Right Wing Nut House

Russian humor during the reign of communist thugs was extraordinarily funny. It seems that when people are oppressed, the quality of their jokes, not to mention the multiplication of targets, increases dramatically.

In a madhouse there was a propagandist highly praising the Soviet Authority. When he finished everyone applauded except for one man standing off to one side.

‘I’m not a lunatic, I’m the hospital attendant!’

There was a funny kind of fatalism in those old Russian jokes, a grudging acceptance of their lot in life:

What nationality were Adam and Eve?

Most certainly Russian! Only Russians can run about barefooted and bare assed, without a roof over their heads, where there is only one apple for two and nevertheless cry out that they are in paradise

Former Soviet leader Breznev was a particularly easy target.

Brezhnev called together a group of cosmonauts. ‘Comrades! The Americans have landed on the Moon. We here have consulted and have decided that you will go to the Sun!’

‘Be not afraid, comrades, the Party has thought of everything. You
will leave at night.’

But something horrible has happened to Russian humor; communism fell. In its place, the not quite democratic, mostly authoritarian Putin regime has sprung up and people are having a hard time adjusting, humor wise.

Witness this attempt at stand-up by the half-crazed leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party (Yep…that’s the name of the party) Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Vlad, to put it bluntly, is a lech. Judging by these remarks he made in reference to some rather mild criticism of the Russia-Ukraine gas deal uttered by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, I don’t think I’d want to be a woman working in this guy’s office:

The fascistic pol attributed that “coarse anti-Russian statement” to Rice being “a single woman who has no children.”

“If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear,” Zhirinovsky ranted on. “Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied.

“Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men’s attention,” he added. “Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: ‘Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!’

One can almost see old Vlad drooling in satisfaction at the thought of Condi being passed around on a Russian army base.

Of course, the Soviet army had plenty of experience in such matters. In the immediate aftermath of their occupation of East Germany, it is estimated that upwards of 200,00 German women were brutally and systematically raped. Ostensibly, it was done in retaliation for the brutality exhibited by German soldiers during the occupation but it also bespeaks a coarseness of spirit and a lack of discipline on the part of the Red Army.

I’m sure Vladimir would have felt right at home with those fellows.

Not willing to keep his mouth shut, Comrade Zhirinovsky continued in a similar vein:

“Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though.”

Note that at the end, Vlad throws a sop to mothers-in-law probably because, given the housing shortage in Russia, he’s living with her.

So who is this guy?

Zhirinovsky has made no secret of his insanity in the past. Besides praising Hitler and encouraging the use of nuclear weapons, he has advocated Russia’s invasion and “reacquisition” of Alaska. To eradicate bird flu, he’s suggested arming every Russian and ordering them to shoot everything with feathers.

Oh well, we’ve got Pat Robertson, they’ve got Vladimir Zhirinovsky…

Last year, more than 12 million people watched as Jack Bauer faked his own death to avoid being handed over to the Chinese on murder charges stemming from an “incident” at the Chinese embassy. The fact that Jack violated about 2 dozen treaties by breaking into the consulate, kidnapping a Chinese national, causing the death of the ambassador, while not signing the guest book only served to highlight the reasons we love Jack Bauer so much and why we shamelessly root for his success.

By all accounts, critics are raving about this year’s installment of murder, mayhem, and angst as Jack and the folks at the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) try and forestall the evil designs of evil men. And if the past is any indication, we will have absolutely no problem identifying who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy.

That’s the attraction of the show, of course. No mealy mouthed platitudes about trying to “understand” the terrorists or writers trying to ply the audience with comforting bromides about “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” These are inhuman monsters.

Even last year’s Ozzie and Harriet terrorist family, the Araz clan, was as dysfunctional and evil a group as one could imagine. Stone cold killers who didn’t bat an eye in helping to carry out a plot that could have meant the death of tens of thousands of innocent Americans, there was very little in the Araz family to redeem them. Even the hormone infused teenager Behruzz was prepared to kill his girlfriend to prevent their little cell from being exposed. And of course, Jack’s most cunning nemesis to date, the fanatical Marwan, proved to be the ultimate Jihadist. Not only did Marwan seek to destroy the United States, but his lack of concern at the millions of people who would have been killed if his plans had succeeded mirrored the cockeyed worldview inhabited by Osama Bin Laden and the rest of his merry band of beheaders.

For this reason, the violence done to the terrorists by Jack and his crew seems necessary and even correct. No handwringing about civil liberties or constitutional rights for the terrorists where Jack is concerned. To Jack, the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. This kind of black and white view of the conflict with al Qaeda has escaped most liberals who instead of seeing an implacable foe bent on destroying us and only worthy of being planted six feet under see a poor, misbegotten criminal who is motivated to do bad things because, after all, didn’t we do bad things to them?

It’s that kind of reasoning which will get us all killed and is the primary reason liberals will continue to lose elections as long as al Qaeda is a threat. The American people want Jack Bauer protecting them not the ACLU and Amnesty International.

A few weeks ago, MSNBC’s Craig Crawford wrote a blurb on his blog about how careless Jack Bauer is with the constitution and by the way, isn’t that just like President Bush? After all, Bush is just a stupid goober chewing, red state mouth breather who sees the war in black and white instead of the nuanced shades of gray that us smart folk look at things. I answered Mrs. Crawford thusly:

In one respect, Crawford is correct in his comparison of Jack with Bush; they are able to clearly distinguish between good and evil, between who is right in this war and who is wrong. Crawford and his ilk can’t. This makes Crawford not only someone to be laughed at but someone to be feared as well. For if we ever have a government headed by a President who sees gray where there is clearly black and white, the chances of enjoying both liberty and security in the United States will disappear as surely as Jack Bauer will end up stretching the Constitution to its breaking point this season in order to protect us from disaster.

