Right Wing Nut House

The Wall Street Journal has partially solved the riddle of where Norman Hsu got the money he used to donate substantial sums to Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial and Presidential campaigns as well as numerous other Democratic candidates.

Joel Rosenman, the producer of the Woodstock rock concerts in 1969 and 1994 gave Hsu’s company an astonishing $40 million “investment” with which Mr. Hsu has apparently absconded: (WSJ Subscription required):

New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.

In a letter this Monday, Mr. Rosenman told investors that the 37 outstanding deals with Components Ltd. are set to mature “over the next four months.” But he indicated that was not likely. He said he had deposited two checks from Components that “matured Sept. 7.” He was informed by the banks that there were insufficient funds.
“This development, coupled with recent revelations,” he wrote, “led us to believe that payments due on our recent transactions with Components and Hsu may not be made.”

Forty million dollars? This fellow Hsu must have a golden tongue with an uncanny knack of separating people from their money. And I think it is obvious we underestimated his abilities. Norman Hsu is not some run of the mill grifter. He is a superstar in the world of con men; a first class, top of the line, first team all American crook.

No word on exactly when Rosenman invested this money with Hsu but the Journal article mentioned it was “recently.” If so, that hardly explains the great bulk of donations Hsu has made to Democrats going back at least 3 years. How many others has Hsu bilked? And is his entire life one big Ponzi scheme where he scams mark after mark, using the proceeds from his most recent victims to pay off some of the past investors?

There is nothing “common” about this criminal. Which brings up several troubling questions that few seem to be asking at the moment:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign couldn’t explain yesterday why it blew off warnings about felon-turned-fund-raiser Norman Hsu - and the Daily News learned FBI agents are collecting e-mail evidence in the widening scandal.

Clinton was forced Monday to give back a whopping $850,000 raised by convicted scam artist Hsu after learning his investment ventures were being probed by the FBI as a potential Ponzi scheme.

She earlier gave to charity $23,000 Hsu donated himself after reports revealed he fled sentencing for a $1 million scam in California in 1992.

Yesterday, the campaign insisted it did all it should to vet Hsu after California businessman Jack Cassidy warned in June that Hsu’s investment operation was fishy. Cassidy e-mailed his tips to the California Democratic Party, which forwarded them to the Clinton campaign.

We should also be asking questions about Mrs. Clinton’s security. How could the Secret Service let someone like Hsu within 50 yards of Hillary? Or were their objections overridden?

But the question the Justice Department is going to want answered is who in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign knew about the Cassidy warning and then failed to adequately vet Hsu’s shady dealings? Or, more troubling, discovered Hsu’s history and still took the money anyway.

Meanwhile, See Dubya at Hot Air has dug into Clinton’s donor list and pulled out several contributions from Rosenman’s family as well as others connected with his investment company:

Source Financing, Mr. Rosenman’s company, has asked the beneficiaries of Mr. Hsu’s largesse to quit giving it away to charity in order to recover it for their investors.
No word on whether Mr. Rosenman wants his own contributions to Hillary back, nor those of a Ned Rosenman who also works for Source Financing, nor those of a Molly Rosenman, also of Source Financing–each of whom gave her $4600 back in March.

Mr. Rosenman’s partner, a Mr. Yau Cheng also donated $4600 to Hillary. See Dubya asks whether all of these checks were part of a bundle delivered by Hsu to the Clinton campaign. In fact, there were 260 individual donors whose checks were bundled by Mr. Hsu. Malkin rightly calls on Hillary to come clean and cough up the list. She’s already returned $850,000. Why not make the names public?

Timing will be critical in this case. When did Hsu receive the $40 million? All the donations from Source Financing were made in March of this year. Was there some kind of understanding between Rosenman and Hsu about part of that $40 million when repaid offered as reimbursement to donors scared up by Source Financing? Was more of that $40 million earmarked for political donations to Democrats? How many operations like this exist to get around FEC regulations?

This could be the biggest election financing fraud in history, even surpassing the Nixon crimes committed during the 1972 election.

