Kossack-in-Chief Armstrong Former Crooked Stock Tout?

The New Republic has a short piece tying a tin can to the tail of bow-wow lefty blogger Jerome Armstrong, now head of Mark Warner's on-line operations for '08. TNR
quotes Chris Sullentrop of the firewalled NYT as saying:

"some people . . . compare the blog boomlet they helped create for Dean to the work of online bulletin-board posters who touted dodgy Internet stocks during the boom market without disclosing that they were being paid for their words."

"Which, interestingly, is precisely what the Securities and Exchange Commission, in court documents filed last August, alleges that Jerome Armstrong did in 2000. (The original S.E.C. complaint is here.) In a subsequent filing, the S.E.C. alleges that "there is sufficient evidence to infer that the defendants secretly agreed to pay Armstrong for his touting efforts" on the financial Web site Raging Bull."

"Without admitting or denying anything, Armstrong has agreed to a permanent injunction that forbids him from touting stocks in the future. The S.E.C. remains in litigation with him over the subject of potential monetary penalties."

LGF quotes the New York Post extensively using strong language against Kos and his manic rabid pitbulls.

Looks like the payback to Armstrong from his many enemies in the financial and political online communities is going to be fast and furious.

NOW Targets Conservative Women

Another example of the self-referential quality of leftist multicultural gibberish comes in an article named
"Conservatives Need Not Apply" written by University of Virginia Law Student Karin Agness.

Karin exposes the insane solecism of the female gender studies infecting US colleges and universities across the country. Agness writes:

"Since the National Women’s Studies Association Conference is hosting a panel on how to deal with conservative young women on college campuses, such as the Network of enlightened Women (NeW), you would think that they would have invited a conservative young woman from NeW. One would think this indeed. But time and again, we must remember that the feminists aren’t always rational."

No, that would imply a dialogue, and the left wants power and control, so Agness's request to participate as head of NeW was curtly declined. The Chief Bi-yotch at the NWSA represents the bogus claptrap a perfesser for the Oprahfied at UVa named Ann Lane enunciates in her disdain to even read the NeW bylaws because the perfesser heard [falsely] that Lynne Cheney is involved:

"there are professors of women’s studies around the country who clearly do not understand the principles and goals of conservative women and make no effort to do so. In a June 12th TIME Magazine article, "What Would Ann Coulter Do", University of Virginia Women’s Studies professor Ann Lane showed this by saying, "I'm not opposed to the group's existence.—I just don't like it." She went on to say, "I particularly don't accept their premise that men and women occupy such culturally different spaces." The article continues, 'Lane, who hasn't read NeW's constitution, bases her opinion on Hoff Sommer's lecture and campus rumor. 'Someone told me that Lynn Cheney is a major contributor of theirs,' she says. Such hearsay, however, is wrong."

So Ann Lane PhD is an opinionated bigot. Seems to be the foundation of the oxymoronic field of women's studies nowadays. Agness finishes the article thusly:

"Ignorance pervades women’s studies departments. Feminists continue to complain about “good ol’ boys” clubs, but this Conference shows that they have created a "good ol’ feminists" club of their own. Women must carry the feminist banner to belong, and women with different views are rejected and ridiculed. What happened to the diversity feminists so value? What happened to the tolerance? Rather than engage in an open discussion on issues impacting women, feminists have attempted to muzzle conservative women in the same way they once claimed that men oppressed women through a system of patriarchy."

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

Lefty Blogger Gone Wild

The Washington Post has become another Joe Lieberman-type shibboleth for the ultra-left Angry Bloggers out to demonstrate their Bush Derangement Syndrome credentials.

Joe Lauria has an article that is sure to poke a stick in their chronic hornet's-nest reactivity. It concerns a reporter, drugged out, dishonest, and far-left named Jason Leopold who has used Truthout.org to sustain his fantasy that Karl Rove is still under Double-Secret Indictment despite Patrick Fitzgerald's public statements to the contrary.

Lauria's article demonstrates the mentality of desperation some far-left bloggers exploit to push their strange obsessions. Leaving aside that the whole Plame incident is a tempest in a teapot where no actual crime may have been committed, the left's urging the MSM to make this pseudo-event "news" pushes the envelope of credibility to new extremes.

Let's just call Joe Wilson an agent provocateur and leave it at that. Read the article to find out how the LAT and Salon keep hiring guys like Leopold despite numerous instances of journalistic fraud. No fault on the left.

LA Times Hilariously Stuck on Stupid

Both Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien recited the same joke Thursday night, I believe. FEMA has revealed that millions of dollars it disbersed for Katrina were spent on porn videos, Girls Gone Wild, and strip joints. The rest of the money was wasted.

Aside from this peek into LA nepotistic jokesters, the always stupifyingly self-righteously vapid Los Angeles Times gives another reason for its parent company at the Chicago Tribune to sell this Turkey real fast, cuz like fish, it is rotting from the head down!

Link it if you want to see just how much the long-term effects of smog have evidently had degenerative effects on the frontal lobes of the LAT cenobite crew. But here is a sample of out-and-out idiocy:
For every "Girls Gone Wild" video purchased, thousands of families used their cards for clothing, food and temporary shelter without having to deal with federal red tape.
Now there is just no way for the omniscient crew at the LAT editorial board to know this is a fact. Not that the San Fernando Valley needs any proof. The Oprahfication super-falsetto proof:
But obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim.
Who's obsessing when auditors do their job? I'll bet there are more obsessive-compulsive hyper-neurotics per capita at the LAT than at any MSM news outlet.

But I would never be so stupid as to claim that as a fact, as the LAT editorial crew do about the "thousands of dollars" above.

Riding With The Kossacks

The Weekly Standard has a hilarious send-up of the mass autism convention in Las Vegas where the always self-referential solipsists known as bloggers are examined by Matt Labash:

You could read about this history being made, too. But not in some jive, dead-tree history book. I read about it in real-time pixels--what we in the People-Powered community call "live blogging." It means blogging something as it's happening, rather than after it happens--or even before it happens, which one blogger told me is called "predictive blogging." I read about the history that was being made in all-star blogger SusanG's Daily Kos diary. She wrote it in the middle of the convention, in a post she entitled "Yearly Kos: The Magic of People Power Made Manifest."

"We are hungry," she wrote, "hungry for each other in person." Easy, SusanG, the World's Fare Buffet is just down past the Capri rooms. (Sorry, we netroots types like to kid each other.) She went on to call it "pure magic," saying, "We are here. We are at the gates. We will no longer remain passive and meek in order to court favor. We, the people, are coming to power slowly and indefatigably, here in Vegas, and here on the blog. We have arrived."

And they have, too, as evidenced by the massive media turnout. There were tons of them. You couldn't tell where the netroots ended and the media began. Sometimes, if you were a journalist, and you were trying to interview someone in the hall, you'd have to first give them the once over to see if their netroots were showing. Otherwise, you might end up accidentally interviewing Maureen Dowd. It's like SusanG wrote: "It seems like every fourth person you run into is here covering the phenomenon of . . . us. We're worth it, too. We are something else."

You tell them, SusanG. You tell them why the politicians from Barbara Boxer to Wes Clark are turning the Riviera into a giant kissing booth. You tell them why prospective Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner rented out the observation tower of the Stratosphere Hotel to toast you with sushi and "Kosmopolitans" and chocolate fountains and Blues Brothers and Elvis impersonators and laptop-shaped ice sculptures. You tell them why the New York Times sent six people and TheWeekly Standard sent two (flood the zone!). Never mind SusanG, I'll tell them. I'll tell them that it's because the Kossacks, as they call themselves, are happening now. They are so of the moment that a moment ago, when I wrote that they were happening now, I was sort of predictive blogging. But that was then, this is now. So don't blink or you'll miss it, because it's happening.

The article is illuminating as well as funny. Read the link for some clever insights on just how blogging has brought some strange eccentrics into the limelight.

Dixie Dumbbells Mouth Off to Brit Reporter

In a Brit puff piece, obnoxious Dixie Chick airhead asks the stupid questions:

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

I guess there's a lot more that this bimbo doesn't understand or care about or doesn't see, but this group doesn't have a collective IQ over 300, and probably a lot less than that. When you divide 300 by three, well, I think the country music audience is a lot smarter than three stuck-up little Texas brats.

Hopeful Signs in Iraq

The English translation of an Iraqi document found in Al-Zarqawi's "safe" house points out the problems that the insurgency is facing in the new Iraqi police and National Guard. The London Times has some corroborating info.
Here is another article on the info found in the rubble.

Taken together, the overall situation has to be regarded in a new light.

First, with Zarqawi gone, the threat against wavering Sunni insurgents who are thinking to negotiate has gravely diminished.

Second, the Iraqi police and National Guard are now providing ears and eyes to scan the landscape for suspicious activities.

Third, provocative acts by Sunnis versus Shias are bound to diminish.

Fourth, the address book and other info garnered will cause the remaining Al Qaeda networks to cover their tracks and be in hiding or even moribund as fence-sitters bail and perhaps rat out their Qaeda contacts.

This time the light at the end of the tunnel might not be a locomotive heading this way.

Annals of the Downfall of the NYT

InOpinion has a response to the Tom Friedman op-ed response to GM's response to Friedman's original op-ed [pay-per-view] piece excoriating GM last week. Only trouble was, the NYT REFUSED TO PRINT GM'S REPLY TO FRIEDMAN'S FIRST ARTICLE!

