Right Wing Nut House

This week’s Carnival features all sorts of cluebats for your reading pleasure. But by far and away, the award for Cluebat of the Week must go the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for their selection of Mohamed ElBaradei as recipient of this year’s Peace Prize.

It’s not enough that the selection committee has exhibited this kind of cluelessness in years passed. I actually thought they had reached a low point in 2001 when they nominated the most cynical and corrupt UN Secretary General in history Kofi Anan. Unfortunately, they followed that bit of idiocy with the nomination in 2002 of Cluebat Hall of Famer James Earl Carter. A former US President and current best friends with terrorists and thuggish dictators worldwide, Carter has become the planet’s number one busybody as he flits from hot spot to hot spot to sternly lecture pro-democratic forces about upsetting sensitive dictators like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe by challenging the results of their rigged elections.

Other “peace activists” who received the selection committee’s blessing have been baby killer Yassar Arafat and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbechev who received the peace prize the same year (1990) that 10,000 Soviet citizens languished in lunatic asylums not because they were mentally ill but because they disagreed with him.

Not content to nominate thugs and their apologists for the prize, the committee also has a website that has a children’s game called “The Peace Doves Game” where children are encouraged to disarm the world of nuclear weapons. In one of those chillingly surreal images that only liberals can come up with, the “peace doves” have rockets strapped to their backs (along with an olive branch in their beaks) and look more like eagles as they swoop down from space and disarm the 8 “so-called” nuclear powers.

IAEA doesn’t have a children’s game on their website but they do have a page called “The DG’s Corner” where the praises of nuclear enabler ElBaradei are sung. This is the same fella that turned a blind eye while A.Q. Khan and his Traveling Black Market Nuclear Technology Medicine Show made the circuit of terrorist states like Libya, Iran, and North Korea selling sensitive knowledge and hardware to the likes of Ghaddafi and Kim Jong Il. And would someone please explain to me why more than 10 years after Saddam was supposed to be disarmed he was allowed to keep - under the auspices of the IAEA - 500 tons of yellowcake uranium that the Iraqis were just waiting for ElBeradei and his clueless crew to turn their backs for five minutes so that they could reconstitute their nuclear program?

So…for cluelessness above and beyond the call of nature, the Nobel Peace Prize selection committee gets the nod as Cluebat of the Week.

So why not browse through the selections below of other clueless nincompoops? You won’t be disappointed!

“The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Hey Freddie! Any ideas why anyone takes anything you say seriously?
(Me)
***************************************************************************************

Those prattling pachyderms at Academic Elephants have a marvelous post up about the Department of Defense v Academia when it comes to military recruitment. Turns out the liberals can’t have their cake and eat it too.

Go ahead and read The Maryhunter’s hilarious take on the ElBaradei Peace Prize. Afterwards, see an old Buster Keaton flick that features the Keystone Cops for a more serious discussion of the selection.

A.J. from The Strata-Sphere writes about Governor Blanco’s continued cluelessness in the aftermath of Katrina. Can’t those poor people in Louisiana recall her before there’s nothing left to save?

Thank God for Orac! I read the piece by Deepak Chopra and didn’t quite have the inclination to fisk its many idiocies. Orac saves us all the trouble by doing a first class hose job on the clueless doctor.

Blogbud Jay at the ever popular Stop The ACLU has an interesting take on an Oregon law outlawing live sex acts that was declared unconstitutional. Good news for flashers…bad news for constitutionalists.

Ferdy the Cat snarls and hisses at Nicholas Hoffman whose post at HuffPo was a mish mash of lies, half truths and out and out falsehoods on the reproductive right. Serious stuff from a seriously talented cat.

Thomas Bowler has a thoughtful take on the what some are saying the Democrats have to do to win at the polls. I doubt whether they can afford to get rid of the moonbats - too much money at stake.

Raven has a crackerjack article about the UN wanting to take over management of the internets. I can just see my email ending up in Katmandu.

More ElBaradei nonsense from The Slayer. Van Helsing doesn’t pull any punches in the title: “Nobel Prize Awarded for Helping Terrorists Get Nukes.” Uh-yup.

Kender is back! The blogosphere’s most petulant scold is on to Kos and his clueless cohorts who wanted to destroy the moderate Democrat Leadership Council. The only problem is that Kos & Co. have no ideas of their own. And the DLC’s plan for “victory” in Iraq is a joke.

Pat Curley is tracking George Monbiot’s (moonbat?) fatally flawed study of how religion is bad for society. First rate analysis along with some devastating responses by Pat to one of the more curious efforts by the left to discredit religiosity.

Mark Coffey has a well written take on the Harold Pinter Nobel Prize. I happen to disagree with Mark’s conclusion that Pinter doesn’t deserve the prize but I heartily agree with his sentiments about the man.

Don Surber bemoans the fading of Senator Robert Byrd who has recently had some “senior” moments. That said, make sure you vote for Don as he is in the running for King of the Cotillion. I’ll send you a bouquet if you win, Don.

