WALLs are frequently heard saying on cable tv and sat radio that "right wing" conspirators are trying to manipulate American opinion by an excess of zeal in pursuing anti-terrorism strategies. They sure weren't doing that prior to Sept. 2001 and one wishes there were a spasm of attention getting anti-terrorist rhetoric at that time. Perhaps someone would have noticed Mohammad Atta sweating or trembling when he boarded that plan in Boston. The WALLs, of course, have convinced themselves and now try to convince others that 9-11 was a one-off deal. Anyone with a contrary view belongs to a conspiracy of "right-wing nuts" trying to terrify the country for political reasons. I think the WALLs are the real "wing-nuts." The WALLs would have you believe that anyone with a view differing from their saccharine one-world-hold-hands-and-dream are trying to put one over on us.
That would include FBI (government conspirator) Robert Mueller who was recently interviewed by NewsMax Magazine (also part of the right-wing conspiracy):
FBI Director Robert Mueller said al-Qaida's paramount goal is clear: to detonate a nuclear device that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.
It was the Wall Street Journal which first reported the story of John Edwards supposedly unwitting foray into the murky world of sub-prime lending. It seems Edwards had a spare 16 million dollars he didn’t know what to do with so he put it into an investment company he consulted for. Edwards’ former employer and investment firm Fortress Investment Group LLC has sent out thirty-four notices of foreclosure on New Orleans Katrina victims, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Fortress Investment Group LLC is the parent of other sub-prime lending institutions which are foreclosing on the homes of poor hurricane Katrina victims. Edwards says he worked for Fortress to learn all he could about international finance, and says he didn’t know anything about the sub prime business Fortress and its affiliates were conducting. Wouldn’t you like to have him for your lawyer?
The Wall Street Journal article gave a few examples of what sub-prime lending was all about. Apparently, it’s a sort of ass-backward way of getting the hard-working poor like the Monteses (depicted in one of the Journal articles) into housing they can’t afford at high interest rates, piggyback loans, and prepayment penalties.
Common sense tells you that poor people should have lower interest loans, one at a time, and with no prepayment penalties. What’s the purpose of a prepayment penalty except to provide a windfall to greedy mortgage brokers and lenders? You should be financially punished for paying off your debt early?
Right now, just about everyone in government wants to crack down on the “deceptive practices of predatory lenders”. The irony of it is that the same people who want to crack down on sub prime lenders are the same people who have pressured government and banks to relax responsible lending practices to help the poor buy houses. Their constituents in the banking, investment, and financial areas were all for it so long as they were making money. Now that the bubble has burst, you have candidates like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton proclaiming their renewed fervor as “champions of the poor and downtrodden”
To avoid the appearance of bottom-feeding, populist candidate Edwards has now promised to assist all the homeowners being foreclosed due to involvement with the company Edwards consulted for. Part-time work at Fortress Investment Group LLC provided Edwards with a salary of approximately $476,000 for the year 2006. In addition, Fortress Investment Group personnel were heavy contributors to the Edwards presidential campaign to the tune of $150,000.
Clearly, populism has rewards that are both political and financial. However, when brazen hypocrisy masquerades as populism, people are rightly disgusted.
In a Newark, NJ neighborhood recently, a trio of college bound post-teens are told to kneel down facing a brick wall and executed with bullets fired point-blank into their brains. A female companion, shot first, survived and bravely pointed out the murderers to police from a hospital critical care ward. The story was slow to get wheels but then it began to get wider circulation. Will it lose momentum just as quickly when a violence benumbed television audience begins to rationalize and dismiss it as just another case of thug life in the ‘hood.
The classical liberal answer is to decry gun violence. Nobody should doubt the sincerity and conviction of Mayor Cory Booker in trying to rid his city of people who are destroying it but he’s got to do better than to recite the customary bromides about hangun proliferation. Doesn’t New Jersey already have some of the toughest handgun laws on record? There’s no point in emulating New York’s Mayor Bloomberg who faults neighboring states for selling handguns to the thugs who, Bloomberg suggests, would not be committing violent crimes at all if the guns had not fallen so easily into their hands.
Tough gun laws, like tough drug laws, don’t work. You’ve got to change the human equation and that’s a little bit more difficult than citing convenient anti-gun slogans to please the liberal electorate.
Booker knows exactly what he’s up against but he’s painted himself into the liberal corner paved for him by Democratic stalwarts like Governor Jon Corzine. Sure, Corzine will play the great humanitarian, appearing at funerals to wring his hands and say predictable things like the murders were "cold-hearted and cowardly." Or that the murders were “beyond comprehension.” Really? Beyond comprehension? Perhaps in Corzine’s neighborhood, but not in the heart of the city Cory Booker swore to clean up.
