Right Wing Nut House

Don’t you just love the game show “Jeopardy?”

I always wanted to audition to be a contestant on the long running syndicated quiz show but somehow never got around to it. No matter. Even though I’d probably do pretty well on some of the categories like history, literature, and science, I’d probably screw the pooch on some other Jeopardy favorites like opera, contemporary TV and music, and the most difficult category of them all, “All in the Family Spin offs.”

But hey! When it comes to border security, our government apparently plays Jeopardy every day! And they do it with our money! Plus, according to the GSA, our government is letting a couple of well connected corporations play too! And the worst thing? The corporations are cheating so that they win every time!

Now you may think that border security is much too important to play games with and I’d have to agree. But just imagine if Alex Trebek were hosting a “Border Security Edition of Jeopardy.” And the great thing is you don’t have to be a Phi Beta Kappa or a Mensa member to play along. Just follow the smell; the stench of corruption and graft permeating the first line of defense between us and the terrorists.

Here’s how we play: There’s a $239 million government program to install cameras and other sensors along the 6500 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders. I’ll give you the answer and you have to figure out the question. No cheating now!

THE ANSWER: A critical network of cameras and sensors installed for the U.S. Border Patrol along the Mexican and Canadian borders has been hobbled for years by defective equipment that was poorly installed, and by lax oversight by government officials who failed to properly supervise the project’s contractor, according to government reports and public and industry officials.

THE QUESTION: What is the $239 million Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System (ISIS), which U.S. officials call crucial to defending the country against terrorist infiltrators.

Okay, that was an easy one. How about something a little harder.

THE ANSWER: The GSA inspector general’s report said official inattention to the system “placed taxpayers’ dollars and . . . national security at risk.” A GSA inspection of eight Border Patrol zones found that $20 million had been paid to IMC for work there but that none of its camera systems was fully operating.

THE QUESTION: What is near Buffalo, IMC billed the government for 59 cameras but only four were installed, and in Naco, Ariz., unassembled high-tech gear was found lying in the desert, the report said. “No IMC personnel had been on-site since the equipment was delivered” in 2003, the report added.

IMC took over the project from an Alaskan company in 1999. What’s interesting is that IMC employs the daughter of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), who also happens to be a major sponsor of the legislation authorizing the program. Representative Reyes has a novel explanation for the nepotism:

Rep. Reyes said that he never interceded with U.S. officials to help IMC win a contract and that he helped IMC retain congressional funding because he believes cameras “are an important part of our ability to defend the borders.”

I do believe in fairies…I do believe in fairies…

THE ANSWER: The most troubled part of ISIS was in Washington state, where the more than 64 cameras fogged up in cold and rain and sometimes broke down completely, according to Border Patrol officials and the GSA report. IMC-hired workers had done such shoddy wiring of fiber-optic cable at junction boxes that Border Patrol operators couldn’t control the cameras, according to the officials and documents. Electrical wires were found corroding under water in supposedly sealed concrete vaults, they said.

THE QUESTION: What is it was common, the GSA report said, for the government to pay IMC “for shoddy work . . . [or] for work that was incomplete or never delivered.”

But the deal gets sweeter for IMC. Evidently, they subcontracted some of the work out to one of their own subsidiaries in gross violation of federal contract regs:

Over the objections of Border Patrol officials, INS official Walter Drabik chose cameras distributed by a firm called ISAP. U.S. officials and contractors said IMC had bought the ISAP firm without disclosing it to U.S. officials. This allowed IMC to buy cameras from its own subsidiary, substantially increasing profits. Undisclosed self-dealing could be illegal.

The GSA report said officials’ lax oversight of IMC’s purchases of cameras and other gear “created a potential for overpayments of almost $13 million.”

THE ANSWER: About that time (2000), Congress threatened to eliminate the ISIS program, and IMC turned to Rep. Reyes and other allies to help rescue it.

THE QUESTION: What is within months, INS and GSA officials granted IMC a contract expansion worth $200 million, with no competitive bidding.

Okay, stop sputtering. The uninitiated among you may be asking how we go from almost canceling a program to giving a $200 million no-bid contract to a firm that employs a Congressman’s daughter and that has already spent millions of dollars on equipment that either hasn’t been delivered or doesn’t work.

I always liked R.J. Haddon’s explanation of government waste and corruption in the movie Contact:

The first rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

In this case, two separate contracts to a firm with ties to a powerful Congressman as well as current and former Border Patrol agents and administrators.