Tony B. from More than Loans points out some real stupidity on the part of Frank Lautenberg who continues to beat the dead horse of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton stock involvement.

Here’s a little satire for your enjoyment from two of our Carnival regulars. First, The Nose on your Face gives us an update on “Doogie Howser, IED.” Then Mr. Right gives us the scoop on George Bush’s newest war - the War against the Smurfs.

And to round out your satirical serenade, how about a little Howard Dean with your coffee? Conservathink has him dead to rights.

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) rushes to the defense of Laura Bush who was criticized this past week for her remarks about opponents of the Miers nomination. One classy lady defending another…

The lovely Pamela at Atlas Shrugs (check out her profile at PJ Media) writes about God, man, natural disasters, and the clueless mullahs who think they know Him.

Neil Phines at the interesting site Et Tu Bloge (wonder how he got the Latin translation for “blog?”) has some very good analysis on the recent German elections as well as France and Germany as economic models. Did Schroeder really say that?

New Blog Alert! Ruy Diaz of Western Resistance has some words of wisdom from the hemisphere’s second most charming murderous thug, Hugo (The Laughing Goat) Chavez. With Castro getting older, looks like Chavez is about to move up in the “Dictators American Lefty’s Fawn Over” sweepstakes.

Angry in the Great White North shows us why Wesley Clark should go back to whatever he was doing and leave politics and policy to the grown ups.

Kurt at Fly at Night has a little local cluelessnss for us as he relates the adventures of County Supervisor who had a meltdown in front of his constituents. Whenever a an agent for confiscatory entity like government starts comparing people to the KKK, I can’t help but giggle a little.

Ezzie of Serendez Blog fisks the Guardian article that quoted a Palestinian saying that George Bush told him that God requested he free the Iraqis. Even when reporting the correction from BBC, the Guardian can’t quite restrain itself from sticking their knife into the President.

Will Franklin is blogging social security. Now before your eyes glaze over consider the excellent points Mr. Franklin makes in this post and then come back and tell me that all of the political nonsense going on in DC is more important than this one single issue.

I love it when politicians get caught being hypocrites. Alex C. of Pstupidonymous has the skinny on Speaker of the Pennsylvania House and his trip to the schoolhouse to read to the kiddies.

Jimmie K takes the MSM to task for their failure to call a spade a spade in the war against terror. It is just mind boggling that the media has so much of a problem acknowledging Islamic terrorists. One wonders if they were Christian would they have a similar unease.

Finally, guess who was in Sweden making viscously anti-American remarks? I take down Al Gore here.

Conservatives are outraged once again that the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to a stark, raving, drooling moonbat. British playwright Harold Pinter is the latest old time socialist to receive the prestigious award and righty web sites are full of examples of Pinter’s outrageous and unreasoning hatred of the US.

Yes, the Nobel Committee is made up of a bunch of Anti-American jackasses who apparently live for sticking it to the United States with their selections - especially in the arts and the over-hyped “Peace Prize.” The poorly named award has gone recently to some of the most clueless denizens of the fever swamps as well as some of the most anti-peace thugs around. In the last 15 years, the prize has gone to Yassar Arafat (baby killer), Kofi Anan (corrupt, cynical exploiter), Jimmy Carter (No. Words. Necessary), and Mikhail Gorbechev who received the prize the same year that 10,000 Russian citizens were incarcerated in lunatic asylums not because they were mentally ill but because they disagreed with him.

But I would say to my righty friends that when it comes to awarding a prize to Harold Pinter, the Nobellers have hit the jackpot for once.

Pinter’s politics have nothing to do with the way the man revolutionized the English speaking stage. His sparse use of dialog and frequent pauses as well as the sheer ordinariness of his characters which sometimes masked a degeneracy of unfathomable depth, shocked audiences in the 1950’s. Here is critic Martin Eslin:

“Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet.”

Pinter achieved this effect by doing some unusual first hand research. As a young, struggling playwright in the 1950’s, he would spend countless hours in the park just sitting on a bench and listening - really listening to the way people talk. He was especially fascinated with the wordplay between older couples whose monosyllabic questions and responses held much deeper meaning than just the words themselves. The result was sheer brilliance, a combination of free verse and dialog so bitingly ordinary that the incongruity between the situations the characters found themselves in - usually something dark, menacing, and unknowable - and the spare, barest of bones language made for a sometimes shocking, sometimes sublime night of theater.

More than most, Pinter’s plays are best judged when performed rather than simply read. This is because of the playwright’s deliberate use of “the pause.” In many plays where stage directions are written into the script by the author, the results are desultory or, more likely logical outgrowths of dialog between characters (ex.: “Mary looks at paper, frowns, then looks at Mark”).

Pinter’s frequent and planned use of pauses - actually writing into the script “short pause” or “long pause” - establishes a rhythm for the actor that allows the unnatural dialog to flow. The pauses are as much a part of character development as anything else in the script and, at the time, was truly innovative.

