Right Wing Nut House

There’s going to be blood on the floor of the Tonight Show studio on Wednesday night when Conservative Lout Ann Coulter squares off with liberal loon George Carlin on the Jay Leno show:

Controversialist Ann Coulter and controversialist George Carlin NBC’s will appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this Wednesday.

Carlin will discuss his role in “Cars,” from Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. The movie is currently the #1 at the box office. Coulter will talk about her latest controversial book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” currently the #1 book at AMAZON.

(HT: Drudge)

I’m surprised that Carlin agreed to be on with Coulter given his penchant for losing his wit when criticized harshly and simply getting nasty. His rants at times border on the mean anyway and if Coulter is smart, she will do some research on some of the comic’s more outrageously mean-spirited rants against Christians, conservatives, Ronald Reagan, and the military.

Carlin won’t have to look far to find material to skewer Coulter with. In contrast however, Coulter never seems to lose her cool in this kind of showdown although her counter-rants are just as mean-spirited and personal.

If I were Leno, I’d wear a plastic poncho during the segment because the bile from those two will be shooting all over the studio.

They were made for each other, those two. Maybe they’ll fall in love like Matlin-Carville and they’ll make a movie about it…

NOT!

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has announced that Karl Rove will not be indicted for his part in L’Affaire de Plame:

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer’s identity.

(HT: STACLU)

Unfortunately, that “pall” which was lifted from Mr. Rove has descended like the cone of silence over internet fabricator and noted liar Jason Leopold who as recently as last night wrote this for Truthout.org still trying to justify his article last month that stated flatly Mr. Rove would be “indicted within 24 hours.” And what is truly unbelievable is the contrast with how Leopold presents his evidence. Here is Leopold’s article from last night:

Four weeks ago, during the time when we reported that White House political adviser Karl Rove was indicted for crimes related to his role in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, the grand jury empanelled in the case returned an indictment that was filed under seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia under the curious heading of Sealed vs. Sealed.

As of Friday afternoon that indictment, returned by the grand jury the week of May 10th, remains under seal - more than a month after it was handed up by the grand jury.

The case number is “06 cr 128.” On the federal court’s electronic database, “06 cr 128″ is listed along with a succinct summary: “No further information is available.”

We have not seen the contents of the indictment “06 cr 128″. But the fact that this indictment was returned by the grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case on a day that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the grand jury raised a number of questions about the identity of the defendant named in the indictment, whether it relates to the leak case, and why it has been under seal for a month under the heading Sealed vs. Sealed.

Now contrast the above caveat-laden article with this piece from last month that had Rove doing the perp walk from his office in the White House straight into the slammer:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

Note how the story has morphed from Fitzgerald actually serving Rove with an indictment to some unknown indictment in an unknown case being handed down by an unknown prosecutor for an unknown crime.

Great reporting, Jason.

It will do no good to point out Leopold’s foibles to our friends on the left who seem to have a curious soft spot for this misanthropic serial fabricator. Maybe it is the fact that he is an admitted drug addict (a state that lasts a lifetime whether one uses drugs or not) or perhaps it is, as Jeff Goldstein points out, that he speaks truth to power and therefore is forgiven his many sins of omission and commission.

Whatever reason the left will not abandon him, I am happy to report that we will indeed have Jason Leopold to kick around some more thus curing conservative bloggers of writers block whenever an article of his makes an appearance. Since Truthout.Org is probably the bottom of the barrel as far as internet publications go, one would expect Leopold to continue trolling the depths of stupidity and loutishness in his quest to see how many prevarications he can get away with before the decent left gives him the permanent heave-ho.

As for the story of Rove’s non-indictment, this development makes one wonder about Fitzgerald’s case against Libby. Will Rove testify against his former aide? And could that have been the price for his reprieve?

I have my own ghosts to expunge here because for the last year I have been predicting that Rove would be indicted. Clarice Feldman at The American Thinker tried knocking some sense into me several times by telling me that Fitzy didn’t have a thing on Rove and that I was making way too much of press coverage of the story.

Clarice was right. I was dead wrong.

I will be following this story today by reading Tom McGuire and Clarice Feldman who I’m sure are busy at the moment gathering their thoughts so that they can tell us “what it all means.” Check back here for updates on this breaking story.

UPDATE: NO ENGLISH LANGUAGE ADJECTIVES TO DESCRIBE THIS KIND OF IRONY

Mark Ash, Executive Director of Truthout.Org penned an article last night that is one of the saddest examples I can remember of an editor standing behind a writer and then being betrayed by the march of events.

Now for what we believe: We believe that federal criminal indictment “06 cr 128″ (Sealed vs. Sealed) is directly related to the Fitzgerald/Plame investigation. That’s based on a single credible source and the information discussed above. We believe that Karl Rove is cooperating with federal investigators, and for that reason Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is not willing to comment on his status. That is based, again, on a single credible source, and background information provided by experts in federal criminal law. We believe that the indictment was returned and filed “on May 10 2006.” Same single credible source, and details from the filing records. We believe that if any of the key facts that we have reported were materially false or inaccurate some statement to that effect would be forthcoming from Fitzgerald’s staff. That is based on the same single credible source.

No mention of the person being indicted was Karl Rove which at least relieves Mr. Ash of the ignominy of being proved wrong less than 24 hours of assuring his readers that the “key facts” of the article written last month by Leopold was accurate.

One has to admire Mr. Ash’s loyalty but at the same time, question his judgment in supporting someone who has made him look like a fool.

UPDATE II: McGUIRE WEIGHS IN

Tom McGuire tells us what it all means and acknowleges his erroneous prognistication regarding Rove’s indictment:

Two quick guesses as to why there was no indictment:

(b) The Armitage angle made a Rove indictment problematic except as a package deal…

And Clarice Feldman emails me with her immediate thoughts:

You might want to simply quote Tom Maguire who’s getting punched around on his own site because he always thought Rove would be indicted. (I bet Fitz wishes he could take back the Libby indictment, tt.) C

He may yet.

And what update would be complete without an update from the man who invented the update…or maybe he just popularized it. Or not:

Did someone here order the crap sandwich?

Actually, I’ll refine my request. Leave your predictions below about which members of the administration they’ll inevitably accuse of being involved in the conspiracy to “silence Fitzgerald.”

Michelle Malkin calls it “Rove Derangement Syndrome” Day. She has some good links as usual with Mark Coffey’s “Top Ten” lefty reactions absolutely priceless.

Check out Pat Curley’s “Twas the Night before Fitzmas.”

Note: The following satire is politically incorrect. If you don’t approve, bite me.

Following accusations by terrorist prisoners of abuse and torture in American, British, Iraqi, Afghan, and Canadian prisons, lawyers for three tourists arrested on Friday and charged with trying to blow up St. Peters Basilica are alleging abuse at the hands of officials of the Roman Catholic Church. They also maintain that their clients are totally innocent.

“Doesn’t every Vatican tourist carry 40 kilos of C-4 around with them?” asked one perplexed barrister.