THE ANSWER: A snake, a worm, and my pet cat Ebony:

THE QUESTION: Who has more integrity and brains than most of the people involved in the ISIS project.

Senator Robert “Kleagle” Byrd has a lot of history to answer for. Born with the most magical name in Virgina politics, the Senator nevertheless grew up poor. His constant harking on his hardscrabble roots to voters plays very well in the mountains and “hollers” of his native West Virginia. And his “good old boy” demeanor on the campaign trail has meant electoral success for more than half a century.

It’s not unusual to erect statues to prominent politicians. I remember a statue of Abe Lincoln in my home town. It was an interactive statue in that kids would climb all over it, hang from the Great Emancipator’s outstretched arms, and sit on his gigantic feet.

But Abe Lincoln had been dead nearly a hundred years by the time that statue had been built. I guess Senator Sheets didn’t want to wait that long:

The Morgantown lawyer made his announcement near the base of a statue of West Virginia’s senior Democratic senator at the state Capitol in Charleston.

Sen. Byrd has set a new standard for taxpayer-funded narcissism by convincing the West Virginia Legislature to erect a statue of himself in the state Capitol. The statue’s completion violates state law prohibiting statues of government officials until they have been dead for half a century.

What a weird feeling that must be! To know that a permanent likeness of yourself is already gracing the Capitol of your home state would give me the willies. But then, I must not have the ego and chutzpah to force the issue through the state legislature in the first place.

Byrd’s opponent may be Hiram Lewis IV, the state’s Republican Party Treasurer. Here he is making the announcement of his candidacy in front of the stern visage of the former Kluxer. I’ve added a caption for effect:

“ALL NIGRAS WILL KNEEL BEFORE ME”

By the way, if I were Hiram, I’d drop that “IV” from the end of his name. Most of those good simple folk from West Virginia look at that moniker and think immediately of the snobby kid from the big house on the hill outside of town. Best do a little back slappin’ and “grinnin’ like a possum” if you’re going to make any headway with the good people of the Mountaineer state.

Mark Noonan of Blogs for Bush gives us just the right amount of outrage:

This is an un-American outrage; we shouldn’t be waiting for an election to get rid of Byrd, we should be impeaching him! And every government official, elected or otherwise, who had a hand in approving the creation of this abomination. That statue should be ripped down today; as our ancestors once upon a time ripped down the icons of living political leaders who taxed and oppressed our people.

Mark, as usual, has hit the nail on the head. It’s unseemly for us to immortalize sitting politicians. Makes us look like a banana republic or worse, a decrepit relic from the cold war Soviet Union where we got used to seeing pictures of a young, vigorous Brezhnev all over Moscow while the real thing was wasting away to mummyhood.

I don’t know though…I think the Senator looks pretty good, very dignified. But, what’s he doing with his left hand? At least he’s got it in his own pocket; we’re pretty used to having it in ours.

Jimmy Carter is a sanctimonious, self-serving, self promoting, anti-American zealot whose trips abroad in the last 4 years have been marked by his harsh, unreasoning criticism of President Bush’s foreign policy. His speech at the Democratic convention was dripping with hatred and venom toward the President. And to top it all of, he entertained in his personal box at that conclave a man who accused George Bush and his family of caring more about the Saudi royal family and oil than about America.

How sweet is it that the President has humiliated this mountebank in public by refusing to include him in the official delegation to the Pope’s funeral:

President Bush selected his father and Bill Clinton over Jimmy Carter for the official delegation attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the Carter Center claimed Late Tuesday.

“President Carter expressed to the White House a desire to attend the Pope’s funeral,” an official said.

Carter “was informed that the official delegation would be limited to just five people, and there were also others who were eager to attend.”

“The Carters always relish the memories of Pope John Paul II being a delightful personal guest at the White House in 1979, on a pope’s only visit to our nation’s capital city. Subsequently, they visited with His Holiness in the Vatican.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Wouldn’t you have loved to have been privy to that phone conversation when peanut brain was told that his presence would not be required?

PEANUT: Heloo George. I’m just about packed for the trip to Rome all I need to know is when do we leave?

BUSH: Hold the phone here, just hold the phone. What are you talking about?

PEANUT: The funeral George, the funeral. What’s the weather like in Rome during April? Should I bring an umbrella?

BUSH: What…do I look like Willard Scott? How the hell should I know. Besides, you’re not going.

PEANUT: Whaddya mean I’m not going? George, this is no time for jokes, the pope is dead.

BUSH: I’m not joking, moonbat. The Pope would roll over on the bier if he saw you there. After all, he was one of those people who “had an inordinate fear of communism” as you so elegantly put it.