To be fair, Jack doesn’t just stretch the Constitution, he shatters it into a million pieces. In last year’s first episode, while watching the interrogation at CTU headquarters of a particularly unresponsive terrorist, Jack couldn’t stand it any longer and burst into the interrogation room, shot the terrorist in the kneecap, and began to fire questions at the thug who, to no one’s surprise, suddenly became much more cooperative.

That’s our Jack. The Craig Crawford’s of the world can shake their heads and prattle on about the terrorist’s rights. Jack simply gets the job done. And considering what was in store for the US that day - nuke plant meltdowns and a nuclear armed missile headed for Los Angeles - I would hazard a guess and say that the overwhelming majority of Americans approved of Jack’s tactics despite not following the Constitutional niceties.

As for the show itself, all of the reviews I’ve read say it is absolutely essential that you not miss the first 10 minutes of the show on Sunday night. No speculation here but this site started a “Dead Pool” on who is going to get whacked first. My own guess is Jack’s beloved daughter Kim (Elisa Cuthbert) will get offed if only as poetic justice for her execrable performance as a porn star in The Girl Next Door. Besides, what better way to get Jack motivated for the next 24 hours?

As if Jack needed any motivation.

As I did last year, I will be analyzing the show on the morning following the previous night’s episode. And back by popular demand will be my “Body Count” feature where I’ll keep track of Jack’s grisly totals as well as totals for the show. We’ll also have some fun speculating about future episodes as well as pointing out inconsistencies in the plot. All in all, make sure you drop by and catch up with all the latest. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

It really was never much of a contest.

For three days, Democratic Senators flailed about wildly looking for all the world like blindfolded children trying to smack a pinata, so elusive and more intelligent was their putative quarry. In the end, they only managed to hit themselves on the noggin while the nominee walked away laughing after getting all the candy.

The confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court may have proven that liberalism has lost its fighting edge. And the reason is that it is no longer politically viable to try and tar and feather conservatives with the appellation of “racist” or “sexist” simply because someone disagrees with the public policy prescriptions of liberal interest groups like the NAACP or NOW. We may very well have moved beyond the point where a nominee who differs with liberals on affirmative action and abortion can be casually smeared with those epithets simply because they have a different point of view, one that is supported if not by a majority of Americans then certainly by a healthy minority.

It used to be easy for the left. A little twisting of the facts here, a hint of “insensitivity” there, and before you knew it, their reliable allies in the media would fill in the blanks and present the nominee as a closet bigot. Since at least the confirmation hearings for Justice Rehnquist in 1971, conservatives have had to endure the shameless pandering of Democrats to minority interest groups, energizing them to oppose nominees because confirmation would mean “rolling back the hard won gains of the civil rights movement” or “the women’s rights movement” or “the environmental movement” or any other “movement” the Democrats could put the fear of God into by raising the specter of a conservative on the court.

No more. If this week proved anything, it is that the left can no longer hurl scurrilous charges that a conservative is a dishonorable mugwump simply because they are a person of the right and then have the public swallow the smear hook, line, and sinker. These days, the people demand a little more proof than Ted Kennedy darkly hinting that Concerned Alumni for Princeton is actually a haven for closet Kluxers.

That’s not to say the liberals on the Committee didn’t try their best. Ed Morrissey points to this exchange between Senator Shumer and Judge Alito where the preening Senator from New York attempted to prove that Alito is a cad because he doesn’t stand up for “the little guy:”

SCHUMER: So as far as I can see, the legal principle and procedural rule in each case was precisely the same. The only difference being that the first was a sexual harassment plaintiff who left out an argument, and in the second it was the government who did.

In the first case, you said to that retarded individual, “Sorry, you’re out of luck.” In the second case, you said to the government, “I’ll make your argument for you.” And that doesn’t seem even handed to me.

ALITO: What I’m talking about there is the doctrine of procedural default, which is very closely related to the doctrine of exhaustion. They go hand in hand.

And what Congress has said in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is that on the issue of exhaustion, the court has to consider that even if the parties don’t raise it.

SCHUMER: Now, that applies to the government as well as to the defendant?

ALITO: Absolutely.

As Morrissey points out, the relevant statute was voted on by Shumer and the fact that he either didn’t remember or didn’t understand the ramifications of what he was voting on only shows the Senator from New York to be as clueless as a day old marmoset.

The point is that this line of attack used to work like a charm for liberals. But the rise of alternative media such as blogs and talk radio means that they can no longer get away with it.

Even the New York Times was having trouble trying to get the smear machine going:

In over 18 hours responding to some 700 questions at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. mostly described a methodical and incremental approach to the law rooted in no particular theory.

But to the extent Judge Alito claimed a judicial philosophy, it aligned him with the court’s two most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

On one of the few occasions Judge Alito spoke about his general approach to the law, he embraced a mode of constitutional interpretation, originalism, often associated with Justices Scalia and Thomas.

“In interpreting the Constitution,” Judge Alito said Wednesday, “I think we should look to the text of the Constitution, and we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption.”