His characters are simple, lower middle class Brits usually with family “issues” - some of them bizarre or surreal. In The Homecoming (1963) we find a long lost son coming home to a father and two brothers ( a boxer and a shadowy low life). He brings his enigmatic wife with him and by the end of the play, the father and the low life are negotiating with the woman to become a quasi-prostitute/mother to the dysfunctional group. When performed well, the play is both laugh out loud funny and shocking in its implications.

Critics at first were universally negative. But theatergoers both in Britain and the United States were starved for something different than the relentlessly up-beat musical comedy and the boilerplate dramas and melodramas of the post war period. As a result, Pinter’s plays were like a splash of ice cold water on a hot day - a bracing and sometimes exhilarating experience. As the years went by, Pinter dramas have gone Hollywood (with uneven results) and the playwright himself has written some screenplays such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman. But in the end, Pinter’s brilliant originality and revolutionary use of language established the playwright as one of the most dynamic forces of the English speaking theater in the 20th century.

Is Pinter worthy of a Nobel Prize? For the totality of his work, yes. In the last 20 years however, Pinter has become something of a caricature of himself and his plays and other writing output (he has published an anthology of rather insipid and obscure poetry) have degenerated into political screeds against capitalism, the west, and especially the United States. But I can’t imagine what the theater would be like today without his contributions from the 1950’s to the 1970’s.

The question arises should we condemn authors and artists for their politics even if their work is a cut above brilliant? I find such a construct puzzling. Just because John Updike is a loony lefty that doesn’t make Rabbit Run any less of a joy to read. And Joan Didion’s essays are achingly well written despite a political content that runs to the left of Marshall Tito. Can we accept talent and beauty in art despite disagreeing with the artists personal politics?

I would think that this would be the essence of artistic expression and criticism. Although a good case can be made that the more conservative authors and artists - or at least artistic endeavors that express conservative themes - are deliberately censored and given short shrift in a world dominated by liberal purveyors and critics of many artistic forms, should this lessen our enjoyment and appreciation of artistic expression even by people whose extremist views are totally at odds with ours?

Personally, I would find such a world very limiting and boring. Consequently, we should pity liberals who refuse to see the brilliance of a Tom Wolfe or even Ayn Rand, whose books have inspired several generations of conservative thinkers and writers. By rejecting art based on the artist’s politics, we are only hurting ourselves.

And so, I congratulate the Noble Committee for recognizing the brilliance of Harold Pinter. However, I wonder if for next year’s peace prize, we couldn’t actually get someone who, you know, actually works for “peace” and not “surrender” or the “peace of the grave” like Yassar Arafat. Maybe they should consider a liberator, someone who has freed 25 million people from the clutches of two of the most bloodthirsty and oppressive regimes in history. Do you think it’s possible…

Maybe when hell freezes over.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin rounds up reaction to Pinter’s Nobel Prize on the right with a link to an interesting Roger Kimball piece in The New Criterion. I think Roger speaks for a lot of conservatives who are simply sick and tired of the relentless anti-Americanism, especially in international organizations.

Joe Gandleman agrees with the award although his support is more tepid and more the result of resignation that the prize was in fact awarded for Pinter’s virulent anti-Americanism.

Roger Simon also believes the award is “well deserved” and makes the same point I did about the body of Pinter’s best work decades behind him.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until tonight at 11:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 33 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

My blog is broke. It sounds like a good blues riff, doesn’t it…

Well I woke up this mornin’
My woman she done gone
Jes’ drinkin’ bad whiskey
Bein’ bad to the bone

And my blog is broke
Yeah my blog is broke
Gotta hurry up an’ fix it
And that ain’t no joke

I want to apologize to many of you who are having a horrendous time commenting and tracking back to this site. I wish I could tell you what the hell the problem is but I really don’t have a clue.

If you’ve had problems tracking back or commenting for whatever reason, please email me at elvenstar522-at-AOL dot Com (ampersand for “at” and a period for “dot”). Please tell me the following:

1. What post you tried to comment on
2. What browser you are using
3. How many if any links you tried to put into the comment
4. What the error message says
5. If you are having trouble with my trackbacks, please tell me what publishing software you are using and the URL of your site.

I will send this info to someone who will examine my site and fix this problem.

And you can email me with your comments at any time and I’ll be glad to post them. Readers of this site know that about the only thing I can’t abide in a commenter is profanity so even those who disagree will have their comment appear on the appropriate post.

WHITE SOX CATCHER A.J. PIERZYNSKI SWINGS AND MISSES AT STRIKE THREE AND THE THIRD OUT OF THE NINTH INNING IN LAST NIGHT’S 2-1 WHITE SOX VICTORY…OR WAS IT?

Rule 6.05(b) in the Official Rules of Baseball state “A batter will be out if…A third strike is legally caught by the catcher; “Legally caught” means in the catcher’s glove before the ball touches the ground. It is not legal if the ball lodges in his clothing or paraphernalia; or if it touches the umpire and is caught by the catcher on the rebound. If a foul tip first strikes the catcher’s glove and then goes on through and is caught by both hands against his body or protector, before the ball touches the ground, it is a strike, and if third strike, batter is out. If smothered against his body or protector, it is a catch provided the ball struck the catcher’s glove or hand first.

