbulbs that vote and run this country could have their eyes bathed in the sun and literally not see the light.

I want this Presidency to end in tatters. It is not tattered enough yet. It is not enough that it end in ignominy and disgrace. Nothing less than an utter, complete, laughingstock of a clusterfuck will suffice.

And even that is not enough.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY....

By Max Blumenthal (parenthetical commentary mine)

I think there is a role for [Pastor John Hagee]. He has earned a certain recognition with the community because of his support for Israel."--Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman, 3/9/07

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day..."
--Pastor John Hagee, "Jerusalem Countdown," pp. 92-93

It does not necessarily matter to AIPAC if you preach "New World Order/Illuminati" conspiracy theories involving "international bankers," a classic coded anti-Semitic trope. Nor does it necessarily matter to them if the rhetoric you have spewed about the Holocaust sounds like a Christian version of Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. AIPAC doesn't even necessarily care that you've lionized Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. What matters more to AIPAC and its allies -- all that matters perhaps -- is that you back the hardline Israeli government without reservation...., and it doesn't hurt that you lust for war with Iran. This crackpot "New World Order" video's creator, Pastor John Hagee, was received with a standing ovation at AIPAC's annual convention

It should come as no surprise then that an anti-Semitic Holocaust apologist like Pastor John Hagee was invited to AIPAC, and was given a raucous ovation. As I reported for the Nation last year, through his new lobbying organization, Christians United for Israel, Hagee is emerging as the most influential leader of the Christian Zionist movement, which has bolstered the Israeli right with the grassroots muscle of the evangelical right. I go on to explain in detail that Hagee is a dangerous crackpot whose stated desire is to see Israel engage in an apocalyptic nuclear war with Iran (like many of our so-called Christian AIPAC "friends.")

Hagee does not agonize over the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews who would die in such a conflict. Instead, he celebrates this scenario as the pretext for the return of JC. "The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching ... rejoice and be exceedingly glad, the best is yet to be," Hagee writes in his latest pulp prophecy bestseller, "Jerusalem Countdown." (Israel must be in Jewish hands for Jesus to return to Earth. Once Jesus returns, three quarters of all Jews will be exterminated. Will the remaining 1/4 still be AIPAC supporters?)

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Bruce Wilson, who's been blogging up a storm about Hagee at Talk2Action, has dredged up an even more disturbing passage from "Jerusalem Countdown." Says Hagee:

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day....
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God uppon his rebellious chosen people." ["Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To War", paperback edition, pages 92 and 93]

( With friends like these, who needs enemies?)

There's more. Journalist Michelle Goldberg, one of the keenest observers of the Christian right around, reported for the Huffington Post that Hagee suggested in "Jerusalem Countdown" that Adolph Hitler was a divine agent sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. Hagee writes:

The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agendas God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.
"But now I will send for many fishermen" declares the LORD, "and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks."
-- Jeremiah 16:16 NIV

(Hate-gee continues):
"I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.
A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God's fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.
God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have -- Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God's Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality." (This tripe gives new meaning to the phrase "burning a village to save it.")

Certainly AIPAC and allies like Abe Foxman, who says "there is role for" Hagee, were aware of the pastor's anti-Semitic statements. But they have their priorities. Foxman, for his part, has been rehearsing his Roy Cohn impersonation with increasing enthusiasm.

In the type of stunt that is becoming all too familiar, in October, 2006, Foxman pressured the Polish Consulate to cancel a lecture by renowned historian Tony Judt entitled, "The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy." After torpedoeing the event, Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk told a reporter, "I don't have to subscribe to the First Amendment." Kasprzyk's move was hailed by American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris, who exclaimed, "Bravo to them for doing the right thing."

To Foxman and company, critics of the Israel Lobby pose a dire threat to the safety and well-being of the Jewish people, even -- or perhaps, especially -- if they are Jewish themselves. But as for those like Hagee who blame the Jews for their own persecution and celebrate the Holocaust, well, it all depends on how useful they are.

(Note: Judgt is not renowned. But freedom - being free to say that you cannot be criticized, being free to criticize other religions - can (or at least should) come at a price: the bigots must be allowed their say. No, there's no "obligation" to debate these people, but it is disingenuous to use the Constitution both as a sword and a shield. As William Brennan said in Texas v. Johnson, as he struck down a law making it a crime to burn the American flag,

"The way to preserve the flag's special role is not to punish those who feel differently about these matters. It is to persuade them that they are wrong. We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned by, as one witness here did, according its remains a respectful burial. We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents."

A PIG HAS JUST FLOWN, PART 2

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-03-14T234814Z_01_N14298921_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-BUSH-SECRECY.xml

A PIG HAS JUST FLOWN

Republican former Senator Alan Simpson writes an Op-Ed:
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Gen. Pace is entitled to his personal opinion, even if it is completely out of the mainstream of American thinking. But he should know better than to assert this opinion as the basis for policy of a military that represents and serves an entire nation. Let us end "don't ask, don't tell." This policy has become a serious detriment to the readiness of America's forces as they attempt to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long and cherished history

NOT A'BIDEN TO GARBAGE

Joe Biden unleashed a gem of a great speech today:

Biden To Bush: "You're leading us off a cliff. Stop!"
Clearly having had enough of Republican colleagues putting their blind loyalty to George W. Bush ahead of American opinion and the lives of our troops, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor Wednesday in which he ripped the GOP for their failure to lead and fulfill their duties to our country.Saying "our troops don’t lose wars, bad polices, bad leadership loses wars," Biden, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, let loose during comments before the vote to even open debate on the Democratic proposal to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by this time next year.Here's Biden on the Senate's responsibility to the troops:
"They should have the courage to stand up and tell the administration, they have had a God-awful policy, they have put our troops in a position that, in fact, has made it virtually impossible for them to succeed at the outset."They deserve a policy. They deserve a plan. There is no plan. We went to war with too few troops, we went to war unnecessarily. We went to war with these men and women ill-equipped, they're coming home ill-served."It's about time we have the courage to stand up and say to the president 'Mr. President, you have not only put us in harm's way you have harmed us! You have no policy, Mr. President'"I'm so tired of hearing on this floor about courage. Have the courage to tell the administration, 'stop this ridiculous policy you have.'"More Biden on the folly of the Bush-McCain Doctrine of sending yet more troops to Iraq:
"This is a cycle of self-sustaining sectarian violence that 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 Americans will not be able to stop. This is ridiculous. There is no plan. I ask the president and everyone else who comes forward with a plan, whether it's 'capping' or 'surging' or whatever they have, what will answer the two-word test? Then what? Then what? Then What?"What happens after we surge these women and men? And by the way, you say General Patraeus is one who believes… He may be the only one who believes this is a good idea! Virtually nobody else thinks it's a good idea." And on how Bush is breaking the U.S. military:
"So as long as the president keeps us on this ridiculous path, taking us off a cliff -- I ask my colleagues, does anybody think they're going to be able to sustain keeping American forces in Iraq, at 160,000, for another year and a half? What do you think? What do you think is going to happen in Tennessee, in Delaware, in Illinois?"Are we gonna break this man and woman's army? What are we gonna do here? How many times are we going to ask those 175,000 to rotate, three, four, five, six, seven times?" And he ends with what every person in Congress should be saying right now: "Mr. President, you're leading us off a cliff. Stop!"

