Right Wing Nut House

RADICAL ISLAMISTS STORM THE DANISH EMBASSY IN DAMASCUS PROTESTING AGAINST THE SCREENING OF THE 13TH WARRIOR

Enraged film goers stormed and torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus following a showing of the 1999 movie The 13th Warrior which stars Spanish born Antonio Banderas as an Arab diplomat. The film follows his rollicking adventures with a group of hard drinking, hard fighting Vikings,

Shouting “God is Great! Banderas Sucks! several hundred jihadist movie enthusiasts were objecting to the portrayal of the poet/diplomat by Banderas, based on characters in Michael Crichton’s novel, as “unrealistic and a disgrace to Islam.”

The plot centers on the banishment of Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Al Abbas Ibn Rashid Ibn Hamad (Yes, that’s really the name of the character played by Banderas) for falling in love with the Shiek’s daughter. Falling in with a motley collection of Viking warriors, he is enlisted to go to war against some cannibals who have been plaguing the Norseman’s kinsmen. Ahmed acquits himself well enough in the ensuing war and earns the respect of his Viking friends despite his prissiness and arrogance toward those who he considers his inferiors.

Some rioters seemed more interested in carrying away Havarti cheese and Norwegian cod cakes from the embassy’s kitchens rather than in protesting what others saw as a negative portrayal of Arabs by Banderas.

Munching on the contents of a can of King Oscar Sardines, one rioter complained that Banderas didn’t even look like an Arab.

“He looks like what an American thinks an Arab should look like,” said Saad Sadr, a taxidermist who lives in Damascus. “Look at me. I could have played that part with ease. I sort of look like Banderas plus I’m a real Arab.” Mr. Sadr added that he would have been very good in the action sequences since he has had recent experience wielding his sword against “infidels.”

It should be noted that Mr.Banderas is 5′ 9″, is ruggedly handsome, and has all of his teeth. Mr. Sadr is barely 5′ 4″ and in desperate need of major dental work.

Other rioters were upset with the portrayal of Arab horses compared to Viking horses in the film with some protesters complaining that the horse ridden by Banderas had an underdeveloped character and that more could have been done with the budding love story between the horse ridden by the Viking warrior Buliwyf and the beautiful white Arabian.

Apparently the main bone of contention of the rioters was that the Vikings were portrayed as far superior fighters to the smaller, weaker Arab played by Banderas.

“It is an insult to portray Arabs as smaller than infidels,” said Abu al-Assad, an unemployed “security consultant” in Damascus. “It is typical of the west to show Arabs as being small and weak. And for this, a fatwa should be issued against all westerners who participated in the making of this film.”

The theater owner who screened the offending film canceled the showing of the matinee feature Lawrence of Arabia.

“Allah knows what these madmen would have done if they found out that Anthony Quinn was born in Mexico,” he said.

It may be that someday, historians will look back on the “Holy War Against Cartoons” as something of a turning point in the larger conflict between Muslims and the west. This is because at bottom, the controversy has now moved far beyond the original complaints of Muslims against the portrayal of their religious icons in what they consider to be a disrespectful manner and has entered the realm of what shooting wars are usually about - facilitating or preventing change.

The hysteria being whipped up by Muslim religious leaders against the west (and shamelessly exploited by Islamic political leaders) is a glimpse into the soul of Islam itself and how it is a cultural imperative for the guardians of that faith to prevent at all costs this supposed slur from going unanswered. To do so would allow a tiny crack in the wall that separates Islam from the modern world. And like the unbending dogmatic faiths that have ended up in history’s dustbin before, it has always been a tiny crack which proved to be the impetus for cataclysmic change, sweeping away the old order and bring on the new.

Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the wall of a church was much more than the act of a tortured conscience rebelling against the corruptive influence of absolute power by the Roman church over the individual. It was a harbinger of the modern world itself, a clarion call for the needs of an independent mind to triumph over the slavery imposed by history, by dogma, and by a tradition that made some men masters over others thanks to their selection by the Almighty as conduits through which ordinary people might achieve paradise. Luther’s complete rejection of this cultural bête noire started a revolution he neither sought nor, in the end, supported. But his simple act cracked open a door to a brave new world that led directly to a political revolution that created more secular nation-states in Europe that were independent of Rome.

Similarly, near the end of the 20th century, the leaders of Soviet Communism were desperately trying to maintain their total control of a restive populace by trying to limit contact with western values and ideas. Enter Mikail Gorbechev who mistakenly thought he could reform communism by importing a few western concepts about freedom. To Mr. Gorbechev’s amazement, his reform measures rather than tamping down dissent actually let loose a flood of discontents that eventually led to the destruction of the Soviet state as well as his own personal downfall. Gorbechev made the mistake of thinking that he could control the forces of change that, once unshackled, swept the dogmatic Soviet system away.

All it takes is a crack.

This idea has not been lost on the mullahs, the imams, and the holy men who have whipped their flocks into paroxysms of hate at European governments that dare to allow independent newspapers published in their countries to run the offending caricatures. Because for anyone to challenge the authentic word of Allah as it is revealed in the Koran is to invite questions. As history has shown, asking questions is the first step in the destruction of dogmatic faith. And since the enemy of dogma is independent thinking, once the human mind is free to inquire into one aspect of one’s faith, there is nothing to stop it from further enlightenment. For the religious tyrants who seek to control the thinking of their charges, there can be nothing worse.

There has been much debate as to whether or not Islam can co-exist with the idea of a secular society. Our experience in America would seem to answer that question in the affirmative. But America is very different than Europe both in its tolerance for religious differences and its sheer size that tends to allow small minorities to simply disappear into the vastness of its culture. Recent studies show that there may be only 3 million Muslims in America or about 1% of the total population. Compare that to the 7 million Muslims in France that make up more than 10% of its population. I daresay that if there were 30 million Muslims in America instead of 3 million, the influence of Islam on our secular society would be much greater. And our reaction to the current controversy would probably be very different as well.

Despite our protestations that we in the west are not at war with Islam but rather a “perversion” of the religion by radicals, the fact is our enemies have no such illusions. They correctly see the conflict as one between the modern world (as represented by Christianity and Judaism) and the world as it is revealed to them in the Koran. This is why there is so little outrage by the rest of Islam’s 1.3 billion adherents to the barbarities carried out in the name of Allah by the jihadists. While the overwhelming majority of Moslems may in fact fret over the image of Islam as it is presented to the world by the radicals, they nevertheless offer silent assent to their tactics and the war itself. No amount of obfuscation, no apologia can alter that basic fact; worldwide, Moslems are on the side of the jihadists and against the west.