And most importantly, in Rule 6.05 (j): After a third strike or after he hits a fair ball, he or first base is tagged before he touches first base;

I don’t know whether Angels catcher Josh Paul cleanly caught that third strike after A.J. Pierzynski swung and missed. That was never really the basis of the Angels argument. Rather, it was home plate umpire Doug Eddings clear and unmistakable hand signal that A.J. was out and that the inning was over that has both Angels players and fans in such an uproar.

Eddings raised his right arm and cocked his thumb in the traditional “out” signal that umpires make to indicate an out has been officially recorded. At that point, the Angels contend the inning was over, which is why they ran off the field. Angels classy manager Mike Scioscia explains:

“It was a swing; our catcher caught it,” Scioscia said. “Doug Eddings called him out and somewhere along the line, because the guy ran to first base, he altered the call and that’s disappointing.”

Mr. Scioscia has it exactly right: White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski faked out the umpires and was able to make it stick as a result of stubbornness and tradition in the brotherhood of umpires.

As legendary umpire Nester Shylock once said “Umpires are expected to be perfect on opening day and improve as the season wears on.” Umps are under enormous pressure and this has bred a kind of insularity that has fostered a rock hard wall of solidarity with other umpires on their crew. Baseball managers are like little children seeking a parent’s permission for some adventure or other; if mommy says no maybe daddy will say yes. So they sometimes go from umpire to umpire seeking to overturn the obvious mistake of one of their brethren.

They may as well be talking to a baseball bat. It isn’t going to happen.

This is part of the tradition of the game, as much as the argument or “rhubarb” that takes place on the field as a result of such a poor decision.

The origin of the term “rhubarb” to describe a dust-up with umpires goes back to the 1940’s and is one of those fascinating little tidbits of info you can find on the web:

It may come from radio jargon. During early radio dramas, when the noise of an angry crowd was needed, actors in the studio would repeatedly utter the word rhubarb, which provided the appropriate effect. The hubbub and din of a radio crowd was somehow transferred over to the noise of a fight or argument. This use is documented as early as 1934.

The use in baseball dates to about 1943. Red Barber, the famed baseball broadcaster for the Brooklyn Dodgers, is often cited as the one who introduced the term to baseball, but while Barber is largely responsible for popularizing the term, he never claimed credit for originating it. Instead, Barber says he learned the term from fellow reporter Garry Schumacher, who got it from another sportswriter, Tom Meany, who learned it from an unnamed Brooklyn bartender. The bartender used it to describe a bar room altercation where a Brooklyn fan shot a Giants fan. (They used to take their baseball very seriously in New York.)

I thought that the Angels showed a lot of class by not making too much of the blown call. Scioscia even went so far as to say that his team didn’t play well enough to win anyway. That said, White Sox fans know damn well that they got a lucky break. And as is also tradition in baseball, look for the umpires to find a way to “even things out” when the series moves to California on Friday night.

Pierzynski’s deke of home plate umpire Eddings was the catalyst that propelled the White Sox to their series tying victory. But only after a game that witnessed some of the most beautiful pitching seen in any post season series in quite a while.

First, Jarold Washburn who two days ago was suffering from strep throat and running a fever of 105 degrees, gave a gutty effort. He pitched extremely well, understandably tiring in the 5th inning at which point he gave way to a succession of Angels relievers who stopped the White Sox cold.

On the other side, Sox hurler Mark Buehrle pitched one of his best games of the season as he shut down the Angels on 5 hits. His only mistake - a home run to reserve infielder Robb Quinlan. Quinlan’s blast knotted up the score at 1-1 in the fourth and there it stayed until the eventful 9th inning.

Something that should be extremely troubling to White Sox fans is the teams lack of execution on the base paths and the dearth of big hits with runners in scoring position. The former is probably a case of nerves and may get better away from home. After all, the Sox have the best road record in the major leagues. As for the latter, give the Angels pitching staff - especially their bullpen - a lot of the credit for choking off the White Sox offense. Last night, that bullpen was unhittable as they allowed only one hit prior to the 9th inning.

And in the ninth, Ozzie Guillen made his first really inspired move of the playoffs by sending in Pablo Ozuna to pinch run for Pierzynski following A.J.’s little deception. Ozuna, a true liability in the field but an excellent hitter and base runner, promptly stole second. And then big time clutch hitter Joe Crede came through with a shot over the head of left fielder Garret Anderson that scored Ozuna and ended the game.

The Sox should consider themselves extremely fortunate to be tied at this point in the series as they have not played well at all. They appear tentative at the plate and in the field and are trying to force things rather than have the game come to them. They have made 4 outs in two games on the basepaths. Aaron Rowand getting thrown out at home plate in the second inning last night with no outs was just plain stupid. And Crede’s double made up for his baserunning gaffe in the 6th inning where he was doubled off second after a liner to left. Coupled with the Sox not able to steal off Angels pitching and catching, getting thrown out twice in Game 1, and you have a recipe for defeat for the Sox.