THE HILDEBEAST

Interesting article from Ellen Goodman. Especially liked the line about Richard Mellon Scaife, who rewarded Kenneth Starr with a deanship at Pepperdine (that way, Starr could be close to the very same sea that his mind is out to anyway):

ELLEN GOODMAN
The establishment candidate
By Ellen Goodman March 9, 2007
IT'S BEEN almost a year since that well-known political pundit Sharon Stone explained why Hillary Clinton couldn't win the presidency. "A woman should be past her sexuality when she runs," intoned Ms. Stone. "Hillary still has sexual power, and I don't think people will accept that."
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I never knew if this was a compliment or an insult to the 59-year-old senator. After all, Henry Kissinger once described power as the great aphrodisiac. Did aphrodisia shrink a woman's political power?
Of course, this was only one of innumerable pink grids put over Hillary's campaign. Her announcement was preceded and followed by endless stories on whether America was "ready" for a woman president. Every move she makes, every breath she takes, every outfit she wears, she is stalked by the media looking for clues to the female electoral cycle.
This was an inevitable part of being the First Serious Woman Candidate for President. And Hillary has said repeatedly, "The fact that I'm a woman, the fact that I'm a mom, is part of who I am." Her candidacy was bound to have a "You Go, Girl!" edge.
It was no surprise that Hillary announced her candidacy in a webcast from a living room decorated in Early Suburban Soccer Mom. It's no surprise that she's just launched a kind of girlfriend's social networking campaign. And it's no surprise to see her campaigning under the slogan: "Let the Conversation Begin." (Memo to the campaign: This female-friendly approach may strike terror in the hearts of husbands who cringe when their wives say, "We have to talk.")
But something is happening on the long, tortured path to the first primary. Hillary's been de-sexed -- excuse me, Sharon -- de-gendered. She already is seen less like the woman candidate for president and more like the establishment candidate. She's becoming less a messenger of historic change and more a messenger of old politics.
It was once impossible to be both a woman and an establishment candidate. But in this primary, Hillary is outflanked on the left by both Barack Obama and John Edwards. The "wicked witch of the left," the "designated devil," the "Lady MacBeth," whose image blesses the baby onesies sold at conservative conventions -- "Hillary Scares Me" -- is now the centrist in the Democratic field.
This has put the Hillary-hating industry into a stock market swoon. The "vast right-wing conspiracy" is losing traction. Even conservative Richard Mellon Scaife has closed up his ATM for Clinton Bashers Inc. She's now, for better and/or worse, positioned less as a scary feminist and more as a calibrating centrist, less of an uppity woman and more of the programmed scion of the establishment.
Obama has become the thoughtful, ruminative, philosopher-king candidate. But in the process, Hillary has come to look like the strong candidate. This may be due in part to her refusal to apologize for her vote on the Iraq war, a decision that many in hyperactive punditry regard as a huge mistake. But there's a subtext. Like it or not, it is part of this woman's morphing into the tough guy in the race.
Obama has also matched or even trumped Hillary on the "historic" front. Gradually her image as "the woman" faded to her image as the "experienced" candidate. Not to mention the candidate most ready to take on the Republican attack machine. "When you're attacked, you have to deck your opponents," says the former first lady. You go . . . girl?
Not even the most calculating strategist could have planned this. She didn't choose her status as the establishment candidate any more than she chose being attacked from the left by Hollywood mogul David Geffen. But what better enemy in the race for votes among the mainstream parents who regard the Hollywood culture as their opponent? And what better position for a woman running in the general election as a leader?
There is a certain irony in sticking a politics-as-usual label on the first serious female contender. Or seeing a breakthrough candidacy cast as "same old." Democrats thirsty for change and hostile to the war may well see Obama as the fresh voice and Clinton as old guard.
But have you noticed how the arguments about whether she's "electable" have dimmed? Have you noticed how the chatter about this woman's leadership ability has faded? Have you noticed how the stories about whether America is "ready" for a woman have receded?
Is Hillary running as a woman? I remember when Pat Schroeder was asked that and quipped, "I didn't know I had other options!" But Hillary is already less the "woman candidate" and more the "candidate." And the "conversation" has barely begun.