Another lawyer for the bearded, Southwest Asian looking men whose religion and region of birth have nothing whatsoever to do with their alleged crime said that the conditions of his client’s imprisonment were “unbearable.”

“It’s a disgrace,” said James “Slick” Burblehead, an attorney with the group Human Rights Travesty Monitoring Executive (HURTME). “Since there are no prisons in Vatican City, our clients have been incarcerated in furnished apartments in the Vatican with comfy chairs and soft beds. What self respecting alleged terrorist would be caught dead in such conditions of imprisonment?”

Burblehead alleges that the Vatican has failed to supply suitably gruesome conditions of incarceration which could lead to unbearable psychological stress on his client as he contemplates how his friends will laugh at him when he returns home. “His self-esteem will suffer unless he is placed in a dark cell with bars that he can rattle a tin cup across,” said Burblehead.

Among other outrages, Burblehead lists:

1. A private bathroom. “No reason to splash urine on the Koran unless someone can see it,” says the barrister.

2. Nuns serving meals. Burblehead points out that since the nuns wear habits that are about as revealing as the burqa clad women from home, there are no opportunities to allege immodesty on the part of female jailers, thus taking away a crucial defense talking point.

3. Internet access. Mr. Burblehead alleges that WiFi access is “spotty” and wonders if the Italians have ever even heard of broadband. “This is the Italian state telephone company we’re talking about here for God’s sake,” said Burblehead.

4. Food. The lawyer says that the food is just too good, preventing his client from going on a hunger strike. “He has become especially partial to certain Italian pasta dishes like Shrimp Papardelle,” said Burblehead. “How in God’s name can one expect to go on a hunger strike in Italy? In Rome, no less?”

Attorneys for the two other men charged in the same case are also alleging intolerable conditions for the clients with one barrister threatening to take their case to the United Nations.

“There is only one organization that can understand what our clients are experiencing,” said Tupak Sixpak, an attorney representing an alleged terrorist who was found with 16 sticks of dynamite and structural plans for St. Peters but who maintains he had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot. “Only the UN will appreciate our clients innocence and the unnecessarily abusive conditions of their incarceration.”

Mr. Sixpak likens the imprisonment of his client to the persecution of early Christian martyrs who endured unspeakable atrocities at the hands of Roman authorities nearly 2000 years ago.

“Not much has changed in 2000 years,” said Sixpak. “I can see the similarities between the way my client has been abused with the suffering of the early Christians. In fact, my client is a modern day martyr and should be released so that he can fulfill his lifelong dream of sacrificing his life for his cause.”

The special election to fill the remainder of convicted felon Rep. Duke Cunningham’s term ended up a little closer than some Republicans would have liked but failed to reveal any hints that they are in any more trouble than they already are. In short, the Democrats still appear to have a better than 50-50 chance of taking the House in November.

The California Congressional seat vacated by jailed former representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham will remain in Republican hands after a special election Tuesday in which a lobbyist narrowly defeated a Democratic school board member.

Republican Brian Bilbray beat Democrat Francine Busby after an combative and expensive race that centered on issues of government corruption and illegal immigration. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Bilbray had 56,016 votes or 49.5 percent, the Associated Press reported, and Busby trailed with 51,202 votes or 45 percent.

While it is true that Bilbray failed to crack the 50% mark (in a district that former Rep. Cunningham garnered 64% of the vote in 2002), Democrats would be hard pressed to claim much of a victory. In the 2002 contest, the Democratic challenger received a little less than 51,000 votes - about the same number of votes as Busby received yesterday. Despite a heinous corruption scandal, general discontent with Republicans nationwide, and President Bush’s low approval numbers, Democrats got about the same number of votes as they did in the last off year election. And despite the reduced turnout, it can be argued that Democratic voters, smelling blood in the water, were much more likely to turn out than Republicans.

And by removing the incumbency factor as well as a recognizing that most Republican voters stayed home yesterday, Bilbray’s totals, while nothing to crow about, are close to what one could reasonably expect. I might add that five months is not enough time for Bilbray to do much fence mending or to establish himself in the district. But unless something truly horrible happens between now and November or the economy tanks, Bilbray should win comfortably.

Elsewhere in California, the Democratic primary race in the 11th district to see who takes on House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo took a somewhat unexpected turn when a moderate Navy Vet Steve Filson was outpolled by Jerry McNerney, an establishment Democrat of a definitely more liberal stripe.

Why the national Democrats thought Pombo was vulnerable is an interesting case study in wishful thinking. In order for any challenger - Republican or Democrat - to win (barring scandal), they must have a rock solid base from which at least 25% of the challenger’s total vote can be relied upon. This is usually a state house or senate seat. Neither McNerney or Filson filled that bill which makes the national Democrat’s interest in this seat puzzling. I suppose their internal numbers showed Pombo was having some problems. But for an incumbent who received 60% of the vote in the last off year election to be considered vulnerable seems to be a stretch. Pombo should make short work of McNerney in November.

The Republicans didn’t help themselves any in the Busby-Bilbray dust-up but neither did they shoot themselves in the foot. All things considered, that’s about the best news the Republicans have had in quite a while.

UPDATE

Allah rounds up some react from the usual suspects and highlights a few other races as well.

Happy Father’s Day, oh Deity of Deities! Actually, I was thinking of giving you one of these but since you’re content with bumping up your ecosysem stats, I will grant your request.

I have pretty much ignored Ann Coulter for the last year or so. As her celebrity has grown - actually since she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine - she has had to make ever more outrageous and off the wall statements in order to maintain her position as a “controversial” commentator. This has often placed her at odds with many of us who, while generally in agreement with much of her critique of American liberalism, nevertheless recoil in horror and disgust at her rhetoric.

She has descended into a black hole of necessity from which there is no escape; where she is forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives usually by going beyond the bounds of decency and proper public discourse in order to make a point that could have been made without resorting to the kind of hurtful, hateful, personal attacks that have become a hallmark of her war with liberals.

Make no mistake. Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout what any conservative with an ounce of integrity and intellectual honesty should be able to see as unacceptable. To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse. And for such a gifted wordsmith, Coulter does not have the excuse of ignorance.

I have been told not to take what she says so seriously, that this is her “shtick.” I, like the Queen of England, am not amused. Neither I think, are the 9/11 widows who are using their position as victims of that tragedy to try and influence the public debate over what to do about the War on Terror and domestic security. We may violently disagree with their politics. We may scorn their portrayal by liberals as unbiased observers with some kind of moral authority that immunizes them from criticism. But as Coulter proved on the Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer, this kind of rhetoric is uncalled for and wildly inaccurate to boot:

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:

COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.”

“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”

There’s more but I won’t pollute my site by republishing it. Crooks and Liars has the video.

There are ways to criticize the widows without saying something so wrong, so hurtful. And what do you think their children would think if they heard Coulter’s remarks? Are they to be in the line of Coulter’s wildly off target fire as well?

This rhetoric is not designed to advance debate or even make any kind of a salient point about the political activism of grief stricken parents like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-Bush September 11 widows. The remarks were designed to hurt other people’s feelings in a deeply personal and entirely inappropriate way. Can you imagine some liberal commentator making similar remarks about Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon and who is fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left? We would be all over that worthy and deservedly so.