I daresay that this view of the constitution is hardly out of the mainstream and the Times knows it. If there one thing that Americans are generally sick of when it comes to the judicial branch of government, it is the belief that judges constantly overstep their authority. This simple statement of Constitutional fidelity enjoys much more support among the broad public than the out of touch liberals on the Judiciary Committee realize.

In the end, it is they who are out of the mainstream, not Judge Alito.

This has been one of the more revealing confirmation hearings in memory not for what the nominee has said but for highlighting how the tactics of the left in opposing conservatives have failed utterly. It remains to be seen whether or not Democrats will pay a price at the polls for their underhanded tactics. I tend to think not as few beyond the beltway were watching these hearings. But if the failure of their tactics means anything, it is further proof that the tired, wretched line of attack that liberals have engaged in for more than a quarter of a century against conservatives may finally have outlived its political usefulness.

What a wonderful thing for our democracy that the Democrats sitting on the Judiciary Committee questioning Judge Alito are nothing if not consistent - as in consistently boorish.

I realize that in tearing down society, liberals have had to attack the very idea of good manners and what they represent. The conventions that place strictures on impolite or rude behavior had to be destroyed if liberals were ever going to get anywhere politically. Hence, shouting down people you disagree with or throwing a pie in a conservative’s face is considered heroic rather than the act of a barbarous lout. Just think how different our political climate would be today if every time we turned around liberals weren’t calling conservatives “racists” for disagreeing with some nonsensical public policy position taken by the NAACP or “Nazi” for…well, being a conservative, I guess.

There are very good reasons for saying “please” and “thank you” not to mention all the societal conventions that most of us learned as we grew up. Politeness, empathy (for individual human beings, not just “protected” political groups), deference to age and gender, as well as the formalized dance of words and gestures that occurs when two strangers meet are all means to grease the wheels of intercourse. Without them, misunderstandings would very quickly degenerate into conflict, a state of affairs not conducive to the smooth running of society not to mention the health and safety of its individual members.

The performance of many Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee during the Alito confirmation hearings has been a shocking display of self-aggrandizing, mean-spirited, boorish and ill mannered behavior not seen since the impeachment hearings during the Clinton era. Then it was some Republican Congressmen who were so desperate to advance their cause that they allowed loutish behavior to substitute for reasoned discourse. In the case of Senate Democrats, they don’t even have the excuse that they are arguing weighty issues vital to the republic. Instead, their attacks have centered on peripheral matters like Alito’s membership in the conservative Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) which, depending on what you read, either was for “excluding” women and minorities or “limiting” their enrollment at the prestigious Ivy League university.

Either way, one wonders why if the Democrats are so concerned about Alito’s nominal membership in a group that sought to exclude minorities they haven’t taken their own Senate Leader Robert Byrd to task for belonging to an organization - the KKK - that sought to lynch them.

And if the Democrats are going to drag out 25 year old articles from The Prospect and (God help us!) the National Review maybe we should dig into some back issues of Ramparts or other lefty “alternative” news digests that called for the violent overthrow of the United States government. I daresay John Kerry would probably have a few anxious moments if someone threw that in his face.

Since the Democrats cannot attack Alito’s qualifications for Associate Justice, they are trying to browbeat the nominee by being as rude and overbearing as the rules permit. By calling into question his character, they are attacking the confirmation process itself. The more scurrilous and unprincipled charges they can cast about, the more headlines they get. Today’s media stories are not about anything Alito stands for or his impartiality but rather the baseless charges being tossed around by Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Charles Shumer and the rest of the Democratic attack dogs who have given up trying to defeat the nominee and instead now seek to undermine any legitimacy he has with the American people.

The tactic worked quite well with Justice Clarence Thomas who to this day causes many women to go into fits of anger at the very mention of his name. It remains to be seen how well it will work with the mild mannered and self effacing Alito who has proven himself much more the gentleman than his craven interlocutors.

It is perhaps horribly old fashioned to use the words “gentlemen” and “Senator” in the same sentence. After all, being a gentleman used to mean exhibiting a certain reserve, a deference to all, low born and high. There was a responsibility to show respect for another’s point of view and empathy for another’s feelings that many of these Senate Democrats have refused to acknowledge. Yes politics is a contact sport. And if this was a hearing for a new Defense Secretary or Attorney General, some of the behavior exhibited by opposition Senators could be if not excused, at least understood in the context of political combat.

But judges should be, if nothing else, above politics. Do what you wish with the actual confirmation vote in the Senate. Play politics all you want when politics is called for. But when trying to ascertain the qualifications and temperament of a Supreme Court nominee, politics should be left behind. With a few notable exceptions (not surprisingly, with liberals shattering precedent in the Bork and Thomas hearings) confirmation hearings have been pro forma affairs where even opposition Senators were constrained from attacking a nominee’s character. The Ruth Bader Ginsburg hearing was a good example as Republican Senators tried without much success to get Ms. Bader-Ginsburg to reveal just how liberal she really was. To the country’s detriment, we didn’t find out until she was confirmed.

There is no such problem with Alito. With more than 300 written decisions to look at, the record is clear. He is a conservative through and through. And the fact that the Democrats seem more than a little perturbed that Judge Alito would not be against revisiting Roe v. Wade or that he actually believes we are presently at war and that a somewhat more expansive view of executive power may be justified - with proper oversight - only reveals the opposition for what they are; a pack of boorish louts.