Although many letters were printed in praise of Friedman's over-the-top [as TF later admitted] swipe at GM, Gail Collins at the Editor's Desk thought that GM's castigating Friedman as "rubbish" was too harsh for the NYT's gentle readership!

Pinch Sulzberger appears to be leading his family heirloom down the primrose path to becoming just another inconsequential tabloid whose editorials peek out between the lines of almost every "straight news" story above the fold on the front page. The editorial page itself has become a shoutfest for closing Guantanamo, just as Howell Raines shouted for women at Augusta for the Masters' Tournament.

The difference now between the NYT and the NY Post is orientation, not quality.

Annals of the Downfall of the NYT

InOpinion has a response to the Tom Friedman op-ed response to GM's response to Friedman's original op-ed [pay-per-view] piece excoriating GM last week. Only trouble was, the NYT REFUSED TO PRINT GM'S REPLY TO FRIEDMAN'S FIRST ARTICLE!

Although many letters were printed in praise of Friedman's over-the-top [as TF later admitted] swipe at GM, Gail Collins at the Editor's Desk thought that GM's castigating Friedman as "rubbish" was too harsh for the NYT's gentle readership!

Pinch Sulzberger appears to be leading his family heirloom down the primrose path to becoming just another inconsequential tabloid whose editorials peek out between the lines of almost every "straight news" story above the fold on the front page. The editorial page itself has become a shoutfest for closing Guantanamo, just as Howell Raines shouted for women at Augusta for the Masters' Tournament.

The difference now between the NYT and the NY Post is orientation, not quality.

Barone on Left's Mass Psychosis

Michael Barone writes some of the most perceptive overviews on the American political scene. His Almanac of American Politics has detailed information on every congressional district in the country and he is the first to spot trends, including the first to have discerned that the Contract With America in 1994 was gaining traction out in the hinterlands. In today's Wall Street Journal, Barone notices the strange habit Democrats have inherited from their European leftist forebearers to impose a template of the past to throw light on present political developments:

It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.

Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat over American setbacks or our allies' defeat, as the leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.

Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history doesn't repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or not, is not a second Richard Nixon.

An elderly cousin/aunt of mine just died who would not get five minutes into a conversation before bringing up Alger Hiss and how this distinguished public servant had a promising career squelched by an evil Congressman from California named Richard Nixon. Then she would lapse into memories about how Nixon slandered "The Pink Lady" and other long-ago nastinesses by Tricky Dick. I agreed and still agree with her that Nixon was a baddie, but Alger Hiss was a traitor, something which the KGB files and Czech files proved after the fall of the USSR. The left tends only to remember its own interpretation of events, and not admit of an alternative narrative.
Barone then brings up the strange brouhaha raised by Karl Rove and the silly Plame kerfuffle:

It is hard in retrospect to understand why the left put so much psychic energy into the notion that Mr. Rove would be indicted. He certainly was an important target. No one in American history has been as powerful an aide to a president, both on politics and on public policy, as Karl Rove. Only Robert Kennedy in his brother's administration and Hamilton Jordan in Jimmy Carter's come close, and neither was as involved in electoral politics as Mr. Rove has been.
Still, it was clear early on that the likelihood that Mr. Rove violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was near zero. Under the law, the agent whose name was disclosed would have had to have served overseas within the preceding five years (Valerie Plame, according to her husband's book, had been stationed in the U.S. since 1997), and Mr. Rove would have had to know that she was undercover (not very likely). The left enjoyed raising an issue on which, for once, it could charge that a Republican administration had undermined national security. But that rang hollow when the left gleefully seized on the New York Times' disclosure of NSA surveillance of phone calls from suspected al Qaeda operatives abroad to persons in the U.S.

In all this a key role was played by the press. Cries went up early for the appointment of a special prosecutor: Patrick Fitzgerald would be another Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski. Eager to bring down another Republican administration, the editorialists of the New York Times evidently failed to realize that the case could not be pursued without asking reporters to reveal the names of sources who had been promised confidentiality. America's newsrooms are populated largely by liberals who regard the Vietnam and Watergate stories as the great achievements of their profession. The peak of their ambition is to achieve the fame and wealth of great reporters like David Halberstam and Bob Woodward. But this time it was not Republican administration officials who went to prison. It was Judith Miller, then of the New York Times itself.

Interestingly, Bob Woodward himself contradicted Mr. Fitzgerald's statement, made the day that he announced the one indictment he has obtained, of former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, that Mr. Libby was the first to disclose Ms. Plame's name to a reporter. The press reaction was to turn on Mr. Woodward, who has been covering this administration as a new story rather than as a reprise of Vietnam and Watergate.

Tsk, tsk, Woodward should have realized which side of the bread was buttered---like the buzzing hives of MSM drones playing their mighty Wurlitzer and exciting photo shoots in Vanity Fair to incite the masses! Barone gets philosophical:

Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left and the press have been so determined to fit current events into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years ago. The people who effectively framed the issues raised by Vietnam and Watergate did something like the opposite; they insisted that Vietnam was not a reprise of World War II or Korea and that Watergate was something different from the operations J. Edgar Hoover conducted for Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office.

That belief has its perils for journalism, as the Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging. There's also a peril for the political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them. The pursuit of Karl Rove by the left and the press has been just the latest episode in the attempted criminalization of political differences. Is there any hope that it might turn out to be the last?

Bingo!

The Editorialist Commissars on the left have been itching to extend unconstitutional concepts such as "hate crimes" into the political arena---and make questionable or dubious activities criminal through a drumbeat of publicity reminiscent of the totalitarian societies of the last century [and don't forget Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe in this century]. The MSM appears to be fomenting class and racial divisions in often lurid reporting [on in the Duke lacrosse team indictment by an appointed DA seeking to become an elected DA] and tendentious exaggeration [on the Iraq War].

If political opinion becomes criminalized, then elites replace democracy with oligarchic dirigiste administrative entities. We already see in France the sort of mandarinate that ensues when a political elite marginalizes public opinion because the elite knows better. The EU Commission in Brussels is doing the same in the new EU, making it a two-tier entity with the former east bloc entrants second-class citizens.

Barone is correct. For the left, reading recent history as a "How To Manual" leads to faulty constructs and to misreading present political reality.

The Outing of Armando

The New Republic has a great article about the recent Las Vegas Convention of bloggers. Best of the vignettes:

But someone is missing: Armando. A favorite blogger and foreign policy wonk, Armando earned the privilege of posting on the front page of Daily Kos. But, before the festivities began in Las Vegas, National Review Online revealed this hero of the liberal blogosphere to be Armando Llor?ns-Sar, a corporate lawyer in Puerto Rico who has represented Wal-Mart and Clorox. Even though this information is a matter of public record, and even though Llor?ns-Sar's picture and affiliation are listed on his firm's website, his unmasking sent shockwaves through the Daily Kos community and led Llor?ns-Sar to quit the site--and, according to bloggers here, cancel his appearance at the convention, lest his pastime create a conflict for his employers.

Many topics will be discussed this weekend, but the bloggers keep coming back to Armando. They don't mind that Armando is a corporate lawyer or that he practices his trade for corporations. What really upsets them is that his seems like a cautionary tale about what can happen as the movement matures and their newfound celebrity threatens their anonymity. In hushed conversations, they refer bitterly to the "outing of Armando."

Turns out that other bloggers, including former prosecutor Reddhedd from FireDogLake, are also from the wrong side of the ideological sheep/goat divvy-up.
And the majority of the conventioneers are old New Left types [I was a New Left type before I grew up] going back to their pre-pubescent lalaland fantasy life:

The divide between the partisans and the ideologues is generational. In addition to being white and wealthy, the average Daily Kos reader is about 45 years old, which is clear from all the gray hair at the Riviera. What emerges from the weekend is that the leadership and public faces of the liberal blogosphere are young, while the rank and file is middle-aged. The twenty- and thirtysomethings have created a space for the forty- and fiftysomethings of the old New Left to reconnect with the political activism of their youth. The young, tech-savvy pioneers of the actual blogs tend to be pro-partisan, while the baby-boomers are pro-ideology. "Because we never knew a time as activists when Democrats were the natural ruling party (pre-1994)," 32-year-old Chris Bowers, who blogs at MyDD, says via e-mail, "my guess is that we tend to understand the need for partisan-based opposition and new tactics quicker than others."

So mindless techies screech partisan blather while ancient farts want to re-activate the failed leftist policies of their halcyon draft-dodging youth. If the Dems actually get a majority in the House and/or Senate, it will be the proverbial car-chasing dog who actually catches the car---what to do next? The programmatic oldsters will want to tone down the nut-root techies, n'est-ce pas? Because they can remember back when [92-94] they were actually in possession of Congress and the White House. Of course, that was when Bill stained the honor of the military with his gay "don't ask, don't tell" sleaze and Hillary tried a stealth Health Care takeover by Big Government. After '94, in the words of Billy Jeff, "the era of Big Govt is over." The New Republic article notes that, with its youth, the techies avoid the policy grind and focus on, what else, themselves, as heedless callow youth basks in its own mirror reflections until self-absorbtion takes over:

The attendance at various panels tells the same story. The labor roundtable attracts no more than two or three dozen attendees. Meanwhile, a panel called "Meta Kos"-- featuring Moulitsas--attracts hundreds of Yearly Kos attendees (a.k.a. Kossacks). Their talk is not about tax policy or abortion but issues like the outing of Armando. "What happened to Armando is absolutely horrible," says Moulitsas.