CRAZY LIKE A FUX

by Eric Boehlert
The cheese has really fallen off the cracker at Fox News over the Nevada Democratic Party's decision to break its presidential debate partnership with the cable news channel because the outlet is not seen as being fair. On Saturday night, Beltway Boys co-host Morton Kondracke completely lost it while discussing the snub and compared Nevada Democrats to communist propagandists. On Monday night, Fox News talker Bill O'Reilly went one better and likened the "radical" Nevada voters to Nazis.
The bizarre outbursts were just the latest in long line of wild-eyed Fox News denunciations that always come whenever there's a high-profile, albeit logical, observation that Fox News broadcasts a conservative-friendly version of the news and that the partisan news operation does not always employ the traditional checks and balances of mainstream journalism. In fact, Kondracke's own flare-up closely followed a name-calling press release in which Fox News itself denounced Nevada Democrats for being controlled by "radical fringe" special interest groups.
Of course, a real news organization wouldn't issue a nasty statement like that, nor would it give the statement exclusively to Matt Drudge, which Fox News did. And Kondracke's wild on-air denunciation of Democratic activists simply proved the activists' point about Fox News and its purposefully slanted programming. (See FoxAttacks for details.)
More importantly, the latest confrontation simply highlights the fact that Fox News can't take a punch. Then again, isn't that always the case with bullies?
Flash back to January. Bill O'Reilly launched a jihad against NBC News, insisting the corporate media giant had veered to the left and had "a vested interest in seeing the U.S. fail in Iraq'' because that would help elected a Democrat in 2008. When NBC News President Steve Capus called O'Reilly's incessant attacks "kind of sad and pathetic," a Fox News spokesperson fired back: "What is it that being exposed as a liberal news organization that he finds 'sad and pathetic'?'' That same week, a Fox News flack told The Washington Post, "We don't know why NBC finds the label 'liberal' so insulting."
All of which begs the questions, why do Fox News execs spin so furiously whenever they're the ones accused of having a bias? Why do they consider it "sad" and "pathetic" to be tagged as Republican? Why do Fox News employees find the label "conservative'" so insulting? Why does Fox News indignantly demand news outlets print corrections if they simply report that Fox News has a Republican tilt? In other words, why this elaborate charade about being "fair and balanced"?
It really has been one of the enduring questions about Fox News. Well, that and how, during the entire Bush administration an openly GOP-friendly news operation like Fox News, boasting a warm working relationships with the White House, has proven itself incapable of breaking major White House news stories or landing significant administration leaks.
Still, Fox News pros exert so much energy attacking anyone who makes the obvious observation about the channel's rightward tilt, despite the fact that citing supporting evidence truly has become a fish-in-a-barrel exercise. Consider:
In the days following the terrorist attack of 9-11, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes sent political advice to President Bush. Ailes did so secretively because he knew that as the head of a major news organization, it would look bad if word got out about his partisan moonlighting.
A 2003 University of Maryland study found that Fox News viewers were far more likely to be misinformed about whether Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda terrorists and whether weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq immediately following the invasion.
A 2004 Center for Media and Public Affairs study found that during the height of the presidential campaign, just 13 percent of Fox News panelist comments about Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry were positive, compared with 50 percent for Bush. (It was during the campaign that Fox News anchor Brit Hume called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's factually challenged book attacking Kerry a "remarkably well-done document.")
Fox News pundits mocked Al Gore in 2004, following a speech he gave, joking the former vice president "had gone off his lithium again," and compared him to "a mental patient."
At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch admitted that his company (which includes Fox News) had "tried" to shape the agenda for the Iraq war.
Unaware that her microphone was on between interviews, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this year announced, "My Fox News guys -- I love every one of them."
This year, commenting on the troop withdrawal debate in Congress, Hume, Fox's evening news anchor, stated, "This is why the Democratic Party has had this reputation, going back decades, of really not being very serious about national defense. It's because they aren't."
A new Media Matters for America study confirms that the lineup for Fox News Sunday remains the most imbalanced among all the Sunday morning talk shows in terms of Republican and Democratic guests.
Here's the crucial takeaway: Fox News is still fighting the last war. Busy arguing that it truly is fair and balanced, Fox News execs haven't noticed that, thanks to the Nevada showdown, the real question now on the table is not about Fox News' fairness. It's about whether or not Fox News is a legitimate news organization. That's precisely where Ailes does not want this media branding debate to go. And that's why the Fox News team has exerted so much energy in recent years trying to bully any doubters.
It's the reason a Fox News flack swung back wildly in October 2003, when a former producer there, Charlie Reina, wrote publicly about the daily internal Fox News memo that instructs staffers how to spin new stories, often in a partisan manner. Rather than address Reina's factual points, in what must have been a corporate media first, Fox News VP-news operations Sharri Berg issued a public statement in which she quoted an anonymous Fox News employee who belittled Reina as being a nobody and worse, he "NEVER had a job in the newsroom," which was supposed to raise doubts about Reina's credibility. (Reina tells me Berg had to resort to using an anonymous quote because Berg herself knew the statement about Reina never working in the newsroom was false.)
It's why when Ben Smith, blogging for the New York Daily News, observed that Fox News projects an "unmissable, insistent slant," Fox News responded with an oddly personal, schoolyard-quality taunt: "Ben has struggled to regain relevance since leaving the New York Observer, which is why you need a blood hound to find his column. We're happy he's making more than the $29,000 he made at the Observer ... then again, you get what you pay for."
It's why Ailes still publicly clings to the myth that, forever being fair and balanced, it was Fox News that broke the blockbuster 2000 campaign story about candidate Bush's hidden DUI arrest. The truth is that it was a resourceful 27-year-old reporter at a local Fox broadcast affiliate, WPXT-TV in Portland, Maine, who uncovered the DUI story, not the Fox News Channel in New York or Washington. Once the local affiliate had the scoop, Fox News itself could not ignore the story, although its reporters, anchors, and guests spent the next two days spinning furiously on Bush's behalf in an attempt to downplay the development.
It's why during the 2004 campaign The Wall Street Journal, confronted by Fox News, had to print a correction that read: "News Corp.'s Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause." The Journal's sin? Days earlier it had reported that Bush "gave a rare interview over the weekend to Fox News, a network sympathetic to the Bush cause and popular with Republicans." As Slate's Timothy Noah noted at the time, "Oh, please. I don't even know any conservatives who dispute that Fox News is sympathetic to Bush."
It's why Ailes went ballistic in 2004 when former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll, in a speech he gave at the University of Oregon, labeled Fox News "pseudojournalism." Penning a name-calling response for The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Ailes fired back: "He treated Fox News Channel worse in his newspaper than he treated the terrorists who recently beheaded an American. But of course, he sees Fox News as more dangerous."
And it's why Fox News resorted to more name-calling this year when CNN's Anderson Cooper this year helped highlight the sloppy smear Fox News tried to spread about Sen. Barack Obama's allegedly attending a radical Muslim school as a child. After a CNN online advertisement announced, "When Fox News Channel 'reported' false rumors about Barack Obama's past: He called them on it. IT'S CALLED JOURNALISM," Fox News answered it by calling Cooper the "Paris Hilton of television news."
During the Bush glory years, that kind of hardball worked. Now, though, with the Republican White House in political shambles, just this week trying to clean up the Walter Reed scandal, the FBI Patriot Act abuse scandal, and the wholesale-firings-of-federal-prosecutors-for-partisan-reasons scandal, Fox News' predictable brand of bullying no longer packs the same punch.
And now Nevada Democrats, pressed into action by online activists, have moved the ball forward. "The lies of FOX News and Roger Ailes have no place in public discourse, journalism, or the Democratic Party presidential debates," insisted blogger Matt Stoller, who helped launch the Nevada pushback on his blog MyDD and who stresses that it's important "to not ratify Fox News as a legitimate news source."
That's why the Nevada defection stung so badly, and that's why Kondracke and others lashed out in such outlandish fashion. Fox News does not want to be in a fight about whether it's a legitimate news organization. Why? Because Fox News can't take a punch.