If Corzine really wants to help Booker help the city, he might want to get real about his support of the “Sanctuary Cities for Illegals Who Commit Violent Crime.” Newark is one of the cities where cops are told by their Governor not to get involved with issues involving illegal immigrants. I’m referring to one Jose Carranza, who had been previously arrested in separate incidents for assault and for rape of a five year old. Corzine should answer for why this guy was out on the street and for why there was no attempt to notify Immigration authorities he was on the streets.
Another wizard is Essex county prosecutor Paula Dow who offers the specious argument that she didn’t direct ICE to be notified because she feared that Immigration officials would whisk Carranza off to the deportation dock. That’s about as screwy a story as you’re likely to hear. Immigration’s not going to deport an accused rapist and murderer with a prosecution pending. How stupid does Dow think people are?
It’s all some screwy politically correct shell game and people are rightly angry. Cory Booker’s a guy who wants to do the right thing but he needs help from the Honkeys on High and that means the governor. Bust chops. Kick the tires and light the fires. Tell the cops they must report illegals involved in violent crimes to immigration authorities. Is the weak drivel offered by the political pimp-daddies of political correctness worth even one hair of those murdered kids heads?
I can remember the number of near traffic fatalities I was involved in while driving fast rolling metal during the reckless days of my youth. Spinning out and surviving at speeds in excess of 100 mph is a kind of message that it took me a while to decipher. This happened more than once, more than twice, and I thought it was just a matter of time before my guardian angel got fed up and decided to walk.
I still like fast cars but not on the highways where I'm putting other people at risk. My tastes for highway driving these days can be summarized in two words: safety and dependability.
On the dependability scale, I was glad to read in the Wall Street Journal that GM's American Buick scored as high as the Toyota Lexus in the JD Power study of dependability.
As a personal matter, though, I do take issue with the JD Power generalizations about the Ford line. I know Ford has its financial troubles (and I think Mulally will succeed in taking care of those) and I know that Ford has had its dogs, but it also has had its great cars, some of which were indestructible. I drove my 1968 Shelby Mustang across country from New York to San Francisco several times in the same year with pedal to the metal and no holds barred. The only problem with that one is that the heater fuse blew out on a cold day in Wyoming. The Ford I have now is a bulletproof throwback with adequate power, decent mileage, and five-star crash ratings from every angle. It's nearly impossible to flip, according to law-enforcement types I've talked to. Guess what.
Another automobile review (Wall Street Journal by way of Russia) by a Russian auto research company appeared also in the Journal, that one about a Chinese car which....well, see for yourself.
The hot air blasting the Northeast could be coming out of Chicago where the Democratic Presidential candidates “debated” under the friendly auspices of the AFL-CIO confederation of labor unions. Newt Gingrich might not be your type of guy but his comments at a recent National Press Club talk were right on the money. How could anyone call this kind of format a “debate”? Gingrich suggested a mano-a-mano “direct conversation” of leading candidates over a 90 minute format.” A conversation. A frank back and forth would eliminate a great deal of the bilious clouds of smoke applied to just about every issue as the candidates play to the camera under the solicitous attentions of their handlers.
Joe Biden was booed in that crowd for mentioning some compelling facts, the most compelling of which is that they are no easy answers. Telling hard-core union types the truth apparently causes the popularity meters to go down, not up. Biden was undeterred as the other candidates huffed and puffed popular generalities about health insurance, trade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The distinguishing characteristic of the August 7 “debate” was that important “questions” were skirted, bloviated, panegyricized, circumvented, ignored or any other adjective describing political minds rendered dead or inoperative in the face of hard realities.
Somebody asked the question: “If you get out of Iraq and Al Qaeda takes over, what will you do?”
I imagined a silent scream from the behind-the-scenes puppet-masters shouting “NO!... DON’T ANSWER THAT!”
Richardson was astoundingly clueless. Obama wandered aimlessly without answering the question and revisited the possibility of bombing Pakistan. For Dodd, the answer was diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. Edwards said he’d get right out of Iraq but if “genocide breaks out…(he would)….prepare for that.” Thank goodness! Biden, at least, pointed out the bitter results of any course of action. Hillary, as usual, placed herself squarely on all sides of the issue, ending with Aunty Nanny’s perpetual all-purpose bromide: “Stay focused and keep them on the run.” Gee, isn’t that the Bush doctrine? Was President Bush there? I must have missed that part.
The “post-forum” analysis with Chris Matthews provided a high moment of the ridiculous when Chris Jansing explained the boos that followed on one of Hillary Clinton’s comments as “voicing displeasure with the Bush policy.” Was President Bush even there? I didn’t see him, did you?
Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter blanched at Jansing’s comments and quickly moved to reign her in. He said that Hillary’s comments presaged a lack of “openness about foreign policy” and that Americans expected that transparency from their leaders.
What was most transparent about this sorry offering of candidates (with perhaps the exception of Joe Biden) was that they were more concerned with exploiting dissatisfactions in order to gain power than with dealing with the harsh realities of leadership.