There is no doubt that Judge Alito will receive a majority of votes from the Judiciary Committee and be sent to the floor where he will almost certainly be confirmed with ease. The question then becomes what the Democrats on the Committee hope to accomplish with their mud slinging. The answer lies with their rabid base who demands blood on the floor. Like spoiled, rotten children, the denizens of the far left fever swamps are throwing a tantrum because they can’t defeat the Alito nomination. Failing that, they are demanding that the committee Democrats tarnish the image and good name of the judge.

It’s all they have left to look forward to in this fight. And if it means attacking the character of a good and decent man to the point that his wife weeps in gratitude when a Republican Senator defends him, then so be it.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker.

It may be the most underreported story of the new year. Very quietly and without any fanfare from a biased and hostile press, George Bush has emerged from the dog days of summer and early autumn where his approval ratings sat at a Nixonian 34% in some polls to a much healthier 46% in the latest Washington Post-ABC News survey.

What makes this comeback even more remarkable is that it is occurring amidst a relentless barrage of media negativity and partisan bomb throwing where all manner of evil doings are ascribed to the President and his Administration. The thundering denunciations from the left of the Administration’s efforts to intercept al Qaeda communications here in the United States as well as the sonorous editorializing by the mainstream press about an “imperial” presidency that seeks to undermine civil liberties seems to have had little or no effect on the American people’s attitude toward the way the President is performing his job. If anything, the most recent polls show that, unlike Democrats and their leftist allies in the media, the American people know that the United States is at war and that President Bush is doing what is necessary to both protect the homeland and win the fight against al Qaeda.

While there may be serious privacy questions about the NSA’s intercept program, it is unfortunate that any rational debate on the matter is impossible given the current poisoned political climate that holds sway in our nation’s capitol. As it is, Americans believe by a huge margin - 65% to 32% - that it is more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats even if it intrudes on personal privacy. And on more specific questions such as whether or not the program is justified, a plurality of 49% to 46% support the Administration’s efforts.

In short, it appears that the New York Times outed a top secret program vital to national security for nothing. If they did it because they believe it is the people’s “right” to know, citizens evidently don’t agree with them. And if they did it to undermine the Bush Administration, they have failed miserably.

All of this points to a dramatic shift in public opinion since late October when the President’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb. For most of 2005, Bush had ceded the playing field to his political opponents on the war, the economy, and a host of domestic issues like social security and tax reform. Inexplicably, the White House allowed the Democrats to define all of those issues by demonizing the President, attacking Bush in a personal way that ate into his credibility and eroded the trust the American people had in the President following the 2004 election.

The Democrats were able to do this because the President was not defending himself effectively. Rather than going out on the hustings and aggressively taking on his opponents, Bush allowed surrogates in Congress and his Administration to talk about policy prescriptions at home and progress in Iraq. In a less incendiary political time, this rational approach to governance would probably have worked. But when your Secretary of State is talking about Iraqi reconstruction while your political opponents are viscously tearing you down and attacking you personally by calling you a liar, a tool of the oil companies, and an uncaring monster, being rational doesn’t work.

There are indications that the President’s reluctance to engage his political opponents on Iraq was based on his advisor’s mistaken belief that keeping Iraq out of the news was the best way to tamp down opposition to the President’s policies. After an all too brief effort for two weeks last June to defend his policies at several military bases around the country, the President once again went into a shell while Cindy Sheehan and the Democrats took over the dog days of summer and dominated the news much to the Administration’s disadvantage.

Then came Katrina and the President’s people once again were slow off the mark, not only in recognizing the scope of the catastrophe but in generating a response to the savage personal attacks by the left which questioned the President’s compassion for his fellow citizens as well as the Administration’s competence in dealing with the disaster. The barrage began almost before the winds stopped blowing in New Orleans and continued unabated as the press breathlessly reported every rumored atrocity and morbidly dwelt on the deteriorating conditions at the Superdome and the Convention Center. The fact that so much of what the media passed along proved to be false or wildly exaggerated didn’t help the American people’s perception of the President at the time.

In retrospect, the months of September and October may be seen one day as the nadir of the Bush Presidency. Every poll that came out which showed the President’s approval rating dropping was trumpeted to the skies by the left. The editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers were filled with questions about the President’s effectiveness, his “lame duck” status, and the imminent collapse of his Administration into political irrelevancy.

But the turnaround had already started. The President hit a home run with his choice of John Roberts for Chief Justice. The selection was supported across a broad swath of the American electorate and marked the beginning of the President’s rebound. While not immediately apparent, an uptick in Bush’s credibility numbers was followed by the vote for the Iraqi Constitution. Once again, massive numbers of Iraqis went to the polls. And despite the desperate downplaying of this seminal event in the American press, the pictures of smiling Iraqis proudly displaying their purple fingers to the world did not go entirely unnoticed by the American people. The President’s competence numbers on Iraq, which had been in the low 40’s, started to rise in mid-October and have been going up ever since.

The turnaround began in earnest on Veterans Day as Bush finally took off the gloves and started to fight back against his opponents. While being careful not to tar them with the charge of being unpatriotic, the President finally got around to accusing his political opponents of at least being disingenuous about their opposition and hinted at their playing politics while American soldiers were fighting and dying in Iraq.