PEANUT: How was I supposed to know that the Soviets were a menace? After all, how could they not like me? I charmed the hell out ‘em. I was so charming I was sure that the force of my personality and the depth of my holiness would overwhelm them. Anyway, what does that have to do with me not going to this funeral? Jesus Christ George! Everyone’s going to be there!

BUSH: Yeah, you’re not. Only loyal Americans need apply. That let’s you and your good buddy Michael Moore out.

PEANUT: C’mon, I hardly know the guy. It was the only way they’d let me speak at the convention, having him in my box. You’re not going to hold that against me are you?

BUSH: Take care, Jimmy. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Maybe when your good buddy Chavez kicks the bucket or your hero Castro passes on, we’ll send you over to represent us…with a one way ticket. (Click)

PEANUT: George? You still there George? You can’t do this to me! I’m the President…er, was the President. I’m important! Millions of people around the world love me! George?

UPDATE

The Captain has similar thoughts:

After a long and well-established track record as a pain in the ass, Carter can hardly expect us to sympathize with him for being left off of a state visit to anywhere, let alone the funeral of a Pope who, as the Prowler also notes, didn’t think too highly of the former President himself.

Perhaps Carter can sit around the house this week and contemplate how much better off he and the rest of us would be if he had just focused on building houses for the poor after he got rejected for a second term in the White House.

As the Klingon’s say: “Revenge is a dish best served cold…” Or was it Shakepseare?

See also Blogs for Bush that links to an al Reuters report on the Carter snub:

“He was quite willing to withdraw his request when he was subsequently informed that the official delegation would be limited to just five people, and there were also others who were eager to attend,” Moor said Tuesday.

Yeah…I’ll just bet that Jimmah was quite eager to “withdraw his request” after he realized that, like the rest of us, the Bush White House has long memories…

The death of Terri Schiavo was an individual tragedy of unknowable proportions for her family. Losing a daughter the way the Schindlers did should never happen to a parent. It came down very simply to the fact that her husband Michael, with the full force and support of the judicial branch of the government of the United States of America decreed that this person - a living, breathing human being who probably had no conscious thought for 15 years but nevertheless existed - would be better off dead.

No amount of sophistry on the part of libertarians can erase the fact that they either stood by in a sort of dazed neutrality or actively supported the idea of Ms. Schiavo’s forced departure from this world. Using a radical objectivism as an intellectual shield, libertarians came up with ever more novel interpretations of federalism and conservative governance for their positions until, like their ideological adversaries on the left, they resorted to name calling and character assassination to get their points across.

There were many things that troubled me about this matter. In fact, many of the same concerns that caused some of these Republican centrists to recoil at the rhetoric and tactics of the religious right also bothered me, a conservative agnostic. But what was never an issue for me or for many of my non-religious socially conservative allies was the cramped, narrow interpretation of life espoused by the libertarians and how that definition led directly to the deliberate starvation of Terri Schiavo.

The fact that libertarians have now resolved one of the greatest scientific questions of our age - what constitutes consciousness - should be a cause for celebration. Couple that with another huge breakthrough in the field of psychic research that allowed these specially gifted people to peer into the mind of Terri Shiavo and assure us that she was no longer human enough to matter, and you have the perfect rationalization for decreeing unequivocally that Ms. Schiavo is an ex-human being and thus, if not a willing participant in her own judicially sanctioned death at least an uncaring bag of water and bones easily discarded.

And what if these super scientific sleuths and soothsayers were wrong? Oh well, we’re assured, she’s in a “better place” or, more honestly, she’s “out of her misery.”

I find it inexplicable that a rational person can say that someone who’s not human any more because she has no conscious thoughts can at one and the same time be in “misery.” As for being in a better place, not believing there’s life after death has its advantages, namely that no one would dare say such a thing as a rationale to kill me.

Perhaps the most troubling and revealing aspect of this entire tragedy has been the dismissive and condescending attitude toward social conservatives on the part of libertarians. Why is this so? The anger of the religious right felt by people like Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, Bill Quick, over their position is, in my opinion, uncalled for but understandable given the emotions that this issue has brought to the surface among social conservatives. If I may be allowed, I’d like to put some of those emotions into an intellectual and historical context that will make some sense to our libertarian brethren.