I think one could make the case individually that the Democratic candidates are just as interesting as any others but, in the debate format, there is a tendency to see them as a sort of collective. As if they’d all lived at the same kibbutz or commune. Or were embryonic companions of an enormous Democrat incubator. A mass of undifferentiated verbiage. Boring.
Fortunately, Hillary is a woman and does not have to don the same uniform as Messrs. Kucinich, Dodd, Biden, or that third-place guy with the great hair. Hillary can distinguish herself from the pack in a variety of ways unavailable to other Democrats. Hillary can wear pink, signaling femininity and a veiled feminism in one single brush stroke. One could make colorful remarks about Barak Obama but Democrats are fond of saying that America, especially Democrat America, is color-blind. Settling the nomination upon a white woman from a privileged background can be explained as the only kind of revolution worth making to a constituency concerned more with winning than with telling the truth.
Perhaps the Democrat candidates are consciously contributing to the uniform geopolitical view in marching lock-step on the War on Terror and chanting anti-Bush slogans to a choir of similar thinking people. Hate the Republican candidates or love them, at least their debates are not as boring as the Democratic contender’s debates.
Having settled on McCain early for a variety of sound personal reasons, I had scarcely looked at the other Republicans vying for the nomination. Of course, how could any person living in the Northeast not have ingested a little bit of Giuliani? The guy that saved New York. The guy that married his nurse. The guy who made New York habitable again after a decade of pious and studiously empathetic mismanagement. Imagine my surprise last night when I returned from a harried road trip and discovered there were other candidates standing alongside my man McCain and Rudy Giuliani.
Mitt Romney looked the charming stalwart and exhibited a wit to match in describing Senator Obama as a guy “willing to have tea with our enemies while bombing our friends.” Or something to that effect. A combination of “Jane Fonda and Doctor Strangelove,” he said. It might be fun to hang out with him for a couple of hours sometime. So far as Mormonism goes, I think all the world’s great religions are mostly good and a little bit spooky, too.
That Tancredo guy looked tough and smart. I don’t think a guy that tough could be elected. Remember Bob Dole? Dark, dark, very dark. I’m afraid that the difference between Dole and Tancredo may be that Tom only looks and talks tough whereas Bob Dole was for sure the kind of guy to give somebody a much needed smack down.
Sam Brownback was just perfect, so perfect that I couldn’t be sure just what he was thinking. If I had to hang around with that guy, I’d feel I’d have to wear long sleeves to cover my tattoo. Keep away from beaches and swimming pools.
Huckabee? What a likeable man! I would be comfortable with him as my doctor but not in hunting down Al Qaeda.
The Big Surprise for me was the California Representative Duncan Hunter. Surviving California means you’ve got to be a player and a hitter and a nut-buster, too. But being a House Rep has not exactly been a springboard to the presidency—it happened maybe…once?
I guess there were some others, too. Ron Paul was entertaining and had the most amazing face, a natural and not unpleasant caricature of itself. So far as faces go, Tommy Thompson has a great face, too. Thompson has a Jake LaMotta ex-pug’s face. He’s an unfancy man who knows that Presidential debates are merely superficial but essential beauty contests required by the Fourth Estate.
I've decided I need a Culture War Correspondent and have begun interviewing. Blogs need variety. Moeursalen has a strong tendency toward solipsism. It would be nice to have a Left Coast Culture War Correspondent. I received a brief resume from a candidate named "Amy" who lives alternatively in Nevada and California. She calls that a "full spectrum living arrangement." I would like to know what readers think of her resume offerings:
Dear Mr. Moeursalen:
I've replied to you in some format approaching sequential, but my usual format in any expression is non-sequitur. English teachers refer to this as "rambling.” Psychologists call it "Attention Deficit".
Believe what you want to believe, see what you care to see, think what you think is righteous, ethical, harmless. Nothing is harmless.
I'm good with 2-word expressions only. I'd be okay working for a teenage tee shirt company. But I usually don't like to complete the ESSAY so to speak. It is very boring and futile to make attempts at completion in Life. Nothing gets DONE.
I remember prayers- and use them in Emergencies. The saints must have a huge backlog of rantings from people, huh? They just aren't jumpin’ in like they used to...
My husband likes to visit California Mexican Padre Missions. But you can't get him inside of any church. He's good at praying in emergencies though.
My dog, Mia is here with me. She has just ripped her latest toy (stuffed animal) to bits. David calls Mia's stuffed animals "dummies". I told him that is a little offensive and politically incorrect. He still calls them "Dummies".
You may think I have forgotten the original intent of my application as Left Coast Culture War Correspondent, but I haven’t. Drifting is merely the usual form of conversation in a state divided by the San Andreas fault. Should you give me the job, I’m sure that your perverse politico-literary pretensions would be requited. Nobody in Hollywood today can lose a train of thought like I can!
Hilary: Damn that New York Times... Damn!..Damn!...Damn!....