BIGOTITIS

A blogger nails it:

"For this isn't really about Coulter at all. This is about a pact the American right made with the devil, a pact the devil is now coming to collect on. American conservatism sold its soul to the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to gain power, and now that its ideology has been exposed as empty and its leadership incompetent and corrupt, free-floating hatred is the only thing it has to offer. The problem, for the GOP, is that this isn't a winning political strategy anymore -- but they're stuck with it. They're trapped. They need the bigoted and reactionary base they helped create, but the very fanaticism that made the True Believers such potent shock troops will prevent the Republicans from achieving Karl Rove's dream of long-term GOP domination."

IT'S THOSE CRAZY LIBRULS

I like this post:

Well, Christmas has passed, so that must mean the librul War On Christmas (tm) is over now too. For now anyway.See, those godless libruls just can't pass up any chance to persecute the helpless people in this country that call themselves Christians.Polls show that upwards of 80% or so of people in the US profess to be Christians.

Do you see what that means?It means that 20%--probably less--of this country's population has cleverly orchestrated a massive conspiracy to hold the vast majority of this country hostage. Christians just can't get a break in this country any more, and are at the mercy of the liberals, who run everything now.

Librul atheists just aren't happy unless they're trying to keep people from worshiping God in the schools, force everyone to have abortions, marry a homosexual, view pornography, and (horrors!) treat women and black people like they really were people.

It doesn't stop there.With atheist's threats of boycotts and intolerance, it's a wonder that shows like Touched By An Angel, Highway to Heaven, Joan of Arcadia, Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, Providence, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, The Brady Bunch, Shining Time Station, Davey and Goliath, Adventures From the Book of Virtues, and ABC After School Specials manage to even get on the air to go up against The Simpsons and balance out the blatant homosexuality of the TeleTubbies and SpongeBob Squarepants and all those other atheist programs.

Sunday morning television and atheist cable networks have got so sinful, there's only Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, D James Kennedy, Robert Schuller, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Jimmy Swaggart, Creflo A. Dollar, Benny Hinn, Marilyn Hickey, Peter Popoff, William Branham, Carl Baugh, John Ankerberg, Garner Ted Armstrong, Kenneth Copeland, Paul and Jan Crouch, James Robison, Trinity Broadcasting, CBN, Jack Van Impe, Frederick Price, Ron Phillips, Rod Parsley, Joyce Meyer, Hal Lindsey, Zola Levitt, Bob Larson, T.J. Jakes, Jack Hayford, John Hagee, and Mother Angelica and a few hundred others on the tube these days, since the atheists ran them off.AM radio has got so godless, you can only find Beverly LaHaye on about 600 stations around the country. Her husband Tim, author of the Left Behind series of books and merchandise dealing with the Rapture, have only managed to eke out an anemic estimated $1 billion in sales.

And don't even get me started about all those liberals and atheists in the US government and the ACLU.

So what's left for the heathen hordes to ruin for everybody?Christmas. The most important holiday of the year to real Christians.Just forget for the moment that there is little to no actual direct evidence that there really was a Jesus. Forget that, even if there was a Jesus, he was probably born early in the fall rather than on December 25. Forget that there is literally no archeological or contemporary historical evidence that there was a Jesus. Forget that much or most of the Bible appears to have been lifted from earlier religions and Christians rituals and observances were copied straight from the Pagans.Just forget about all that: Christmas is a holy day, and being religion, that's all the proof it needs. If enough people believe a thing, that means it's true.Retailers were so scared of the atheists, they had to stop telling shoppers "Merry Christmas."

The holiness of Christ's birth was defiled because retailers had to say "Happy Holidays" when they were selling X-Boxes to soccer moms. And when salespeople had to say "Season's Greetings," the significance of the Holiest of Holy Days was completely ruined for people shopping for IPods.

But Christians did manage a few defenders of both the faith and the holiday.Bill O'Reilly selflessly offered himself up as a sacrifice to the hazards of the ungodly liberal hordes, and used his (sadly overlooked) little cable TV program to alert us all to the danger. When O'Reilly loudly protested the liberal conspiracy to force people to stop saying "Merry Christmas," the forces of darkness tried to change the subject and direct people to O'Reilly's website, which offered "holiday gifts," which they claimed showed him to be a hypocrite who made up the whole issue for ratings and money and to stir up tension.To prove he wasn't a hypocrite, O'Reilly quickly eliminated that objection by changing his website.But the damage had already been done.

Liberals had somehow infiltrated the White House and managed to hijack George and Laura Bush's Christmas card list. The Bushes found themselves in the embarrassing position of having sent out thousands of Christmas cards with the dreaded, atheist, politically correct "Happy Holidays."The liberal plot against Christmas was exposed in detail with Fox News "personality" John Gibson's book The War on Christmas. When the liberal Rob Boston of the anti-American group Americans United for Separation of Church and State claimed on Gibson's program that Gibson had made it all up, Gibson cleverly and effectively exposed the weakness of Boston's criticisms by yelling loudly and talking over him so no one could hear what Boston was saying.

But the defenders of all that is good and right are a lonely bunch in the media.Michael Moore and Molly Ivins have such a stranglehold on the media that, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, John Gibson, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Thomas Sowell, Michelle Malkin, Cal Thomas, Pat Buchanan, John Stossel, John Mclaughlin, George Will, Lucianne Goldberg, Bob Grant, Oliver North, Gordon Liddy, Ken Hamblin, Armstrong Williams, Michael Reagan, Laura Schlessinger, Joe Scarborough, Tony Snow, Mara Liasson, Chris Matthews, Dennis Miller, Michael Medved, Cokie Roberts, John Hockenberry, Robert Novak, Tucker Carlson, Paul Weyrich, Andrea Mitchell, Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Schneider, Candy Crowley, Peggy Noonan, Bernard Goldberg, Matt Drudge, and Howard Kurtz just can't get a word in edgewise to speak for the other side.If it were up to the librul media, you wouldn't even know there was another side.