The anti-Bush 9/11 widows are not immune from criticism for their political positions nor even for the tactics they use to advance those positions. But to say that they are “enjoying” their status as widows is so far beyond the pale that anyone who makes such a statement deserves the most severe censure possible. And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of “Spokesman” for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn’t speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.

Coulter owes those women an apology. Failure to give it only reveals her to be a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction.

UPDATE

Confederate Yankee takes Coulter’s message - that grief does not bestow absolute moral authority - without mentioning her brutalization of the widows.

His point is well taken but he seems to be able to make an even stronger case than Coulter without resorting to the degradation of grief stricken widows.

UPDATE 6/7

It appears that one lefty blog in particular (although I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed elsewhere on the left) believes that I and other conservatives are trying to “distance ourselves” from Coulter’s idiocies.

An interesting concept, that. The fact that most responsible conservatives who see fit to dignify Coulter’s outrageousness in the past year or so by commenting on her over-the-top remarks end up strongly criticizing her, I wonder how much more “distance” the left wants us to maintain.

But my commenter SSheil put it nicely:

I think this post (and several others relating to the same topic) is illustrative of what I see is generally the largest difference between blogs on the right and left. As with Rick’s blog, most blogs on the right are not shy of taking our leaders, writers and speakers who represent the Right to task when they individually or collectively “step on their d*cks.”

When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?

I think I hear crickets chirping…

NOTE: A WORD ABOUT THE TOWER AD FOR COULTER’S BOOK

The answer is, yes I could request that the ad be taken off this site. But since I don’t believe in stifling debate (witness the insulting, degrading, comments from most of you directed towards me below), I will not make that request.

Such freedom of speech (and the freedom to abuse that right) used to be self evident in America. Nowadays, if you disagree with something written, many feel no compunction whatsoever about agitating for the offending literature to be banned.

Times have changed…

UPDATE

A few days ago in that same space, there was an ad for An Inconvenient Truth., a movie that most global warming skeptics (and even some advocates) believe is an execreable piece of propaganda.

I suppose I could have asked that it be removed since I don’t like propaganda being advertised on this site. I wonder how many people swearing at me for allowing the Coulter ad to run would be swearing at me for taking down the movie ad?

UPDATE 6/8

For the classically liberal perspective on Coulter’s remarks, you could do no better than visit my brother’s blog, The Vivid Air. And, no TBogg, my ignorant friend, not my “greater” brother. Since, as Jim points out in the comments, I have 6 other brothers, you are going to have to come up with some other shallow, simple minded way to criticize me. He’s just older, wiser, not quite as good looking, but considered by most to be a reasonable sort of fellow.

He can’t be all bad. He hates Kerry as much as Bush.

LAST WORD

Jim points out that he doesn’t “hate” Bush. Indeed, we in the blogosphere tend to toss that word around with a casual disdain for its meaning and by so doing, delegitimize the argument made. Separating the human being from the policies being promulgated or opinions expressed would serve us all well.

Well, not literally.

Bush has been blamed for most of the world’s ills over the past five years. He has been blamed for tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, obesity, a rise in global temperatures, and the pimple on Duncan Black’s posterior.

But I never thought I’d see the day when anyone would accuse the President of the United States of facilitating a sexual encounter between a man and a woman (Well, not literally):

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we’re starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

It seems when learning about the birds and the bees, none of us were ever told that a woman could also get pregnant simply by listening to “Rush” Limbaugh.

Well, not literally

Thanks to said “rush of passion” - during which time all the higher functions of the human brain cease and our gray matter reverts to the primordial medulla oblongata thus forcing people to think like a crocodile - our correspondent knew she was in trouble.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy — but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse.

[snip]

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend — and the end of the 72-hour window — was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids’ school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options — short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book — I figured I’d take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I’m 42. Isn’t it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn’t believe it.

Here is where I actually sympathize with the woman. I’m not exactly sure where I come down on this issue but my gut tells me that if a doctor will not prescribe the needed medication due to his personal moral or religious beliefs, he should do everything in his power to see that his patient has access to that medication through another doctor. And this doctor failed to do that and, in my opinion, failed his patient.

But whatever sympathy I felt for the writer disappeared after reading this:

I felt sick. Although I’ve always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

Actually, one man held up approval of the drug; former FDA chief Lester Crawford, who took over the approval process when he believed that insufficient safeguards were in place to keep children under 17 from purchasing the drug. Talk about politics, it was pro-choice commissioners who were railroading the drug through the process for political reasons, satisfying their constituencies.

Pot, meet kettle. And this is an outright falsehood:

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern — valid or not — wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

That’s a Planned Parenthood talking point, echoing conservative Christian groups NOT anyone at the FDA. For the writer to include this was pure spin, an attempt to smear Crawford whose concerns overrode the eagerness of the pro choice advocates to push the drug on the market. The matter is now in litigation as a civil suit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against the FDA.

And “penalizing” someone for having sex? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I realize we live in a time when taking responsibility for one’s actions is so…so…bourgeois - so “common” - but one would think that the most personal of all human activities could somehow resist the call of modernity to place the blame for human reproduction on someone or something else.

Sex has consequences. Even an atheist like me knows that. And one of those consequences is that despite all the pills, mechanical devices, jellies, latex, and the #1 safeguard against pregnancy - good intentions - those wriggly little devils will find a way to make it to the egg if at all possible. This is the fact of life, not “rushes of passion” or any other pitiful excuse for resisting what by any stretch of the imagination is the one human endeavor where both parties alone are responsible for the result of their actions.

But our correspondent doesn’t stop there. Not content with blaming “conservative politics” (despite her assurance at the beginning of the article that she wasn’t “literally” doing so) for her predicament, she then brings her dim bulb of a brain to bear on the intersection of religion and politics:

Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.

Moreover, they aren’t even required to tell the patient why they won’t provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn’s receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn’t prescribe Plan B for me.

In other words, the religious or moral beliefs of the doctor are simply a matter of “politics.” What isn’t said is that only liberals’ political beliefs can have moral underpinnings. If a conservative follows their moral compass, it can be chalked up to “politics” only and thus delegitmized.

What a crock.

After relating how hard a time she had getting an abortion - something I wish wasn’t so but at the same time, like Bill Clinton, devoutly wish to see abortion a rarity in our society - She then lets loose with this eye popper:

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

And to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years.

All this after saying at the beginning of the article that she was not “literally” blaming George Bush for her predicament.

Having blamed Bush for politicizing religion, perhaps she should read a little American history. Without the politicization of religion, she would be living in a city where African Americans were still riding in the back of the bus. And there’s a chance we would still have a draft and 100,000 troops in Viet Nam. Or perhaps slavery would still be a stain on our constitution.

No one has ever been able to separate religion and politics in America. They are joined at the hip, one leading the other depending on who’s in office. As secular as American society has become over the last 50 years, it has been religion and religiosity that has driven our politics for good or ill. Reverend Martin Luther King’s message was, in its heart and soul, a Christian message of sin and redemption. King changed America because he wanted to forgive us our sins and redeem the constitution and Declaration of Independence by making them living documents.