Bill: What’s gotten into you Hilary? Haven’t you read that fawning NYT family piece about Chelsea?
Hilary: I wish they’d leave Chelsea out of it entirely. That photo made you look like a Christmas Daddy but there I was off toward the side of the picture crooning like a torch singer. As if I couldn’t give a damn!
Bill: (sympathetically) C’mon Hilary….
Hilary. No kidding, Bill, I’m so pissed I could shoot the photographers and those two clowns who wrote that Iraq piece.
Bill: Don’t say that, Hilary. Gun control, remember? Besides, I thought you liked Michael O’Hanlon.
Hilary: (exasperated) That’s not the point, Bill. O’Hanlon’s cute alright but he was probably influenced by that Brookings Institute creep.
Bill: Kenneth Pollack?
Hil: That’s the one. Did you read the story? It’s got everybody’s underwear in a knot. It says the military has made a great deal of progress in Iraq. They made it sound as if we were winning the war in Iraq. Or as if we could win. That’s all I need right now. I’d have to change positions again!
Bill: I did read that piece about your old boyfriend, Peavey. And the weird letters you sent to him. He gave them up to the New York Times? Geez, you have to admit yourself they were weird letters.
Hilary: Silly little nerdy shit!
Bill: I thought the story about Peavey was fairly sympathetic, Hil.
Hil: Are you out of your mind, Bill? Sympathetic? That 1969 photo with vertical stripped hippy pants made my thighs look elephantine. And the Birkenstocks! Sympathetic? “Pathetic” is the word I’d use. The only time presidents need to look “sympathetic” is when they die in office. How would you like to be memorialized with a nice little sympathy photo of that pathetic little creature what’s-her-name crawling beneath your desk while you….
Bill: Okay, Hilary…that’s enough already. Fer Chrissakes….Hilary…let it go.
(The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Bill (irritated) picks it up.)
Hilary: It’s for you, Hil…. Harry Reed.
Hilary (brightening): Okay, Harry, thanks for getting back to me. Here’s what I’d like you to do…. (Hilary’s voice trails off as screen fades to dark)
Wide Shot: The brightly lighted Senate Hall.
Cut To: C.U. The Senate Podium where Harry Reed is standing, bespectacled and reading from a prepared script.
Harry Reed Senate Leader: (sonorously)
The future for Iraq is neither merry nor bright. The protracted Civil War has been waged under a dark cloud of pessimism and defeat. We cannot hope to win in Iraq. We must lay down our arms. We must never dream that Iraq can be a free and democratic nation. We must engage with our enemies on the battlefield of bureaucracy and diplomacy. We must beg forgiveness. We must be grateful whenever our enemies (and we acknowledge none) fail to forgive us. We must never retreat from these ineffective, feckless, and effete notions which shall be the war cry of the New Direction for America.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont recently teamed up with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to assist Al Qaeda in the secret conduct of its activities. Leahy is the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and is widely respected among leading Democrats for putting politics ahead the nation’s security. Senator Leahy has done his utmost to obfuscate, delay, and thwart the administration’s efforts in intelligence gathering around the world. In a statement fraught with legalistic jousting over the power of the executive versus the power of congressional legislators, Leahy ignored the one single component most vital to freedom, the right of perfectly healthy American citizens to remain alive.
Cant liberal interpretations of FISA (the Foreign Service Intelligence Act) have been a crucial part of the inheritance left by former Attorney General Janet Reno and Leahy has been a willing heir. Anyone listening to the Vermont Senator’s rants will hear Patrick Leahy declaiming his protection of “ordinary American citizens” from warrantless wiretaps a la J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s and 1970s. In the interest of personal privacy, and in deference to Mr. Leahy, knowing and grateful wireless users are no longer shouting into their phones in public places to reveal their most intimate secrets.
Senator Leahy’s anal-retentive interpretation of FISA is outmoded as much as the term “wiretap” itself. We’re no longer in Kansas, Mr. Leahy, and packet-switched communication between two terrorists located in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran or anywhere else in the world are routinely bounced around the globe in such a way as to pass through “domestic” telephone airwaves. Given the tone-deaf indifference of the Democrat controlled Congress to America’s safety, and its preference for soothing elevator music instead of leadership, it’s appropriate that the Bush administration is asking for some modernization of FISA.
President Bush has already screwed up by agreeing to seek warrants under the FISA provisions. Talk about giving them an inch. Leahy now jacks everyone up by stonewalling the process of modifying and streamlining the FISA process. When it comes down to picking up intelligence about a gas attack on a city subway line or an explosion aboard an aircraft, yesterday’s warrant for intelligence may be about as useless as yesterday’s breakfast.
Could it be that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, never recovered from vice-president Cheney’s rebuke of him in June of 2004? Noble indignant Democrats were stung by Cheney’s retort to the Senator and duly sniffed the air like the blue bloods they are. But for most of us, Cheney restored a tone of reality to an unfettered Democratic Party flight toward a nostalgic sixties-style fairyland.