America has gone beyond being a cultural wasteland. We’re now a full blown toxic waste dump, a veritable cesspool of poisonous images, noxious ideas, and venomous conceits. The corruption of our culture has proceeded willy-nilly without regard for the sensibilities of a huge minority of loyal American citizens - perhaps as many as 20 million Christian Evangelicals - whose rising concern about the inescapable nature of our mass media and the influence it has on their children has caused them to become politically active.

And what do they get for their trouble? Ridicule, hostility, and the back of the hand from some of the same people who come to them every two or four years and ask them for their vote. In addition, the sneering media’s preternatural pretensions regarding their own sophistication and worldliness give them license to portray these individuals as dupes who believe in some kind of primitive superstitious nonsense.

To make a mockery of someone’s deeply held beliefs would ordinarily be frowned on by these very same critics and sages. But since this target of mirth and derision are Christians, a double standard emerges that’s obvious to all except the most willfully self-deluded.

I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that religious conservatives are not well served by the majority of their leaders. But couldn’t the same be said for African Americans, women, and other minorities? I can’t tell you how many times I heard over the last two weeks what a dangerous extremist Randall Terry is. The fact that I also believe him to be a self-promoting charlatan is besides the point. Randall Terry does not speak for the majority of religious conservatives despite the efforts to portray him in such a light.

Other, less radical and more thoughtful leaders of the pro-life and anti-sleaze movements don’t get air time because, let’s face it, they’re not “sexy” enough. Cardinal George here in Chicago is an extremely articulate spokesman for the pro-life position. But because he’s not a shouter nor a polemicist on the issue of abortion, he rarely gets interviewed. This is a man who heads up an Archdiocese of more than 2 million Catholics and yet gets sort shrift in the media.

The same could be said for dozens of protestants, Catholics, and Christian laity who work tirelessly and selflessly to improve the quality of our culture. Being pro-choice, I don’t agree with many of their positions on abortion. But I respect them as advocates. And on issues where we do agree like trying to clean up the toxicity of our culture, I generally sympathize if not support their efforts.

And what are these efforts? Do they lobby the FCC to enforce the law? Why yes they do! It would seem then that our libertarian brethren are very selective on which aspects of the constitution they would like to be strictly construed. I guess the law authorizing the FCC to insure that the airwaves are regulated in the public interest doesn’t fall into the category of strict constructionist but rather individual taste. So when various Christian media watchdogs request that the FCC enforce its own rules against indecency are they just being blue noses or do they have a point?

I can’t tell you how many commenters on this site as well as other blogs have decided that since I supported Terri’s right to live I’m somehow part of this monolithic threat to our liberties known as the Christian right. And I also would have problems telling you how many non-religious social conservatives like myself have been flabbergasted by being lumped into this group, pigeon-holed by intellectually lazy people who are looking so far down their nose at the Christians, they’ve missed the rest of us who are concerned, even frightened by the state of the culture and the direction it’s taking.

If this is a war that’s begun between social conservatives and our more libertarian minded brothers and sisters than so be it. We didn’t start it. We didn’t want it. But because of the stakes involved, we’ll fight with everything we have.

And if it tears the Republican party apart, amen to that too. We were back benchers for 50 years. I kind of like the view.

Cross-Posted at Blogger News Network

UPDATE: 4/6

John Hawkins weighs in on this issue, jumping in with both feet:

On issues where they philosophically agree with conservatives, like taxes, free markets, & shrinking the size of governments, Libertarians tend to be impossible to please purists. On the other hand, in many areas where Libertarians philosophically disagree with conservatives, like open borders, legalizing hard drugs, & legalizing prostitution, their beliefs equal political death for almost any Republican who espouses them at the national level.

I made the point in a comment that the libertarians influence in the blogosphere far exceeds their numbers. And the libertarians current attack on Senator Cornyn, joining their supposed adverseries on the far left, is indicitive of how far the libertarians are now willing to go to attack social conservatives.

Here are the 58 House members who voted against Terri’s bill:

Baldwin
Berkley
Bishop (NY)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Butterfield
Capuano
Cardin
Carnahan
Carson
Castle
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Conyers
Davis (FL)
Dent
Dicks
Doyle
Evans
Frank (MA)
Gutierrez
Hastings (FL)
Holt
Hoyer
Israel
Kaptur
Kennedy (RI)
Larson (CT)
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Matsui
McDermott
McKinney
Miller (NC)
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Olver
Pallone
Pascrell
Payne
Price (NC)
Reichert
Rothman
Schiff
Schwartz (PA)
Scott (VA)
Shays
Spratt
Strickland
Thompson (MS)
Van Hollen
Visclosky
Wasserman Schultz
Watt
Weiner
Wexler
Wu