Unless they can find a way to settle down and play their game, Sox fans may have seen the last their boys at home this year. The Angels are perfectly capable of sweeping the Sox in California which would end the series and the dreams of the Pale Hose to make it back to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1959.

I can’t decide whether Al Gore is a certifiable loon or certifiably insane. Not that it matters. The former Vice President, current owner of a TV station absolutely no one watches, and erstwhile inventor of the internet has had a very tough time of it since his close loss in the Presidential election of 2000. The trauma seems to have initiated delusional episodes that every once in a while manifest themselves in drooling, spittle-flying tirades against America before a bevy foreigners, global warming advocates, and jihadi appeasers around the world.

I suppose everyone has to make a living - even former Vice Presidents who almost have to purchase air time on TV to get noticed. Oh for the good old days when the world press hung on almost every word he uttered, breathlessly waiting for the next nugget of wisdom to flow from his usually confused and illogical mind. Nowadays, he’s got to compete for attention with a slew of other anti-American zealots. Even Europeans and B-List celebrities receive more ink for their incoherent rants against the United States than the man Bill Clinton called “The most effective Vice President in history.” Given that FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner once compared his office to a “warm bucket of sh*t,” I guess that makes Al Gore the biggest overflowing commode to ever serve as second bananna . (Is that what Gore means when he talks about the left as ” a movement?”)

Be that as it may, Mr. Tidy Bowl was in Stockholm, Sweden yesterday to give a speech before an economic forum. Now a Democratic politician speaking at a European economic conference is like a jackass giving a speech at a convention of mules; something akin to the ignorant lecturing the emasculated. And what the Dishonorable Mr. Gore had to say about his own country on foreign soil only proves that when it comes to showing off one’s anti-American bona fides, never let it be said that a homegrown leftist loon was ever outdone in exhibiting hatred of the US by a bunch of European socialist lickspittles. Here, in the best tradition of Orson Scott Card and other counterfactual history novelists, is America ruled by Algore I:

When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, though, he had harsh criticism for Bush’s policies.

“We would not have invaded a country that didn’t attack us,” he said, referring to Iraq. “We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families.”

“We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people,” Gore said. “We would be a different country.”

Gore did not elaborate. But last year, he blamed Bush administration policies for the inmate abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

About the only thing I agree with in that snippet is that last part about America being “a different country” if Mr. Snooze Alarm had been able to convince a few more Floridians that handing him the keys to the White House wouldn’t have been an absolute catastrophe. Given the rather indifferent way in which the Clinton-Gore crew treated Osama Bin Laden and the poor, misunderstood jihadis and other enemies of the United States (how many times did Yassar Arafat stay overnight at the White House?) it seems certain that by this time in a Gore presidency, there would have been some kind of feel-good sit-down with al Qaeda and their apologists from around the world. This would have resulted in some kind of retreat by the US from the Middle East and other areas where the holy warriors want to establish a 21st century version of What’s my Caliphate?

Actually, I think that it might be interesting to play a little counterfactual game ourselves and fantasize about President Al Gore addressing the very same group of European dummypuppens:

Thank you for your kind welcome. I’m glad to be here in Sweden where that famous army knife was invented. After I became the very first Eagle Scout in American history, I have many fond memories of using the corkscrew on that wonderful tool to carve the faces on Mount Rushmore.

In closing, I’d like to thank the entire European community for serving as a model for my Administration. In short, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Authorities in New York who responded to the threat of a terrorist attack against the city’s subway system are being widely criticized as a result of a report that the Iraqi informant who originally gave the information was probably lying through his teeth:

The alleged threat that led to heightened security on New York subways last week may have been a hoax on the part of an Iraqi informant attempting to get money in exchange for information, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said yesterday.

The informant has since disappeared in Iraq, and the Defense Department has not been able to locate him, city and federal officials said.

U.S. troops in Iraq captured three suspects south of Baghdad who the informant said were involved in the alleged plot.

But none of the suspects, including two who were given polygraph examinations, corroborated the informant’s allegations or appeared to have any connection to a terrorist plot, according to intelligence officials.

The city lifted the alert Monday after the time period identified by the informant passed without incident

Not only was the report probably bogus, but city officials - including Mayor Bloomberg - evidently took the report much more seriously than the federal government:

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, who called the threat “noncredible” last week, declined to elaborate yesterday.

“The intelligence community has not found any evidence to substantiate the threat information,” Knocke said. The FBI also declined to comment in detail.

The question we should be asking is did the New York authorities act correctly by putting the city on a high state of alert even though the people whose job it is to keep us secure thought there was no reason to be alarmed?

To my mind, this question goes to the very heart of what homeland security should be: How safe can we afford to be?