“Fuck yourself,” Cheney told the silver-haired super-lawyer
My sentiments exactly. But Leahy’s petty resentments seem to have taken over from that point onward. Leahy voted against reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006, and for any other anti-terror proposal coming out of the Bush-Cheney White House ever since.
(Previously on Senate Stop-The-War: Senators wheel cots into the capitol like feckless college kids pulling an “all-nighter.” Hilary Clinton makes her now famous 4:00 in the morning Stop-The-War Pitch to bored legislators. This is viewed by the press as a departure from her early positioning on the war, her later positioning, last week’s posture, and her developing strategy. Harry Reid does all he can to make pal Nancy feel comfortable on the narrow cot, providing 600 thread-count sheets emblazoned with the logo of the stupendous Las Vegas Bellagio Casino. Senator Carl Levin spends time primping and surfing the internet to find a pair of bi-focals that will make him look “Franklinesque”)
Act II, Scene I: New York’s Senator Hilary Clinton attempts to rouse the sleeping Speaker of the House).
Hilary Clinton: (poking Pelosi’s ribs) C’mon, Nancy…. Get up, will you? You’ll miss the YouTube-CNN debate. I need you there to watch the popularity meter.
Nancy Pelosi: (sitting up on her cot, moaning, and rubbing her eyes) Oh, for the love of Mike, Hilary….leave me the hell alone!....
Hilary Clinton: Get up, damn it! You’re the majority leader!
Nancy Pelosi: Oaaammmmmh!... (yawns)…those yellow jackets!... Where’d you get them anyway?
Hilary Clinton: Harry got them from some guy in Vegas. What does it matter? Get up, your limo’s waiting outside.
Act II, Scene II: The CNN-YouTube debate. Most of the Democratic candidates are there. This time, Hilary has demanded a podium well away from John Edwards’ podium. That anti-democratic open mike embarrassment still stings. Hilary now needs to look open and inviting. The decolletage strategy was only the first step.
Debate Monitor: Senator Dodd seemed really steamed tonight although the source of his apoplexy has not yet been determined. His campaign advisors urged him to show passion and so the Senator from Connecticut fulminated in every utterance. Asked if he would like someone to fill up his water glass… (cut to Senator Dodd)
Senator Dodd: Water! Humphh!... I know water like nobody knows water! Do I want some? I’ll tell you this… I’m not about to have a drink of water before anyone else has a drink! Besides, I love Connecticut! What the hell does that have to do with my being president? Well, one of the things I’d do when I’m president is let the people decide. Water, yes, water is a good thing for the country! It’s about time someone had the balls to get up and shout it out for the entire country to hear! That’s something I haven’t heard from any of them, except maybe Dennis Kucinich!
Debate Monitor: There are only two other persons who stood out this evening: Senators Barak Obama and Joe Biden of that small chicken-raising state of Delaware. Asked about the candidate position on the Iraq War, the Senators responded:
Barak Obama: My position on Iraq and my position on being an African-American are the same as it ever was. And, unlike my opponents, my position doesn’t change when I’m in New York City trying to hail a cab, either.
Joe Biden: Hilary, Dennis, Chris, Barak, and that cracker guy with the fancy hair-do…ooops!..I didn’t mean that, ha-ha….Senator Edwards, I should have said… are all talking about a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. I’m going to give it to you straight. Showing ass while the troops are in the field is going to get lots of people killed. And which of these assembled liberals is going to pony up to that?
Hilary Clinton: Senator Biden, I strongly object! I resent being called a liberal! The correct word is “progressive.” “Progressive” means forward. “Progressive” , in this case means fast forward to the day Bill and I reclaim our rightful progressive heritage in the White House.
Nancy Pelosi: Well said, Hil! The popularity meter crossed the median point.
Harry Reid: Hi, Nancy…how well did you sleep?
Carl Levin: (trying on a new pair of bi-focals) Now how Franklinesque do I look?
Debate Monitor: That’s about it for tonight, folks. Tune in again for another future edition of Foreign Policy Roulette.
(The lights go down on the stage, though we hear a shriek and a voice calling “Harry!...”)
Scene: The stately Senate building in Washington D.C. Teams of undocumented workers wheeling cots and bedpans into the erstwhile edifice. Strolling into the Senate Building arm-in-arm: Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Senator Carl Levin and a host of minor players.
Harry Reid: Together we’ll save the soldiers, the enlisted men, the draftees! We’ll stonewall the troop spending bill!
Nancy Pelosi: Geezuz, Harry… get it together. There are no draftees!
Harry Reid: No? Well alright then, we’ll save the dummies that joined up and don’t know any better.
Carl Levin: Right on! Hey, do I look statesmanlike?
Hilary: Statesmanlike? Well, duh! Don’t you mean “statespersonlike?”