What can be done? Can Islam “reform” in any meaningful way so that it can co-exist with societies whose members don’t buy into the Koran’s view of the world? The answer today has to be a resounding no. Unless and until Islam releases its stranglehold on the minds of its adherents, it will be a threat to the ideas embodied in western civilization that realizes that in order to free the soul, one must first free the mind.

UPDATE

Go immediately to Michelle Malkin’s site and see what the we’re up against. She has a series of outrageous photos of ordinary Muslims in full cry against the concept of free speech as it is practiced in the west

Jeff Goldstein:

Orientalism (in the sense Said envisioned it), in short, has become a convenient de facto intellectual totalitarianism—one that, when combined with our western history of guilt over colonial adventures, manifest destiny, imperialism, cultural hegemony, and our status as the world’s sole hyperpower, provides a powerful liberal (in the non-partisan sense) impulse for granting autonomy, and for promoting a soft cultural relativism.

Unsurprisingly, this whole philosophical movement—insofar as it was based first on essentialism and then, once the group could be defined down that way, to the excommunication of apostates to the official narrative of the essentialist who won the internal battle over defining the official ethnic and political narrative—was destined to end in a will to power. Which is what happens when universalism—even in its softest and most agreed upon form (for instance, it could simply be a contractual, contingent universalism, to satisfy the sensibilities of post modernists)—is discarded in favor of the notion that individualism (the base point at which human universalism as an ideal is at its strongest, the point that Bush has cleverly made over and over again in his speeches) is to be surrendered to collectivism (the point at which the will of the most powerful within the group is always ascendant, and where apostacy, which we might call disagreement, is a legitimate offense), comes to mimic a kind of individualism by united front: “The Arab Street.” “The Jihadist.” Etc. These are types taken as individuals.

I don’t like to be too gushy, but Goldstein is a treasure, a precious resource of clear, logical, and incisive thinking. Reading his entire critique, one is left with a soaring heart and joyous soul. He is Saint George doing battle with the dragons of deconstructionism and relativism. It is a tragedy that his is such a lonely voice for we need an army of Goldsteins to combat those whose prideful spite at the civilization that has nurtured them and given them so much should now go AWOL in her hour of need.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Watching the President’s State of the Union speech one could be forgiven for coming away with the impression only one side of the House chamber was grounded in reality. The contrast between what the President was saying on the podium and the pouting, grimacing, dour faced Democrats, who resembled squirming little children getting antsy during a long church service, was extraordinary.

It only served to highlight the opposition party’s need for an intervention of sorts – one that would save them from their own folly and bring them back into the mainstream of American thought.

In fact, one could compare the plight of the Democratic Party with the problems associated with children whose schools are so bad that federal intervention is necessary in order to correct the situation. It is in that spirit that I propose a brand new federal program geared toward helping our friends across the aisle catch up to the rest of America in their attitudes toward security, the war, and perhaps most importantly, what decade we live in.

Entitled the “No Democrat Left Behind Act,” such a program would serve the dual purpose of bringing Democrats gradually into the 21st century as well as disabusing them of several inaccurate historical analogies that only serve to impede their progress toward becoming useful, contributing members of society.

For indeed, it is history itself that has left the Democratic Party in the dust. The march of freedom across the globe, that began in the 1980’s with democracy’s triumphs in Latin American as well as the fall of the Wall, was opposed by that Party virtually every step of the way. From opposition to Ronald Reagan’s successful efforts to bring freedom to Nicaragua and El Salvador to their refusal to support our defense buildup that eventually helped bring down the Soviet empire, Democrats have consciously and deliberately placed themselves on the wrong side of history.

They have preferred maintaining the status quo rather than support the revolutionary tides that have swept across the planet bringing freedom to hundreds of millions of people.

It will be a challenge to bring Democrats up to speed on what is really going on in the world. After all, a party whose symbol could very well be changed from the donkey to an ostrich almost by definition refuses to engage the truth on any meaningful level. Where most of us see opportunity, Democrats see failure. Where the majority of Americans understand what is at stake in places like Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and other spots where democracy is slowly taking root, the Democrats whine about how hard the process is, how much work needs to be done.

Can anyone imagine Franklin Roosevelt complaining about the uphill battle faced by America as she tried to lift herself out of a searing economic depression not to mention defeating the Nazis, the most powerful military machine the world had seen up to that point?

In this respect, the Democratic Party has truly lost its way. The historical titans Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy all understood in the marrow of their bones that liberating the human soul by working tirelessly for freedom and justice was a goal worth pursuing for a great Party and a great nation. Nowadays, their successors have made cowering in the face of threats, genuflecting to tyrants, and timidity in engaging the world beyond our shores a large part of their party’s platform.

For the Democrats, it’s almost as if the world stopped spinning sometime in the 1970’s when the Party was at the pinnacle of its power. Dominating Congress, the courts, the culture, the media, and the national conversation, Democrats were in a position enjoyed by no party in American history except perhaps the post Civil War Republicans, whose similar domination of the Reconstruction Era not surprisingly produced similar results: a Party whose reason for being went from trying to effect change to trying to hang onto power.

This doesn’t necessarily explain why history passed the Democrats by except that it revealed what happens when a party’s energies are directed toward maintaining power rather than trying to solve the nation’s problems. For Democrats, the 1980’s made them painfully aware of the destructive nature inherent in their statist solutions to poverty, the economy, and foreign policy.

For example, to accept “The Reagan Doctrine” which supported anti-Communist insurgencies wherever they might be would have meant admitting that their opposition to American victory in Viet Nam was mistaken. So too their opposition to the arms build up of the 1980’s which took federal funds earmarked for rapidly expanding the social “safety net” and not only ate away at the notion that these programs were working as intended but also transferred federal priorities to national defense.

Their dire warnings of nuclear holocaust and starving children came to naught. Like two ships passing in the night, they never realized that the world they had dominated and were familiar with had changed forever.

They were vouchsafed a breathing spell in the 1990’s when the world allowed America a short respite from her responsibilities during the Clinton years. Intervening militarily in places like Bosnia and Kosovo where there were no real American interests contributed to the illusion that only the selfless application of American power could be justified. Meanwhile, heads were rolling in Rwanda and Osama Bin Laden took the mettle of America in Somalia and found us wanting. Engaging the Palestinians and their terrorist leader Yasser Arafat did nothing to assuage the anger of radical Islamists who saw our support for Israel as well as the world domination of our culture and ideals as a threat to their own hold on power. So while Democrats diddled, Bin Laden planned.

Even attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1996, our embassies in Africa in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000 failed to move the Democratic Party toward embracing a security posture consistent with the threats faced by the United States. They continued to support President Clinton’s drastic cuts in defense spending which went from over $320 billion in 1987 to $288 billion in 2000. At a time when our enemies were gathering forces to attack us, we were unilaterally disarming, enjoying a “peace dividend” that not only proved ephemeral but an unconscionable danger to our republic.