It worked. And the reason it worked was because the President continued a spirited defense of his war policies over an extended period of time. Now he was dominating the debate about Iraq. It was no longer a question of whether or not the President misled the country into war, the question became what policy alternative, if any, the Democrats could offer. It’s hard to say whether the Administration trapped the Democrats into revealing their true feelings about the war, but if they didn’t then the Democrats surely stepped into it with both feet when they began to push a resolution in the House that advocated what could only be called an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The fact that it was proposed by one of the party’s more recognizable “hawks” in Representative John Murtha and was backed by their leader Nancy Pelosi only served to highlight to the American people the total lack of credibility of the Democratic party on national security issues. And when all but a handful of Democrats helped defeat the resolution, it became clear that the Democrat’s critique of the war had little support in the hinterlands. In fact, almost 60% of the American people still support the effort to stay in Iraq until democracy and security are established in that tragic, bloody country.

With momentum going the Bush’s way, and with hardly a peep from the media, the President’s approval ratings have risen dramatically. In contrast to the massive coverage of Bush’s poll numbers when they were on the way down, the press has largely ignored this upswing in Presidential popularity in favor of highlighting the continuing split in the country over whether or not the war is “worth it.” Even here, the press has failed to note that the number of people who support the President on Iraq is once again at 50% which is just slightly below where his support was in November of 2004.

Make no mistake. There are plenty of pitfalls ahead for the President and the Republican party. A thousand things could go terribly wrong in Iraq. The corruption scandals could start to resonate with the American people to the party’s detriment (although the most recent polls show the American people believing both parties are equally corrupt). The privacy issues involving the NSA intercept program could come to the fore if it is revealed that the Administration is lying about the extent of the operation. And any number of ancillary issues could contribute to another downturn in the President’s approval ratings and with them, the fortunes of the Republican party at the polls this November.

But as it stands now, the President has made a remarkable comeback and, just as importantly, seems to have some momentum going into the new year. This can only bode well for the Bush presidency when he begins to campaign in earnest for Republican candidates later this year and as Republicans seeks to hold on to both the Congress and the Senate in what is going to be a very close election.

Until late Sunday evening, this week’s contest for Cluebat of the Week was a runaway.

Pat Robertson has been a frequent entrant for Carnival participants since we started. The man seems to have a terminal case of foot in mouth disease which would be harmless if his flights of rhetorical fancy were confined to matters religious. Alas, the good Reverend has, on occasion, allowed thoughts to spill out of his nominally empty head regarding politics and international affairs. And since the prism he views the world through is colored by a thundering old testament like faith in a God who smacks people down on a regular basis for being bad, what we usually end up having is that volatile mix of gasoline and nitroglycerin - politics and religion. The results are predictable.

By saying that the stricken Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was punished by God for dividing the Holy Land should have been simply ignored by the press and public, given Robertson’s minuscule TV audience and (despite the left’s claim that he is in “Karl Rove’s Rolodex”) less than zero impact on national politics. But who can blame the press when here in the 21st century, we have someone who believes so fervently in this ancient, angry God who hurls lightening bolts at humans who displease Him - or Robertson himself which makes one wonder if the former Presidential candidate can’t tell the difference.

Robertson’s insensitivity would normally have allowed him to walk away with Cluebat of the Week except late on Sunday, his cluelessness was surpassed in a big way by Carnival Hall of Famer Ted Kennedy.

It seems that the Senator from Chappaquiddick got a hold of a bottle first thing in the morning and, at a breakfast roundtable, made this jaw dropping statement about Judge Alito:

“This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency,” he said. “The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws.” Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that “Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old.”

It is gratifying to see Teddy live down to his reputation. For more than 40 years he has been making it up as he goes along and getting away with it because his name is Kennedy. What is remarkable, of course, is that while he emulates his Presidential brother in matters of the flesh, he couldn’t hold a candle to JFK when it comes to expressing himself. Not to be unkind, but the youngest Kennedy is one of the more incoherent members of the Senate. Unless one of his cadre of wordsmiths writes something down for him to say, he is a lost sheep, a bumbling, fumbling, mumbling, bundle of incomplete sentences, dangling participles, disjointed non-sequitors, and frequent double negatives. The Washington press corps covers this up by filling in the incomplete sentences and tidying up his modifiers so that they actually have something to quote. Otherwise, if they quoted him verbatim, he would sound like a stuttering three year old rather than a United States Senator.

So for demonstrating the kind of incoherence and idiocy we’ve come to know and love here at the Carnival, Ted Kennedy is the Carnival’s Cluebat of the Week.

We have some great posts as usual. Just keep clicking.

The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
(Voltaire)

“Mais oui, mon ami! And the only way to contemplate stupidity is to listen the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilling Judge Alito.
(Me)
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Miriam recognizes the supreme irony contained in the title of Stephen Spielberg’s Munich. The more I read about this movie, the less I want to see it.

Cao at Cao’s Blog fisks one of her tormentors, a Transylvanian named “Soj” who is as clueless as they come.

Look who’s stonewalling now? DJ at Bacon Bits fills in the details of the New York Times stiffing their public editor over the NSA intercept story.

Michael Hussey (”Disaffiliates - Think Twice” is a great name for a blog) enlightens us about the ancient and dishonorable Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies” as they have been nicknamed since the turn of the 20th century. I didn’t even know they still existed.

The Wonder Years Blog takes Veep Cheney to task for his clueless speech at a Harley Plant where, instead of talking about economic gains under Bush, he talked up the war.