On the one hand, you have the loony left who believes that every threat is actually part of a deep, dark plot by George Bush to divert attention from one thing or another so that he and his pals can impose a dictatorship on the rest of us. According to this school of thought, the War on Terror is always placed in quotation marks because it actually never existed, that in fact al Qaeda and its offshoots are figments of the Bush Administration’s imagination and that the terrorist fanatics who flew planes into buildings aren’t really a threat.

This September 10 mindset may be emotionally satisfying in that it comforts one to know that since in their heart of hearts the moonbats know George Bush will never line them up against a wall and shoot them, they can live their lives the way we all did prior to 9/11; without the fear of a sudden and horrible death overtaking them on a bright, cloudless day.

The rest of us, on the other hand, must live in the real world. And that is what makes the response by New York City authorities to this threat - even though it was pooh-poohed by Homeland Security bigshots in Washington - illustrative of how all of us are still learning to live with the threat of terror in the homeland.

It’s important to remember when trying to judge officials in New York that this particular threat did not occur in a vacuum. One need only be reminded of the London subway bombings to realize that prudence in the face of threats of this nature can be the only course for elected officials who take their responsibility seriously to keep the citizens of their city safe . It is also well to remember that the level of confidence we all have in federal authorities to judge the relative merits of any terrorist threat is colored by the fact that most of this same crew missed the “big one” on 9/11.

The result is that we are being whipsawed back and forth between overcautiousness and an almost sublime forgetfulness about the consequences of being wrong only once. Thus, homeland security can become a politicized outgrowth of our own projected fears; either government is lying for some ulterior motive or, more ominously, they aren’t telling us the whole story so as not to upset us.

The latter attitude can be found this week especially on conservative blogs as the unfolding story of (depending on your point of view) a troubled young Joel Hinrichs who committed suicide outside the University of Oklahoma stadium while 80,000 fans were enjoying that most American pastimes of watching a college football game or, if you prefer, a jihadist convert looking to become a martyr and take hundreds of infidels with him on his journey to see Allah.

It may in fact turn out that Mr. Hinrichs was simply a depressed college student with delusions of martyrdom. Or, his death may in fact reveal a a terrorist cell in the heartland of America. The fact that the discussion on blogs relates more to why the story isn’t being covered by the MSM says volumes about this Soviet-style mindset that posits the notion that things are being withheld from us because the truth would be too uncomfortable or would reflect badly on Muslims, or even that any revelations regarding Mr. Hinrich’s associations would prove what a lousy job the Homeland Security Department is doing to protect us.

Other incidents in California recently - both at UCLA where a bomb was discovered in the courtyard of an apartment building and the suicide of a student in San Diego are also being bandied about the blogs as something suspiciously like terrorists screwing up before they can hurt the general populace. Again, it is wise and prudent to approach these incidents with that thought uppermost in our minds while at the same time not jumping to conclusions that, in retrospect, would prove alarmist.

The fact is, we’re still feeling our way in this new country. And being the adaptable race we are, I’m sure that a majority of us will eventually find that common sense balance between panic and ennui. But until that day comes, I would hope that we not criticize the authorities for doing the right thing and acting to protect us from threats that could turn out to be acts of terror.

The Los Angeles Angels pitcher Francisco Rodriguez celebrates his team’s 5-3 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the American League Division Series in Anaheim on Monday night

“Pitching, defense, and speed wins championships” is one of those baseball truisms that in recent years has been proven to be not so true. Last year’s champs, the Boston Red Sox, clubbed their way to a World Series victory over the Cardinals with sheer firepower - an offensive display of devastating proportions that bulldozed opponents with a dizzying succession of extra base hits and home runs.

But it looks like “small ball” is back in vogue this year - at least for the American League Championship Series. ALCS opponents Chicago and Los Angeles appear to be evenly matched in many respects but especially in the pitching, defense, and speed departments.

OFFENSE

While the White Sox finished fourth best in all of baseball in total team home runs, they are not considered a power-hitting team. However, if there is one significant edge to either team in this series, it is in the round tripper department as the Angels finished with more than 25% fewer dingers than the Chisox.

Both teams had virtually the same batting average, same number of extra base hits, and the same on-base percentage. Los Angeles had more walks and fewer strikeouts. The White Sox had more sacrifice bunts.

In the speed department, Los Angeles led the league in stolen bases while the White Sox finished up the season in third place and in a base stealing slump. One must give the SB advantage to LA both because the Sox are in a funk and because of the Angels catcher Benji Molina who has one of the best arms in the league. Couple that with the fact that Sox pitchers are uniformly slow to the plate and that Chisox backstop A.J. Pierzynski possesses only an adequate arm and you have the potential for a huge series-changing advantage for LA.

For the Sox to win, it may come down to keeping Chone Figgins, who led the league in steals, and some of the other LA speedsters off the bases as much as possible. If not, they may run rings around the White Sox.