It is a mystery why 9/11 did not rouse the Democrats and bring them, however unwillingly, into the modern world. Their support for the invasion of Afghanistan as well as the initial invasion of Iraq involved little more than the cold calculation of power politics. They realized that voting against either of those operations would be used against them by their Republican opponents come election time.

This fig leaf has now been removed and their fecklessness regarding both of those operations has been revealed as just a continuation of their mindless opposition to the broad application of American power. In retrospect, it is hard to imagine what kind of a world we would have if a few votes in Florida hadn’t been counted for George Bush. Given recent evidence that Saddam’s contacts with Osama Bin Laden were more extensive than first realized, could Osama, like the terrorist mastermind of the Achille Lauro incident, Abu Abbas, have taken up residence in Baghdad following an operation to oust him from Afghanistan?

And what of the Taliban? Would a President Gore have gone all the way for regime change in that cesspool of terrorism and tyranny? Alternative history scenarios are fraught with uncertainty. But given the Democratic Party’s historic myopia involving Islamic fundamentalism, there is a good chance that a Democratic President would have settled for simply kicking Bin Laden out of Afghanistan and scrambling his command structure. Where that would have left the Afghan people would not have entered his mind.

Our fictitious federal program to help Democrats adjust to their status as a minority party and drag them into the 21st century would necessarily involve much pain and suffering. It would mean our leftist friends would have to give up cherished beliefs and a wrongheaded worldview. But this would only be a first step. For in trying to relearn the history of the last 30 years, Democrats would be forced to confront the consequences of their obstructionism. And perhaps, just perhaps, at the very least they could learn how to get out of the way of history rather than trying to hamper our efforts to change it.

Mid-winter in the Midwest is a dark and dreary season. Where once the prospect of snow brought a tingle of anticipation at the prospect of reviving memories of childhood play and the excitement in the changing season, it now breeds a sense of dread; a depressing realization that soon it will be time to haul the snowblower out of the garage and brave the wind sweeping across what remains of the prairie in order to clear the sidewalks so that the snow Nazis ensconced in local government don’t cite you for failing to be a good citizen.

This used to be a free country. You used to have the perfect freedom to be a rotten member of the community and not shovel a snowflake the entire winter. Used to be all you’d get would be dirty looks from your neighbors. Now the protective nannies in local government will issue you a ticket and slap a fifty dollar fine on your backside for being an unhelpful neighbor.

Next thing you know, they’ll be publishing the names of “Snow Removal Scofflaws” on the front page of the local paper in order to shame you into action.

Another aspect of enduring a long winter is that since most of us don’t go to Florida or Arizona for relief, one’s mood makes the journey south for us by taking a turn for the worse right about this time of year. Midwesterners get so tired of dealing with Old Man Winter that they become snippy and short tempered. Their natural persnicketiness morphs into a grumpy gruffness so that trying to carry on a conversation becomes an exercise in monosyllabic futility:

ME: Hi
Next Door Neighbor: Ummph.
ME: Yea?
NDN: Pftttt!
ME: Sheesh!
NDN: ARRGH!
ME: Unhuh.
NDN: F***!
ME: Nosh*t?
NDN: Hellyeah.
ME: Seeya.

After all, it’s hard to carry on a conversation when you’re wearing 20 pounds of outerwear to ward off the cold. You try saying anything when you’re burdened with two mufflers, earmuffs, a ski mask, and that shawl that Aunt Josie crocheted for you wrapped around your head . I guarantee you’ll want to keep the chit chat to a minimum.

In addition to our being vulnerable to this seasonal grumpiness, we become rather insular about our politics. Are the streets plowed? Won’t someone come out and fix these goddamn potholes? Do they really have to use so much salt? Politicians then have long realized that the dead of winter is not the time to approach Midwesterners and ask for their support for much of anything. This is why the President’s State of the Union speech pretty much fell on deaf ears out my way last night. It isn’t so much that we aren’t interested in what’s going on in Washington, it’s just that most people are so heartily sick and tired of the mud wrestling that politics has become that they find it almost as wearisome as dealing with the winter. One gets the sense that they blame the Republicans for many things but see the Democrats as unreasonable obstructionists.

At bottom, there is a general feeling of unease at the direction the country is going but they can’t put their finger on it. The see the economy doing fairly well but fear for the future of their jobs and businesses. They see the war in Iraq going badly and wish it was over but are fiercely protective of their sons and daughters who are fighting it. They worry about their health insurance - if they have any - and are genuinely afraid of catastrophic illness. And many wish social issues like abortion would just go away; not because they don’t have opinions on them but rather they see them as too divisive.

And that is the nub of the Midwestern critique of the state of the nation; the partisan food fights that dominate the news are confusing and depressing. They look to the President for leadership and, like all Americans, see what they want to when examining the person of George Bush and project their own fears and hopes on to his Presidency.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you don’t get the sharp edged extremes in opinion here than you would in other places which only goes to show that we here in the Midwest tend to be a little more realistic about Bush than his base of opposition in the east and his base of support in the south and west. Being an eminently practical folk, we like the man’s common sense but worry about his certitude at times. It used to be called “putting on airs” but is now likened to arrogance. This goes down well when Bush talks about national security, less so when speaking about domestic issues. Trust in the President has worn a little thin but when talking to people about the War on Terror, they seem grateful that Bush is making what appears to be a good faith effort to protect the country. On the war in Iraq, the President is in better shape than pollsters and analysts think. Ask people here any of the standard questions on the war and you get the boilerplate Democratic talking points in response; Bush lied, the war isn’t worth it, we never should have gone in, etc. But unlike pollsters, if you keep talking to them, a slightly different answer emerges.

There is a huge reservoir of support for the men and women in uniform. Everyone knows someone - a family member, a friend, a neighbor’s son or daughter - in the military. And while they are desperately worried for their safety, I can’t find a single person in the groups I run in (most of them can hardly be described as “conservative”) who believes they should come home until the job is done. And they have their own definition of victory that matches up pretty well with what the President has been saying although the feeling that some kind of timetable for withdrawal should be established is pretty popular.

In short, while agreeing with the Democrat’s critique of the war, they disagree with their prescription for ending it. There is also general agreement that the media is deliberately withholding good news from Iraq. They know this because they get letters from the front telling them of an improving situation. And - bad news for Democrats - even registered Democrats think that their own party is being defeatist on the war. Some independents I’ve talked to are even disgusted with what they see as the left playing politics with the conflict.

This is about what you’d expect from a district with a Republican Congressman who regularly gets close to 70% of the vote. But I think even the Democrats I know would agree with my assessment of their opinions. There is none of the rabid Bush hatred among Democrats that I know although there is certainly a strong dislike for his personal style and his policies. In other words, horns but no tail.

