Scene III : Hilary Does the New York Times

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.

Take It Back, Cheney!.... Trial Lawyers Rule!

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.

The Monkey Speaks: Ode to the Democratic Presidential Candidates

We’ll write the story
And then we’ll find the facts.
We’re not concerned with truth
So much as political attacks

Obfuscation is our credo,
Litigation is our game.
We’ll tie you up in paper
And save the facts for later.

Nancy is our General
Hilary, our appointed Queen
The Breck Boy carries water
Barak is on our team.

Rumsfeld was a tyrant,
We whined until he quit.
Have you ever seen such brilliance
Since the days of Lilliput?

Mexicans are wonderful
When they’re not Attorneys General.
Gonzales dissed our judges
And now must bear our grudges

We’re for the troops of course
But not if they cost us money
We’re at the front on Terror
But the Army is in error.

We like to praise Bin Laden
Imagining him alive and prospering
It rankles Georgie Bush
And wins us friends in Hindu Kush.

Please don’t call me liberal.
The word is out of date.
It may seem a bit obsessive,
But I’m both mainstream and Progressive.

I wouldn’t say we’re evil
I wouldn’t say we’re nice
So we’ll just write the stories
And then supply the facts.

By Moeursalen

Talking Heads in the Cyber Age

(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.

Chorus: BZZZZSSSSSSZZzzzzzzzzz….blah-blah…..blur-blur….. Bsxxxxzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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!...”)

Senate Stop-The-War Pajama Party…

A One Act Play.

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)

The 50 Second Bin Laden Tape

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.

read more | digg story

Bin Laden: Dead or Undead?

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.

In the Clearing Stands A Fighter

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.

When Darkness Falls

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.

The Bronx Is Burning: ESPN Miniseries Starts July 9

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:

Burn, Baby, Burn! : Mika Brzezinski's Pyrotechnics on MSNBC

Returning from Summer Vacation News:


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.

Toyota Prius Reaches 100 MPH in Hands of Celebrity Driver

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!”

The Healing Arts & The Doctors of Terror

That so many of the terror suspects arrested in the London-Glasgow attacks are doctors should dampen the fatuous notion that “the poor” become so “desperate” that they “turn to terror.” That litany of clichés has been a sort of mantra for those who wish to rationalize terror against civilian populations.

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…

Hilary & Michael Moore On the Same Page

I’m a McCain supporter hedging as a Giuliani supporter. I don’t know how I ended up on Hilary Clinton’s campaign mailing list but somehow I did. Since then, I’ve received email letters from Hilary’s congenial husband, Bill, and several from Hilary’s camp. All are aimed keeping me informed of policy vagaries and soliciting campaign money. Though I fully appreciate Hilary Clinton's ambition to be all things to all people, I think the Clintons could afford to send me some money. Here's the beef of Hilary's email solicitation:

“We're ready for universal health care. We're ready to create jobs and achieve energy independence. We're ready for an end to the war in Iraq and to restore our role as a respected leader in the world.”

Wow! Universal Health Care timed to coincide with another brilliant release of a Michael Moore pseudo-documentary, this one titled “Sicko.” Of course, that title is redundant. But shouldn’t Hilary tell her supporters that the touted social medicine systems of Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, some other countries mentioned in Moore’s film are turning to private medical insurance companies to buttress their government subsidized medical systems?

Our own health care system needs reform. If Government-sponsored Universal Health Care was, in reality, the utopian field of dreams Hilary said it was, then we’d be crazy not to go for it. There’s a simple reality test for Health Care Reform. Pass a law requiring that whatever universal health care was provided for “the people” would be the only health care plan to which members of Congress would have access. No private pay, no other.

Mowing The Lawn in Flannel Shirts & Birkenstocks

Just about everyone I know claims to be an environmentalist yet most of them live their lives indoors. Some environmentalists mow their lawns on riding lawnmowers and then return inside. Many who live in the country feel they are living in a hostile environment of mosquitoes, biting flies, gnats, wild animals, and pesky critters like deer, groundhogs, rabbits, and raccoons. Rarely are people seen outdoors, particularly in winter. In winter, most of the people one sees in the woods are hunters, and many of them soon retreat to the indoor comforts of their television sets and hearths.

Environmentalism becomes more political and abstract than real or experienced. No one will disagree that the vast amount of resources devoted to publicizing the causes of environmentalism is a form a social engineering. Social engineering refers to the ability of a small group of people to get a much larger group of people behaving in a specified way. Social engineering is what Lenny Riefenstahl memorialized in her film paean to the Third Reich. There are certainly benefits to be obtained from social engineering. Publicity, regulation, and education have presumably encouraged millions of people to recycle their garbage, conserve water, and cut down on their energy consumption.