PITCHING

As it stands right now, the White Sox have a huge advantage in starting pitching. With Bartolo Colon going down with a bad shoulder and Jarold Washburn sick with a strep throat, manager Mike Scioscia is in something of a pitching quandary. Both John Lackey and Colon pitched very well against the Sox this year while Washburn and Byrd were hit hard by Chicago. The wild card is the kid Ervin Santana who has brilliant stuff but probably won’t be able to pitch until game three in California. He blanked the Sox for his first major league victory back in July. Also, the LA pitchers may have to go on short rest for the first 2 games unless Washburn is ready on Wednesday.

On the other hand, with the White Sox sweep of the Red Sox came the luxury for manager Ozzie Guillen of being able to set his pitching staff up the way he wants to. Thus, second half phenom Jose Contreras will go in game one followed by Mark Buehrle and John Garland with Guillen having the option of pitching Contreras with three days rest on Saturday or going with Freddie Garcia.

The bullpens of the two clubs are eerily similar with excellent set up men and great closers. Even with the Angels pitching woes, they still have some great arms to throw at White Sox hitters.

INTANGIBLES

LA won the World Series in 2002 and knows what it takes to get there and win. The White Sox are hungry, confident, and perhaps even a little cocky.

But if the Sox thought there was pressure on a Division Series, it’s best they get it through their heads that the ALCS is a whole new experience as far as pressure is concerned. And that pressure will come in the first two games of the series to be played in Chicago. Given the horrendous record of the White Sox on the West Coast the last several years, both home games to open the series are almost “must win” situations. The Angels are perfectly capable of beating the White Sox three games in a row in their home park so a sweep at home for the Sox is almost a necessity.

PREDICTION

I believe the White Sox have a big advantage the first two games of the series what with LA’s pitching woes. And I see Chicago taking one of the three games played in LA next weekend.

Look for the White Sox to take the series in 6 games - all close, low scoring pitching duels with both pens performing brilliantly but long balls by the White Sox being the difference in the long run.

The fallout from the political assault on the Bush Administration by the MSM and the left following Hurricane Katrina is spreading to Asia as politicians and press organs in Pakistan seek to make President Musharraf pay the same political price paid by President Bush for the perceived sin of “not caring” about the victims of a natural disaster.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said his government was doing its best to respond to the crisis. He had appealed for international help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides.

“We are doing whatever is humanly possible,” Musharraf said. “There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help.”

Anyone who doesn’t think ordinary people - not to mention governments - from around the world don”t watch CNN International or other warmed-over western news reports should listen to this poor fellow who was forced into looting just to survive:

“We haven’t eaten anything for two or three days. The shops are closed and we haven’t got anything from the government,” said a 20-year-old man who refused to identify himself as he ferreted away stolen goods. “We are desperate and hungry.”

Sound familiar?

And here is what happens when aid is distributed the way that critics of the Administration’s Katrina efforts at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans thought was necessary:

In the first major influx of aid, about 10 trucks brought by Pakistani charities and volunteers rumbled into Muzaffarabad early Tuesday. Attempts by relief workers for an orderly distribution dissolved into chaos, as residents scuffled for cooking oil, sugar, rice, blankets and tents.

The same thing happened with every truck, every helicopter that was ferrying aid to these devastated locations. It is why international aid organizations refuse to deliver assistance to areas where there is no local security; people die in these life and death fights for food.

More similar complaints voiced by ordinary people in Pakistan with those expressed by American journalists in New Orleans:

“If the government has devoted its efforts to rescue a few hundred people stuck under the rubble of one building in Islamabad, why has it then completely ignored this badly afflicted area where tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured?” one unidentified survivor told Aljazeera.

The Kashmir earthquake measured a devastating 7.6 on the Richter scale. That makes this particular earthquake the 4th largest on record. The temblor initiated rock slides and mudslides along the narrow, unpaved mountain roads that connect rural parts of the Kashmir with Islamabad, itself hard hit by the disaster. No military on the planet - not even the American military - could supply the kind of relief by air that would make a difference for the 2.7 million people affected by the disaster. And with 40,000 people injured - many of them with broken bones and other crushing injuries that would necessitate surgery to repair internal damage - there is no evacuation plan or rescue scenario that could possibly help more than a fraction of those who need assistance.

It would appear that we have entered an era where a government’s response to natural disasters will be critiqued based on some pie in the sky notion of what some all powerful government should be doing rather than what can humanly be done under the circumstances. Ignorant reporters and suffering victims are least able to objectively assess any kind of governmental response to a large natural disaster since they are stuck with a grasshopper’s view of the relief effort.

A case in point would be the press obsession with what was going on at the Convention Center in the aftermath of Katrina. While conditions at the Center were uncomfortable and people were hungry - and in a few cases dehydrated - rescuers were working frantically to save the lives of nearly 10,000 people stranded on rooftops, on balconies, and even in the attics of houses. The heroic efforts of the Coast Guard, the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Commission (whose more than 300 boats began rescuing these people night and day almost before Hurricane force winds died down) as well as the National Guard troops, New Orleans Fire and Rescue teams, and even the much maligned (deservedly so) New Orleans Police Department saved thousands upon thousands of lives. But to hear the press tell of it, nothing was happening much to save the poor, black people of New Orleans.