From a practical political point of view, the President is in trouble but not overwhelmingly so. Republicans however, are in a real pickle. There is so much disgust with their spending habits, their perceived arrogance, the corruption (Note to Kos; corruption is a bi-partisan issue in the heartland), and a “business as usual” attitude that some long time Republicans I know say they’ll never vote Republican again. This seems to be reflected in recent polling that suggests unless something happens between now and election day to change the political climate, Republicans may wake up to a huge surprise the day after the election.

This Washington Post - ABC News poll shows the Democrats ahead on a generic ballot by 12%. It is unclear how that translates district by district. But I suspect that at the very least it brings more seats into play for the Democrats. And that can only spell trouble for a party that may have a hard time energizing its base to show up and support it on election day next November.

If the Democrats had their act together, I suspect they could play upon this uneasiness felt by voters and turn it into a huge election issue. But since the party can’t even agree on where the bathroom is, it’s hardly likely that they will be able to capitalize on this opening granted them by Republicans.

In the end, as it stands now I suspect that the Republicans will barely hang on to the House and may come very close to losing the Senate. And if things go south in Iraq or some economic crisis is precipitated by an oil shock caused by the Iranian crisis, all bets are off and we could very well end up with a Democratic majority - one that would move for impeachment of Bush within 60 days of the new Congress being gaveled to order.

Pity poor Nancy Pelosi. She, like the rest of her Democratic colleagues, has huge problems when it comes to criticizing the NSA intercept program in order to make political hay. On the one hand, they can’t be seen as soft on national security so you never hear them calling for the program to be terminated. On the other hand, they have to pander to their cockeyed base of support so you never hear them saying that the program was necessary.

It’s almost enough to make a Republican giggle.

Legal and unnecessary? Sounds like a great argument to make if you’re not running for anything. Unfortunately for Pelosi, she and her Democratic camp followers have to face the voters and are desperately flailing about looking for an issue that will prove a magic talisman that if rubbed hard enough, will bring them victory at the polls next November.

Judging by this interview with the Associated Press, Pelosi is coming to the realization that the NSA intercept program ain’t it:

Pelosi did not say the NSA’s surveillance program was illegal. But she said the administration should follow the procedures in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows government lawyers to ask a secretive court for warrants for surveillance in the United States during national security investigations.

“If you say … this is for a narrow universe of calls, there is absolutely no issue with getting a FISA warrant for that,” said Pelosi, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and has been involved for the past 13 years in overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies.

“It is when you go beyond that, that it becomes a challenge,” she said in the interview Friday. “The president says he is not going beyond that, so why can’t he obey the law?”

Pelosi declined to offer specifics about warrants granted, but she said the administration already has “the mother of all FISAs which enables them to do a lot.”

If Pelosi is going to hang her hat on the technical requirements of getting a warrant through FISA, she will probably be disabused of this line of attack by Attorney General Gonzalez who will appear at hearings called by Senator Specter’s Judiciary Committee starting on February 6. Without being able to get into the details of how the program worked, Gonzalez will still be able to cite plenty of case law that shows the President not only had the authority under the Constitution to act but that bypassing the FISA court was both legal and justifiable under the circumstances.

Responding to a New York Times hit piece on the President’s legal justifications for the NSA intercept program, John Hindraker summarizes Pelosi’s dilemma:

The Times quotes liberal critics of the administration repeatedly through the article, so why is it suddenly so coy on this critical point? Because there is no law professor in America–actually, no law student in America–who would allow his name to be associated with the Times’ indefensible characterization of the 2002 opinion of the FISA appellate court. The Times tries to suggest that that court’s statement that the President has the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes lends only debatable support to the administration’s case because “some legal analysts say” that the court was only talking about precedents that pre-dated the passage of FISA in 1978; therefore, the court’s conclusion may not be operative post-FISA. That suggestion is completely untenable. The FISA appellate court specifically rejected the theory argued for by the Times:

We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.

No doubt the Democrats on the Committee will ignore this kind of evidence and, like Pelosi, raise the specter of dragons hiding in the mist to intimate dark and foreboding evil doings being perpetrated by the White House.

Unfortunately for the Dems, Saint George only has to slay real dragons - and the people agree with him judging by this NY Times-CBS Poll:

In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at “Americans that the government is suspicious of;” they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at “ordinary Americans.”

I would say it’s a pretty safe bet that if you’re in contact with someone overseas who has sympathy for or works with terrorists, that would make the government suspicious of you.

Pelosi and her pals can read these polls as well as you or I which makes her statements on the issue begin to sound more and more like the protestations of a survivor of the Titanic who complains that there is no first class service available in the lifeboats.

At the same time that they realize they can’t call for the suspension or elimination of a program that the majority of Americans see as an effective tool in keeping the homeland safe, neither can they come out in support of it due to the rabid opposition by the feral dogs inhabiting the fever swamps of the party to anything that proves effective in the War on Terror done by the President.

So we’re left with the spectacle of Pelosi gingerly walking the plank hoping that her crazed brethren don’t push her over the edge by demanding that she and her colleagues call for the elimination of the intercept program.

This is why this issue will fade with the coming of the blooming cherry blossoms in DC. It is unlikely that the court challenges against the program will make any headway for the foreseeable future and as a political issue, “that dog won’t hunt” as Zell Miller might say.

Don’t feel too bad for Nancy and her trapped friends. There’s always hope that the Republicans in Congress will find a way to hand them the key to their handcuffs and send them on their merry way to victory in November.

Can the Republicans be that stupid? Stay tuned.

Joseph J. Ellis is one of my favorite historians. The Mount Holyoke professor won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2001 with his fascinating story of the men who created America called Founding Brothers. And his book American Sphinx that looked at the towering figure of Thomas Jefferson with a freshness and vigor that earned him a 1997 National Book Award is also well worth a read.

But in an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, Ellis makes a mistake made by many historians when he tries to put the events of 9/11 in perspective while the smell of burning jet fuel and charred bodies is still fresh in the nostrils of many Americans. In other words, Ellis is attempting to contextualize an event that for all intents and purposes is still “news” and therefore immune to the kind of analysis that even an excellent historian like Ellis can generate.

I believe it was the Civil War historian Bruce Catton who half-joked that mid 20th century historians of the French L’Académie française declined to study any event later than the Napoleonic Wars. They believed that it took 100 years for all the personal reflections, reminisces, and correspondence to see the light of day hence, it was useless to try and piece together what actually happened during any given time in history without the passage of time.