By an unlucky chance a Fox fell into a deep well from which he could not get out. A Goat passed by shortly afterwards, and asked the Fox what he was doing down there. “Oh, have you not heard?” said the Fox; “there is going to be a great drought, so I jumped down here in order to be sure to have water by me. Why don’t you come down too?” The Goat thought well of this advice, and jumped down into the well. But the Fox immediately jumped on her back, and by putting his foot on her long horns managed to jump up to the edge of the well. “Good-bye, friend,” said the Fox, “remember next time,

“Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.” (Aesop’s Fables)

There are times that Mexican President Vincente Fox appears to look upon the United States the way a parasite looks upon its host; why ruin a good meal by reminding the victim of your presence?

To that end, Fox has maintained pretty much of a low profile since his election in 2000. He has given lip service and not much else to cleaning up the notoriously corrupt Mexican police force even though the DEA constantly complains about lack of progress. And his pronouncements on illegal aliens have concentrated on trying to clean up the smuggling rings that make the journey to America so hazardous for so many.

But yesterday, Fox really put his foot in it. Talking about the grass-roots Minuteman Project, which will patrol the Arizona-Mexican Border for one month starting April 1, Fox complained that such groups represent a kind of “extremism” that poor Mr. Fox finds “troubling:”

“We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups,” Fox said. “We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups, which are a minority . . . will not have any opportunity to progress.”

Organizers of the Minuteman Project say they have signed up more than 950 volunteers, including 30 pilots with aircraft, to patrol the border for 30 days beginning April 1. The activists say they will notify the Border Patrol if they see border crossers and will not confront them directly.

Minuteman co-organizer Chris Simcox said participants are exercising their constitutional rights.

“Vicente Fox can rant and rave all he wants, but he obviously doesn’t understand what a democracy means,” Simcox said. “We have been working within the law.”

President Fox is also upset about the proposed “triple fence” to be built in the San Diego area:

Fox also harshly criticized the construction of walls along the border, including a new “triple fence” planned for the San Diego area.

“We are convinced that walls don’t work. They should be torn down,” he said. “No country that is proud of itself should build walls. No one can isolate himself these days.

Fox said he understood Americans’ concern about protecting their southern border. But he dismissed fears that terrorists have sneaked into the United States through Mexico. “We have absolutely no evidence of that,” he said.

A couple of things should be pointed out here: First, if the Mexican government wants to use “international law” to stop American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights, I’d really like to see him try. Even as anti-American as most international tribunals are, Fox would be laughed out of court not to mention skewered by the US government. Second, are you as comforted as I am when Mr. Fox says that there’s “no evidence” of terrorist infiltration of the border? I thought you might be. Someone-maybe in the State Department- should tell Mr. Fox that interrogations of al Quaeda prisoners have revealed plans to infiltrate the US via Mexico.

Maybe the ostrich should be made the national bird of Mexico.

The President of Mexico even felt compelled to jump into the US debate on social security with a novel reason why illegals should be allowed to flood our cities only to be made legal by turning them into “guest workers:”

Fox said he will push for action on a “guest worker” program in the United States. He said that the U.S. population is aging and will need Mexican labor in the future and that turning millions of undocumented Mexicans into legal, taxpaying workers could help keep the Social Security system afloat.

First of all, stop giggling. It’s not nice to laugh at other people’s stupidity. And I think we should show all the respect due to any parasitic, bloodsucking, meddling, nincompoop that we can muster.

That being said, perhaps the President of Mexico would like to explain how any immigrants-legal or illegal- will help solve the social secuirty crisis.

The problem isn’t the number of workers . The problem is the number of retirees. In order to have the same number of workers supporting the same number of retirees today (about 3.5 to 1) by 2050, we would have to have a workforce of almost 200 million! By 2050, there will be approximately 55-60 million Americans of retirement age. That pencils out to needing between 190-210 million workers paying into the social security system just to keep taxes where they are today. Currently, the American workforce consists of about 110 million. That means we’d almost have to double the workforce to make Mr. Fox’s suggestion that we use illegals to solve our social security problems work.

That’s one way for Fox to realize the dream of Azaltan, the movement to “return” much of the southwest and California to Mexico. Then again, given the attitude of our brave fellow countrymen involved in the “Minuteman Project,” I wouldn’t be so quick to take the advice of this particular “Fox” in any circumstances.

UPDATE:

Blogs for Bush has a similar take:

Here is the President of Mexico, who urges us to tear down our border fences altogether in order to better serve his need to have his unemployable youth stream north, insulting the very Americans who are supposed to put out the welcome mat for millions of illegal aliens.