We all know the librul media did everything in iys power to cover up how evil Bill Clinton was. Remember how hard it was to find anybody willing to talk about how he and Hillary murdered Vince Foster just to laugh at him while he died and how Bill was raping interns? And remember, you heard it here first: Patriots in the legislature stood up to the liberals and barely managed to call an impeachment inquiry. But it failed because the librul media did everything in its power to cover it up.And now the beleaguered Christians have once again used their meager resources and stood up, against all odds, David vs. Goliath, to the heathens that want to take out the "Christ" from Christmas and just leave it with the rancid commercialization that otherwise defines the season.Thank goodness we all still have Santa, the reindeer, and all the elves at the North Pole, and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas to remind us how dearly we hold the birth of the baby Jesus at Christmastime.So another Christmas came and went with no problem, no thanks to the godless atheist liberals. Until next year, that is.Or Easter.

HATE-PAC

Today, Vice President Cheney, taking the occasional break from his glowering, delivered a "speech" to AIPAC. Here is a selected portion:

1. The most common myth is that Iraq has nothing to do with the global war on terror. Opponents of our military action there have called Iraq a diversion from the real conflict, a distraction from the business of fighting and defeating bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. We hear this over and over again, not as an argument but as an assertion meant to close off argument.

Yet the critics conveniently disregard the words of bin Laden himself. The most serious issue today for the whole world, he has said, is this third world war that is raging in Iraq. He calls it a destiny between infidelity and Islam. He said the whole world is watching this war and that it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation. And in words directed at the American people, bin Laden declares, "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

This leader of al Qaeda has referred to Baghdad as the capital of the Caliphate. He has also said, and I quote, "Success in Baghdad will be success for the United States. Failure in Iraq is the failure of the United States. Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars."
Obviously, the terrorists have no illusion about the importance of the struggle in Iraq. They have not called it a distraction or a diversion from their war against the United States. They know it is a central front in that war and it's where they've chosen to make a stand. Our Marines are fighting al Qaeda terrorists today in Anbar province. U.S. and Iraqi forces recently killed al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad who were responsible for numerous car bomb attacks. Iraq's relevance to the war on terror simply could not be more plain.

Here at home, that makes one thing above all very clear. If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us.

**This tiresome rhetoric essentially is Cheney's way of saying, "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." This position represents false choice nonsense. Cheney basically believes that Iraq is not a diversion from the war on terror... because our enemies have said that failure in Iraq would be humiliating to us. Thus, Iraq is important, not a distraction, etc. In this instance, Cheney has no problem using the words of the enemy to validate his beliefs. Has it not occurred to him that al-Qaeda is saying that Iraq represents an important conflict simply to excite people like him so that he can send more people to die over there? Iraq is only important to the extent that we are moving targets there. Someone wearing a "kick me" sign is more likely to be kicked than someone who is not wearing such a sign, but this does not mean that the kickers of the world have some special place in their heart for the people with the signs; the kickers attack these folks for convenience's sake. Our ENEMIES chose to make Iraq a battleground because we stupidly went in there. Cheney, by saying it is the central battleground, has implicitly accepted the enemies' point of view.



The second myth is the most transparent. And that is the notion that one can support the troops without giving them the tools and reinforcements needed to carry out their mission. Twisted logic is not exactly a new phenomenon in Washington. But last month, it did reach new heights. At a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain put the following question to General Petraeus, suppose we send you over to your new job, only we tell you that you cannot have any additional troops. Can you get your job done? General Petraeus replied, "No, sir."

Yet within his days of his confirmation by a unanimous vote in the Senate -- I repeat, a unanimous vote of confidence in General Petraeus -- a large group of senators tried to pass a resolution opposing the reinforcements he said were necessary. And, of course, the House of Representatives did pass such a resolution. As President Bush said, this may be the first time in history that a Congress voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose the plan he said was necessary in winning that battle. It was not a proud episode in the history of the United States Congress.

The resolution that passed was not binding, only a statement of feelings. Yet other threats have been made that would hamper the war effort and interfere with the operational authority of the President and with our military commanders. These, too, are counterproductive and send exactly the wrong message. When members of Congress pursue an anti-war strategy that's been called slow bleed, they're not supporting the troops, they are undermining them. And when members of Congress speak not of victory, but of time limits -- (applause) -- when members speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they're telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out. (Applause.)

Congress does, of course, play a critical role in the defense of the nation and the conduct of a war. That role is defined and limited by the Constitution. After all, the military answers to one commander-in-chief in the White House, not 535 commanders-in-chief on Capitol Hill. (Applause.)

Congress does have the purse strings. And very soon, both houses will have to vote on a piece of legislation that is binding, a bill to provide emergency funding for the troops. And I sincerely hope the discussion this time will be about winning in Iraq. (Applause.)

Anyone can say they support the troops and we should take them at their word. But the proof will come when it's time to provide the money. We expect the House and Senate to meet the needs of our military and the generals leading the troops in battle on time and in full measure.

** What is Bush's current policy, if not one of "slow bleeding?" He is fighting a war of attrition. Congress has simply recognized the absurdity of this. Also, it is always good for a laugh to hear Cheney talk about the necessity of funding for "the troops" - a line which he thinks sounds good in a sound bite but one that makes his stomach squirm when it comes to actually providing body armor, decent food and water, and health care. His nonsensical "a deadline sends the message to the enemy that it can wait the clock out and thus validates the terrorists' strategy" blather presupposes that he knows what the strategy is. He does not. The strategy could be to kill as many Americans in Iraq as possible, in which case the setting of a timetable could thwart that strategy. We are fighting in the middle of someone's civil war. Setting a timetable simply sends the message that.... hey, folks, this is your battle, not ours. We're not going to take sides - shifting sides - simply so you can kill us. The same bleating was indulged in by supporters of the Vietnam War - if we left Vietnam, these folks said, the Vietcong would win and Communism would spread. This did not happen. It did not happen for both obvious and non-obvious reasons. Whatever the al-Qaeda "strategy" is (and why is the ultra-secretive Cheney talking about the strategy in public? Answer: because he has no idea what the strategy is and is just trying to scare people), the strategy is served by our remaining in Iraq as long as possible, where our soliders are fighting in alien and inhospitable conditions. If the strategy is to win a war of attrition, that strategy was validated a long time ago - when we first sent the troops in. Trying to get them out is merely trying to thwart the strategy. At any rate, whatever the actual strategy is, Cheney will still cling fast to his notions about how the war should be fought - reality and facts be damned.