There is something to be said for that kind of attitude toward history. And when looking at the events of 9/11, it is tempting to draw lessons and make historical analogies that a good historian like Ellis would normally eschew. Allowing a single event to ripen and age in the minds of the people ordinarily brings a kind of consensus as to where it fits into the national narrative. This is when “perspective” can be imprinted on the national psyche and give depth and meaning to a single event. History is all about having 20-20 hindsight. And the time and distance we move from any single point allows for emotions to settle and memory to fade so that the historian can then place into a context relevant to our personal experience events that when they occurred generated passions that could cloud the judgment and roil the emotions of both the historian and reader.

It’s bad enough that Ellis is attempting such a feat of legerdemain regarding 9/11 itself. But he also attempts to place the Administration’s efforts at homeland security in context with other measures taken by Presidents during national crisis and finds the comparison with Bush wanting. It may be that someday (and let’s hope that for America there will in fact be a “someday”) future historians will find much to criticize regarding the President’s aggressive domestic security policies. But with so much hidden from the average citizen by necessity, it seems to me to be a futile exercise to attempt such analogies now. We know quite a bit about what went into Adam’s decision to introduce the hated Alien and Sedition Acts. I daresay we don’t know squat about the NSA intercept program compared to what we will know in 100 years.

Simply put, Ellis is dead wrong in trying to train his historian’s eye on 9/11:

Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

I appreciate Professor Ellis’s disclaimer regarding “definitive answers” about ranking 9/11 as a threat to our survival. And if it is debate he wants, he’s got it.

Ellis takes several historical events - the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the Cold War - as events that were more of a threat to our survival than 9/11. I find the choices made by the professor interesting but would argue that only the Cold War was a true threat to American survival. There is a school of thought that argues there was no way American independence could have been denied, that even if Washington’s Continental army had been destroyed, resistance would have continued until the British gave up and went home.

A similar argument can be made about the War of 1812. The British may have temporarily been able to hang on to the Northwest territories and perhaps even have occupied the mid-Atlantic states for a while. But as the Treaty of Ghent proved, the British were not interested in reestablishing colonies or maintaining much of a presence in North America. The question of New England secession is an interesting one, best dealt with by author Orson Scott Card in his Tales of Alvin Maker series. But for the same reason that even if the northern states had given up at some point during the Civil War the United States would have come back together at some point. The ties of history, commerce, and culture were too natural and too strong to break, even by war.

That leaves the Cold War where the United States could have been destroyed in less than a day. Ellis specifically calls to mind the Cuban Missile Crisis which in many ways marked the apogee of Cold War tensions. I can’t argue that 9/11 was a greater threat to national security than the Cuban missile crisis. But I can certainly point out that the professor is comparing apples and oranges by failing to differentiate between an event like the Cuban missile crisis and the ongoing threat posed by those who perpetrated the attack on the Trade Centers. Taking the Cold War in its totality and putting it into the context of an existential threat to the survival of the United States is all well and good. But even here, given the implacable nature of our enemies compared to the Russians who after all were not willing to destroy themselves in order to defeat us, one has to take into account the fanaticism of the jihadists in order to appreciate the current threat - something I don’t believe the professor does.

Not content however to rank the threats to our national life, Professor Ellis then really gets my goat by pointing out other security responses of the government to different crisis in our history:

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the “quasi-war” with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950’s, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

I will defer to the professor’s superior knowledge and judgment about how “lamentable” each of these reactions to crisis was in “retrospect.” He’s a better man than I if he can judge Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus (which I’m sure the professor is aware was only one in a series of actions President Lincoln took that violated the Bill of Rights). I prefer to look at Lincoln and FDR doing what they honestly believed must be done to safeguard the Republic. Does that make them immune from criticism? Not from a distance with that 20-20 hindsight I referred to earlier.

But the same historians and biographers who take those illustrious Americans to task for their actions initiated in the name of “national security,” rarely fail to point out the context in which those decisions were made. Can a decision like Lincoln’s to abandon 4th Amendment protections in areas of the country in rebellion be seen as both wrong and necessary? I would think that Father Abraham thought so. He knew full well he was violating the Constitution: “”To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Lincoln went on to ponder whether obeying the Supreme Court would not violate his oath of office to “preserve and protect” the country since he felt the suspension of habeas corpus to be absolutely essential to the survival of the country.

This, I believe, places President Bush’s actions in a similar light. While it is evident that Professor Ellis does not view 9/11 as the earth shattering event that many of the rest of us do (reason enough for any of us not to try and place it in historical perspective) it is also clear that he feels it is wrong to have it dominate our national security and domestic policy to the exclusion of most other issues:

What Patrick Henry once called “the lamp of experience” needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Do I detect a whiff of partisanship in the professor’s notation that there has been an “overreaction” to 9/11? And how is it possible in this context that “complacency” toward an enemy that as I write this is desperately trying to get its hands on weapons that would kill 10 times and 10 times again the 3,000 that perished that horrible day?

The reason September 11 is the “defining influence” that it has become is the recognition of the kind of enemy we face and their fanatical desire to kill as many Americans as they can regardless of the consequences to themselves. It may be that someday soon we will start calling this war something besides the War on Terror. Goodness knows that appellation is a misnomer if there ever was one. It should be known as the War Against the Darkness or the War Against Modernity. It may even become War Against Islam which is what our enemies are calling it anyway. But to say that our actions have been an “overreaction” presupposes that there is a limit to what our enemies wish to visit upon us. A look at what they say and their actions in support of those words should disabuse all but the most inward looking among us that they mean what they say and worse, are capable of making good on their bloodcurdling boasts.

Sorry professor. I admire your attempt to get a debate going on this issue. But it may be a non-starter. In order to debate the issues you outline in your article, there has to be an agreement on basic facts like whether or not we are at war and whether or not you think George Bush has horns, a tail, and is the incarnation of the devil himself. What would be the point in debating 9/11 in an historical context if the person on the other side sometimes appears to believe that those dastardly attacks never happened?

UPDATE

A couple of other views on this worth looking at.

Ranting Profs:

In other words, because when we have responded to trauma in the past, the threat has turned out to be exaggerated, and September 11 was a trauma, this threat too will turn out to be exaggerated, QED.

And, by the by, however big a pig Joe McCarthy was, I think most people have come to the conclusion by now that there really were some Communists running around. And he himself argues that they were a threat when he lists the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first tier of historical threats — those weren’t Swedes pointing missiles at us, you know.

Well said. And I was going to include her point about Jumpin’ Joe being vindicated by the Venona intercepts - cables that showed that there were literally dozens of communists at State and DoD including Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs - but I also felt the professor had a point about McCarthy’s overreaching.

Robert Schlesinger at the Huffpo has a thoughtful piece:

There is of course a strong counter-argument. The September 11 attacks brought into sharp relief the fact that we have entered a world where individuals can wield destructive power that was once reserved for nation-states.