Perhaps it's just because the medium is so new, but there are few things the bloggers like talking about more than themselves. In Las Vegas, the medium is the message

Meet the New Bubbas, Same as the Old Bubbas.

Gore refuted by Climate Scientists

Climate Scientists are pretty harsh over Al Gore's movie:

"Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

"No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field."

Read the rest of the article to understand just how narrow and unconvincing Gore's clever propaganda appears to climate scientists, and remember that Roger Ebert is not a science major!

More on Rove and the Mass Psychosis on the Angry Left

WSJ gloats and glories in the STUPIDITY of the leftist side of the blogosphere. Haven't had this much fun since Zarqawi was killed last week. Or when I heard that all the White House Press Corpse was in a bus on its way to Camp David when it was announced that Bush was in Bagdhad! Wish I could have seen those chump-faces, especially the aged drunk Helen Thomas:

Wilson famously said he would like to "get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." The New York Times and other liberal editorial pages demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate who gave accurate information to journalists, though it apparently didn't occur to them that finding that out would entail calling journalists to testify. (Now they are vigorously defending their First Amendment right to disclose things that really are secret.) The Justice Department complied.

Today Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told the Times that the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, had formally advised Rove that he will not be charged. It appears the investigation is over, except for the forthcoming trial of Scooter Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice--wrongdoing that allegedly took place entirely after the investigation began.

This has got to be the worst day for the Angry Left since at least last Thursday. It would not be an exaggeration to call the left's enthusiasm over the Plame kerfuffle a case of mass hysteria. For months they have been awaiting "Fitzmas," the day that the grand jury handed up indictments of Rove and--who knows?--maybe even the vice president himself.

Sorry, guys.

Anyway, look around the Web and you can find examples of the Angry Left going through the five stages of grieving (we should note that this guy beat us to the idea):

Denial. Truthout.org (motto: "If you want the truth, get out of here") "reports" that Rove actually has been indicted. "As of Friday afternoon that indictment, returned by the grand jury the week of May 10th, remains under seal--more than a month after it was handed up by the grand jury. The case number is "06 cr 128." On the federal court's electronic database, '06 cr 128' is listed along with a succinct summary: 'No further information is available.' " Says blogress Christy Smith: "Unless and until I hear it from Patrick Fitzgerald, the investigation continues to be ongoing. Which means that there are still potential developments down the road."

Bargaining. "This latest news doesn't prove or disprove the basic question of whether Fitzgerald was ready to indict Rove," claims Duncan "Atrios" Black. "It's quite likely Rove has cut a deal of some sort. It's quite possible that Fitz's letter to Luskin, which hasn't been made public as far as I can tell, says something along the lines of 'as long as you cooperate as promised your ass is safe for now.' " Black's employer, Media Mutters, says maybe Rove will lose his security clearance for--well, for what isn't quite clear.


Anger. "He doesn't belong in the White House. If the president valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove, Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago," says Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean on the "Today" show. "So I think this is probably good news for the White House, but it's not very good news for America."


Despair. "My Heart Is Broken, My Spirit Crushed, My Faith in America Destroyed," declares "Dementer" on DemocraticUnderground.com. "On the other hand, I am sure that there are numerous other criminal enterprises that Kkkarl [sic] has participated in, so we just have to keep digging. Perhaps Fitz is doing just that--he has the license to do so. Or am I approaching the definition of insanity, here?"


Acceptance. "I think the chances are nil that Luskin is making this up since that'd be practically daring Patrick Fitzgerald to indict his client," says Josh Marshall, who had been one of the most credulous cheerleaders. "Whatever else he may be . . ., he's no fool." Though Marshall must be feeling quite foolish for having been one of Wilson's most enthusiastic and credulous cheerleaders way back when.
Drudge notes that many Angry Left Web sites have been strangely quiet, though MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who according to Drudge has predicted Rove's indictment at least 26 times, does comment: "It is the 'Perfect Storm' of baseball scandals."

Not that anyone watches Keith on MSNBC: Last count O'Reilly 2.5 million vs. KO at 500K! Olbermann is a loser, pure and simple.

UpDate: DrudgeReport 1 Nutroots 0 ROVE WALKS

It's a river in Egypt, folks.

The lying prevaricating losers on the nutroot Moonbattery lie strangely silent while
Drudge properly gloats.

The fake set-up grand jury kerfuffle about some desk-jockey blonde in the CIA has reached at least one honest conclusion---Rove didn't try to slander fake envoy Wilson when that fraud started leaking to the tabloid Times about yellowcake, or the lack of it, in some hellhole in Africa.

This imposter went through a charade in Niger, not even checking out Iraqi Amb to the Vatican's [!!?] visit to the country's capital, ostensibly for ecumenical outreach between Muslims and Catholics!

This is a mini-Dreyfus affair, and the fraudulent nutroot screechers are strangely silent when the Big Enchilada walks.

Let's see how the tabloid Times handles this blow to its journalistic integrity.

UPDATE: Puffington Host has a teensy-weensy little hard-to-find link with close to a thousand comments. Can you imagining the screeching arm-waving Medea-fit the Chief Crone would be throwing if Karl had been indicted?! And the size of the headline?

Decision '08 has a David Letterman Top Ten format.

Pajamas Media has the full rundown of gnashing teeth and Egyptian rivers on the left versus more questions on the right about Colossal Fraud Anti-Pope Joe Wilson IV---how does this lying imposter avoid being indicted for leaking classified materials?

Sansura & Susan Polk: SF Minds on the Loose

If anyone wonders what happens to minds brought up in public schools in northern California by liberal teachers [like Deep Throat's daughter in Santa Rosa, a school teacher who had "vaguely heard of" Bob Woodward], take a look at Susan Polk, on trial for stabbing her husband, who subsequently died, 20 times. She is her own defense counsel, and claims hubby died of a "heart attack."

The laughable SF Chronicle reporter and a defense lawyer named Canny both are straight-faced in the coverage by the MSNBC legal maven sitting in for Dan Abrams. The defendant Susan is taped daydreaming about Winona Ryder in jail, how good an actress Susan Sarandon would be playing her role in a made-for-TV flick, and saying Anthony Hopkins should play her 70-year old [allegedly] murdered husband in the movie, though "Felix was actually worse than Hannibal Lector."

California's Teacher Unions have dumbed down and imbedded socialization skills/nitwittery into generations of mentally-challenged students and the societal effects are starting to display themselves. Deep Throat's ignorant daughter had spent a decade in a Taos commune before getting a teaching certificate. A gamine-naive woman-child named Sansura was interviewed on The O'Reilly Factor and this 20-something child had absolutely no notion of the world outside her SF bay cocoon---"but polls show that most people favor....yadda, yadda....means it's law to Sansura. O'Reilly, ever the gentle didact when impairment appears unmixed with malice [a rarity on the generally impaired-nasty left], led Sansura gently to the border of the real world, and like that medieval woodcut of a man peeking under the rim of a curtain toward a Copernican universe, allowed Sweet Child-Bride a glimpse of straight reality.

Can Lotus-Eaters stand the harsh glare of sublunary worldliness? When the jury comes back with a guilty verdict on ultra-left husband-stabber battered-woman victimization pleader Susan, then I will have a glimmer of optimism left that human nature has a chance even in northern Cal. Read The San Jose Mercury or watch MSNBC tomorrow.

Clinton Joins Gorebot In LooneyTune Land

The ineffable insufferable ["BJs are not sex"] BS-machine fraud who calls himselfBilly Jeff Clyntoon told a gullible audience of Democrats in Florida:

"It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming," Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. "It's a serious problem. It's going to lead to more hurricanes."

Yep, the Senate rejected Kyoto 95-0 under Clyntoon's leadership, while he was being impeached for not being able to control his sexual urges, and IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT when Florida suffers a rash of hurricanes a few years later.

And many highly reputable scientists do not support the global-warming scenario that Gore is foisting on a gullible stupid Democratic rabble [the smart Dems stay away from demagogic crap, but the Kossacks are as dumb and dishonest as their fan clubs].

And actually, as more fresh water melted from polar icecaps hits the North Atlantic, the conveyor from the South Atlantic will not push warm water as far north, and the cycle of mini-Ice Ages interspersed with mini-Warming Trends will continue, no matter what a couple of leftist blowhards blowing hot air and flying in private jets [Clinton and his "bachelor-buddy" Burkle polluting the skies in Burkle's jets] spew in front of civility-challenged Democrats.

Pelosi: So Stuck on Stupid WaPo Criticizes Her

The rapidly advancing Alzheimer's affecting Nancy Pelosi's cerebral cortex has reached her frontal lobes with this one.

The 66-year old Political Genius from North Beach who wanted to call the Dem's 2006 Congressional Campaign a "Contract on America" until it was pointed out to her that it would imply a Mafia Hit scheduled on the country---something this self-described "Italian-American Catholic grandmother" seems somehow to have overlooked!

Now in the same breath, this brain-dead gramma calls the Dems the party of "civility" while railing about Republican "corruption." She probably doesn't even understand why civilized people are laughing at her. Nor do liberals, as it challenges their myth of infallibility---"no fault on the left," as the Leninists used to say.

And of course, William Jefferson and Rep Mollohan and Harry Reid with his boxing ticket freebies aren't "corrupt." They're just normal Democrats!

Meathead: Grinder Not Stopping This Hot Dog

Political Con artist Rob Reiner, aka "Meathead" from his antediluvian TV past, doesn't think a crushing defeat of his taxpayer-financed campaign for pre-school ed on an Initiative will stop him.