The Christian conservatives, so vilified (sometimes for good reason), see a culture so at odds with their beliefs that it has driven them out of the pews and into the voting booth in record numbers. They are not under some trance of Karl Rove or George Bush. They are genuinely frightened by the turn our culture has taken and fear for both the lives and the immortal souls of their children. To simply dismiss their concerns as “politics” is ignorant. They feel themselves prevented from living life the way that they see fit because others are imposing their beliefs on them.

Personally, I don’t mind the violence, gratuitous sex, and general mayhem found on TV, video games, and in films. But I can see some people asking that such fare be denied to youngsters as a responsible component of rearing children. This goes for everything from R rated movies to Plan B. And the writer’s complaints are symptomatic of a selfish disregard that liberals have for the sensibilities of those who disagree with an “anything goes” society. I would hate to live in a country where religion dictated what people could watch or wear or eat. But I would be equally uncomfortable living in a place where religion was prevented from impacting the political life of the country.

It’s no accident that this individual grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, a time when it was drummed into us that no on was responsible for anything. Criminals were routinely absolved of their crimes, sloth was celebrated as the natural state of man, and people could blame their problems on anything and anybody but themselves.

Well, not literally….

UPDATE

Cassandra and I are on almost the same wavelength as she fisks what little brains the dim wit was born with. Her take on personal responsibility is said much better than my clumsy attempts to come to grips with such out and out idiocy.

UPDATE: 6/5

Kevin Drum appears to be one of the only lefties who don’t think the woman should stop whining and take a personal responsibility pill. He calls Crawford “a liar” and then links to this news story that doesn’t prove Crawford was telling fibs but rather reveals Mr. Drum engaging in a typical blogger tactic of making an outrageous charge while supplying a link ostensibly supporting it but that does no such thing. In fact, here’s the money graf:

An April 2004 e-mail message from Jane Axelrad, associate director for policy at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that allowing over-the-counter and prescription sales of Plan B in the same package would be “consistent with precedent” and comply with “applicable statutory and regulatory provisions.”

But that same month, an unidentified FDA deputy division director wrote that McClellan and senior management in Axelrad’s department “do not concur” and “cannot support” such a move. They, in turn, asked the FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel for a final assessment on whether the drug could be sold both with and without prescription for different age groups.

Sounds like Crawford was concerned about safegaurds that would prevent little girls under 17 years of age from buying the drug over the counter.

Drum also points to this post by Digby where an FDA medical officer raised the specter of “sex cults” surrounding the use of Plan B:

In the memo released by the FDA, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency medical officer, wrote: “As an example, she [Woodcock] stated that we could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.”

Rosebraugh indicated he found no reason to bar nonprescription sales of Plan B. (Emphasis mine)

So some wacky doctor at FDA makes an idiotic statement about adolescent sex. But I notice that Mr. Drum fails to mention that the same doctor supported over the counter sales of Plan B!

There is much to criticize regarding FDA procedures in this matter without making baseless, misleading charges. Drum should be ashamed of himself.

Robert Kennedy’s long, exhaustive, investigative piece in Rolling Stone magazine about voting irregularities in Ohio does an enormous service to the cause of making elections in America more free and fair. The article lists about a dozen credible instances where the GOP improperly tried to suppress the vote by purging voter registration rolls, discounting newly registered voters (most from Democratic precincts), highlighting GOP shenanigans on election day at polling places, and even making a good case for some good old fashioned ballot box stuffing in some rural Ohio counties.

That said, Kennedy is on much less firm ground when he tries to sell the notion that the voting machines were rigged, that Secretary of State Blackwell personally oversaw a massive vote fraud operation, that there is anything to the notion that there is proof of fraud in the difference between exit polling and the actual vote counts, that corporations involved in making the voting machines participated in any fraudulent activities, and that a full recount would have changed the eventual outcome.

Overall in fact, this is a jaw-dropping piece of partisan hackery. It might have been helpful if Kennedy had bothered to look into charges of Democratic vote fraud that were also swirling around in Ohio on election day and before. And a helpful overview of charges of Democratic vote fraud in other extremely close states that were lost by the President - specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three of the most heavily unionized states in the nation and featuring Democratic governors with their hands on the polling machinery - would have given his critique an air of authority and legitimacy.

Instead, Mr. Kennedy decided to mix in the most base of smears directed at a Republican gubernatorial candidate with his fact flakes, thus bringing much of his good work down to the level of the gutter.

This country is in desperate need of electoral reform. Not only do both parties plan and organize disenfranchisement operations, they have developed techniques over the years that have gone far beyond dirty tricks like graveyard voting, ballot box stuffing, and the outright bribery of voters, which are election day traditions in many parts of the nation and have been for almost two hundred years. Kennedy’s article reveals some of the dirty little secrets of our democracy and of our political parties (although again, Kennedy’s beautification of Democrats by not accusing them of any wrongdoing is laughable). The long and short of it is, the system is broke and there is apparently not much that anyone is willing to do about it.

Kennedy’s critique is strongest when detailing GOP efforts to disqualify registered voters, especially voters newly added to the rolls. There is also a good case made that the distribution of voting machines was deliberately manipulated to make likely Democratic voters wait much longer to vote than likely Republican voters. There were also enormous problems with the so-called “provisional ballots” that were supposed to be given to people who either had questionable registrar information or were voting in the wrong precinct.

This last charge was not confined to Ohio as both Democrats and Republicans across the country sought to fiddle with the requirements of the law. The statute in both Democratic and Republican controlled states appeared to be honored in the breach as there were numerous complaints in Wisconsin about Republican voters being disenfranchised the way Democrats were in Ohio (among other outrageous examples of Democratic vote fraud in that state).

Some of the charges against Blackwell are spurious:

To further monkey-wrench the process he was bound by law to safeguard, Blackwell cited an arcane elections regulation to make it harder to register new voters. In a now-infamous decree, Blackwell announced on September 7th — less than a month before the filing deadline — that election officials would process registration forms only if they were printed on eighty-pound unwaxed white paper stock, similar to a typical postcard.

There was very good reason to cite that “arcane” regulation - massive, systematic Democratic voter registration fraud:

The unfortunate fact is that Ohio election authorities experienced an unprecedented number of fraudulent voter registrations and some organizations appear to have been engaged in efforts to facilitate and pay for the submission of fraudulent voter registration forms.

This point was noted by Keith Cunningham, President of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, when he testified about the election in Ohio before the House Administration Committee in March 2005. During his testimony, Cunningham remarked that “disruptive” and “distracting” political activists on the ground in Ohio made it increasingly difficult for elections officials to do their jobs.