Ilkka Kokkarinen is a Finnish-Canadian with an excellent blog “Sixteen Volts Per Minute.” Check out his takedown of Finnish Stalinists - it’s worth your time.

The Headmistress is “gabberflasted” at TV coverage of the tragic mine disaster in West Virginia and sternly lectures the press. Maybe a good rap on the knuckles with a ruler would be more efficacious, ma’am.

Tom Bowler has some interesting thoughts about the recent revelation that Saddam trained 8,000 terrorists in the years leading up to 9/11, something yet to be commented on by anyone in the MSM. I guess documents, pictures, and testimony regarding the terror training camps just isn’t enough proof. After all, they may have been tourists at a fantasy camp.

Wonderwoman gives us more idiocy from our friends north of the border who want to cure alcoholics by giving them…alchohol. Now that’s a great idea. And when you read what the clueless medical director says about people who are getting the free booze, you will want to spit. BTW - 17 people died as a result of this program. I guess that’s one way to solve addiction problems.

Minh-Duc returns to the Carnival with a vengeance. Read his take down of Spielberg’s Munich. First class stuff.

Josh Cohen has a gut churning post about an insurance company that refuses to pay for an anesthesiologist during a colonoscopy. Yeah…bad pun but read the damn thing, willya?

I saw this post by Iris floating around the blogosphere last week. They make the case that clueless doctors may have contributed to Prime Minister Sharon’s stroke. On such cluelessness does history turn… (NOTE: See update below)

The Carnival is attracting quite a stable of side-splitting satirists. Here’s your weekly dose of giggles and guffaws from our masters of the craft:

Mr. Right has “College Journalism Exam with Answer Key!”

The totally clueless Peace Moonbeam has a very happy New Year.

Buckley F. Williams brings us DC’s Mayor Marion Barry and “Crack Is Crack… I Want My Groceries Back.”

Check out those sites for some of the best political satire you can find on the right!

Blog goddess and Carnival Pin Up Girl Pamela at Atlas Shrugs looks in askance at the recent gathering of former defense and foreign policy experts who came to the White House to “advise” the President on Iraq. What advice Robert McNamara - the architect of our victory in Viet Nam - could give is the real head scratcher for me.

The equally lovely Mensa Barbie gives us the lowdown on a billboard from the Middle East that asks drivers to obey the law and law enforcement officials. Yep, I guess they better if they know what’s good for them.

Don Surber has a laugh out loud bit of cluelessness about local health inspectors in a small town whose stupidity ended up costing the town a great bakery.

Mark Coffey has Part II of “None Dare Call it Treason” which isn’t exactly true because Mark not only calls a spade a spade, but is confirmed in his naming Cindy Sheehan “Jackass of the Year.”

Duncan Avatar has some French cluelessness that was all over Drudge last week about the performance artists who took his art just a wee bit too seriously. Duncan wonders what would happen if he tried the same thing.

AJ Strata is laughing at the idiot Democrats and their “Now you see him now you don’t anti-Alito witness. Quoth AJ on the Dems new motto: “We Deserve to be Trod Upon” Yep.

The always entertaining and sometimes infuriating Jack Cluth has a real doozy as his “Dumbass of the Week. Hypocrisy knows no ideology or political party.

Ferdy the Cat has some serious and sobering thoughts about the Ariel Sharon and the Intifada. Plenty of cluelessness to go around in some respects. ” I suspect we’ll find that it does more good to build a hospital in Gaza than it does to blow up civilians in Tel Aviv,” saith Ferdy. They don’t call him the smartest cat with his own blog for nothin’.

Banished almost to the foot of the class for handing in their homework late, those pokey pachyderms at Elephants in Academia has the skinny on some local moonbats and their effort to impeach the President of the United States. Tilting at windmills in Madison, WI is a required course.

Jay wants to Stop the ACLU from succeeding in calling off the leak investigation by the Department of Justice into the NSA intercept leak. What a bunch of whiners.

The folks at Different River have an article on the tax benefits of living together rather than being married. Alas, those of us who live in sin already were aware of this little quirk in our tax code.

Finally, here’s my post on Pat Robertson and his soulmate President Ahmadinejad from Iran who both seem to be stuck on stupid.

UPDATE

Barak of Iris Blog points out that indeed, the folks at that fine site scooped the world on the incompetence of Sharon’s doctors contributing to the Israeli Prime Minister’s stroke. Here’s a story that Drudge has been carrying all day confirming that.

Not the first time those guys have beaten the MSM to a story…probably won’t be the last!

Give credit when credit is due. Some of the larger newspapers this morning are asking some questions of Judge Alito that any of us would want him to answer. In fact, I would say that judging by the seriousness with which the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times all approach today’s confirmation hearings, I would say it bodes well for the public debate over the qualifications and temperament of the nominee.

I say public debate because you and I both know where the debate in the Senate is headed; into the sewer. Or lower if the Democrats can manage it.

That said, here are some excerpts from some very thoughtful editorials in the above mentioned newspapers:

THE WASHINGTON POST

The Post frames the issues fairly while eschewing the tactics of the radical left in trying to personalize the confirmation debate:

So for the nominee, the hearings are a chance — his only chance, really — to allay Democratic hostility toward his nomination, which has been stoked both by legitimate concerns about his record and by no small amount of fevered and unfair political rhetoric. For senators, meanwhile, it is a chance to try to tease out whether Judge Alito is a traditional conservative of the type who ought to be confirmed or an outlier or extremist who ought to be rejected. The stakes are high, as they always are with Supreme Court nominations and because in this particular instance, Judge Alito would be replacing one of the court’s swing voters.