He will go to the spectacularly left-wing California Legislature who, after discerning the public's resounding dislike of the proposition, will pass it into law:

He promised he would continue to work on the issue, although his advisers say legislative action -- rather than another statewide initiative -- is the most likely solution.

No stopping a liberal because they always know better.

Bad Days for My Teams: Heat Doused, World Cup/Steeler Train Wrecks

The best thing about NFL quarterbacks lies in their combination of intelligence and prowess. But after numerous admonitions about the dangers of riding a cycle without a helmet, Steeler QB Ben Rothlisberger took the risk anyway and predictably got in an accident, It would have to be a head accident, a serious one through a car windshield. The article linked above notes the sad history of star athletes doing stupid things.

And if the Miami Heat didn't stink up the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, just how would an observer describe the way the Heat was outhustled? The Heat defense didn't seem to exist, while Dallas had full-court harassment through the whole game. The Heat just mailed in their performance, not giving Shaq the ball, missing open shots from the circle and missing layups by trying to score all net without using the backboard. Wade was obviously missing a step or two and the Mav defense just didn't let up.

That couldn't be said about the US National Team in Gelsenkirchen, whose defense let up while its offense kept the ball in midfield rather than attack. Occasional camera shots of Coach Arena showed diffidence if not boredom on his countenance. Highly-touted players like Beasley and Conver looked uninspired. Landon Donovan played hard, as did Reyna, but the US Team just looked almost as bad as the Heat.

Soccer is fun to watch between the top teams in the world, but otherwise just turns into tiresome drudgery if a team falls a couple goals behind, like baseball only slower.

And the generation of "soccer moms" a while back seems to have engendered a host of "girlie men" on the pitch. The Czechs were aggressive, crisp, and sharp both defensively and on attack. The US Team waited for something to happen, and it did---the curtain on its 2006 World Cup chances, all on a dozy afternoon in Gelsenkirchen.

Clueless Dan Balz: WaPo Inspects Kosistan

The tempermentally moderate WaPo Reporter Dan Balz does an uncharacteristically shallow overview of the Las Vegas shindig DailyKos is throwing to get Democratic activists jump-started.

Balz writes like he fell off a turnip truck. His main point is buried among sentences and paragraphs indicating schoolboy wonder at the next big thing.

....the arrival of the blogosphere as a political force has produced tensions within the Democratic coalition, including battles with party centrists over the direction of the party, which have led to questions about whether the often-angry rhetoric and uncompromising positions of the bloggers will drive the party too far left and endanger its chances of winning national elections.

Such as is happening in Connecticut.

Tom Mattzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, called the struggle inside the Democratic Party a "clash of civilizations" between an old order and a new order, but he also discounted those who view it purely in ideological terms. His group, he said, had polled the net-roots activist community. "What they want is not an ideological litmus test," he said. "They want Democrats to stand up and fight. They don't want Neville Chamberlain Democrats; they want Muhammad Ali Democrats."

That, said many of those in attendance, explains the contempt with which net-roots activists hold Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), whom they see as having gone out of his way to support Bush and to criticize Democrats on the Iraq war and other issues. A popular button here showed Bush and Lieberman in near-embrace with the words "The Kiss," and Lieberman's primary challenger, Ned Lamont, has become a darling of the net-roots activists.

And, of course, the nut-root activists proclaim with a straight face that they are not inmates in the asylum, but its prospective superintendants.

But Moulitsas said the movement has been miscast as a collection of young, far-left activists by Washington-based Democratic consultants, Republicans and elected officials.

"I think Democratic politicians -- I don't know whether slowly or quickly -- are realizing that we aren't these far-leftist, na?ve and young political extremists, that we're actually a fairly representative cross-section of the Democratic Party and we don't have an agenda other than seeking strong Democratic voices."

That certainly sounds nice, and I can imagine Dan Balz seriously nodding in assent, but anyone used to reading the Kossack frothing-mouth rants must be giggling as serious Dan gets his leg pulled big-time. In their quest to be taken seriously by serious Dan, they do their chest-thumping in a subdued fashion:

But Dave Dayen, a comedian and activist, said the net-roots activists are genuinely pragmatic in evaluating candidates, particularly those in heavily Republican states. He noted that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is as conservative as Lieberman but has not been targeted by bloggers. "We understand regional realities," he said.

Stirling Newberry, an active blogger on economic issues, said the list of attendees at the conference validates the significance of the net-based movement. "The media are here, the candidates are here," he said. "That says the power is here."

Joe Trippi, who helped tap the power of the Internet for Dean as his campaign manager, said he was surprised more prospective Democratic presidential candidates were not here. "Skipping this is like skipping the Iowa J-J [Jefferson-Jackson Day] dinner," he said.

Moulitsas said he expects the power of the blogosphere to grow. He predicted that it will play as significant a role in shaping the field of Democratic presidential candidates as in who raises the most money and who signs up the best consultants. "I think there's clearly going to be a blogosphere primary [in the 2008 race]," he said.

Old-fashioned Bill Richardson, who can spot phonies and blowhards a mile away, is less convinced:

Whether the activists can fulfill the movement's potential that many see is far from clear, however. The first YearlyKos conference offered a glimpse into the future, but as Richardson told some of the participants, there is still a long way to go before they turn ideals and ambitions into action and accomplishment. Future elections will show whether they have been successful.

Dan Balz is obviously vying for the David Broder steady-as-she-goes conservative-temperament liberal slot at the Post. But Broder would have been smart enough to note that a conservative side of the blogosphere exists, and perhaps also note that a Quinnipiac poll in Connecticut just out has noted that although Lieberman has "only" a 55-40 poll lead among Connecticut Dems, if by some chance he were knocked off in the Dem primary, he could run as an independent and get two-thirds of the general election vote in November. So much for the Sturm und Drang John Reed wannabes on the ultra-left. Like their connection to the real world, the Dem nut-roots effect on national politics is only marginal.

Ann Coulter: Our Jonathan Swift?

Watching Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources this morning brought the redoubtable blonde menace to the left---Jonah Goldberg called her a Medusa's Head pulled out of a sack to frighten the girlie-men and their androgynous women---front and center to my consciousness as a latter-day incarnation of Jonathan Swift, who often exaggerated by saying the unthinkable [A Modest Proposal: if the Irish are starving, eat them as food] in order to clarify the unpleasant reality no one wants to confront.

As Goldberg pointed out, Coulter excoriates and vilifies the identity politics of victimization, whether it be grieving Gold Star Mom [in a swipe at radical-activist Cindy Sheehan], black stripper [serial rapee in Durham, NC], "Jersey Girl" widow of 9/11 martyr, or Joe Wilson [wife off-limits because of job].

The left loves these no-fly zones where the radical accusers are sacred cows. This "infallibility" which gives credence to someone as an entitlement because they were a "victim" casts a religious halo over frequently insipid partisan tripe.

The hypocritical MSM leftist-tilt talking heads like Matt Lauer and Brian Williams earnestly intone that by attacking radical wives that "a line has been crossed" or a barren childless harridan like Dowd will piously give a free pass to radical activist Sheehan---all because of some sort of exalted status given a war victim.

These left-tilt MSM types don't give the time of day to the thousands of parents who still support the war despite losing a son or daughter to the vicious conflict in Iraq. Nor does the hypocritical left-tilt MSM showcase badly wounded soldiers who continue to support the war despite the heavy personal price they have paid.

Yes, Coulter is self-absorbed and a cottage-industry has been erected around her psyho-drama persona. Yes, she probably loses fence-sitters with her penchant for preaching to the choir. Yes, she serves as a convenient foil to less emotionally flamboyant types like Bill O'Reilly who criticize her for lapses in taste and decorum---talking moderately in comparison to her diatribes.

But as Karen Tumulty observed on the Reliable Sources panel, Coulter demonstrates how far the level of common discourse has descended towards out and out screech-fests. And Michelle Cottle actually commends Coulter for getting her message into the marketplace of ideas---nevermind Coulter's over-the-top language and hyperventilating talking-head goggle-eyed kinetics on the Today Show.

Finally, Jonah Goldberg notes that Michael Savage lost his show on MSNBC because of his excessive language, but Coulter persists in holding national attention because---she's blonde and good-looking and articulate. As Goldberg says, Coulter actually is a first-class constitutional writer and thinker, but prefers cutting and thrusting on-air to the scalpel and stitch of scholarship.

And, as Swift's tombstone notes, saeva indignatio [savage indignation] cuts her heart.

O Canada! Time to Wise Up in the Great White North!

Clifford May's article in Townhall starts out:

Are you surprised that terrorists appear to have set their sights on such unlikely targets as the Parliament building in Ottawa and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in Toronto? Astonished that anyone would even consider sawing off the head of a Canadian Prime Minister? Are you thinking: What could anyone have against free, democratic, liberal, multicultural, diverse and tolerant Canada?

The question answers itself. Freedom, democracy, liberalism, multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance – these are precisely the attributes that Militant Islamists find most offensive.

Yes, those feckless, bland, well-meaning folks to the north of their protector-power can't figure out what Australia and the UK, among other Anglophone countries, have been able to divine through extensive use of their citizenry's collective frontal lobes!

This reality is difficult for some people to fathom. It shouldn't be. The Nazis disdained liberal societies as decadent. The Communists rejected democratic values as bourgeois. Now Militant Islamists regard Western nations as blasphemous. This is old totalitarian wine in new bottles.

Canadians don't want their rosy view of reality, free of evil and based on tolerance of all creeds, religions, and eccentric mindsets, to suffer a nasty intrusion of reality.