Cunningham: “[T]he November 2004 election was probably the single most difficult thing I have ever tried to manage in my life. … For instance, the card we send out to voters that tell them where they’re registered, what your precinct is. I spent the better part of an afternoon arguing with somebody that the type on that card was too small, when it’s the same card we’ve been sending out for some time and it’s the default setting on the printer. My belief is that not everyone in November 2004 was dealing in good faith. And there were people on the ground and present in Ohio who … were attempting to create chaos and confusion in hopes that out of it could come something that could be exploited.” (266)

Part of the “chaos and confusion” referenced by Cunningham stemmed from the thousands of fraudulent voter registrations submitted to elections officials in every corner of Ohio.

This is what happens when you make charges without giving any context to someone’s actions. Blackwell was responding to massive, systematic, planned voter registration fraud. Groups like the NAACP (paying for voter registration with crack cocaine), ACORN (massive voter registration fraud resulting in the arrest and conviction of several of their Ohio employees who were paid $5 for each new voter signed up), Americans Coming together (ACT), and the nation’s oldest purveyor of voter registration fraud, the AFL-CIO all sought to game the system and hand Ohio to the Democrats in a blatantly illegal scheme to place fraudulent or non-existent names on the voter list so that operatives would be able to vote several times. This is a time honored scheme in Democratic states and appears to have taken place in Wisconsin, a state the President lost by a mere 11,000 votes.

I urge you to read this link for a detailed description of what Blackwell had to deal with. Much of what is criticized in Kennedy’s piece could easily be chalked up to Blackwell’s grim determination to make sure that the registration process - already strained to the limit with more than 1.5 million new names - didn’t degenerate into a democratic farce. This concern regarding registration fraud also played a hand in the snafus with provisional ballots although clearly, Republicans failed to abide by the law in many, many cases.

Such lack of context permeates Kennedy’s critique:

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas.(157) Although it was billed as a means to ”ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud,”(158) Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP’s attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would ”create chaos, longer lines and frustration.”(159)

The day before the election, Judge Dlott attempted to halt the challengers, ruling that ”there exists an enormous risk of chaos, delay, intimidation and pandemonium inside the polls and in the lines out the doors.” Dlott was also troubled by the placement of Republican challengers: In Hamilton County, fourteen percent of new voters in white areas would be confronted at the polls, compared to ninety-seven percent of new voters in black areas.(160) But when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court on Election Day, Justice John Paul Stevens allowed the challenges to go forward. ”I have faith,” he ruled, ”that the elected officials and numerous election volunteers on the ground will carry out their responsibilities in a way that will enable qualified voters to cast their ballots.”(161)

What? Nothing about the legions of Democratic challengers who were also present? I guess we ought to just put the halo on Democrats in Ohio right now rather than waiting for the Vatican to bestow sainthood.

And in a rerun of issues surrounding the 2004 Florida debacle, Kenned pulls out the same, tired canard about “ballot crawl” - the practice that some voters inadvertently or out of sheer stupidity vote for the wrong person on the punch card ballot:

In addition to spoiling ballots, the punch-card machines also created bizarre miscounts known as ”ballot crawl.” In Cleveland Precinct 4F, a heavily African-American precinct, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka was credited with an impressive forty-one percent of the vote. In Precinct 4N, where Al Gore won ninety-eight percent of the vote in 2000, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik was credited with thirty-three percent of the vote. Badnarik and Peroutka also picked up a sizable portion of the vote in precincts across Cleveland — 11M, 3B, 8G, 8I, 3I.(178) ”It appears that hundreds, if not thousands, of votes intended to be cast for Senator Kerry were recorded as being for a third-party candidate,” the Conyers report concludes.(179)

But it’s not just third-party candidates: Ballot crawl in Cleveland also shifted votes from Kerry to Bush. In Precinct 13B, where Bush received only six votes in 2000, he was credited with twenty percent of the total in 2004. Same story in 9P, where Bush recorded eighty-seven votes in 2004, compared to his grand total of one in 2000.(180)

This is the “idiot factor” at work and there is little to be done about it. The fact that it happens in precincts where people are less educated:

In an attempt to bring illiteracy to the attention of the American people, the U.S. Department of Education pointed out a decade ago that an alarming 47 million American adults were functionally or marginally illiterate. Arguably, little meaningful progress has been made in the fight to reduce illiteracy in the most affluent nation in the world.

A 2001 Newsweek article pointed out that an astonishing 47 percent of Detroit, Mich. residents, or almost one-out-of-two adults in the predominately African-American and urban city were functionally illiterate. By way of comparison, only 6.7 percent of citizens in Vietnam are functionally illiterate.

“Ballot crawl” is a problem of reading, not fraud. This is another dirty little secret of American politics - a sizable minority of people (black and white) are unable to function in our democracy as a result of their being marginally or functionally illiterate. I don’t see Kennedy or Conyers advocating doing anything about it either when they attempt to intimate fraud where remedial reading classes are called for.

Kennedy really jumps the shark when trying to tie the idea of massive vote stealing by the GOP to the skewed exit polls. Ed Morrisey does an excellent job debunking this canard:

News flash: mathematics is an exact science. Polling isn’t, and for at least one basic reason — you can’t force people to participate. The only people answering exit polls are those inclined to share their opinions. It also relies on the skill, integrity, and execution of the actual polltakers, many of whom are hired with little training. Moreover, reporting results in the middle of the sample almost always guarantees bad conclusions.

And interestingly enough, that’s exactly what two research firms looking into the exit poll debacle found:

Indeed they did. And, as I pointed out on election night, the high turnout was playing havoc with the computer models anyway:

A word about exit polls…they take a couple of dozen “key” precincts and average turnout, party reliability, and a few other mundane factors to project a winner. The big turnout here COULD be skewing the computer models and not giving confidence to the networks.

Indeed, that is what happened. An increase of almost 17 million Republicans offset an increase of 15 million Democrats. Rove won the numbers game and Democrats still can’t believe it. And the forecaster’s models broke down as a result of the unpredictability in the increase in voters.

Any notion that the exit polls were going to reveal who won can safely be put to rest by the projected results in these states:

But Kerry winning by 16 in PA? Up 15 in MN? Kerry by 17 in NH? These numbers aren’t just wrong, they’re numbers taken from some kind of weird parallel universe where bloggers don’t exist! How could they have gotten it so wrong?

Not to mention the poll’s split of 59% women and 41% men. Did anyone bother studying that anomaly?

Those exit polls also showed Kerry winning North Carolina and Arizona - two states where there are no charges of vote fraud and which the President carried comfortably. I wonder if Mr. Kennedy would be kind enough to explain that?

In summary, Kennedy should have applied Occam’s Razor to his Exit Poll theory; given multiple explanations for the same outcome, the simplest is probably true. And it’s a helluva lot easier to say that the exit polls were wrong rather than positing the notion of massive, nationwide vote fraud.

Finally, Kennedy raises legitimate questions about the recount of the vote by the state. There apparently were many irregularities in following established procedures and the law for which Mr. Blackwell should be criticized. But would a recount really have given the state and therefore the election to Kerry? The candidate himself didn’t think so and was advised I’m sure by the most knowledgeable and savvy pols in his party. Besides that, it would have been asking too much to expect the President’s lead of nearly 128,000 votes to disappear entirely in a statewide recount. Such an eventuality would have no precedence in American history which is why Kerry probably conceded in the first place.