While I obviously have my inclinations, I am not entirely comfortable with either side. But it’s still a debate worth having.

I would argue that a couple of nukes would destroy the America we live in now and replace it with something unrecognizable.

See also Ed’s rebuttal to my post in the comments.

UPDATE II

Pat Curley has a great point that I sort of surrounded but didn’t make as clearly as this:

First, let’s stop calling it “Sept. 11″. That’s one incident. Where does Pearl Harbor rate on his scale? Answer: It doesn’t; it’s a part of a larger conflict called World War II. Obviously 9-11 wasn’t as big a threat to the United States as World War II. But is Islamic terrorism as big a threat as Hitler and the Japanese? Maybe not, but the scale is not as dramatically off kilter. How many American civilians were killed by our enemies in World War II? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it was not as many as died on 9-11.

Outside of Pearl Harbor and the odd sinking of a freighter that was carrying passengers, the number of dead American civilians doesn’t come close to the number we lost on 9/11.

What has happened to the left recently?

I suppose I could ask that question every couple of days but it just seems that of late, the liberals have lost what little sense they had to begin with and have begun to de-evolve right before our eyes. Instead of becoming some souped up version of Lenin’s “New Man” who would be “altruist in spirit, communal in outlook, sacrificial in his labour for the common good,[and] boundless in his fight for world revolution,” what we’ve witnessed the past few days is the devolution of the moonbats into a modern day version of the primordial goop from which all life sprang some 4 billion years ago - a quivering, shivering, shaking, mass of jello-like goo incapable of doing anything save lie there and gurgle impotently.

Of course, this process was made easier by the fact that there is so little in the way of skeletal structure to be found in your average lefty what with their proven lack of spine as well as an absence of rock hard cohones so that their liquefaction proceeded in an accelerated manner until the libs reached their present state of being where they resemble a molded fruit salad.

Witness the “attack” on their allies in the mainstream press. In the last few days, they have jumped on the ample backside of Chrissy Matthews for blurting out the truth about the similarities in message between Osama and Michael Moore. They have whacked poor litle Katie Couric over the head for being less than precise in describing the sins of Jack Abramoff and where his money went. They have leapt down the throat of Matt Lauer for a similar crime. And they really bit the hand that feeds them when they began a nuclear war with the Washington Post over not only daring to mention “Democrats” and “Abramoff” in the same sentence but then they really went to town when the Post blog shut down comments to prevent the prying eyes of children from getting a gander at the colorful use of invective on display. After all, if you’ve seen All the President’s Men you know that the Post is a family newspaper who cut the word “tit” out of story involving Attorney General Mitchell’s suggestion on where Mrs. Graham might want to put her mamalia.

What this shows is that the liberals are very possessive of this Abramoff imbroglio. This is their scandal and anyone who says any differently is going to be tarred and feathered with the absolute worst appellation they can bestow on a target - RIGHTWINGER! It is curious that they actually believe this is an issue that will carry them to the promised land of majority status given that poll after poll shows that the American people think (correctly) that both parties are populated with the greedy, the grubby, and outright thieves who use their Congressional prerogatives to garner favors and fortune from bloodsucking lobbyists.

And we wonder why the American people are so cynical about politics?

Meanwhile, Republicans are trying their best to give their Democratic friends as much help as possible in their quest to take over the House and Senate. By refusing to stand up and be counted for anything except whatever special goody for their back home districts they can wangle from the federal government, the GOP is rapidly losing the respect and support of its political class - that’s us. Disgusted as we all have become with the overspending, the “DeLay” tactics of parliamentary gimmickry, and tired to the marrow of our bones of the pettifogging, grasping, and back room politicking while our country is at war makes being a loyal Republican much more of a chore than it should be.

But it points to a special kind of myopia on the part of the left that despite Republicans eagerly trying their best to alienate supporters, that the Kossacks, the DU’ers, and other denizens of the fever swamps have chosen this time to get possessive about a scandal that has absolutely no chance of doing anything to help them politically. We have a similar situation in the Senate with this forced filibuster of Judge Alito, something I predicted months ago. The fact is that even the mainstream of the party has become so beholden to the radicals of Code Pink, Moveon and the rest that in order to insure their own political survival, they have decided to embark on this quixotic quest to block a nomination supported by a majority of the American people and where they have no chance - no chance whatsoever - of succeeding.

We used to call this stupidity. Now these Don Quixotes are lionized in an orgy of vainglorious rhetoric. John Kerry, who has taken up blogging by posting over at Daily Kos might be excused since he obviously believes he can ride the enthusiasm and deep pockets of the Kossacks to the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. But why should other Democrats follow him over the cliff? The only sensible answer has to do with the enormous pressure placed on Democratic Senators by a hard left base that has captured and tamed the Democratic party. The will lick the boots of Code Pink because they know that having them in opposition would be political suicide.

And so watching the left’s meltdown over this past week could very well be a sign of desperation. The world is not going quite the way that it should and as a result, they have begun to eat their own. It may be feel good politics to try and correct the record every time some blow dried, brainless twit of an anchorperson gets it wrong. But we on the right can tell you from experience that there is not much you can do about mistakes arising from ignorance. And trying to posit the notion that some kind of “conservative bias” is inherent in the media is laughable. Only in the extraordinarily insular world inhabited by liberals can such a meme be taken seriously. Water doesn’t run uphill nor do major media types have a hard on for George Bush.

So instead of fighting, the left is quivering in impotent anger. Quick! Someone get a petrie dish. I want a sample of this stuff so that after the mid term elections, I can plant it and maybe some day it will grow into a normal human being…

Not. A. Chance.

Watching lefties trying to distance themselves from the taped comments of Osama Bin Laden is like watching a large mouth bass wriggling on the end of a hook; try as they might to attempt escape, they’re caught and they know it.

Witness the desperate outrage at MSNBC’s Chrissy Matthews who, in a moment of clarity on Thursday night blurted out the obvious; that Osama “sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore…” . The fact that several bloggers have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Osama’s speech could have been taken from the words spoken by several Democratic party luminaries including “war hero” Congressman John Murtha and serial liar and blowhard Moore only makes the spectacle of watching lefties hem and haw and try and change the subject that much more enjoyable.

The actually believe if they scream loud enough and long enough that this will obscure what everyone with even a passing interest in politics knows; that the deadliest enemy of the United States agrees with them and uses their own language and ideas to taunt the United States of America.

I realize that introspection is not a liberal’s long suit. Looking in a mirror and facing facts would require a modicum of humility and a desire to understand the real-world consequences of one’s rhetoric and ideas. From what I’ve read this morning about the Matthews imbroglio, it ain’t happening:

John Aravosis:

Yes, in the eyes of MSNBC, the majority of country, and most of you reading this, have a bit too much in common with a mass murderer who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11. I wonder if MSNBC’s advertisers agree that more than half of their customers are akin to Al Qaeda terrorists? I wonder how fond MSNBC’s advertisers are of sponsoring fag-jokes? A line has been crossed, and enough is enough.