Those arrested last week were acting locally but linking globally. According to Canada's National Post, “before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.” That doesn't mean those arrested are part of a global organization. It does suggest they are part of a global movement. You don't defeat such movements by forfeiting battlefields or attempting appeasement. How you do defeat such movements we are only beginning to figure out – one must hope.

The suspects arrested in Canada are all Canadian citizens or legal residents. Early reports insisted they "represent the broad strata of our society” but that description did not withstand scrutiny.

Remember Munich and appeasement and all sorts of compromises with Uncle Joe Stalin? Doesn't work unless one is singularly focussed and often bloody-minded about protecting one's national assets, including control of one's borders! Even Canada's protector-power to the south has not quite figured out how to square that circle!

Americans generally expect immigrants to adopt not just American citizenship but also American nationality: to embrace American values, to revere the U.S. Constitution and to learn to speak English. Our more multicultural neighbors to the north have demanded less of those who apply for their passports. Canadians have asked immigrants few questions about their religious and political convictions. Recently, the Canadian government has even been considering allowing Muslims to substitute Islamic Sharia law for civil law. It will be instructive to see if this episode prompts any changes in Canadian thinking.

"Canadian thinking" is a euphemism for a Pollyanna mindset that only an ignorant backwater could engender, one that swallows a liberal world-view without a knowledge of history or the common sense of a tragic national experience. Canadians had no revolution with their mother-country, no Civil War, no wrenching civil rights experience. Mexicans have told me that they feel more sympatico with Americans, because of the sense of tragic history and revolt against authority both historical narratives share. May finishes his article with an admonition:

That is not to suggest that every immigrant to Canada must attempt to become a Molson-drinking, hockey-playing, Dudley Do-Right, proudly pronouncing “z” as zed. But would it be too demanding for Canadians to insist that those who want to make their homes in the Great White North not aspire to be suicide bombers and decapitators of infidels?

Free peoples, if they are to stay free, need to exercise control over their borders. They also need to exercise discretion about who they welcome as neighbors and compatriots.

As of 2007, Americans travelling to Canada and Canadians going to the USA will have to display passports at the borders as identification, I read recently in the news online [sorry, no link].

It's sad that things have come to such a sorry pass on what was once a border between friends.

LV Strip Jammed with Kossack Kosistan Natives

Sen Joe Lieberman can rest easy in his quest for re-election this Fall. According to Caterpillar Adam "CocoonMan" Nagourney,

With little doubt, the most unpopular Democrat around was probably Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, scorned for his frequent support of President Bush's policies. Mr. Lieberman is facing a primary challenge from Ned Lamont, a cable television executive, that should offer a pretty good test of the political impact of this world. Lamont T-shirts and buttons were in abundance.
"Lieberman is going to lose this one," Mr. Moulitsas said.

Given the vertically-challenged Markos' previous track record of 0-20 [or thereabouts], Lieberman doesn't need to toss and turn at night about his chances!

Gov. Bill Richardson flew in at the last minute. Gov. Mark Warner is touted by Jerome Armstrong, who co-wrote [read ghosted] the ADD-challenged Markos' book, and other Dem prez wannabes were present in numbers. Read the link to get the Caterpillar's cocoon spin.

NYT Refuses to Publish Letter from GM

Mickey Kaus signals the rapid descent swirling down the porcelain corridor the NYT OpEd page is making under the tutelage of Marquette U [my alma mater] journalism grad Gail Collins. After Tom Friedman [who occasionally writes sensible pieces] wrote a piece accusing GM of all sorts of terrible crimes against humanity, the GM VP Harris sent a letter to the NYT saying the Friedman piece was "rubbish." The snooty OpEd Collins decided that the word "rubbish" was over the top and deigned NOT to print the letter. Even Tom Friedman admitted afterwards that his OpEd effort was "over the top" and designed to get GM's attention.

Isn't excessive non-factual accusation the very definition of TABLOID JOURNALISM? What precisely is the difference between the hyperventilating hyperbole of house-idiots Herbert/Krugman and the claims of the National Enquirer or the Globe available at your supermarket check-out counter? Why does Friedman believe he must exaggerate and prevaricate in order to "get attention?"

Yes, Ann Coulter was "over the top" in her description of the "Jersey girls" as harpies and enjoying their husbands' demise. But Mary Matalin upbraids MSNBC imbecile Don Imus correctly when she retorts that liberals slander Repubs almost daily with ridiculous exaggerations without the MSM fact-checking the tilted nonsense liberals spew.

Finally, the death of Zarqawi gets an AP story citing an purported eyewitness namelessly named "Muhammed" saying that Americans beat Zarqawi to death. On BBC just after the event, a local Iraqi claimed three black SUVs with tinted windows drove up to the house and dynamited it. At least the BBC did not run with that story, but AP evidently will go to every length to slander American soldiers, even without evidence.

The Democracy Project takes the AP and MSM to task, but they are undeniably committed to an American defeat in Iraq and a Democratic Party victory in 2008, so odds are that, similar to the NYT OpEd maveness Collins, they aren't listening and are descending into tabloid values.

WASPs and Golf: American Ruling Class Replaced by Irish Catholic [or is he a Jew?] Rupert Murdoch

The always provocative Steve Sailer links a very good piece on Steven Clemons Washington Note via Scott McClellanThe Wasp Diversion which links links to the downfall of US Middle East policy, among other solecisms. But McClellan makes a good point about the recent Harvard [scratch that] JFK [scratch that too] paper concerning the preponderance of the Israeli Lobby in US foreign policy-making. The Nation rep does score a perfect 10 with his remark:

At any rate, "the lobby" had, I think, hoped that Walt and Mearsheimer's piece could buried under a pile of smears and abuse -- it was clever of the New York Sun to ask David Duke's opinion of it, so anyone who wanted to treat it as tainted could mention that, and it took up a lot of rhetorical space that might have been given to the merits of the actual piece. But praise be to the liberal establishment and the Left because after Phil Weiss in The Nation, Tony Judt in the New York Times, and Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books had treated the piece favorably, it essentially gave permission to the rest of the country (or that part interested in foreign policy ideas) to discuss it. Walt makes an excellent presentation, glib and precise, extremely moderate in his demeanor. At the Committee for the Republic he had a friendly audience, and it is testament to how much he and Mearsheimer have moved the ball that there is an "establishment" audience for something like this, a subject that might have been mere dinner table conversation five or ten years ago.

Walt is unsparing of George W. Bush, who has adopted Caligula's foreign policy of not caring if they hate us so long as they fear us. He explained that his main intention was to start a discussion -- it is seldom pointed out that though Israel is a rich country, we give it $500 per Israeli in aid a year, that the U.S. would have stopped the settlements long ago if the lobby was weaker, and that Israel would have been better off for it. I recall that former Kennedy and Johnson foreign policy aide George Ball made these points about 20 years ago when there were far fewer Israeli West Bank settlements and caused some ripples in the foreign-policy establishment but no further resonance. That is, of course, the problem: you may get a majority of foreign policy experts to agree that the Israel lobby distorts American policies, but there is no political follow through. Walt says that the guiding "moral" reason Americans might change their policies is self-interest -- we would be a safer and more prosperous country with a more intelligent Mideast policy. But as one veteran writer for The Nation pointed out to me after the event, self-interest is likely to be defined by the people who give the biggest campaign contributions.

Walt radiates a kind of middle-of-the-road nice-guyness, and it is hard to dispute his view that if the United States had, in the aftermath of 9/11, devoted as much energy and resources to bringing about an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as it had to invading Iraq, its position in the world would be vastly better than it is now. This seems so obvious -- and yet, sadly, it is really difficult to imagine any American government that would have taken that advice -- not just Bush but anyone with a plausible chance of being president. Walt acknowledged that he would "whiff on three pitches" a question of how to expand the Mideast policy debate beyond the readers of the foreign-policy magazines. I certainly don't know either. I once worked for a presidential candidate (my colleague Pat Buchanan) who had great communication skills and was very much committed to doing this, and, well, we know how that turned out.

For my part, it is more frustrating than satisfying to hear Steve Walt speak with subtlety and brilliance before an audience of 300 or so establishment Washingtonians. Walt and his co-author John Mearsheimer need bigger, younger audiences. They need to go on college speaking tours. They need to expand their paper into a book. (I have heard much speculation about whether any mainstream publisher will actually take the risk of signing up the authors of the most widely discussed magazine article in the past ten years, and a friend who is a book review editor at a big establishment publication thinks probably not.) They need to get on TV. But they are academics, believers that a well-modulated essay will slip into the cultural stream and actually change things. Perhaps so, but the change won't come soon enough or dramatically enough.

Scott McConnell, editor of the American Conservative.

SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE COMMENTS FOR AN INTERESTING OBSERVATION:
Posted by dmeyer at June 6, 2006 01:41 PM

Comments
I can't think of anything that needs discussing and CORRECTING more than the zionist Lobby. They are bigger danger to this country than all the Islamic radicals put together. They have made this county more than just like Israel, they have made it worse than Israel. It's sickening. They and all the politicans they own, which is 80% of our congress, need to have their US citizenship yanked and be deported to Israel.

Maybe when the newly created "Office of Anti-Semitism" within the US State Department actually arrest an American citizen for critising Israel or zionist your average Joe Lunchbox will realize something is very wrong here.