If I sound dismissive of most of Kennedy’s article, I don’t mean to. As I pointed out, he makes several troubling and valid points about what happened before and after election day in Ohio. Overall, however, his criticisms ring hollow due to his total disregard for Democratic tomfoolery - especially the blatant disenfranchisement campaign carried out against overseas citizens (among many other transgressions) in next door Pennsylvania by Governor Ed Rendell - a state where Kerry’s margin of victory was smaller than Bush’s in Ohio.

What I applaud Mr. Kennedy for is in bringing these issues out into the open for discussion. I have no idea how to solve these problems - I will leave solutions to others. But there is no doubt in my mind that the problem of election and registration fraud is getting worse and threatens our entire democratic system. Best heed the calls for reform now before people lose faith in our system of government entirely.

UPDATE

The Editors make some interesting points about the article while taking some righty bloggers to task for inconsistency. Check out some of the comments as well - some of them still don’t get the fact that the exit polls were so far off thanks to methodology, not conspiracy.

Kim Priestap:

The Democrats just can’t accept that they lost in 2000 and 2004. As far as they are concerned, power is their right, their entitlement. Therefore, as they see it, Democrats don’t lose elections. The elections are stolen from them, which is why Kennedy puts all his eggs in his the-exit-polls-were-accurate basket. Now their target is Secretary Blackwell. And it appears that no smear is low enough for them.

I would say there is a lot of truth in that but in RFK’s case, I think he did raise some legitimate issues.

UPDATE II 6/3

James Joyner does a first class job debunking many of Kennedy’s theories and links to a Salon article that also criticizes Mr. Kennedy’s fact flakes.

A decent critique of the Ohio vote in 2004 would have included the intense scrambling for new voters that caused the Democrats to step over the line of legality and the Republicans to respond by trying to suppress some of the registrations. Again, Blackwell was in an impossible position but, as one of my non-partisan commenters pointed out, it is ludicrous to have the state Chairman of one party’s nominee in charge of seeing that a fair vote is conducted. The appearance of impropriety is too great to give much confidence to the people that nothing underhanded is going on.

Tristero also notes the Salon article and walks back a little from his flat statement that the 2004 election was stolen. He believes Kennedy should acknowledge his mistakes and apologize.

The last forecast I saw for hell did not show any cooling trends in the near future.

UPDATE: 6/7

Readers who have come here via The Poorman Institute must be a little confused. I’m sure they were expecting to read a piece that tries to whitewash Republican malfeasance during the election, when in fact I praise Mr. Kennedy for bringing many of these issues - including the deliberate disenfranchisement of Democratic voters - into the light.

No, the Editors did not direct you to the wrong link. And no, I will not descend to the level of the barnyard to point out that whoever wrote that post did not read much of what I had to say and further, did not give even a hint that both sides were doing their best to supress the other’s vote in Ohio on election day.

To say otherwise is moronic…or is it “moranic?”

Are you curious about what the left really wants to get out of the Haditha massacre?

Carol and the rest of her Bush-defending pals need to go home and take an ethics class. Then they need to ask forgiveness. This kind of argument is shameful. In fact, I’ll go a step further: It’s un-American. Our national identity is based on holding ourselves, and our country, to the highest moral standard on Earth.

And that - rather than this kind of slippery rationalizing - is true patriotism.

The writer, one R.J. Eskow, (another one of the seemingly endless irrelevant and painfully boring paste eaters that Arianna Huffington has writing at Huffpo these days), wants Carol Platt Liebau to apologize for 1) waiting until all the facts are in on the massacre before making an intelligent judgment regarding the guilt or innocence of those involved; 2) not blame the entire Marine Corps for the actions of a few; and 3) taking the left to task for caring more about the rights of detainees at Guantanamo than the rights of the soon-to-be-accused-Marines-who-aren’t-charged-with-anything-yet-but-who-the-left-has-already-convicted-sentenced-and-executed.

And it might be interesting to point out that while Mr. Eskow accused Liebau of being a “Bush defender,” Carol never mentions the President’s name in her piece - which reveals much about what the left is truly seeking in their eager embrace of this story as metaphor for the military, for the war, and for Bush himself. The left wants a public humiliation of their tormentors on the right. Like Escrow, they want an “apology” and an acknowledgement that they, in their infinite wisdom, were right about Iraq and that the hawks were wrong.

It’s an interesting exercise, this, when one considers that for the past few years the left has had to work extraordinarily hard to make their initial rationale for opposing the war come true. And this begs the question; how “right” are you in the first place when you have to actively work to bend history to your will in order for the result to play out according to your prognostications? Does the left seriously believe that they have not undermined the war effort by their words and actions? Are they so myopically stupid that they can’t understand that these words and actions have given enormous comfort and encouragement to the enemy?

Haditha has handed our foreign enemies a propaganda victory. Why does the domestic left have to assist them in this? The answer to that question is simple; because both the insurgents in Iraq who are killing Americans and our domestic left have the exact same agenda; the defeat of the United States in Iraq. Jed Babbin:

First, the left will use every tool at their disposal to ensure that the Haditha incident becomes synonymous with the entire Iraq war. Abu Ghraib proved a propaganda bonanza for the terrorists and nations such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia that want us to withdraw from Iraq in defeat. Haditha - regardless of what the facts may turn out to be - will be used ceaselessly and purposefully to eliminate American support for the Iraq war and to demonize anyone who still supports it. Haditha will become the Orwellian centerpiece of the Democrats’ claim that they support the troops. “They’ve been there too long,” Murtha and his ilk will cry. “We have to bring them home before they kill more babies.” And then the Dems, feigning concern for our soldiers, will offer them psychological counseling when they return. The political fallout will be enormous, and it will damage both the ongoing war efforts and our troops’ morale.

Babbin is on to something. Lefties are screaming that the troops are not really to blame; it’s the fault of the President Their reasoning? Since most of our military is on their second and third tour of duty in Iraq, they are all tired and suffering from some fantastic form of battle fatigue. Some of our men and women may indeed have suffered psychological damage as a result of extended tours of duty. But to posit the notion that this is some kind of infection that has engulfed our service people is absurd.

But the focus of the left’s metaphorical attack is not on the troops. It is directed against the will to continue the long, hard, slog in a bloody land with the constant drip, drip, drip of American casualties and political progress measured in the smallest of increments. We may indeed reach a point where the returns on our effort will never match our hopes for a positive outcome on the ground. At that point, a reassessment of our commitment would certainly be in order. But we are not there yet. And the only reason Haditha is bringing us any closer to the day when American troops will indeed exit Iraq is that the left is willing it, not because anything fundamental in a strategic or tactical sense has changed as a result of the massacre.

As for the Iraqi citizens, those Iraqis who are of a mind to will point to Haditha as one more reason for the Americans to leave. They will not give us the benefit of their understanding for investigating and prosecuting the offenders. They will not draw a distinction between the rarity of such a massacre with the commonplace tactics of the enemy who routinely carry out such slaughters as a matter of course. Confidence in American arms will decline and distrust of American assistance will rise. If the propagandists here and in the Arab world have anything to say about it, Haditha will be remembered as the catalyst for American withdrawal not only from Iraq, but from the entire Middle East.