I doubt whether we will be able to regain any kind of perspective on what a natural disaster actually means for people who must endure one. They will no longer be seen as acts of God but rather opportunities for a political opposition to skewer the party in power as the inevitable delays, screw-ups, mistakes, and mismanagement are highlighted and shown as indicative of the incompetence of national leaders. One consequence of Katrina and other disasters like the earthquake in Kashmir will be what I choose to call “The Chicago Effect.”

The great Chicago snowstorm of 1979 overwhelmed the ability of both the city’s snow removal equipment to remove the white stuff as well as the city’s disaster management bureaucracy to deal with the crisis. The resulting political firestorm cost then Mayor Michael Bilandic his job. Incoming Mayor Jane Byrne went out and bought enough snow removal equipment to handle the same kind of snow fall in the future. The problem is that much of that equipment would sit idle for decades because the kind of snowfall experienced by the city that caused the political upheaval comes along perhaps 3 times every hundred years.

So the question arises; do you plan for a “normal” sort of hurricane which governments at all levels respond to fairly efficiently or do you pre-position supplies, have the National Guard (or, more ominously the regular army) on standby, and have all the apparatus needed to deal with a major catastrophe like Katrina ready to go at a moment’s notice? The latter would be ruinously expensive and might be used once every thirty years. But it might head off criticism of the party in power that not enough was done prior to a Katrina-like disaster.

Chalk up one more casualty to Katrina; common sense reaction to an act of God.

I’ll admit to being extremely ambiguous about the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court. That said, I have no intention of joining the crop of conservatives who insist on quaffing kool-aid over the nomination by hoping to either block her or, more problematically, have the President break down and actually withdraw her name from consideration.

Admittedly, the President has left most of us pragmatists with very little choice. The consequences of a Presidential defeat over the Miers nomination at this point in the Bush Presidency cannot be overstated. Fairly or unfairly, the perception of the Bush Presidency has taken several huge hits over the last few months causing his approval ratings (and thus the true measure of his influence) to tumble precipitously. While it is true that Presidents cannot govern via the public opinion polls, it is equally true that those polls are watched closely both by the political opposition and Republican legislators for signs of gross Presidential strength and weakness. And the quickest way to emasculate the President and make the rest of his term an irrelevancy is to have conservatives gather around in a circle and open fire at the nominee.

Conservatives never would have pulled this crap with Reagan. I say that because anyone who has studied Ronald Reagan with an unemotional and critical eye would realize that the Gipper was never one to place ideology above pragmatism. True, he governed in much more civilized times when after a day-long session of partisan name calling, he and the ever entertaining but completely clueless Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill could sit down and throw back a few scotch and sodas while swapping stories. But Reagan also had a keen sense of what was politically possible. When it became clear that his original tax proposal to cut marginal rates 30% over 3 years wouldn’t fly, he negotiated a 25% cut over 4 years with the now defunct conservative and moderate wing of the Democratic party. So despite a huge Democratic majority in the House, Reagan’s proposals squeaked through and became law all because of his recognition and reading of the correct political environment in which he was working.

George Bush may have nominated Miers in hopes of forestalling a filibuster by Democrats over a better known and more conservative jurist. But judging by this Washington Times article that suggests fully 1/2 of Republican Senators may oppose her nomination and John Hawkins unscientific but thorough survey of most of the top center-right political blogs (sorry John…mine must have fallen through the cracks) there is immense dissatisfaction with the Miers choice with some of the President’s natural allies. In the end, I suspect most of those Senators will bite the bullet and vote to confirm but only after much hemming and hawing about the President’s judgment, etc.

More of a problem for the White House are conservative activists who are heavily represented on the web and are actually writing about some kind of bloody coup d’etat to either defeat the nominee on the floor of the Senate or put enough pressure on the White House to withdraw the nomination.

To quote the great country crooner Dierks Bentely, those folks should be asking What was I thinking? Just what do my friends on the right hope to accomplish by weakening the President at exactly the moment when his Administration is balanced on the knife’s edge of irrelevancy? Lame Duckiness is staring George Bush right in the face and here comes a bunch of conservatives running toward this particular gasoline dump trying desperately to keep the match lit long enough so that they can experience the deep and abiding satisfaction of self-immolation.

It’s nuts.

First, if successful, just what kind of nominee do they think they’d get to replace Miers? Bush would have to come up with someone quickly, someone who has already been vetted for high office. How does Justice Alberto Gonzalez grab ya?

I thought so.

So while I’m not quite with Hugh Hewitt and Thomas Lifson that this is a great choice, that Miers is a stealth conservative whose very ordinariness is a huge plus I’m also not with those who are calling on Bush to recall the nomination or worse, actively work to defeat the choice either at the committee level or on the floor of the Senate. That last especially would be ironic indeed. I wonder if Grover Norquist would consider a joint ad campaign with Moveon.org?