Tell Walt and John if I win the lottery I will finance a book for them, buy them prime time on TV and provide a private jet for them to tour colleges and speak on the Lobby and American foreign policy...and provide them around the clock protection by the Blackwater group from the Lobby and their minons...and oh yes, set up a trust fund for them so they won't have to worry about supporting themselves in academica when the swiftboating of academics begans with the advent of our new law on "monotoring" universities for anti-semitism in Mid East studies....

Come to think of it why aren't some WASP sponsoring Walt and John on this, they already have the money to do it...don't they care about their country?..or too busy playing golf?

Posted by: Carroll at June 8, 2006 03:16 AM

The WASPs are too busy playing golf and watching basketball felons while illegal aliens mow their precious lawns or build houses for them to sell at outrageous prices. Meanwhile, their daughters are dreaming of sex with "cool, smooth" multiple black "playas," and their neighborhoods are filling up with illegals and their illegal relatives, 20 of them per house...But as long as Jewish-owned Fox News trumpets mass murder ("collateral damage") of "ragheads" on the other side of the globe, everything is A-OK with America. "I SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT." Too bad he doesn't support you, isn't it?

Posted by: DR at June 9, 2006 09:16 AM

Excuse me if I am dense, but this is satire right?

Are you really saying "The problem with America is that WASPs have lost control"?

Or worse, "The problem with America is that WASPs have lost control because they are over-privileged douche-bags more interested in golf than power"?

This is a joke, right? Right?

All kidding aside, our foreign policy is FUBAR. If we don't drop this arrogant BS and start working *with* the rest of the world, rather than at cross purposes, we are going to find ourselves confronted with a lot of international organizations who's unstated (or stated) purpose is to constrain American power. China and Russia in particular. Putin has found anti-US rhetoric useful. Comrade Wolf, that's US! The EU should be a natural ally, and yet the people of Europe are greatly suspicious of US power. Do we want South Americans looking to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro for leadership and inspiration? We should work *with* the rest of the world as a leader, not ride into a hundred stupid gun fights like some lone cartoon cowboy.

And for solutions? Perhaps we should start WASPAC? Help get the Old Boy's Network back in charge. Good news folks, the future is lookin WASPy as hell!

Posted by: ron at June 9, 2006 09:35 AM

As a British Isles WASP I am sad to hear that my American kinfolk have apparently lost control of their great nation. I hope they get it back again soon.

BTW re Fox News - Rupert Murdoch is Irish-Australian Catholic, right? Not Jewish.

Yes, and the demographic contract that conservative Catholics have made with Israelis with often secular goals lies at the center of the support Fox and Catholic organizations give Israel, even though Israel persecutes many Palestinian [and Lebanese] Catholics on a regular basis.

The Israelis share the Catholic conservative cultural matrix, and the Angry Left does not.

Zarqawi Death Will Strengthen New Government

Chris Matthews had a good interview just now on Hardball with Ambassador James Jeffreys, Condi Rice's Special Advisor on Iraq, about future prospects for the insurgency now that Zarqawi is burning in hell.

Jeffreys had a few interesting points. The main change that Zarqawi's death will effect lies in the new government's attempts to get insurgent leaders to compromise in order to co-opt them into the new political system. Jeffreys said that Zarqawi was the main obstacle to get this process moving forward, as his group quickly found out if a tribal chief or insurgent commander was moving toward conciliation, Zarqawi would kill them quickly and ruthlessly.

Zarqawi, who represented only a tiny fraction of the insurgency and whose group was largely comprised of foreign members, was first and foremost a dreaded enforcer of discipline on the insurgent margins. Jeffreys noted that many of his lieutenants have been killed in past operations in Fallujah and Ramadi, but that Zarqawi would replace them with similarly efficient killers. Mathews said, "like a snake, it would grow a new part," and asked Jeffreys if Zarqawi would be replaced. Jeffreys simply responded, "you can't replace a head of a snake."

Jeffreys noted Zarqawi was born ina Palestinian camp in Zarqa [which I have visited and which has the only oil refinery in Jordan]; elsewhere I had read he was of Bedu origin of the Beni Hassan tribel

Jeffreys also noted that Zarqawi had been with the Al-Ansar Al-Qaeda group in the mountains of Kurdistan near the Iranian border for a while, and might have had Iranian connections. Much more intriguing was a record found of Zarqawi's stay in a Baghdad hospital before the American invasion. One did not check into a Baghdad hospital without being allowed to do so by Saddam's brutal secret police. And what was he doing in Baghdad besides staying in a hospital?

Anathema to liberals, but this implies some sort of collusion between Saddam's people and Al-Qaeda before the American invasion.

Yep, although the scale of the cooperation might have been miniscule, Bush may have been right about an Al-Qaeda/Saddam connection.

Chirac Promotes Laziness in EU Workplace

Jacques Chirac has embarrassed Angela Merkel by inserting his oversized Gallic proboscis into a planned merger of the EuroNext Exchange with the New York Stock Exchange. Chirac says:

"a "Franco-German solution" with Deutsche B?rse would be better than the recently agreed merger between the Paris-based stock exchange operator and the New York Stock Exchange."

"The French president's comments come amid growing anxiety about the $10bn takeover among Euronext's large shareholders and users in Paris, and could encourage Deutsche B?rse, the NYSE's German rival, to counter-bid. Some Euronext shareholders have already criticised the "sudden rush" to cement the deal with NYSE."

Of course, lame-duck Chirac is notorious for his uninvited imbecilities into areas where agreements have already been reached and the French are already advancing a protectionist agenda with the Arcelor Steel takeover by Mittal and a Spanish attempt to buy energy companies in France and Belgium. An Italian/German bank merger may also be thwarted by growing economic nationalism of the sort initiated by French "dirigistes" afraid of their dwindling economic clout.

On another front, the notoriously otiose French are protesting the fact that other countries allow their workers to exceed 48 hours a week. The French anti-capitalist left consist of layabouts with attytood and worry that their 35-hour work week might be threatened as the French economy sinks ever lower vis-a-vis countries with a work-ethic.

EURSOC cuts to the chase:

The current EU Working Time Directive has it that employees cannot work more than an average of 48 hours a week, unless their country has an "opt-out" of the law. Britain has one such opt-out, several new member states either want or plan their own versions.

However, France and Sweden want Britain and others to lose the opt-out. We can't imagine why Sweden should be concerned with the amount of overtime British workers choose to do, but Paris' long-standing opposition to the opt-out suggests to us that [b]the move is yet another attempt to drag more dynamic EU nations down to France's level[/b]. If France wants to allow its workers 35 hour weeks, that's its lookout and it should bear the consequences - [b]why Paris is obsessed with extending its Crusade to other countries is beyond us[/b].

A good guess might be that work is the curse of the drinking classes, and the French are notoriously unable to avoid "une guele de bois" after extensive tippling. Their debased national ethos cannot abide with mass immigration nor compete with more vigorous entities in a Darwinian"red in tooth and claw" economic arena.

Finally, hard work is seen as a cardinal tenet of Anglo-Saxon capitalist liberalism, which the French and their EU allies fear will wrest economic control from the lazy political elites of the languorous layabout countries on the blue Med.

Mickey Kaus Fisks "Cocooning" Adam the "Caterpillar" Nagourney

Like one of those poker monikers that are almost irresistable to endless repetition, the li'l lefty Cocoon-builder [or do they also have "bubbles" in Dowdyville?], Adam Nagourney has his diapers lowered and is soundly spanked by Mickey Kaus on Slate:

"Narrow Victory by G.O.P. Signals Fall Problems": Cocooning--nobody does it better! Adam "Caterpillar" Nagourney triumphantly returns to regain his title as the best at his profession--the profession of telling gullible Democrats that this time they really have the Republicans on the run! [Nagourney's piece seemed on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-handiish. What, exactly, did he miss?--ed

1) Nagourney talks about "Republican institutional advantages" but misses the key, substantive advantage Tuesday's election revealed, namely the power of the House GOP immigration "enforcement" position to mobilize core Republican voters.

2) Instead, Nagourney says the pro-enforcement vote "highlighted divisions within the [Republican] party" between get-tough House members and President Bush. But it's Republican House members who are in the ballot in November, and it's their Democratic opponents who are likely to adopt President Bush's pro-legalization position. If we're talking about Signaling Fall Problems, why doesn't the centrality of the immigration issue Signal Fall Problems for the Dems, as opposed to the GOPs?

3) Nagourney, says, of the victorious GOP candidate,

Mr. Bilbray's failure to break 50 percent was striking.

But, as the LAT's Brownstein and Hook have the honesty to note,

Bilbray ran behind Bush mostly because two conservative independent candidates siphoned off about 5% of the vote.

Nagourney's failure to mention the conservative appeal of the independent candidates is ... striking.

4) "This was never considered a truly contested district," declares Nagourney. Two paragraphs later he says it was on a list of "the 10 most competitive races for House seats now held by Republicans, as identified by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report." Huh? Sounds like it was considered contested by Cook! ...]

The arrant arrogant absolute dishonesty of the lefty project seeps and oozes from almost every editorial-soaked article the NYT, LAT, and WaPo project as "news." It's obvious that dishonesty is what the bulk of their readers WANT TO HEAR, and therefore, they pander to their readers' leftish prejudices. And at the same time, inform their readers, like Pravda and Izvestia used to do, of the latest party line in Political Rectitude.

Mickey Kaus continues to call them as he sees them, not as the lefty project wants them to be perceived.

Zarqawi Death Could Bring UN Back to Iraq?