Carl: Yeah. Sorry, that’s exactly what I meant, Hil. But hey!.. Check out these new Ben Franklin bifocals. CNN will absolutely shit when I pop these babies on.
Harry Reid: Why would you want to peer over your bifocals like Ben Franklin when you can be like me and look like Calvin Coolidge? Think how much money we’ll save if we cut out bullets, bombs, boots, aircraft, and striker vehicles from the defense budget. Wouldn’t you like to get the credit for that?
Carl Levin: Sure, but who got more ass than Ben Franklin? Not stingy Calvin Coolidge, that’s for sure.
Nancy Pelosi: Where’s my bunk? I’m bushed already?
Hilary Clinton: Who could sleep with this racket going on?
Harry Reid: Don’t worry, Nance… We’ve got the 600 threadcount sheets for you. And those little yellow pills you like so much. You’ll sleep like a twenty year old dog. And tomorrow when you wake up, it’ll be a New America.
Nancy Pelosi: New America? That’s catchy but talk to me about it tomorrow. I’ve got to get some shuteye. (Fumbling in her purse) Damn!...where are my sleeping pills? (Something drops from purse, but the Majority Leader quickly snatches it up, embarrassed.)
Hilary Clinton (winks): Nice catch, Nancy. I hope that was the energy saver.
Carl Levin: What was that?
Harry Reid: Don’t worry, Nance…what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Hilary Clinton: Shut up, Harry, we’re not in Vegas anymore, it’s four a.m. and we’ve got to show America how to lose this war.
Carl Levin: You go, girl! You’re up next! Tell ‘em how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
(Hilary walks across the floor and mounts the dais and begins to speak. Nancy Pelosi climbs into a small, narrow cot and pulls the sheets over her head. Carl Levin pulls out a compact mirror, applies makeup and works on his Ben Franklin look. Harry Reid looks about confused by all the activity… )
Harry Reid: Anybody wanna’ play horsey?
(Political Drama Thriller to Be Continued Indefinitely.)
Preview of Coming Events: Tune in next week to see Al Qaeda captives being mercilessly tortured by being locked into a cell 24/7 with Cindy Sheehan)
Here's the actual clip of Bin Laden's latest appearance on tape recently edited into the new Zawahiri tape. It's as old as Papyrus. It's more decrepit than Zawahiri.
This latest round of terror warnings really kills me and my hope is that it will not kill some others, too. First of all, there was Michael Chertoff’s “gut feeling” pronouncement to set everyone’s nerves on edge a while ago. And then there’s the new hour-long Zawahiri rant with its embedded clip of Osama Bin Laden which, according to most experts, was as old as a papyrus tablet. The most interesting commentary so far is this theory of the “three warnings”. According to one commentator, Islamic law requires three warnings before violent action should be visited upon an enemy. Security analysts have counted this latest Zawahiri tape as the third. I would think it more likely that the Caliphate spends its free time watching American baseball and has adopted the three strikes rule. Surely, these jerkwads will attack any time they have a convenient opportunity. The nazi-inspired videos are the other hand of terror: propaganda. Terror doesn’t work so well unless it’s publicized, and where can you get a better audience for terror than in the likes of John Edwards, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their political bed partners.
From John Edwards we get the now popular slogan: “The war on terror is nothing more than a bumper sticker.” From just about everyone else, you get the news that we’re wasting our efforts in Iraq “while Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose.”
But why would terrorists pass up the tremendous morale building new clip of a thriving leader and present the world with a five year old grainy clip of the dour-faced Jihadi millionaire? Wouldn’t the Islamist Fascists do better by presenting a real live Bin Laden instead of the wraith-like Dr. Zawahiri? How many thousand cowering bed-wetters will continue to gleefully say “while Bin Laden is on the loose” when it is quite possible that Bin Laden had a bite taken out of his sorry butt and has now gone to heaven?
Besides, if Bin Laden were still clinging to life somewhere in a bat-dungeon or a Pakistani basement hospital ward, it is quite obvious that he is too frightened even to fart for fear of being discovered.
You’ve got to be a hard person to be president. You need brains, nerves of steel, and a hard shell shielding your sensibilities. I think Bill Clinton was a tough guy deep down. It's too bad that he couldn't carry his "bad self" over into the foreign policy area. I can almost cop to it that Bill was a decent domestic president but he turned to mush when it came to foreign affairs. Bill Clinton was more interested in being loved by everyone than he was in setting foreign policy precedents. He seemed not to care two beans about foreign affairs (and I won’t make any bad jokes about domestic “affairs”) judging by his choices of Madeline Albright and Warren Christopher to head the State Department. His many choices for Secretaries of Defense were ill-fated too.
Les Aspin turned down General Colin Powell’s request for tanks, armored vehicles and AC-130 Spectre gunships for American forces in Mogadishu, Somalia and we all know the sorry result.