There is a third myth about the war on terror, and this one is also the most dangerous. Some apparently believe that getting out of Iraq before the job is done will actually strengthen America's hand in the fight against terrorists. This myth is dangerous because it represents a full validation of the al Qaeda strategy. The terrorists don't expect to beat us in a standup fight. They never have. They're not likely to try. The only way we can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission and the terrorists do believe that they can force that outcome.
Time after time, they have predicted that the American people do not have the stomach for a long-term fight. They cite the cases of Beirut in the 1980s and Somalia in the '90s. These examples, they believe, show that we are weak and decadent and that if we're hit hard enough, we'll pack it in and retreat. The result would be even greater danger to the United States because, if the terrorists conclude that attacks will change the behavior of a nation, they will attack that nation again and again. (Applause.)

**Who s saying that our hand will be strengthened if we leave? Who is this straw man? How does Cheney know what al-Qaeda's strategy is? How does he know what the terrorists expect? How could Beirut have been a long-term fight? What were we going to do - re-bomb the same marine barracks over and over again? Somalia isn't even an example of terrorism. The terrorists have concluded that attacks will change the behavior of a nation - by making that nation behave erratically, in utter panic and fear, even to the point where the nation will attack the wrong country in retaliation. It's not that we don't have the stomach for a long-term fight; we shouldn't have a stomach for a wrong fight, and if we picked the right battles then there would be no need to worry about whether America would remain steadfast in battle. Picking a wrong battle - the mistake that represents - is not erased by continuing to fight that battle to the point of pointlessness.
**
Believing they can break our will, they will become more audacious in their tactics, ever more determined to strike and kill our citizens, ever more bold in their ambitions of conquest and empire.
** "Conquest and empire" - I guess Cheney means all they want to conquer is Iraq??

And that leads me to the fourth and the cruelest myth of all and that is the false hope that we can abandon the effort in Iraq without serious consequences to the broader Middle East. I stand here today as a strong supporter of Israel and Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than George Bush...

**There will be consequences, but for whom, and what will those consequences be? How is Israel being helped by the wholesale slaughter of American soldiers and the waste of blood and treasure that has accompanied this war?

A PARODY OF A PARODY

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

The Fux News Channel, that bastion of "fair and balanced" jackhammering, has decided (because they are so fair and balanced) to produce a Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart-like (counter)program called "The 1/2 hour show." The folks at Fux aren't very creative in matters of titling. As is reported below, this show will no doubt have people in stitches:

**********************************************************************************
1/2 Hour News Hour, which debuted tonight on Fox News, is not funny. But too few laughs is the least of the problems this Daily Show wannabe brings to the table. Of far greater concern is that 1/2 Hour undermines Fox News far better than even the Daily Show or Colbert Report ever could. Viewed another way, what is the Fox audience supposed to think when a show advertised as comedy that clearly seeks to emulate the satirical Comedy Central shows, delivers a program no different than any Fox News show but for a laugh track?
Instead of Sean Hannity zingers about polar bears and global warming you get 1 liners and skits about polar bears and global warming. Instead of Bill O'Reilly shouting down Hollywood liberals you get 1 liners about Hollywood liberals. And while the Fox News audience is not known for being perceptive, the similarities between Fox comedy and Fox news are not subtle. In fact, the contrived targets, both people and issues, are basically the same.
Perhaps the best illustration of the dilemma is seen in the debut episodes opening "jokes" involving Senator Hillary Clinton. Before 1/2 Hour's debut, Fox News had spent almost every day for 10+ years skewering Hillary to the point that much of the country views her as a cartoonish villain. So, when 1/2 Hour jokes that President Hillary would staff the White House with angry lesbians it's hardly funny. Dick Morris has said essentially the same thing on the O'Reilly Factor more times than I care to remember. And you can basically assume the same problem will arise for every politician and celebrity that 1/2 Hour targets.
******************************************************************************
Conservative humor is not funny. It's not funny to watch people try to be funny, and it's not funny when people try to act funny by spouting hate (it's funny watching THEM but the hateful jokes aren't funny). This is why conservatives could not create an effective filmic response to "Fahrenheit 9/11." The few attempts were an uneasy mix of "information," "Rebuttal," and hate. These people do not know how to temper their hate with good humor or irony. It is this characteristic of so-called "conservatives" that explains why Ann Coulter's calling John Edwards was not funny. Jokes about gay people can be funny. Jokes about people who aren't gay but who act gay can be funny. Jokes about the idea of Dr. McBigot (Isaiah Washington - another black male dripping with homophobia) having to enter "rehab" for expressing his homophobia can be funny. But Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" is not funny because she, a vicious and banal bigot, is telling the joke to achieve a bigoted effect to an audience full of bigots for no purpose other than to "shock." Where was the actual humor in this joke? Humor involves juxtaposition, irony, plays on words, rhyming, teasing, sudden reversals, last-minute revelations, and the unexpected. Spouting hate involves none of these, which is why conservatives are not funny.

Example:

Bill Clinton parsed words, some say, when he famously declares, "That depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is." A funny joke derived from this line is: how did Bill Clinton defend himself against the latest charges of sexual harassment? By saying, "That depends upon what the meaning of the word "Jiz" is." It rhymes. It makes a point. It shows how he is a sex fiend and mealy mouthed THROUGH using rhyming and absurdity. In Coulter's case, the would-be point is not made through creativity. The HATE is the point, and the point is the hate. Not funny.

By the way, I am sick and fucking tired of people who ought to know better claiming that Fux News, although it is not real news, requires the viewer to wear earmuffs, and gives one a headache, nonetheless is redeemed because it is "pro-Israel." Jews who haven't drank the Kool-Aid know this to be true. Whenever some blond chicklet-fucked anorexic Fux anchor talks about the "secular humanist terrorist agenda to destroy Christmas," what group of people do you think said blond chicklet-fucked anorexic Fukster is talking about? Christians? No. Gays They are bashed separately. Muslims? Ditto. It's this JEWS in their "elite" universities running the "elite" media. And when Fux News defends Mel Gibson's latest bigoted tirade against Jews, that means that Fux is not pro-Jewish, too. Really. I mean, how fucking dumb are the people who still think that "pro-Israel" means "pro-Jewish"? The Jerry Fatwells and Pat Bigotsons of the world are laughing over what suckers these people are. Fox News is only "pro-Israel" to the extent that it is bigoted against Muslims (said bigotry being general conservative hatred of "the other" rather than action-specific bigotry) and is PRO-CHRISTIAN. Wake up, people. Or are you secular Jews who don't even know what it means to be pro-Israel because you know nothing about the religion and just hate Muslims SO desperate to comform that you'll continue to allow the anti-Semitism to continue?