Whether or not socially engineered environmentalism works at more than a superficial level is debatable. How many people have truly made that vital connection to nature? How many know the names of common trees and wild plants? How many people have ever planted a tree? How many have grown their own fruit and vegetables? Some of our most noted “environmentalists” have probably not even mowed their own lawns. The disconnect between people and the natural world is evident when the weather is “too cold” or “too hot” or “too humid” or “too buggy”. Conspicuous by their absence on days such as these are the “environmentalist” who are no doubt at home dreaming up new projects in social engineering.

Many of the people who call themselves “environmentalists” direct others from air-conditioned offices on the top floors of city buildings? Other self-styled “environmentalists” are merely steppingstones for politicians. Am I wrong in believing that a deeper connection to nature is a more enduring benefit to society than any form of social engineering?

Moeursalen: Angel "The Duck" Cabrera Wins U.S. Open Professional Golf Championship

Moeursalen: Angel "The Duck" Cabrera Wins U.S. Open Professional Golf Championship

Stay Out of the Sand Trap and Look Out for Lap Dancers

Advice to golfers playing the Cherry Valley Pennsylvania Course: Stay out of the sand traps. Don’t over hit your first drive on those long dogleg holes. Concentrate. Don’t let yourself be distracted by the bimbo squad and the lap dancers hired by an operator of a “Gentlemen’s Club” who rented the course for a private party.

A Pennsylvania newspaper called The Pocono Record reported the full story this week, complete with video. According to the Pocono Record report, about eighty golfers paid a $150.00 fee to play the course and to frolic with strippers and lapdancers in lounge chairs alongside the fairways. Did the sight of naked or half-clad women cause golfers to aim for the “rough”? Did some lucky woman’s husband or boyfriend get caught by the video camera of passersby who traveled the public road which runs along the golf course?

It’s hard to attract visitors to a blog which tries to deal in serious things. So here goes my first shameless attempt to use sex to sell advertising:

Pocono Record - Strip club owner faults media for driving golf outing story

Incidentally, The Pocono Record was taken to task for its “salacious” reporting by another Pennsylvania newspaper, The Morning Call. The Morning Call published an edited version of the cheesy cheesecake video. According to a Morning Call writer who contacted the Associated Press for a comment, AP wasn’t interested in the video. The Morning Call published the following comment in its June 27 edition:

''We do exercise judgment on that kind of material,'' said Kevin Roach, executive producer for online video at AP.

But will YouTube?

Arlen Specter Fights for Guantanamo Detainee Rights

Would that it were not true, but Pennsylvania's Senator Arlen Specter supports action to provide Al Quaeda operatives vacationing at Guantanamo with rights of habeas corpus. This means that the prisoners at Guantanamo would have special privileges and rights which uniformed and regular prisoners of war do not have. Unless the U.S. government could specifically prove that the highest standards of evidence was applied to the detention of these battlefield terrorists, these headcutters and mad bombers would have to be released. A writ of habeas corpus, provided compliments of Pennsylvania's Senator Spector, would be served upon them while further legal proceedings were undertaken against them. Of course, the former prisoners of Guantanamo would stick around for that. And of course Senator Specter would extract sincere promises from them not to kill any more of our people. Perhaps the next President of the United States, Madame Hilary Clinton, might put Mr. Specter in charge of writing up subpoenas for their appearance in court. Pennsylvanians can rest easy with the Senior Senator in charge of their security. Remember, it was Mr. Specter who came up with the legendary "magic bullet theory" for the Warren Commission.

This Is Not Your Father's Ellis Island

Once more blurring the lines between personal life and news as we know it is the immigration “debate”. I can guarantee three things:

1) Some additional measures will be enacted by Congress.

2) Some hapless government agency will have to embark on a mission impossible attempt to implement the changes.

3) Whatever new measures are enacted will be the wrong thing.

Why am I so cynical? One reason may be that I’ve worked for several government agencies. One agency I worked for was entrusted with the task of implementing fanciful new legislation which made sense to someone’s auntie who lived in a nice neighborhood in Peoria but to few other people.

Another reason is that the immigration service has been buried under a pile of unworked immigration cases for about the past twenty years. A news agency reported last week that there was a three million case backlog. If there were only a three million case backlog, I would be optimistic about the immigration future.

Liking or not liking immigrants is beside the point. No one loves the poor immigrant as much as I do. Whether it’s the nice little lady in the supermarket beneath the hijab or the chef in that nice restaurant at the edge of town or the Latinos who are afraid to look at you because your hair is cropped short like a police cadet’s hair, I welcome them all, with the narrow exceptions of the terrorist and the criminal some of whom wish to steal our resources, assault our citizens, and kill us all in the name of Allah. And so long as they don't "jump the line" and put themselves before the thousands of people who are patiently undertaking the legal process of immigration to the U.S.

But there are too many of them, and more on the way. My sister, an ultra-liberal social activist who administrates social programs and teaches school in California, has finally admitted there is a problem.