Of course, Mr. Trichinosis fails to note that “a majority of the country” does not believe the war is being fought for Haliburton and Bush cronies nor do Americans believe that the War On Terror is being lost. Only lickspittles like Mr. Halitosis and other progressives like Osama Bin Laden believe such twaddle.

Jamie Wolcott:

Michael Moore didn’t bring down the towers, Howard Dean isn’t responsible for Bin Laden remaining at large, and, unlike the fisking blogger, the overwhelming majority of liberal Manhattanites didn’t lose their nerve and flee the city after 9/11. They, we, stayed put. It’s the cowardly lions who curled up into a fetal ball and remain there today, talking tough and fooling no one but themselves.

Um…No one has said Michael Moore looks like Osama or acts like Osama. What is as plain as the nose on your fleshy, misshapen face is that Michael Moore sounds like Osama, a question you clumsily avoided by throwing up so many smokescreens that if you were a New York City tavern, you would have been closed for disobeying the tobacco nazis.

The flip side, of course, is that Osama’s rhetoric and ideas do not sound like anything anyone on the right has ever said about America or the war. This makes any critique of conservative criticisms by people like Mr. Osteoporosis and Mr. Limpett pretty useless because they refuse to confront the overriding issue; a Howard Dean speech and Osama Bin Laden rant are interchangeable.

For a good laugh, here’s someone who knows all about echoing the enemy’s talking points. He did it during the Viet Nam War and he’s doing it now.

John Kerry:

You’d think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn’t have to hear this barbarian’s voice on tape. That’s what we should be talking about in America.

Yes John, you’d like the focus to be on “destroying” Osama Bin Laden - since focusing on you and your ideological compatriot’s rhetoric would reveal that he agrees with just about everything you say. And despite more awkward obfuscations like bringing up Tora Bora (it didn’t work in November of 2004…what makes you think it will work now?) as well as failing to mention the massive damage done to al Qaeda by using tactics that you have consistently opposed shows you either to be a clueless moron or a dishonest lout. Given your past history, I’ll take the latter.

I suggest the RNC take a page out of LBJ’s dirty campaign book and come up with a commercial that has Osama spouting his hate on one side of the screen with liberals on the other side saying basically the same thing. They don’t even have to run it, just release it to the cable outlets. The Democrats will do the rest by making a huge to-do about it which will have the news nets playing it around the clock until most of the country has seen it.

Dirty? I suppose from a certain point of view - the Democrats - it wouldn’t be very nice. But effective? Like LBJ’s “Daisy” commercial which ran only once, people won’t remember that it was dirty politics; they’ll remember what the commercial was all about.

Now that’s what I call Hardball.

UPDATE

Jeff Goldstein decapitates John Kerry:

[W]hat is truly astonishing about this bit of strained outrage Kerry is so desperately trying to muster is that, more that a year after the Senator’s presidential defeat, he still fancies himself capable enough a speaker to pull off rhetorical dodges that are not only obviously insincere and unconvincing to the majority of Americans (and I include intellectually honest Democrats—even those who support Kerry’s Machiaveillian attempts to shift the debate’s focus), but that he actually seems inveterately incapable of recognizing that what he is really managing to do is highlight his party’s transparent attempts to distract from the substantive point— in this case, that Usama bin Laden, in his recent audio tape release, has put together a propaganda piece that, as others have pointed out, is replete with the anti-war talking points the progressive left has spent years now fine-tuninng and market testing. In fact, the onlytruly remarkable thing about the text of bin Laden’s speech was not the message itself—we’ve been hearing it for years now, from Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan or Sean Penn or Nancy Pelosi—but rather that these talking points, having been translated into Arabic and then back into English, have managed to hold up so perfectly. No small feat, that—and a testament to the rigor of the crafting of the agitprop. Let’s see the geeks at Babelfish pull that shit off.

A lot of thought went into that Bin Laden rant by al Qaeda. And the fact that the left is accusing people of comparing the person Bin Laden to Michael Moore and other anti war protestors is telling. No one is saying Michael Moore is like a terrorist or even that he supports terrorists. We’re saying he and the terrorists sound exactly alike, a caveat the left cannot acknowledge without a huge chasm opening up beneath their feet. There’s zero chance however they will do so because as I point out above, the left is incapable of the kind of introspection necessary to arrive at the self-realization that their rhetoric has serious consequences detrimental to this country’s war effort.

See also Giacomo’s piece on Harry Belefont’s tirade. Mr. Calypso really is a tool.

It was a time of darkness and turmoil in the Empire.

Emboldened by scandal and a never ending war, the Rebel Alliance threatened the Empire’s hold on several key star systems.

Imperial Governors from across the galaxy met in the old capitol to be feted and stroked by minions of his Majesty, the Emperor. They were anxious lest they lose the privileges and prerogatives vouchsafed them by their dark lord, Darth Vader.

Fearing a revolt (and in an effort to stiffen their spines), the evil Lord reminded the Empire’s apparatchiks of the weaknesses in the Alliance:

At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security,” Rove said. “Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn’t make them unpatriotic — not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.”

The Governors put up a brave front, applauding in all the right places but still worried about the outcome of the coming battle.

Meanwhile, the Ewoks protested violently against the intimations of the Evil One that the soft, furry creatures were incapable of fighting a serious war.

“We’ll show that Blue Meany how strong we can be,” they cried.

The Ewok Headman gathered his people in a circle around the fire and issued a call to battle:

“Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative,” Dean said in a statement. Dean added: “The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong.”

Representatives of the Rebel Alliance who were present at the Ewok gathering saw through the Headman’s bluster and were deeply troubled. The Ewoks wanted to fight with spears and rocks while Imperial Storm Troopers had Star Destroyers and Blaster Rifles.

Back at the Imperial Palace, a representative of the Trade Federation, Mehlmik the Magnificent, tried to buck up the flagging spirits of the Governors by hinting that he would be ruthless toward those who would corrupt the Empire:

The issue of ethics was left to Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who in his own tough-worded attacks on Democrats to the committee condemned Republicans implicated in any scandals. Mr. Mehlman, however, sought - as part of what has been a Republican strategy this week - to blame Democrats as well for the investigations now swirling around Congress.

“Public service is a sacred trust - and we cannot allow it to be sullied by anyone, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “As Republican chairman, I am proud of my party and loyal to our members. But if Republicans are guilty of illegal or inappropriate behavior, they should pay the price and suffer the consequences.”