Back in the 1980’s I looked upon Congressman Jack Kemp as something of a hero. He had an infectious enthusiasm for ideas that was very attractive to a young conservative looking for ways to translate Ronald Reagan’s electoral success into true conservative governance. He may be the only Congressman in history who could make a speech about tax and budget policies interesting.

Blessed with a soaring optimism and sunny disposition, he could be called the ideological grandfather of “The Ownership Society” that President Bush is trying to enact. He proposed what at the time were radical ideas involving “Enterprise Zones” in the inner cities where investment would be encouraged by lowering taxes and eliminating regulations. As Secretary for Housing and Urban Development he pushed for public housing residents to own their units and set up co-ops to govern those housing projects.

In 1993, he started Empower America with William Bennett that seeks to promote capitalism and freedom while reforming tax policy and social security. And in 1996, he was the Vice Presidential candidate when Bob Dole made his run for the White House.

Couple that impressive resume with his experience as a Hall of Fame pro football quarterback and you have someone that was easy to look up to and admire.

And that’s why the news brought to us via Michelle Malkin is so depressing:

Jack Kemp, the businessman, was recently negotiating a highly questionable billion-dollar oil deal with Venezuela’s Chavez. Kemp stood to make up to $50 million in commissions….

Kemp made high-profile “courtesy” visits and wined and dined with Hugo Chavez and his ministers in 2002. Weeks later, a contract dated Jan. 17, 2003, was circulated between Free Market Petroleum, where Kemp is chairman, and the Chavez government. That Kemp, the GOP’s 1996 vice presidential nominee, even would consider doing business with the Chavez government raises troubling ethical and political questions…..

Kemp has used his political capital to open doors for Chavez. In May of 2003, he tried to charm the staff of The Wall Street Journal editorial page into abandoning its opposition to Chavez’s undemocratic behavior.

I had also missed this little tidbit of information that Michelle relates:

Jack Kemp has been getting quite a bit of attention lately for his relationship with Samir Vincent, a secret agent of Saddam Hussein who was recently convicted in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal.

When you discover your hero has feet of clay it’s almost like being told again that there’s no Santa Claus. There’s disappointment, a sense of personal betrayal, and a great, heavy sadness that weighs upon the mind. You ask yourself how you could have been taken in by someone who clearly has betrayed some of the most cherished beliefs about supporting freedom he held those many years ago.

And then you realize it’s not so much your hero has feet of clay it’s that he’s a human being. And humans, being the complex creatures that we are, sometimes fall short of the high expectations we set for them. It doesn’t make them evil, it simply reveals them for what they really are; a flawed representation of the image you projected onto him.

Folk artist Suzanne Vega wrote a song about this phenomena entitled “When Heroes Go Down”

When heroes go down
They go down fast
So don’t expect any time to
Equivocate the past

I heard you say
You look out for the feet of clay
That someone will be falling next
Without the chance
For last respects
You feel the disappointment

We’ll always have heroes. And as surely as there is no Santa Claus, some will end up making us wish we’d never heard of them.

Cross-Posted at Blogger News Network

Senator Robert (”some of my best friends are negroes” ) Byrd peeked out from underneath his hood yesterday on the Senate floor and, with the courtly manners worthy of the old fashioned Southern gentleman that he is, proceeded to compare the Republican party with the Nazi’s:

Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.

But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.

Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.

(HT: Wizbang)

Senator Kleagle is recognized as something of an historian when it comes to the arcane details of the Senate. In fact, he conducts a monthly seminar on the history of that august body. Funny…he never gets around to lecturing on his own excerable role in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1965 or his opposition to the nomination of the first African-American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. But then, the doddering old fool can barely stay awake long enough to listen to the Senate’s opening prayer and drink his metamucil much less hold forth on his own colorful career as an apologist for the Klan and civil rights obstructionist.

The Capn’ does a better job giving the old coot a history lesson on Nazi Germany than I could:

By the time the Enabling Law came up for a vote, the SA (Brownshirts) had effectively terrorized the Reichstag into giving Hitler everything he wanted. Hitler did not come to power through purely democratic means, nor did he care all that much about the sheen of legality. His SA by that time numbered into the millions, and they had already blazed a trail of violent chaos, attacking all of their political opponents, assassinating a number of them; that’s how the Nazis came to power. So when Byrd speaks about how the Nazis used legal means to secure their dictatorship, rest assured that the Senator takes that completely out of the context in which it occurred.