Would this be so bad?

Screamed about by protesters, shown endlessly on television news, My Lai and the court-martial of one of the perpetrators, Lt. William Calley, provided the final political nail in the coffin of American involvement in Vietnam. We withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, abandoning our allies and hanging our heads in shame. This is the political result the left wants from Haditha, and we cannot allow it to happen for one very big reason. The Vietnam War ended in Vietnam, leaving America incapable of taking action in defense of itself or its allies for decades. The end of the war against the terrorist nations won’t occur in Iraq, and we must be prepared - psychologically and politically - to continue the fight. When we lost Vietnam the enemy didn’t follow us home. Radical Islamists will. If they win, we will literally lose America.

The stakes are indeed high. Back in 1975 there was no internet, not much in the way of conservative views reaching the bulk of the American people. But things are different today. And all of us must make a supreme effort to keep trying to frame Haditha and put it in the proper context. The left loves metaphors. It makes their jobs of undermining the war so much easier. Let’s deny them that propaganda tool by continuing to place Haditha in perspective at every opportunity.

UPDATE

Allah shows up Keith Olberman and links to a couple of interesting articles in Time and WaPo on the cover-up angle. I’m not sure how they can actually charge “negligence” if an officer higher up in the chain of command couldn’t divine a cover up by junior officers based on incident reports. Should such an officer have to follow up on every instance where a civilian is killed?

I’m not sure if there’s a practical way to do it, but one might think that such a regime would instill a little confidence in the Iraqi people.

Also read John Cole’s piece, highlighting the excellent article by WaPo imbed Arwa Damon who Allah also mentions.

The Commissar warns us all about not shrinking from the massacre and its implications while taking a blogger to task for suggesting that we wait until any courts martial verdicts are reached.

The self-policing blogosphere in action.

Al Gore is a truly liberated soul.

Bursting the bonds of earthly manners and morals, Gore has transcended his lowly origins as an American politician and has entered the rarefied stratosphere of cultural and political godhood. He is worshipped as a prophet, a doomsayer on global warming, especially in Europe where the secular masses need someone or something to activate their “God Gene” - at least until Sharia law arrives in a couple of decades. Then, our European cousins will get all the “God” they can handle…and then some.

These Euro-weenies nearly swooned in admiration when our transmogrified Al turned up at the Cannes Film Festival - not quite as anti-American as Hollywood but only because the attendees are too busy preening for the international paparazzi and participating in an endless, orgiastic, self congratulatory seance about how clever and beautiful they truly are.

Al was one of the brightest lights on display at this gussied up cattle call thanks to his starring role in the anti-capitalist, anti-globalization movie An Inconvenient Truth. As we all know, there are many “inconvenient truths” in the world including the fact that Al Gore is a solipsistic nincompoop with the brains of a warthog and the personality of a three toed sloth. The glitterati in Europe went ga-ga over the film, largely because, as Gore readily admits, it “speaks truth to power” by spreading propaganda and lies about climate change:

“…I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”

(HT: Maggies Farm)

We should actually amend Gore’s admission to “speaking scary lies to frighten the masses.” In other words, the sky may not be falling but if we all sacrifice our first born to Gaia, we may stop it from happening anyway. This went over very well with that segment of the population that longs for the days of horse drawn carriages and using whale oil for indoor illumination. Maybe New Bedford can make a comeback in the coming years as the center for Shamu killing.

Basking in this hagiagraphic halo courtesy of the socialist press, our Al has also demonstrated that he hasn’t forgotten how to trash the United States while on foreign soil - something that he and Jimmy Carter have become so adept at doing that they are now the most sought after anti-American Americans in the world, eclipsing even the long shadows of Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark. Just yesterday, Gore delivered a few brave broadsides at President Bush and, by extension, the United States. Dissing the office he so rightly was denied while proving his cowardice by doing it in Great Britain, Gore gave a curious assessment of what is wrong with the Administration:

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as “a renegade band of rightwing extremists”.
In an interview with the Guardian today, the former vice-president calls himself a “recovering politician”, but launches into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming.

Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election, Mr Gore says: “If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right.”

What “thing” Gore is talking about remains undefined. If he is talking about the freely elected government of the United States of America, I daresay someone should sit the former inventor of the internet and model for Love Story down and lecture him on the efficacy of democratic rule. As a man of the left, however, there is never an electoral defeat of liberal ideas. Either the American people are too stupid to realize how truly good and noble their potential liberal masters are or the vote is rigged by evil conservatives and their buddies in giant corporations. Anything else is unthinkable. Why, being rejected at the ballot box because of their loony ideas would be like rejecting peace, love, and unsustainable tax increases.

What is it about being overseas that seems to bring this hatred out in Mr. Gore? Maybe its no fluoridation in the water. Perhaps its the dearth of “chunky monkey” ice cream. Or it could be that Gore just doesn’t have the common decency to keep his mouth shut so that the Anti-American left in Europe won’t have the ammunition to trash the United States and make it harder for the left leaning governments of Europe to deal with us. Having Jimmy Carter running around the world like a global electoral fruit fly, flitting hither and thither with his pronouncements about elections in Venezuela and Iran actually being models of democratic contests is one thing. No one really thinks of Carter as being an American citizen anymore. He has given himself over to the thugs and enemies of freedom so completely, that he has become the third world tyrant’s favorite enabler.

But Gore should know better. Even during the worst of the Clinton scandals, former executive branch employees Bush and Quayle never dared utter the kind of wild, out of control claptrap that passes for political analysis and that is eagerly lapped up by the lickspittle left overseas. Alluding to “renegade right wing extremists” is so over the top, so laughably idiotic that only the simple minded, the deluded, and the certifiably insane actually agree. For in truth, while Bush may be a lot of things (and not all of them flattering), accusing the United States government of being a “renegade band of right wing extremists” under his leadership sounds more like General Sheridan describing the Indian wars of the 1870’s.

Like it or not (and most conservatives don’t like it), the Bush Administration has been a moderately conservative President governing closer to the middle than the left will ever give him credit for. One need only look at his Supreme Court picks to realize that both Roberts and Alito are fully in the mainstream of conservative jurisprudence - a fact that galls liberals to no end since anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy is considered a conservative extremist. And if I mention the words “Prescription Drug Plan” the first thing that comes to your mind should be “statist boondoggle” not “right wing extremism.”

Perhaps we should yank Mr. Gore’s passport and declare him an enemy combatant. That way, he could preach about global warming to the gimlet eyed jihadists at Guantanamo rather than bothering us with his fear mongering and anti-American rants.

At least he’d almost be on foreign soil when he did so.

UPDATE

Dean Esmay points out that Gore also was the first to make comparisons of right wingers with Nazis (”Digital Brownshirts). I guess “renegad right wing extremists” should be considered an improvement then, huh?