Blogger.com has been down for a couple of days, so this is my first chance to get back on Dave's World:

David Ignatius has a sensible piece in the WaPo, hitting the key point that Zarqawi's main aim in Iraq was a murderous campaign against any insurgents who had thoughts of co-operating with the new government. Now that this Sunni Islamo-fascist is gone, more insurgent groups may get on board the government.

Oh, and Ignatius noted the following:

Zarqawi's most devastating attack on this Western project may have been the August 2003 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. As intended, it frightened the United Nations away.

Maybe now the craven cowards in the discredited UN will make one last attempt at relevance in the real world by getting back into Iraq. After Chiraq and Putin got Oil-For-Food kickbacks through UN auspices and then opposed the US initiative in 2003, they should redeem themselves by reinserting their agencies where they are needed most.

But if Darfur is a clue, I wouldn't bet on these Turtle Bay turncoats doing anything except spewing hatred for US news agencies who believe the UN is a bureaucratic asylum. Like their cowardly spewmeister Malloch Brown, whose pink tie revealed his orientation as he whinged to Democrats how bad Republicans treat the incompetent nincompoops in Turtle Bay.

Mini-Mencken in the Making

Gary Brecher doesn't beat around the bush letting you know how he thinks [scratch that] feels about things. Here is a major part of his take on Haditha:

the Dems'mouthpiece, some old potato-face named John Murtha, is claiming Haditha is going to hurt us more than Abu Ghraib.

It's one of those times when everybody's talking crap -- left and right, pro and con, roadrunner and coyote.

Let's start with Murtha. At first, his argument makes sense. After all, we weren't actually killing people at Abu Ghraib, just messing with them. To an American, especially an old guy like Murtha, death is the worst, scariest thing in the universe, so killing is worse than shaming people.

Except the Iraqis themselves don't see it that way. As soon as the massacre story broke the US press fanned out across the Green Zone trying to get reaction quotes from the Iraqis, and all they got was shrugs.

One Baghdadi was quoted as saying, "This is just the way of life now." Nobody was surprised, nobody thought it was a big deal. For them, Abu Ghraib was way, WAY worse than a little massacre (probably about 30 dead when they get finished counting).

So why do Iraqis care more about shame than death? It comes down to demographics, population profiles. I've said it before and I'll say it again: war is just demographics in a hurry. And Iraq is a young country, not afraid of death. 40% of the Iraqi population is 14 or younger; only 3% is over 65. That's why the Iraqis went crazy at those Abu Ghraib pictures but just shrugged when the news crews stuck microphones in their faces and tried to get them riled about this massacre story.

Massacres are much easier to take when you've got a huge birthrate to replace your losses, and shame trumps dying to young males. That's why it's always been ridiculously easy to get cannon fodder: young guys like the idea of killing and dying, but go ballistic if somebody humiliates them.

We don't get this, because we're old, rickety folks. Compared to Iraq, the US is an old folks' home: 75% of us are over 18, and 13% are over 65. One thing you'll notice if you've been around old people: they care more about their smelly old hides than any kid ever did. So naturally a soggy old dude like Murtha -- just look at a picture of him -- thinks the Iraqis are going to care more about GIs killing people than about the non-lethal hijinks at Abu Ghraib.

But he's wrong, and all you have to do to understand why is think the way you did when you were young. At age 16, the median age for the Iraqi population, getting your locker trashed by the cool girls is way, way worse than death. I should know.

So think of Iraq as a high-school kid. Naturally, to him, sexual humiliation like Abu Ghraib is way, way worse than a piddling little massacre. I kind of admire that about them, the way they care more about some infidel flushing a Koran than about whole families blasted.

But I'm not saying this massacre doesn't matter. It does -- as a symptom of how Iraq duty is ruining the superb US Army we sent to the war. Nam nearly ruined our armed forces; driving Humvees down stinking Iraqi alleys waiting for an IED to kill you is going to mess with our people the same way. Massacres like Haditha turn GIs into death squads -- because death squads are the only way (aside from nukes, and I'll get to that in a second) to fight against urban guerrillas.

The rightwingers won't admit that we're never going to turn Haditha into Anaheim, and they're so vain and pig-headed they'll keep our troops there till they turn into classic Colombian-style throat-slitters. Worse yet, since we have no decent intelligence about who we're fighting, they won't even slit the right throats.

If it was up to me, I'd charge Cheney, Rumsfeld and Feith with treason for sending troops into Indian Country with no intelligence, so our patrols end up cruising the shit-stinking alleys of Iraq like ducks in a shooting gallery, letting the locals pick their time to join those wires and detonate the old artillery shell they buried at the intersection last night. You can't expect heavily armed Marines to shrug and applaud when that shell goes off and kills their buddies. They itch to show the neighborhood who's got the firepower. Sooner or later, they're going to do it the way one fire-team did in Haditha: going house to house killing everything inside.

And you know what? Those Marines were right, at a strategic level. Tactically, no; small massacres like Haditha just piss the locals off, recruit more insurgents. But strategically, those jarheads were right: massacre on a really big scale is the only solution. The shooters at Haditha saw the situation more clearly than the Generals who sent them out on patrol to smile and pass out candy, hoping to win "Hearts and Minds."

The cold, scary fact is that there is no way for a conventional army to defeat an urban guerrilla force militarily. The only options are withdrawal or smart genocide -- the cold-blooded, efficient extermination of the whole population of any city or region that supports the guerrillas. When those Marines went house-to-house killing, they were acting logically and thinking more strategically than their commanders, never mind the Moron-in-Chief. Mao would have nodded approvingly, and so would the Brit officers who wiped out 1/4 of the Boers' civilian population and pioneered the Concentration Camp. Stalin said it best: "No people, no problem."

Trouble is, one little USMC fire team just doesn't have the weapons to really do the job. If we were serious about transforming Iraq or the Muslim World, we could do it in minutes, just by turning the whole Sunni Triangle into radioactive glass, one big skating rink that could double as a tanning parlor. Wouldn't even need artificial lights at night, you could skate just by the glow.

Unless we act fast to change the planet's demographics, the Iraqis -- in fact, the whole Turd, I mean Third World -- will win by deploying the poor man's nuke: higher birthrate. I saw a picture yesterday that summed up what's really happening. It showed a few GIs taking a break in an Iraqi woman's kitchen, eating while she stared at the street. The caption was some crap about how the Iraqis are learning to love us (as if anybody ever loved a foreign occupying army), but to me, the real point was that the woman was eight or nine months pregnant, and three of her kids were running around outside.

My caption for that photo would be, "Who's Winning?" It's not the GIs chowing down in her kitchen. They're far from home, and they'll have maybe one or two kids. She'll have nine or ten. That's victory, the slow and sure kind. And hey, in the meantime, just to pass the time, her husband has a hobby: planting IEDs along our patrol routes. Then he comes home to impregnate the wife again. So he's beating us day and night, if you see what I mean.

The European countries can't even maintain their current populations. The US is doing better, thanks to those immigrants, but the hot countries, the poor countries, are zooming past us, their populations growing like crabgrass on AFDC. And picking off a few civilians here and there, like we're doing now, is useless. If Bush & co. really were the scary Darth Vader guys the leftists say they are, they'd have thought hard about this.

Unfortunately, those idiots can't see the big picture. In fact, they've actually cut back on birth control funding to the poor countries, guaranteeing that you'll grow old in a hungry, pissed-off world that wants your house, your SUV and your head on a stick, not necessarily in that order.

So what would a real Darth Vader, a serious American nationalist, do with a problem like the one we've got in the Sunni Triangle? Simple: either wipe them out or buy them off. That's what the Romans and the Brits, the real pros, would have done by now. (God, imagine if the 19th c. British Empire had had nukes! The whole planet would be a game preserve, totally unpopulated, except for a few country houses along the English coast, with some slave-breeding farms tucked away inland to produce maids and butlers as submissive as labrador retrievers.)

Brecher is right, of course, that the US is neither bloody-minded enough to build an empire nor single-minded enough to keep the Fourth Estate Fifth Column from demoralizing our sensitivity-trained troops, who have already been Oprahfied in a country wallowing in emotional bathos.

The Israelis were much smarter than we Americans. In 1982 they raced up to Beirut and just shelled it more or less indiscriminately. Then the US rushed Phil Habib in to talk to Yasir and get him and his PLO buddies out of town on the first boat to Tunis. Hitti gave the US word of honor that the remaining refugees at Sabra and Shatila would be protected.

When Sharon heard that, he had his cat's-paw Lebanese Phalangists go into Sabra & Shatila to stain Arab manhood with the shame of leaving his women, children, and old folks to be slaughtered. Sharon understood the Arab mind better than US Arab-American Habib, and smudged beyond repair whatever was left of American credibility and honor with the Arabs.

Remember what Hafiz Al-Asad did in Hama, shelling the part of the city controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood into rubble and killing 20,000 inhabitants.

Sharon and Al-Asad and Saddam Hussein are brutal savages, but in the short term they establish order and control in their areas of activity---the peace of the dead, perhaps, but as Brecher understands, in the long run, the demographics are on the side of the Asiatic peoples, just as they are on the side of the Hispanic/Latino and Brazilian hordes to the south of the border.

Bush doesn't understand that, but he has been snookered by the Wall Street Journal crowd and the "moderates" to succumb to blandishments from the liberal Oprahfied Kofi Annanites.

I guess the "American Century" was from 1945 until the US gets swamped by immigrants. Looks like diminishing returns are already beginning to set in.

Drugged Drunk Pat Kennedy Grandstands: Treat Me like a Black!