I might add that, in order to assure passage of this “Enabling Law” which suspended the Weimer Constitution and gave Hitler broad, dictatorial powers, Der Fuehrer simply arrested a number of socialist and communist deputies and kept them away from the Reichstag when the vote came up. In addition, Hitler’s leader in the Reichstag, Hermann Goerring, placed dozens of SA Brownshirts throughout the floor initimidating the rest of the deputies into voting for the Act.

Perhaps Senator Cross Burner should get his head out of his wrinkled, sagging posterior long enough to read something besides garbage like this:

It is time to acknowledge our democratic system of government has been replaced by fascism.

Strong? You bet. But true, saith I. Laurence W. Britt, in an article entitled “Fascism Anyone?” published in the Spring 2003 issue of Free Inquiry magazine, identifies what he says are 14 “basic characteristics” of fascism. Britt writes that he “consider[ed] the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia,” and says further, “To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power.”

(HT: Museum of Left Wing Lunacy)

The only problem with this “analysis” as well as Senator Sheets rant is that they never bother to define what fascism is! So hysterical are they in their opposition to the President and the Republican party, they believe that simply by saying “Nazi” long enough and loud enough, it will come true and people will believe them. They haven’t the foggiest notion of what fascism is except that it’s “bad.” And that’s hardly enough to justify tarring your political opponents with such an incendiary label.

Thankfully, the American people just seem to shake their heads in wonder at this exercise in overheated rhetoric. I would also guess that 62 million people don’t like being compared to Hitler on a daily basis.

I wonder if that’s going to come back and haunt the Democrats when election time rolls around?

Tonight at the Oscars, in addition to the usual speeches thanking mothers, fathers, friends, co-workers, hairdressers, and dog groomers. we’re probably going to hear the occasional anti-American, anti-Bush rant about Iraq.

This is fine. It is, after all, Hollywood. And Hollywood as we all know is a place of dreams; not to mention a place of self-absorbed, self-obsessed, drug-addled nincompoops with a collective I.Q. not much larger than the number of steps in an alchoholic rehabilitation program. Couple this with a child-like faith in their own intellectual and moral superiority and what will be on display tonight will be American liberalism at its finest. Or, in Hollywood jargon, kind of like Mary Poppins meets The Hunchback of Notre Dame with our Hollywood heroes flying in to do battle with the ogrish George W.

So, while the children on stage complain, sniff, grumble, and rant, the grownups have been busy really changing the world.

CAIRO, Feb. 26 - President Hosni Mubarak asked Egypt’s Parliament on Saturday to amend the Constitution to allow for direct, multiparty presidential elections this year for the first time in the nation’s history.

On the face of it, the unexpected proposal from Mr. Mubarak, a former Air Force general who has ruled Egypt unchallenged since 1981, represents a sea change in a country with a 50-year history of one-party governments.

(NY Times 2/27/05)

Who woulda thunk it?

Mubarak took this action one day after American Secretary of State (and new international sex kitten, if you believe the Washington Post) Condi Rice cancelled a planned trip to Egypt in protest against the arrest of a democracy activist:

Ayman Nour, head of Al Ghad, a newly approved political party, was imprisoned on Jan. 29 on allegations of forging some 2,000 signatures to gain a license for his party last year. He denies the accusation, and government critics note that his continued detention seems to undermine the president’s commitment to greater democracy.

Everybody on the planet can see the obvious connection. Mubarak, an inveterate survivor, sees the handwriting on the wall as country after country in the region breaks for democracy.

And Cairo isn’t the only Capital where the siren song of participatory government is being sung. Lebanon, a nation that’s seen more than a quarter century of sectarian strife is now uniting behind the idea of evicting their long-time oppressors and occupiers, the Syrian army:

JERUSALEM — The U.S. led war against terrorism and its advances in Iraq and Afghanistan have enhanced the climate in the Middle East and will enable the international community to force Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon likely by May, former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun told WorldNetDaily today in an exclusive interview.

“The U.S. and EU are backing us in our movement to free Lebanon,” said Aoun, speaking to WND from France. “They are interfering through diplomacy and threats of sanctions, and the situation is such today that Syria must comply. If the U.S. and Europe follow through, Syria will be obliged to withdraw before Lebanese elections in May.”

(WND: 2/25/05)

Columnist Thomas Friedman, sometime supporter of Bush’s mid-east policy, is encouraged:

After the Hariri murder, Lebanese just snapped. Lebanon became the story of a broad majority of Lebanese Christians, Muslims and Druse no longer willing to remain silent, but instead telling the Syrians, and their Lebanese puppet president, to “go home.” Lebanon went from a country where few dared whisper “When will Syria leave?” to a country where nearly everyone was shouting it, and Syria was having to answer.