“I recently found out that four of the classroom aides I hired were illegal. And they were the ones who admitted it when I asked,” she said last night.

Meaning that there were others she didn’t ask and others who might not tell. She also tells the story of the college scholarship award made to one of the school’s brightest students which had to be retracted when it was discovered the student had no social security card and was an illegal alien.

The horror stories abound. Overworked and understaffed hospitals must treat illegal immigrants without medical insurance. Illegal immigrants are robbed and sometimes slain by coyotes smugglers who steal their savings and leave them abandoned in the dry desert.

Nor are the horror stories limited to the Southwestern states and Florida. A June 2007 immigration raid in Pennsylvania netted eighty illegals in a factory which received state incentive grants designed to create work for the local citizenry. It was the local residents employed by the same factory who tipped off the police to the cycling of illegals through a local employment agency. It seems that illegal immigration is a trough where everyone is feeding from. Certainly, the illegals do not benefit from the modern day equivalent of indentured servitude and living fifteen people to a small room, moving constantly to escape authorities. In the long run, illegal immigration benefits no one and presents great risk to the United States economy and well-being.

A message to Congress: Get real about immigration policy. Rid us of the fuzzy-headed idea wonks who are using the issue to gain votes.

A Mighty Heart: The Search for Daniel Pearl

I read Joe Morgenstern’s review of the new film, “A Mighty Heart,” in the Wall Street Journal and decided to give it a try. I’d already seen the documentary about the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl compiled by CNN News: “The Journalist and the Jihadi.”

That documentary, narrated by Christiane Amanpour, is worthy of some praise. Amanpour lends some credibility to the reportage. Is there a world trouble spot Amanpour hasn’t visited?

Hearing that Angelina Jolie was playing the starring part of Mariane Pearl worried me a little owing to my inherent mistrust of Hollywood treatments. Many will agree with me that the “star” factor can wreak havoc upon facts and sensibilities.

I need not have worried. After about two frames of the film, the “big Hollywood star” completely vanished into the character of Daniel Pearl’s pregnant journalist wife. Marianne Pearl is an attractive woman. Angelina Jolie is attractive, too--it’s a wash. The whole thing works especially well since Jolie is so convincing in the role that you don’t have to think about it.

As most people know, Daniel Pearl was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan. He disappeared in the teeming Pakistani city in January of 2002 after leaving word with his wife that he was setting off for an interview with a leading Islamic cleric. “A Mighty Heart” is the title of a book written by Marianne Pearl about her husband’s disappearance and the search by various Pakistani and American law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The film is a fast paced ride through the stratified neighborhoods and slums of Karachi.
Director Michael Winterbottom presents an absorbing collage of Karachi’s streets, sometimes in flood, a place where modernity collides with wooden carts, a place where goats, chickens, and other livestock are crammed into streets choked with cars, motorbikes, and people crossing the screen aimlessly and with reckless abandon.

The film should have great appeal with geo-political types as well as those who enjoy a fast-paced police drama. Irfann Khan is a stand-out as a Pakistani police captain directing his men in the streets of Karachi in a relentless, fast-as-lightning, no-holds-barred counterattack . The role requires an admirable delicacy and refinement as well as an action hero in the Bruce Willis mode.

The success of movies about real life events depends upon the suppression of gimmicky theatrics, mawkish sentiments, and overacted hyperventilated role-playing. To the degree possible, given the time compression of film, the truth should be the script and the story should be the star. Mariane Pearl has a primal meltdown in one scene but she summons the strength quickly to carry herself back into the world and the circumstances she needs to confront.

Though “A Mighty Heart” is a good film, I don’t very much like looking at it in purely artistic terms. For whatever inexplicable reason one stranger in the world connects with another complete stranger, I felt very sad at the sadistic murder of Daniel Pearl. I was disturbed enough by Daniel Pearl’s murder to write something about it a while back on a website:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127717/the_journalist_and_the_jihadi_the_murder.html

I’ve read Daniel’s book called “At Home in the World”. I’d like to read Mariane’s book and the book written by Daniel’s parents called “I Am Jewish- Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl.”

Daniel Pearl’s book is a compilation of his writings about the places in the world he reported stories. The stories are interesting, to be sure, but they also reflect the intelligence, universality, and humanity of the man. I am particularly angry at the virulent inhuman hatred which is willing to make a ritual of a sadistic, cold-blooded murder. Were his murderers the decadent and criminal spawn of men like Adolph Hitler?

Four of the kidnappers are locked up in Pakistani prisons, with one sentenced to hang. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, a planner of the 9-11 attacks, is a major reason for the foul odor of Guantanamo prison.

I think Guantanamo should be kept open. It is my human failing to have no sympathy for Daniel Pearl’s kidnappers, nor for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, nor for any of the Al Quaeda types sequestered there. True sympathy was parceled out to humanity in small doses. I’m saving mine for the real victims.