The continuous soap opera downfall of the ethically and morally impaired Kennedy clan made it to The Daily News when freshly rehabbed Pat, son of colossal substance abuser Ted Kennedy, blubbered that he wanted to be "treated like a black."

Those who have lived in DC for a long time outside the cocoon of Congress and the toniest DC neighborhoods in Northwest DC must be having a good chuckle. If one is a white and gets in a traffic altercation or minor accident involving a black within the confines of DC, the white---unless he is in Congress or has a lot of political pull and vigorish---will get the short end of the justice-stick.

Not only do whites have to prove they are innocent in a rigged court system which has been constructed by black politicians since self-rule of sorts began, the media in DC ignore the robberies and occasional murders of white joggers in Rock Creek Parkway and other public parks when it is apparent that a black or blacks were involved. The case of the California congressman a couple years ago was blown up out of all proportion because he was a Republican, and the girl was a white [Chandra Levy].

DC is pretty much a bad joke---partly the legacy of Marion Barry. The Kennedys are a tragedy---partly the legacy of Teddy and his monstrous personal shortcomings, but more because the ultra-left has adopted them as mascots.

Dubious Awards

Last night the Faux News Show with Jon Steward had Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg on to present a "Profiles in Courage" talking head schtick for this year's recipient. I wondered to myself what sort of high courage it takes for an over-the-hill drunkard to turn tail and run, or advocate doing so, in order to gain the plaudits of a vapid crew of America-haters? And an MSM itching to blame Bush for everything that goes wrong anywhere in the world.

The humorous part of the Daily Show's parading of Caroline was Jon Stewart trying to get her to name some people who did NOT deserve the award. Actually, the book Profiles in Courage by JFK [and ghostwriter NYT reporter Arthur Krock] is back on the newstand/bookstore in paperback.

The left's hyperflatulence is especially windy about its moral courage, especially far away from harm's way, in denouncing how the Global War On Terror coulda woulda shoulda yadda yadda and WMD and all sorts of cowardly sniveling cheap shots about almost everything going wrong in the world. It's the Bush Derangement Syndrome.

John Leo has a nice piece on just how vapid, mindless, and silly the current proliferation of awards and presentations are becoming. Rachel Corrie is the new heroine of choice. Click on the link and observe just how far down the slippery slope of backsliding weaselhood our friends on the ultra-left have slid.

Noble Ideals go the Way of the Typewriter as Oprahfication Rules

The Opinion Journal has a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger Op-Ed about the disappearance of "honor" from our country's set of reflexes. As my daughter's private school here in Boca, whose headmaster has a son-in-law named Tucker Carlson, has the motto "Honor Above All," I thought I'd mourn the passing of another quaint artifact of the past. As the head of the Guggenheim Institute, Josiah Bunting III, puts it in a wonderful intro:

In our culture of therapy, self-absorption and celebrity, "honor" has very little cachet. An abuse of honor--say, by perpetrating a public fraud or acting duplicitously in private life--is but the occasion for the administration of comforting words of understanding, the application of medicines to assuage lingering anxieties and the invitation to appear on "Oprah," the better to explain the forces that, overwhelming meager resources of conscience and character, impelled a dishonorable act. Next may come an invitation to undertake the labor of a book, more fully to explore and expiate the fall from grace. Closure (as it is called) will then, at last, be obtained.

In short, there is no shame in actions once known as dishonorable, and the virtues that supported honor seem moribund. Chastity and modesty--so important to honor in social relations--are treated as relics from Jane Austen and "Little Women." When a high-school girl defends a sexual encounter on the grounds that an American president said that her particular act was not really sex, both she and her role model are, if not completely forgiven, understood to be, as members of the human family, subject to the same vagaries of uncontrollable temptations as you and I.

No shame indeed, as members of Congress demonstrate in another WSJ opinion piece about the by-election to replace Vietnam's top ace [another glance into the past, when honor ruled the military] Randy Cunningham, who utterly disgraced himself and his party and country by taking massive bribes [not the teensy-weensy ones of $100K by Democrat William Jefferson] and ended up in prison.
Dennis Hastert responded to the raid on Jefferson's office in precisely the way a dishonorable discredited leader of a party on its way out of power would do: yammer about the "separation of powers" while 80-90% of the country believes that crooks should not be protected if they are in Congress. In the words of Brendan Miniter:

The broader issue here is that congressional corruption is rampant and Congress is doing little about it. After the FBI raided Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office last month, Speaker Denny Hastert and other Republicans joined with Democrats in denouncing the raid of the Louisiana Democrat's office, even though the FBI allegedly has a video tape of Mr. Jefferson accepting $100,000 in cash and later found $90,000 of that money in a freezer at his home. It's true that there is a separation-of-powers issue at stake. But constitutional arguments can be abstract and hard for the public to follow. What voters do understand is payoffs with cold hard cash. Do Republicans understand the politics of that?

Honor Above All? What a quaint concept!

Congressional Animal House: Road Trip!

Just when I thought Congress had turned a corner when John Boehner of Ohio, who has never put an earmark into a bill, became House Majority Leader, it turns out he has his own pet addiction: Road Trips!

We all recall that scene in the movie Animal House when the pressures of reality begin to interrupt the delirious round of parties and pranks---usually at final exams or around Spring Break. Time for some tripping, and not on illegal substances!

Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Washington Post has some of the major-league travellers and lo & behold! my very own Congressman Bob Wexler, whose office abuts my wife's real estate office here in Boca, has taken over $350,000 in trips and is one of the largest recipients of travel goodies in Congress! This will not hurt him much with his Boca constituency, consisting in large part of cruise-line and frequent-flyer retirees. Wexler actually put forward a Social Security reform bill last year when Nancy Pelosi forbade any Democratic alternative to the Bush [who never did submit a reform bill] campaign to partly privatize social security. I'm sure Wexler has canvassed much of Europe and also Israel in his research on alternate versions of an American social pension plans. Katherine Harris, who is not going to be a US Senator, managed to take a three-day "Restoration Weekend" at the Breakers in Palm Beach, sponsored by Conservative guru-man David Horowitz. Her schedule for her afternoons had "shopping, golf, yadda, yadda....] and her original travel form omitted the trip's sponsor, the "Center for the Study of Popular Culture." Lotsa heavy lifting in that schedule, I'll bet.

Charlie Rangel also broke a rule when he, his wife and son all went to SURPRISE! Cuba on an "ecology" junket. He was evidently sponsored by a Fidel-loving constituent---didn't know they had that many in Manhattan!

House rules permit sponsors of lawmakers' trips to cover the cost of only one accompanying relative. A Rangel spokesman said the office had not been aware of the rule.

Yes, Charlie has only been in Congress fifteen or twenty terms or so. He wouldn't know about tiny details like HOW MANY RELATIVES HE CAN HAVE ON HIS COMMIE JUNKETS!

A San Diego defense firm named General Atomics, who build and sell the Predator defense drones, evidently had the novel insight that Congressmen and staffers are great business outreach reps, as the company's CEO explained trips to Turkey and Australia:

"[It's] useful and very helpful, in fact, when you go down and talk to the government officials, to have congressional people go along and discuss the capabilities of [the plane] with them," Tom Cassidy, chief executive of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the company's aircraft-manufacturing subsidiary, told the center [for Public Integrity].

Gosh, I'll bet it is, and of course, I'll also bet it doesn't hurt the Predator's in-country marketing strategy inside the Beltway! When Defense appropriations hearings are held, I'll bet the Predator gets a free pass from members who have been helping market them overseas! Wonder if Randy Cunningham was part of their business outreach Mission Statement? Next question. Was it bi-partisan? Yes, it was!

The center's study illustrates how widespread the practice has become, for both Democrats and Republicans. Of the 25 individual lawmakers who accepted more than $120,000 worth of travel during the period, 17 were Democrats. Of the two dozen congressional offices on which private trip sponsors spent the most money, 15 were Republican, the study said.

I guess the Kossacks and HuffnPuff screamers can't blame it all on Delay and Abramoff. A brief nose-holding excursion through some lefty blogs finds the usual self-promotion [Sirota] and fixation on Republican wrong-doers [Muckraker & AirAmerica]. But, as the Baltimore Examiner notes:

let’s not miss two fundamentally important points about these trips. First, the investigators found numerous examples of a tactic familiar to congressional veterans: Take a three-day trip to give one speech in a desired location. Find a friendly lobbyist or advocacy group to pay for your trip, then deliver the speech. Spend the balance of the three days seeing the sights. This is a con job, to be sure, but it is a bipartisan part and parcel of the corrupt culture that gives rise to the Incumbistan Complex inside the Beltway.

Finally, to be fair, there are good reasons for Senators, Congressmen and staffers to come to foreign countries or visit on-site examples of what they are crafting the nation's public business about. When I was at the Embassy in Saudi Arabia, every other week had a Codel or Staffdel flying into Jidda, and I was the guide for many in excursions around town [the gold suq was the most popular] and had interesting discussions around the ambassador's dinner table with Ted Kennedy, Jacob Javits and lesser but influential House types like Clem Zablocki and Steve Solarz. Saudi Arabia was and is an important place to visit to understand US national interests in a comprehensive fashion.

But the temptations of power and success often guide these solons and their amanuenses beyond reasonable boundaries into con junkets, as DeLay at St. Andrew's and other examples demonstrate. Congrats to the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media, and Medill at Northwestern [where my nephew just won a $40,000 scholarship to study journalism]. I hope the fallout from this exposure sharpens the focus and removes temptations from the more grasping of our nation's legislators.