The next defense secretary, William Perry, was chiefly known for downsizing the military and engaging in international diplomacy. A psychologist would describe the condition as "role and identity confusion."
Clinton’s third guy was a little better and it happens that he was a Republican. When Clinton announced his policy of “regime change” in Iraq, Secretary of Defense William Cohen was in charge of operation Desert Fox. Desert Fox was Bill Clinton’s 1998 four-day bombing campaign of Iraqi targets designed to loosen Saddam Hussein’s grip on his government. Too bad, the administration was afflicted with the governmental form of attention deficit disorder. It’s understandable, after all. We all want to feel secure and what’s the best way to feel secure and happy? Why to be told that we are secure and happy and to have our attention drawn away from life’s ugly facets.
Looking at the current crop of presidential candidates, I wonder if any of them have the deep-down toughness and strength of will and charactger the job requires. I guess John McCain's not a perfect human, but there's a tremendous strength of character which goes beyond what most folks call "patriotism".
Shot down in Vietnam in 1967, McCain was stripped, spat upon, bayoneted, gouged, kicked, ripped and left to rot in a Viet prison camp with broken arms, legs, and a shoulder. Regular daily beatings and torture over a five and a half year period is proof enough of McCain's character strength and his ability to measure up to challenges.
McCain’s a bit like the soft speaking normal guy who tossed off the hero’s robes to get down with the rest of us. I've know for a long time that McCain’s a boxing fan. Recently, I saw McCain and his wife (on TV) ringside at the much ballyhooed Mayweather-De La Hoya fight. Boxing's not the sport of the elite. I doubt you'll find John Kerry or Hilary Clinton at ringside, nor Nancy Pelosi. I guess they're wind-surfer, tennis, and golfing types and certainly there's nothing wrong with that. I imagine their handlers are hard-pressed to find an image connection that will humanize them to voters. I suggest Hilary and Pelosi go arm-in-arm to a boxing match with their pal Harry Reid, the senator from Nevada.
Like McCain, I’m a boxing fan. I'm also a registered amateur boxing coach. It's very rewarding though it can be wild and even a little bit dangerous. I spend about one-fifth of my time hanging around steamy gyms with gangsta kids from tough streets waving bad attitudes like battle flags. You know the kind? The ones the politicians are always promising to save. Boxing is a language that ties people together even better than religion.
And yeah, you don't have to tell me, it's a brutal and ugly sport, the nearest one can get to death in life without being shot out of a perfectly good airplane and captured by enemy torturers.
Steve Kornacki of the New York Observer was on Fox New York local TV with Jody Applegate and Ron Corning this morning and he was there to comment upon John McCain’s faltering campaign. Faltering here means lacking in dollars. Kornacki made me so mad that I anteed up another contribution to John McCain’s campaign at a time I can scarcely afford it.
I’d never heard of “political analyst” Steve Kornacki. He appeared to be a bubbling, gleeful, intelligent guy with a softened brillo haircut and an enormous amount of self-esteem drawn from a pampered or doting upbringing. His flight glide must have been a three step: prep school, college, journalism job. Maybe I’ve got that wrong and he was really a jet jock shot down over Iraq during the Gulf War, captured by Al Qaeda, tortured but refusing to give up any info except name, rank, serial number. But wouldn’t that have made him persona non grata among New York’s self-appointed cognoscenti?
The New York Observer is one of those insider political and style commentaries aimed at the moneyed liberal elite of New York City. A lot of the writing is about style and trend issues and that part of it is both funny and clever (with an effective humor range of about thirty Manhattan blocks). What’s not funny is that New York Observer writers are content to abstract real issues, believing that a clever phrase and a political approach are the cure for all the world’ problems. I was fascinated watching this guy reciting the conventional wisdoms as if he were a precocious child performing a recital for a gathering of close relatives.
It’s a tune you’ve heard before so I’ll abbreviate and employ semaphore. The recital went something like this: John McCain didn’t endear himself to conservative republicans because of his support of the failed Immigration Bill and his past forays into campaign finance legislation. Then he goes on to say that the one truly isolating issue that sealed the death warrant for McCain is that he hasn’t adjusted his stand on Iraq to reflect the popular media polls and the political winds.
Smile, wink, drool. The thought of McCain being punished for his support of the war is enough to make guys like Kornacki lick their lips and begin salivating. We’re in an Orwellian era of double-speak, double talk, and turning worms and they’re not all on the Democratic side of the aisle. My dream ticket is John McCain and Joe Lieberman-- I’d take either one for president.
I’m tired of turning worms like Hilary Clinton. I’m tired of b.s. armchair generals like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. I’m tired of the two Chucks—Hagel and Schumer. I’m tired of so-called journalists regurgitating popular sentiments and pre-digested notions which receive the stamp of imprimatur from their spineless contemporaries who think that “roughing it” means eating at a roadside diner instead of Elaine’s. I’m tired of hearing from people who think that the only type of people who wish to become soldiers do so only because they are too dull to think of anything more fun to do.