What liberals from Hollywood to Harvard Yard are going to have to start dealing with is the possibility that, once again, they’re wrong. They’ve been wrong so often over the past 2 years (hell, over the past quarter century) that, if they were studio executives, their record would have required them to be fired for gross incompetence.; kind of like Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” meets Michale Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.”

From “Afghanistan can never have democracy” to “elections will never be held in Iraq,” liberals haven’t only been wrong, they’ve been clueless. The world wept as Afghani women, who until recently were beaten to death if they went uncovered in public, emerged from polling places having exercised their right to vote. And can anyone forget the tears of joy shed by Iraqi citizens as they raised their purple-stained fingers to the sky in triumph following their election last month?

Elections in Palestine, democracy roiling in Lebanon, Egypt now in lock-step, rumblings in Syria, the radioactive mullahs getting more and more nervous…all of this is a direct result of the policies initiated by George Bush and the United States government (Hat Tip: U.S. Military).

Looks like the makings of a real blockbuster.

I read this letter reproduced in part below courtesy of And Rightly So and realized how old fashioned I truly am. You see, I have something of an outdated sentimentality about patriotism, love of country, and an admiration for the United States military.

It’s hard being patriotic in public. Write something nice about the United States on your blog and you’re likely to get a Ward Churchill wannabe telling you what an evil dupe you are…or worse. This is fine. We call this free speech. Even if that speech is hurtful and deliberately designed to inflict pain (giving the lie to the term “compassionate liberal”) the kids referenced in the letter below are fighting and dying for their detractor’s right to spout their bilious hatred to their heart’s content and not have to worry about being lined up against a wall and shot or sent to a gulag-like prision for “re-education.”

This only makes me admire them more.

There are times when all of us have had second thoughts about this war. Mine have had to do with the young men and women we’re asking to fight. On more than one occasion I’ve taken George Bush to task for trying too hard to carry on “business as usual” as our people are fighting and dying over there. I can understand the political necessity of the strategy. After all, when you enemies are so bitterly hateful and are looking for any opening at all to tear you apart like a piece of raw meat in a shark tank, you tend to downplay your political vulnerabilities. That was John Kerry’s problem in the last election. Bush made Kerry’s position(s) on Iraq the issue, not the war itself or Bush’s handling of it.

Good strategy…but done partially at the expense of our warriors over there.

By not calling on us to sacrifice much, I believe in a way, the President demeans the sacrifices of our men and women in Iraq. But what kinds of sacrifices could be relevant? Many liberals want to raise taxes to pay for the cost of the war. If the present pace of spending on Iraq keeps up and if the threat from Iran and North Korea doesn’t lessen in the next 18 months, the moonbats are going to have company. I can guarantee that fiscal conservatives will be up in arms if we keep spending $18-20 billion a month on the war effort as we are now without an equal cut in expenditures on the domestic side. And those cuts will cause pain and involve real sacrifice.

Which brings me back to these kids and the sacrifices they are making:

I have never seen anything like this. Trucks and Humvees that looked like they had just come through a shredder. Their equipment was full of shrapnel blast holes, and missing entire major pieces that you could tell had been blasted by IEDs. These kids looked bad too! I mean, sunken eyes, thin as rails, and that 1000-yd. stare they talk about after direct combat. Made me pretty damn embarrassed to be a “rear area warrior”.

All people could do was stop in their tracks and stare… and feel like me…like I wanted to bow my head in reverence. A Marine Captain stationed with me, was standing next to me, also headed to the gym. He said, “Part of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 8th Marines, sir. Took the heaviest losses of any single unit up north as part of Task Force Danger, sir.”

As the convoy rolled up, all of us watching just slowly crept toward these kids as they dismounted the Hummers and 5-tons. Of course, we were all shiny and clean compared to these warriors. This kids looked like they had just crawled from Iraq. I had my security badge and ID around my neck, and started to help them unload some of their duffle bags.

A crusty Gunny came up to me and said “sir, you don’t have to do that…” I said, “Gunny…yes I do…” They all looked like they were in high school, or younger!! All held themselves sharply and confident, despite the extreme fatigue you could tell they had endured. “You guys out of the triangle?” I asked. “Yes, sir.” 14 months, and twice into the grinder, sir” (both fights for Fallujah).

Read the whole thing here.