At the same time, the hearings are unlikely to provide big surprises. Judge Alito, in any formal sense, is obviously well qualified — as the American Bar Association recently recognized. Allegations of impropriety on his part seem trivial, and the ideological questions about him are well known: Does he have too limited a view of congressional power and too robust a view of states’ rights? Will he respect privacy and abortion rights? Does he consider affirmative action programs presumptively unconstitutional? How broadly does he see presidential powers, particularly in wartime? What does he think now about the “one man, one vote” principle he appeared to question in the 1980s? Has he read civil rights statutes too narrowly? And perhaps most important, what are his views concerning how readily settled precedent should be disturbed?

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Times points out where the burden of proof falls given that Alito has written more than 300 opinions that outline his judicial philosophy for all to see:

The burden of proof falls on Democrats to show why not. “We look forward to supporting you,” Sen. Ted Kennedy told Judge Alito in his 1990 appellate-court hearings, calling the then-nominee “distinguished.” On Friday, Mr. Kennedy was quoted in The Washington Post accusing Judge Alito of supporting “unfettered, unlimited power of the executive.” If Democratic opinion of Judge Alito has changed for reasons other than political expediency (and we can’t read those words as anything other than a Democratic gamble that extremely dubious charges of wiretapping overreach and illegality will stick) then the argument should be aired.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Even the rabidly anti-Bush LA Times is behaving itself this morning. Outside of a couple of gratuitous swipes at the President, the paper frames some interesting points:

As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor eloquently stated in a Supreme Court decision reining in an instance of executive overreach: “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

There is reason to press Alito, who would replace O’Connor on the court, on whether he agrees with this statement. And it’s not simply because he is a conservative judge, which this president is legitimately entitled to nominate, or that he served for many years as a lawyer in the executive branch, as many of Washington’s best and brightest lawyers have done. It’s because Alito in the past has asserted a radically expansive theory of presidential power.

While I would take issue with the use of the adjective “radically” in describing Alito’s view of expanding executive powers, the question is a legitimate one and I would be very interested in hearing the Judge’s views on it.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Times actually does something interesting. They asked 6 legal experts to write 5 questions they would want Judge Alito to answer.

They range from the interesting -

Do you think judges are at least in part responsible for the fact that, while Americans might profess reverence for the law, they often criticize the legal system? Does some of the public’s criticism stem from growing use of foreign and international sources of law by some judges in interpreting the meaning of the Constitution?

asked by Federalist Society Executive VP Leonard Leo, to the ridiculous -

In light of your having been a member of a Princeton alumni group that opposed the university’s admission of women, criticized its affirmative action policies and urged the admission of more alumni children, can you offer two examples of any efforts by you to promote gender or racial equality?

asked by moonbat ex Clinton impeachment attorney Cheryl Miller, to the thoughtful -

Do you believe that the 9/11 attacks put the United States in a state of war with Al Qaeda and its allies?

by former influential Bush Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, to the specific -

In 1944, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent. Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in a concurring opinion that an action taken in wartime “is not to be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless.” He and others in the majority believed that in times of war, security interests outweigh rights that would otherwise be controlling. Do you agree or disagree, and do you think that the issues raised by this event (for which the United States later apologized) are like or unlike the issues raised by the current detention of enemy combatants?

asked by Professor of Law Stanley Fish.

Of course, the chances of Alito answering any of these questions specifically is just about nil. But if you listen how the Judge frames his answers to questions that are sure to come about executive power, precedent, minority rights, and other hot button issues, you should be able to get a handle on where the Judge might come down on some of those excellent questions.

It’s too bad that Senate Democrats couldn’t follow the example of the press and give these hearings the seriousness they deserve. Instead, the cold political calculation of partisan advantage will rule the day as Alito and the Republicans will be forced to parry the blows as best they can.

It’s the mismatch of the century!

In the Red Corner, Judge Samuel Alito; scary smart, learned judge, judicially tempered, unflappable, and given the highest rating by the American Bar Association for competence.

In the Blue Corner, the Democrats; piddle brained, highly emotional, tending toward hysterics, and character assassins extraordinaire.

A full house is expected in the arena as this heavyweight match - and in the case of Ted Kennedy, Super-heavyweight - unfolds before a nation that, at the moment, is trying to come to terms with profound constitutional issues involving privacy and civil liberties in wartime.

In the Blue Corner, the seconds for the Democrats - Moveon.Org, feminists, racialists, environmentalists, and various sundry loons, goons, poltroons, and dirty necked galoots - are pushing their combatants to attack the Judge personally. Failing to find any instances of the Honorable Mr. Alito wearing women’s clothes in public (although come to think of it, they would probably mark that in the Judge’s favor) or pictures of the Judge kicking his dog, they have settled instead on the long standing liberal tradition of attacking a nominee because he is white, male, and conservative.

Of course, they don’t come right out and say that this is the problem with the nominee. So instead, they try and dig up “dirt” showing that he’s a racist because his hometown is mostly white or that he’s anti-female because he’s only had one wife, or that he’s anti-abortion because…well, just because. The circumstances don’t matter. In this kind of match where headlines are generated hourly, the important thing is to throw as many baseless, inaccurate, and exaggerated charges on the floor to see if any of them stick to the bottom of a shoe.