Shakespear’s Sister:

He still swears he’s not running. We’ll see. I don’t believe it for a second. I’ve wanted no one as my president besides Al Gore since I was 16 years old; I have always been convinced we needed him—flaws and all—and I’ve never been more sure about that than I am now. And I think he feels the same, whether he’s ready to admit it or not.

Methinks she is trying to give hagiography a bad name.

Joe Gandleman offers some curious analysis:

Has Al Gore stuck his foot in his mouth or has he articulated a view that even some Republicans may be privately saying?

Wha? Run that by me again?

I talk to a lot of Republicans - privately and otherwise - and the idea that this Administration is made up of “renegade right wing extremists” proves that Mr. Gandleman should set the kool aid down on the table very carefully and walk away. Outside of the Lincoln Chafee wing of the Republican party - both of them - there’s nary a Republican soul who thinks this President or this Administration is too “right wing” or “extremist” in any way, shape, or form.

As a genuine right wing extremist (according to my critics, anyway) I can vouch for that.

Almost unthinkable six months ago, the improving prospects of a Democratic takeover of the House and perhaps even the Senate has many observers trying to gauge what the loss of power for Republicans would mean in the short term as well as how such an event might impact the Presidential election in 2008.

First of all, I feel compelled to point out that we are still five months away from the election, an eternity in politics. As such, prognosticating the results can be compared to trying to predict the weather 100 years from now. This fact doesn’t seem to stop Al Gore from predicting doomsday so I’m going to put my two cents in on what a Democratic House might do both institutionally and legislatively.

As far as the Democrats chances, at this point you would have to say they have a 1 in 3 chance of being successful in capturing the 15 seats necessary to take over the House while their odds are considerably less in winning the 5 seats it would take to force the Senate to change hands. The Republicans have several chances to pick up Senate seats that will offset some of their losses, making a Democratic takeover of the upper house a longshot indeed. Only a seismic shift in the way Americans view government would give the Democrats that kind of victory, something that no poll is suggesting. In fact, many bedrock Democratic ideas are still wildly unpopular in the country - a fact that may turn out to be the saving grace for Republicans in the end.

That said, there is a general feeling of disgust in the country that goes far beyond any negative feelings people have toward George Bush. In fact, if the Democrats persist in trying to make the election into a referendum on Bush, the Republicans would probably still hold on to power in the House. This is because such efforts usually fail. It failed for Republicans in 1998 as it failed for Democrats in 1982 when President Reagan’s approval numbers were in the upper 30’s. The only recent success of such a strategy occurred in 1974 when Democrats gained 52 seats in the House running against Nixonian corruption.

But Americans are restless with incumbents who appear to place themselves in a superior position to the people they purport to represent. The various scandals involving both Democrats and Republicans reinforce that notion with Republicans taking more heat because there are simply more of them.

What this leads to is an increase in the number of House races that are placed in the “competitive” column rather than being considered “safe.” And if the Democrats are smart and can choose which races gives them the best opportunity for a pick-up, they can target resources and perhaps tip the balance in enough of the newly competitive races to bring them victory.

To be sure, most analysts including Evans-Novak, Charlie Cook, Stan Greenberg, as well as pollsters like Rasumussen believe that in order for the Democrats to succeed, just about every seat that is seriously “in play” would have to break for the Democrats on election day. At present, the Democrats have identified 22 such seats and appear to be ready to sink most of their financial and organizational resources into those contests. Considering that Republicans have a chance to pick up at least 5 and perhaps 7 open and competitive seats of their own, one can see why despite all the talk about the Democrat’s large lead in the so-called “generic ballot” for the House, their chances for a takeover remain much less than 50-50.

If the Democrats were to take control of the House, there would, of course, be massive changes ahead. As the Republicans played parliamentary tricks to increase their advantage in Committees, I would expect the Democrats to do the same. This would mean that even though the Democrat’s majority would be razor thin, they would pack Committees with much larger majorities - especially on vital Committees like Ways and Means and Armed Services. I would also expect Democrats to play fast and loose with how floor votes were conducted as well as imitating Republicans in the way that amendments could be offered to bills under consideration. In short, all the the parliamentary shenanigans that Republicans have used over the past decade to maximize their narrow majority will come back to haunt them institutionally on the House floor and in the Committee rooms.

And in those rooms, we will have a parade of Bush aides answering the dozens of subpoenas that many Committees and Sub-Committees will be issuing in conjunction with enough investigations to keep the press and the Democrats busy for years. Both current Minority Leader Pelosi and ranking Judiciary Committee member Conyers swear that they will not initiate impeachment proceedings against the President. This is a crock. Their investigations of the executive branch will inevitably lead them to advancing one or more of their conspiracy theories about Iraq that will almost certainly result in the full House voting to initiate impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee. I would predict that the Democrats will give themselves a comfortable majority in that Committee - enough to quickly vote out one or two articles of impeachment by next summer.

As for legislation, forget it. Any Democratic initiatives on health care are doomed to failure. They may seek to strengthen some environmental legislation like the Clean Air Act as well as address global warming with CO2 emission standards - both may pass but probably vetoed by the President.

Minimum wage legislation would get a boost as well as - more veto fodder for Bush. A roll back of the tax cuts would also be attempted (if I were in charge of White House stationary supplies, I would make sure to lay in good supply of veto pens). An attack on some other pet Bush initiatives like No Child Left Behind and the Prescription Drug Plan may succeed in that Bush might agree to some necessary alterations as a compromise.

And unless significant progress has been made in Iraq by next summer, I have no doubt that the Democrats would seek to pull a Viet Nam and try to cut off funding for our operations there. At the very least, they will seek to gain control of the conflict in some way by using the power of the purse strings.

So much for “the unitary executive.” I don’t imagine we’ll be hearing much from our leftist friends about the “balance of power” between the executive and legislative branches as Congress seeks to usurp the executive’s authority on any number of matters.

Would anything good come of a Democratic takeover of the House? Perhaps by 2008, it would make people long for Republicans being back in control - at least, that appears to be one aspect of the so-called Tapscottian strategy (named after Heritage fellow and blogger Mark Tapscott) that gives Republicans a reason to stay home this November. Mark is a very smart fellow, but this is stupid. Without the “culture of corruption” to run against, the rules of incumbency would reassert themselves and even Democrats in marginally Republican districts would be enormously difficult to unseat.

Actually, Republicans would be wiser to run against the “culture of investigations” that the American people are much more likely to tire of - especially when it turns out that most of these investigations will be fishing expeditions that uncover little in the way of real corruption and instead show Democrats to be petty and spiteful politicians. To my mind, that would resonate far more with voters than any grand strategy that envisions Republicans riding to the rescue as Democrats trash the country.

One thing for sure; a Democratic victory in 2006 will make the Republican Presidential race very interesting indeed. Do the Republicans work to nominate a true blue conservative? Or do they try and split the difference in the electorate by nominating a Guiliani or even a McCain? I think that a Democratic victory in 2006 will weaken conservatives and allow for the nomination of a Guiliani or even a Romney as more moderate forces successfully blame stay-at-home conservatives for a 2006 election debacle.

Stranger things have happened in politics.