FOR THAT OLD GUY SMELL...

Amazing how John McCain has all but completely adopted the McJesus, McTaxCut, McBigot, McIslamofasicm (meaning that he mentions the "I" word a lot, like a few people I know, but doesn't realize what defeating it would involve and is merely brandishing it as a function of bigotry, while problems that this country COULD solve do not enter into his thought process), McImperialExecutiveBranch agenda:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait10mar10,0,6772386.column?track=mostviewed-storylevel

His competitor, Rudy Ghouliani, beating him in the polls now by over 20%, has virtually adopted the same agenda. Man of the Republican McFascists, don't care that Guiliani will clamp down at least as much on civil rights as Bush has. After all, they creepily intone, "civil rights don't matter if you're dead." So the point of living, then, is to not have them? I'd rather die if this were in fact the case. I have yet to hear a single intelligent rejoinder to the remark made by Ben Franklin over 200 years ago: "Those who are willing to give up essential liberties in the name of a little extra security deserve neither." So, all of you people who say, "civil rights don't matter if you're dead," you deserve to die anyway! That way the rest of us can figure out how to win the war on terra, terra, terra without adopting the terrorists' ideology.

The purge of U.S. Attorneys... Scooter Libby.... The documented misuse of the Patriot Act that was announced earlier this week... Walter Reed... How has ANY of this defeated Islamofascism - or come close to defeating it - or made us safer, all of you people who cry terra, terra, terra, Islamofascim, Islamofascim, Islamofascism? How? Look, I know that you guys think that the only thing worth doing in this world is claiming that Islamofascim must be defeated by going on about how people "must become informed about it,") but a parlor-game obsession with something is just that - obsession. While you folks engage in your keyboard-commando obsessions, must the rest of what you call non-issues facing this country - health care, education, the environment, etc., be permanently put on hold? In the hopes that you will somehow be able to "think" Islamofascism to death? Your mindset is exactly what the terrorists are counting on - they want you to be so consumed with them that you pay no heed to the daily functionings of your society. You folks treat the Islamofascist threat, ultimately, as a Phantom Menace - claiming that nothing else is important - with the result being that your society stagnates from under your grasp and as a result is in no position to vanquish the threat you claim to care about so much.

"Some people think that the future means the end of history," Captain Kirk once said to those who could not enter into the new era of peace between the Klingons and the Federation. "History is replete with turning points - you must have faith," Spock said as a retort. In other words, it is only by allowing our lives as they exist to go forward - because life MUST go forward - that we can venture into the future and vanquish our foes.

I pity those - and I am thinking of one person in particular - who cannot see this.

As e.e. cummings once said, "Hey, it's a hell of a universe out there. Let's start exploring it."

So for those of you who breathe, sleep and eat Islamofascism and say that nothing else matters, since you'll never be convinced otherwise (that's one of the advantages in not living in a reality-based environment), I pity you. I pity our country because of you. J.Q. Adams once said, "The United States goes not in search abroad of monsters to destroy. If she did, then she would become the dictatress of the world." You folks think you are trying to destroy monsters but in doing so you are destroying what makes this country worth living in - freedom. Once that is destroyed it does not matter whether we defeat our foes in battle, for they have already won.

So, you people, realize that yours is only one of many competing viewpoints, and that you do not have a monopoly on patriotism. If you don't, then you will be responsible for the death of this country as surely as the lib-ruls and the Islamofascists. Cheers.

FOAMY DON'T PLAY THAT GAME NO MORE

The strange Kabuki dance that ensues whenever Ann Coulter yaps her trap is now waltzing its way across America once more, but this time, with an unusual twist:

The dance begins with Coulter making a would-be outrageous comment meant (by her, anway)to be indicative of great insight and powers of argumentation (and, indeed, many conservatives BELIEVE that her comments can be characterized this way). Outrage - some of it mock, some of it genuine (and all of it legitimate) ensues. Coulter then issues a non-apology apology that merely amplifies the original insult.

By this point, the story, which most likely broke on a blog, has spread to national television, including to the so-called liberal media - including the folks at ABC, CBS and NBC who are so obviously outraged by the blather that they invite Ann onto the show to discuss her comment while their talking heads nod complacently as the foam coming out of her mouth dribbles onto the camera lens.

Then, of course, the right-wing smear machine attempts to look for an "equivalent" insulting comment made by a Democrat; Ann is invited on to Fox News to explain why her latest bleating is greater than sliced bread, and the story goes away as the outrage recedes into slow burn.

The "faggot" comment Ann made produced an additional element to the dance: denunciation by some of the audience members (Mitt the Shitt, Ghouliani, McCain) who heard the comment. Astounding.

GLOBAL WHORE-MING

The Republican thought "evolution" (excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably as I use the words "thought" and "evolution" next to the word "Republican") on Global warming:

"It doesn't exist." - 1990
"The science is still out." - 2000
"It exists but it is not caused by man." - 2007
"If it is caused by man, it must be a good thing" - 2015
"It is caused by man" - 2020
"It is a good thing" - 2020
"Go fuck yourself" - Dick Cheney

GGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks directly behind him.
Since St. Peter was standing right next to the man, he asked him, "What are all those clocks?"
"Those are Lie-Clocks," St. Peter said. "Everyone on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock move."
"Oh", said the man. "Whose clock is that?"
"That's Mother Teresa's", replied St. Peter. "The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible", said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
"That's Abraham Lincoln's clock," St. Peter said. "The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's Dick Cheney's clock?" asked the man.
"Dick Cheney's clock is in Jesus' office," said St. Peter. "He's using it as a ceiling fan."

I -(THE) MAN

Imus smacks down Holy Joe Lierberman, whom Imus no doubt would call a "weasel" and a "stooge" (he is both) on Imus' radio show today:


Imus: It would occur to me Senator Lieberman. Particularly if you were somebody who thought this war was such a wonderful idea as you did. And continue to support this idiotic exercise and you sit on some of these committees. That you would have a special responsibility to know what the hell is happening to these kids. It’s not enough to say you didn’t know or didn’t ask the right questions. I mean that’s why we elected you.