There’s not really much the champ can do except parry the blows to the best of his ability and grin back when Smilin’ Joe Biden accuses him of being a Nazi in disguise. And when that Fightin’ Irishman Pat Leahy wonders aloud whether Mr. Alito is “out of the mainstream” it would be best if the champ merely nodded his head and looked at the Vacuous Vermonter as if he were a serious lawmaker rather than the empty headed twit he truly is.

The tale of the tape in this match-up gives a huge advantage to the champ. His intellectual reach exceeds any of his opponents. And his obvious heft and gravitas gives him a big edge in the weight category due to the unseriousness of his tormentors. His muscular brain is more supple than that of any of his speechifying questioners. And his heart is twice the size of any of his ruthless and unprincipled counterparts.

In short, the confirmation hearing for Judge Alito will be a one sided affair that will show the glaring incompetence of his opponents as their inability to land any blows will drive them nuts.

And if Ted Kennedy can lay off the sauce until noon, maybe we’ll get some questions about where Alito was during the Goldwater Administration - even though he was only 14 years old.

We’ve all seen the sneering challenge from liberal loons for someone to show them where our national security was damaged as a result of the NSA leaks. This challenge has two wonderful advantages for the moonbats:

1. In order to prove there has been damage to national security, the actual workings of the NSA program along with many technical details would have to be exposed. Since the idiots know the government will never do this because by doing so it would compound the damage, they can smugly claim that the program wasn’t necessary.

2. If the government did expose the program to answer their loony challenge, the galoots could then claim the Administration was “playing politics” with national security and skewer Bush for that.

Since we can then safely ignore the braying jackasses on the left with regards to this issue, for those of use who are more serious about the national security damage caused by the NSA leaks, here’s Orin Kerr who took information from the James Risen book and demonstrated just a couple of ways al Qaeda (and others) can now adjust their communications protocols to make it more difficult for the NSA to keep track of them:

Finally, and relatedly, the details of the program from Risen’s book arguably explains the national security interest in keeping the domestic surveillance program a secret. It’s not that terrorists may suddenly realize that they may be monitored; that argument never made much sense, as every member of Al-Qaeda must know that they may be monitored. Rather, I suspect the security issue is twofold. In the short term, terrorist groups now know that they can stand a significantly better chance of hiding their communications from the NSA by choosing communications systems that don’t happen to route through the U.S. And in the long term, some countries may react to the disclosures of the program by redesigning their telecommunications networks so less traffic goes through the United States. The more people abroad know that the NSA can easily watch their communications routed through the U.S., the less people will be willing to route their communications through the U.S. Cf. Bruce Hayden’s comment. No doubt it was a long-term priority of the NSA to ensure that lots of international communications traffic was routed through the U.S., where the NSA could have much better access to it. Indeed, Risen’s book more or less says this. The disclosure of the program presumably helps frustrate that objective.

So, thanks are due to our friends at the New York Times and the arrogant, unelected, and self-righteous leakers who made this story possible. They have the advantage over the rest of us in that when the next terrorist attacks occur, they will be comforted with the knowledge that they did their best to promote an absolutist position on the Constitutional rights of al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers here in the United States.

I wonder how eager they would be to meet with the families of people lost in any attack? And I wonder how hollow their smug, arrogant, self-righteous talk about “rights” would sound to people whose loved ones may have been saved if such an attack could have been prevented?

This was expected but still not good news:

THE number of Turkish people thought to be infected with avian flu rose to more than 50 this weekend, prompting concern that the disease may be about to spread into Europe.

Yesterday a British laboratory confirmed that a Turkish brother and sister who died last week had the feared H5N1 strain of avian flu.

A third child from the same family in Dogubayazit, in eastern Turkey, has now died of avian flu and dozens more suspected cases have emerged.

“The laboratory in the UK said that they have detected H5N1 in samples of the two fatal cases,” said Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation. They are the first fatalities outside East Asia.

The fact that cases of Bird Flu in humans have now been confirmed outside of Asia isn’t the real news here. What is very troubling is this quote via Instapundit:

“Professor John Oxford, an expert on flu at Queen Mary’s medical school, London, said the most worrying aspect of the deaths in Turkey was the large number of human cases resulting from exposure to a small number of birds.”

What we may be observing is a very small but significant change in the pathology of the disease - its ability to infect humans may be improving. While it still cannot be spread through the air via casual contact like sneezing or coughing, it may have mutated ever so slightly so that the virus can either trick our immune system long enough to become established or, more likely, replicate at a faster pace once inside the human body thus overwhelming our bodies’ natural defenses in a shorter period of time.

Scientists are reasonably certain that at present, the virus can only be contracted by humans after eating or handling diseased fowl. Given the proximity to their livestock that many people in the rural parts of Europe live, it is perhaps not surprising that, like peasants in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, rural Europeans would be the first to contract the disease.

I hasten to add this is rank speculation on my part. No definitive word can come about any mutations in the virus for many weeks as the painstaking process of comparing the strain of virus that killed the children in Turkey is compared gene by gene with the strain we have seen in Asia. And it could very well be a statistical oddity that makes it appear there are fewer birds infecting more humans. Or scientists could just be wrong.

Having said all that, the idea that the virus wouldn’t mutate is a dangerous notion for governments to have at this point. And trying to find answers fast enough to keep ahead of the virus as it makes its way into Europe will prove to be the biggest challenge over the next few months.