Would the Evil Lord conquer the Ewoks and defeat the Rebel Alliance? His strategy appeared to be simplicity personified:

In a speech that drew several bursts of strong applause, Mr. Rove criticized Democrats for their opposition to tax cuts and for what he called “mean-spirited” attacks on Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Mr. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee. And he left little doubt that in 2006 - as in both nationwide elections since the Sept. 11 attacks - he was intent on making national security the pre-eminent issue.

As the Governors left the palace, they seem buoyed by Vader’s words as well as a recognition that things were not as bad as they seemed:

RNC members said privately they are particularly concerned about holding on to their party’s long-sought, narrow edge in state legislatures. The GOP now enjoys a majority in 20 state legislatures, compared to 19 for the Democrats, with the remaining 10 split 50-50 between the two parties.

After regional breakfast sessions yesterday morning, the mood of many members improved, with several saying they were buoyed to hear from fellow state chairmen how few congressional seats seem threatened by the Abramoff scandal, at least at this point.

As Vader left for his audience with the Emperor, he was gripped with a sudden feeling of unease. He knew that somewhere out there, Obi Wan Kenobi was waiting for him, hoping he would slip up so that he could run his light saber through his putrid heart and destroy him.

“The force is strong in that one,” Vader muttered.

The Evil One vowed not to let his thoughts about Obi Wan cloud his judgment. He must have all his wits about him if he is to face the Alliance and defeat their designs to overthrow the Empire and bring peace to the galaxy.

Yesterday proved to be a day to forget for our friends on the left. It appears that they lost so much bile and spittle in defending, attacking, defending again, and finally going stark, raving, loony that I daresay many of them will need a bile transfusion not to mention an IV drip to replace all the bodily fluids they expended in an unsuccessful effort to respond to news headlines that highlighted their total cluelessness.

In fact, I’d like to use this blog to offer my assistance in their recovery. Anyone wishing to donate their bodily fluids, please deposit them either here or here. And remember, all gifts are tax deductible.

The day began with the release of the Barrett Report, an independent counsel monstrosity that took 10 years and $23 million to figure out that 1) former housing secretary Henry Cisneros is a crook; and 2) the Clinton Administration was peppered with corrupt, lying, weasels who weren’t above using the IRS to cover-up their venality.

Well, duh.

Predictably, the left pounced on this bit of non-news and attacked Republicans for being two faced not to mention trying to distract the populace from the Abramoff scandal. As usual, the left resorted to moral relativity to dismiss the criminal actions of the Clinton administration: You’re scandal is worse than our scandal.

How edifying.

A little later in the morning, the first really big bomb of the day was dropped by none other than Deborah Howell of the Washington Post who wrote a story on the Abramoff scandal in which she identified some Democratic pols who received money from some of the sleazeball’s Indian tribe clients. For some reason, the left took serious umbrage to this information - information available from the Federal Election Commission among other places - in that someone in the media was trying to point out the obvious; the Jackanape Abramoff sleaze machine touches both political parties.

This just won’t do. This is a Republican scandal after all and how dare you bring any Democrats into it?

At any rate, Howell responded on the Washington Post Blog yesterday and the legions of lefties left so many comments of, shall we say, a personal nature including suggestions that Howell perform feats of anatomical legerdemain that most textbooks say is impossible. This caused the prim and proper folks at the Post to turn off the comments to the site which only caused the moonbats to spin further out of control.

It was a great show and only reveals the absolute, total electoral desperation of the left. They don’t believe they have any issues they can run on that can win next November. In fact, they think they’re only chance to overturn the House and Senate is to hold the Republicans up as the sole party of corruption and sleaze.

Note to my liberal friends: Running around screaming “neener, neener, neener” to anyone who reveals the truth about Capitol Hill corruption - that sleaze knows no ideology or favorite party - is not a winning strategy. Politics has a nasty habit of revealing a lot of glass houses where the other side always has a large supply of stones. This goes for both parties on all sorts of ethics issues. And as the polls show, the majority of voters believe Democrats and Republicans are equally crooked.

So…Get. A. Grip.

Finally, a nuclear bomb went off with the Osama tape. For some reason, the imaginations of the Reality Based Community took flight and soared into the stratosphere of cuckoo land when several threads on Daily Kos speculated that Osama was really a Republican in disguise, a Rovian creation that coincidentally always seemed to emerge whenever Republicans were in trouble for one thing or another.

Since from the moonbat perspective, the Republicans are always in trouble - that some issue or news story will finally bring down King George and his minions - one would think that after being so wrong, so many times, on so many “scandals,” each one a dead certainty to prove to be Bush’s undoing, they would learn from their mistakes. No such luck.

At any rate, after convincing themselves that Osama was a Republican plant, it seemed to escape their notice that Osama’s entire rant could have come from the fertile imagination and ample gut of His Rotundness, Michael Moore. As I said below, the left is just too dense to recognize how much they have in common with the mass murderer.

And then Chrissy Matthews made the mistake of actually pointing out that Osama “sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore…” on Hardball last night. That did it. Even the perspicacious Peter Daou went bananas saying ” “Bin Laden sounds like Rush Limbaugh” — “Bin Laden sounds like Bill O’Reilly”– “Bin Laden sounds like Mel Gibson” — “Bin Laden sounds like Bruce Willis” — “Bin Laden sounds like Michelle Malkin”… and how would you Republicans like them apples?

Peter, God bless him, completely misses the point. No one in their right mind would say that Osama sounds like any of those conservatives because not one thing Bin Laden said remotely resembled anything ever uttered by any of those worthies. And to make the comparison only shows that, in fact, the left recognizes very well that Osama was spouting their talking points. To prove it, take any day’s postings and diaries at Daily Kos and I guarantee you will be able to match what Osama said with what is said on that “mainstream” Democratic site.

The fact that liberals feel no shame about having a mass murdering thug agreeing with them (and being clueless about why) was highlighted by Senator Joe Biden who, in response to Chrissy Matthews Michael Moore observation had this to say:

“I think this is just to reinforce sort of the stereotypical negative images of us in the Muslim world. That’s why I really think this is much more directed toward the Muslim world…”

The unspoken question and answer here is how did the Muslims get to thinking this way about America? It couldn’t be this kind of traitorous language used by liberals in everything they write, everything they say, and everything they think now, could it?

The Osama tape brings liberals face to face with the consequences of their stupidity. Their wild conspiracy theories, their deranged hatred of the President, their constant caterwauling about how badly the war is going (despite all the evidence to the contrary), and their cockeyed notions of Osama himself will show anyone with an ounce of objectivity that the deadliest enemy of the United States agrees with them. They cannot escape it. They cannot deny it. They can only try and change the subject.

I hope you lefties have a better day today. And I’ll bet more than a few of them are saying to themselves…

Thank God it’s Friday.