Lieberman: We all have responsibilities and I take it very personally because I have supported the war and I continue to believe we have to do everything we can to have it end successfully. I have a special responsibility and we should all be doing mea culpas. Battlefield medicine, I’ve been too battlefield hospitals when I’ve been over in Iraq, Walter Reed in the main building unbelievable. Unbelievable heroism by soldiers who have lost limbs and are just devoted to coming back as close to normalcy as they can. But the other stuff, just crazy and unacceptable and I think you’re going to see a change now.

IMUS: "How do we get this fixed?"

LIEBERMAN: "Well, I think the first thing is to hold people accountable. And, you know, General Weightman going is a good first step. The Armed Services Committee…"

IMUS: "Well, it's an absurd first step. He didn't have anything to do with this. He's been in charge — that's a big scapegoat deal and you know that."

LIEBERMAN: "Your questions about General Kiley are very good questions, and I'm going to ask him. Because this, after all, is the guy that was in charge for a couple years."

IMUS: "Well, he's a lying skunk. He ought to be forced to resign today, Senator."

LIEBERMAN: "Of course, I don't have that exact authority."(LAUGHTER)
"But I will tell you that — I'm on the Armed Services Committee. The Armed Services Committee oversees the medical hospitals. And a group of us on the committee are going out there this afternoon. And I am going to ask some of the tough questions that you and a lot ofothers…"

IMUS: "See if they'll let you, Senator Joe Lieberman, walk around without being escorted by four or five of these generals who've known about this for years."

LIEBERMAN: "Yes."

IMUS: "I mean, did you read Dana Priest and Anne Hull story in The Washington Post yesterday, that General Kiley's been up there testifying before your committee and lying to you, Senator…"
(CROSSTALK)
IMUS: "… lying to you and these other people. He's lying to you."

LIEBERMAN: "A lot of that was housekeeping. I agree. Look, this is the guy that was on top of the institution. It is not — it's a good sized hospital, but it's not a city. And this wasa building that was an important part of that. So, look, he should have known. And I believe as this goes on, he's going to be held accountable. But I want to figure out what we can do next on this. Part of this, Don, was that the whole response never lived up to the increasing demand on the Army medical system or the military medical system after Iraq."

IMUS: "Well, that's not a good excuse."
****************************************************************************
I respect Lieberman and admire his lone-voice-in-the-wilderness-tude. One need not be an apologist (and indeed cannot be one) for the George-of-the-Bungle administration's mistakes, though, to lay claim to the title of "taking terror seriously." So stop sucking up, Joe. It's not helping us defeat these people.

FAILURE IS THE BEST REVENGE

I remember the evening - a date in late August of 2o00 - as the chill wind of law school entrance beckoned - well. Governor George W. Bush was delivering his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. I would not have watched such a vile event on television in any event (exaggerating, am I? Remember Pat Buchanan in 1992? Notice how the real power of the party - Armey, DeLay, Gingrich, McConnell, Boehner, Blunt, Frist, Lott - never speak at these conventions, especially since Pitchfork Pat's bloviations?), but it just so happened that the speech was on while I was driving home from work. At least I didn't have to look at the retarded clown's face over the radio, when I heard the clown state the following:


"Little more than a -- little more than a decade ago, the Cold War thawed, and with the leadership of President's Reagan and Bush, that wall came down. But instead of seizing this moment, the Clinton-Gore administration has squandered it. We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence. Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report: "Not ready for duty, sir."

Funny, I thought. Wasn't that Bush's line during Vietnam?

The night before, Dick Cheney, scolding the Clinton Administration for the same alleged error, told the military that "help was on the way." How grateful those who heard the message must be, especially the poor folks at Walter Reed.

Turns out that the "I will prepare the military for battle" taunt, like many of then-Governor Bush's would-be promises of reversals of the dreaded Clinton years and its policies, has only haunted the taunter:

Today, Ann Scott Tyson reports in the Washington Post that readiness for America's National Guard has dropped to historically low levels:

Nearly 90 percent of Army National Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready" -- largely because of shortfalls in equipment worth billions of dollars -- jeopardizing the Guard's ability to respond to crises at home and abroad, according to a congressional commission that released a preliminary report today on the state of U.S. military reserve forces.The commission found that heavy deployments of the National Guard and Reserves since 2001 for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other anti-terrorism missions have deepened shortages, forced the military to cobble together units and hurt recruiting. The problems threaten to undermine the nation's 830,000-strong selected reserves, the commission said.

Army National Guard units in the United States have on average about 50 percent of their authorized stock of dual-use equipment, meaning gear needed both for fighting wars and domestic missions, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The National Guard estimates it would require $38 billion for equipment to restore domestic Army and Air units to full readiness. The Army has budgeted $21 billion to augment guard equipment through 2011.Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the use of U.S. military reservists has sharply escalated, from about 12.7 million days of service in 2001 to an estimated 63 million in 2006. The current increase of U.S. troops in Iraq is expected to require the accelerated call-up of as many as four National Guard combat brigades beginning early next year, as part of an effort to relieve the strain on active-duty brigades, which are now spending as much time in combat as at home.Not ready for duty indeed. Much has been written about the transformation of America's reserves since 2001. They have been reshaped from a "strategic" reserve into an "operational" reserve. Instead of waiting on the bench for "the big one" to break out, the reserves now augment and supplement the active-duty forces on a regular basis. During the Cold War, we mostly left the reserves alone, preserving them as a reserve (the term does have some meaning) for some future contingency. Today, that cupboard is bare. The National Guard, which contains most of the reserves' combat forces, is barely making ends meet. The Army Reserve is straining too. The world is still a very dangerous place. I don't know that we can afford to spend our reserves so prodigiously.

And yet the military still overwhemingly, in one of the grandest examples of battered-wife syndrome crossed with Stockholm Syndrome ever seen, votes Republican. THIS is why many people have a perception of some of our military as "stupid" - because some members are duped into voting against their interests, with a smile, just as so many people in the hate states have been likewise duped. These people would rather curse the imagined darkness than light the single candle. Actually, that's not harsh enough: they've been so duped they wouldn't know where to find the match.

Some folks expressed outrage several days ago that the assassination attempt against Dick Cheney was just that - an attempt. I don't wish death on either Bush or Cheney. Their remaining alive, going down in flames, in the shame of self-immolation - whether they care matters not because life is long and hell is murky - is more essential now than ever, so that the tiniest glimmer of hope that Americans will have experienced enough of their terror to shudder at the thought of voting for like men again will remain alive.