I’m probably a lot like you. I’m a guy trying to learn as much as I can about all the candidates, all the domestic and international problems, and all the strategies for guiding America. At bottom though, after all the political bullcrap, manipulations, illusions and insincere words are spinning in the air like dead leaves, it comes down to who you’d follow when you’re in trouble. It’s probably not news to you, ladies and gentlemen; we live in times of trouble. A knee-jerk withdrawal from Iraq coupled with a nostalgic yearning for pre-9-11 euphoria won’t help us much when the “bright new day” of a Clinton presidency turns out to be wishful thinking just as a real, hard, darkness falls.
A new ESPN miniseries documents the late seventies in New York City. The miniseries is set to air on Mondays, beginning July 9, at 10:00 p.m. 1977 is the year that Reggie Jackson came through for the Yankees in the World Series. Son of Sam killer Richard Berkowitz was prowling the neighborhoods of New York City with a .44 Caliber handgun and killing people at random. The big sound of the Seventies was disco so many people who are not baseball fans may find some nostalgic plateau of enjoyment in the soundtrack for the eight-part miniseries.
The miniseries is based on a 2005 book of the same name (The Bronx is Burning) by Jonathan Mahler. Apparently, the director was concerned about the “look” of the documentary series. Since much of the series is based on archival video footage, ESPN was faced with the problem of how to seamlessly intercut modern actors and scenes with the low-definition clips of old video. The Wall Street Journal online video clip ( 1 min; 15 secs) tells us how to “de-res” the new footage:
In the event you were outside the country or orbiting the earth in a satellite as one of the world’s newest space tourists, it is worth re-telling the story of Mika Brzezinski’ s attempted pyrotechnics on MSNBC morning television. The episode is symptomatic of the seismic changes going on at the GE owned television conglomerate.
Call her an absolutist or a rebel, but Mika Brzezinski found the lost chord of American television when she refused to do a story on Paris Hilton’s release from jail. Not only did Ms. Brzezinski refuse, but she grabbed a cheap plastic cigarette lighter from co-host Willie Geist’s pocket and proceeded to ignite the baloney script on live tv. Co-host Willie Geist (producer of Tucker Carlson’s show) must have trained with Homeland Security because he defused the incident by snatching the mini-torch from the hands of the rebellious Mika. Mika’s a woman of great will and determination however. Under the deprecatory jibes of another co-host, Joe Scarborough, Mika got up from her desk and pushed the entire script through the paper shredder situated behind the trio.
Now, can we get on with the real news? When hell freezes over, Mika, but should you shrink to a pile of simpering mush in future endeavors, you will always be remembered (and loved) for that one grand heroic act. News junkies, it is well worth going to the MSNBC website and watching the video.
At first I thought the real news was that a hybrid car could reach 100 mph in the first place but then I read a little further.
CNN reports that Al Gore III was arrested for speeding down a California highway at 100 m.p.h in a Prius containing illegal drugs: marijuana, Vicodin, Valium, Xanax and Soma, and Adderall, an amphetamine often prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit disorder.
Gore III wasn’t charged with driving under the influence because an “expert” determined that his driving wasn’t impaired. That’s nice. Apparently, the exercise of poor judgment while driving does not count as “impairment.”
Gore’s drug arrest a few years earlier apparently didn’t cure the 24 year old of his propensity for fast driving and illegal substances. He is reported to have been previously arrested for driving 97 mph in a 55mph zone in Tennessee.
If the past is prologue, as some say, this celebrity son is bound to respond to his preferential treatment with additional displays of license and privilege in the future. Perhaps I’m being harsh in wondering what specific quantities of illegal drugs were found in the car. So far as I know, that wasn’t reported. Was it one pill each of Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Soma, and Adderall? All for his own use?
As comedian Jonathan Lovitz would say: “Yeah, yeah...that’s it...that’s the story!”
Islamic terror has always been propelled by privileged elite. Ayman Al Zawahiri is an Egyptian medical doctor. Osama Bin Laden comes from a family of family of great personal wealth and had bodyguards and private limousines to assist him in cruising for women in the bars of Beirut. It is interesting to note how successful the privileged elitists of terror have been in persuading stupid, poor, and desperate followers to commit suicide in the name of homicide in the name of morality in the name of Allah…
A network of doctors makes sense from the terrorist standpoint. The special privacy guarantees of American and British medical health law allows the unrestricted transmission of information. Confidentiality concerns protect the death doctors if communication is embedded in the text of private patient health information.
Do they have a Hippocratic Oath in medical training hospitals of the Middle East? What would it say? I promise to uphold and respect human life except for civilians, infidels, gays, Jews, Christians, moderate Muslims, young men and women dancing in bars, and all those who don’t agree that mass murder is the solution to all of mankind’s problems…