Some of the questions about the source of Norman Hsu’s largess spread around the country to Democratic candidates have been answered. But as in all scandals, each question answered raises additional problems. This is a very serious scandal for the Clinton campaign, one that could even sink her candidacy even if it doesn’t touch Hillary directly. And depending on how extensive the lawbreaking was, it may pull down the Democratic party a notch or two nationally.

My latest column at PJ Media is about the Petreaus hearings. A sample:

There are few things in Washington that get the political juices flowing more quickly than an important Congressional hearing. Part heavyweight title bout, part high school musical, when the gavel comes down and the kleig lights click on, America’s leaders paste on their most serious faces and prepare for their five minutes of notoriety with all the care and solemnity of a bride getting ready for her walk down the aisle.

This is why rather than asking the witnesses questions, members generally gave speeches about why they support/oppose the surge, usually concluding by asking some rhetorical question along the lines of “How many times did you beat your wife today, General?” or “Why do puppies find you so irresistible, sir?”

What a difference a week makes.

I honestly didn’t expect a large boost for Fred Thompson after he officially declared his candidacy. He had been “on the verge” for so long that I believed most Republicans had already accepted him as a candidate and that any bump he got from announcing would be a blip, barely beyond the statistically significant.

But polls taken in the last 72 hours tell a different story. Apparently, many conservatives who had been flirting with both Romney and Giuliani are taking another look at Thompson, tightening the race nationally while showing a definite “Fred Surge” in one key state.

First, the national numbers. Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that Fred Thompson is enjoying a bounce from his formal entry into the Presidential race.

In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, Thompson is on top for the first time since late July. The former Tennessee Senator is currently the top choice for 26% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. Rudy Giuliani, who has been the frontrunner for most of the year, is close behind with support from 22%. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earns the vote from 13% while 12% prefer Arizona Senator John McCain. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee remains atop the second tier at 6% (see recent daily numbers).

Now that’s what I call a surge.

CBS has Fred moving up as well, narrowing the gap with Giuliani:

After seeing his support among Republican primary voters rise to 38 percent in August, Giuliani was backed by only 27 percent of respondents in the most recent survey, narrowing his lead over Thompson to 5 percentage points after holding a 20-point edge last month.

While Thompson, at 22 percent support, is now a close second to Giuliani, he was not the only Republican to seemingly benefit from Giuliani’s fading numbers. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was written off by some after months of staff upheaval and disappointing fundraising, saw his support increase 6 points since the last survey to 18 percent. On the other hand, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won August’s straw poll in Ames, Iowa, saw little benefit nationwide, scoring 14 percent support - largely unchanged since last month.

Gallup gives Fred a smaller bump (19% - 22%) but still significant.

Obviously, Fred is tapping into a conservative base that was unhappy with Romney and especially, Giuliani - for different reasons. Romney’s calculated moves to the right have not sat well with many while Giuliani makes no bones about his differences with many conservatives, although he’s probably conservative enough for most Republicans. Unease with Giuliani’s experience as well as his stands on root Republican issues like abortion and gay marriage have some of the base looking for an alternative.

Romney, still mired in the mid teens nationally, may be getting a little desperate. A poorly disguised political dirty trick directed against Thompson has backfired:

A top adviser to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appears to be behind the launch of a new Web site attacking GOP presidential rival Fred D. Thompson during his first week on the trail.

The site, PhoneyFred.org, painted an unflattering picture of Thompson, dubbing the former TV star and senator Fancy Fred, Five O’clock Fred, Flip-Flop Fred, McCain Fred, Moron Fred, Playboy Fred, Pro-Choice Fred, Son-of-a-Fred and Trial Lawyer Fred. Shortly after a Washington Post reporter made inquiries about the site to the Romney campaign, it was taken down.

Before it vanished, the front page of the Web site featured a picture of Thompson depicted in a frilly outfit more befitting a Gilbert and Sullivan production than a presidential candidate.

The Republicans have a long way to go as far as being internet savvy. You can bet if a Democratic candidate set up an attack website, there would be no way to trace it back to the campaign. The Washington Post was able to unmask the fake Fred site in no time.

Meanwhile, in California, the latest Survey USA (GOP) poll has Giuliani edging Thompson 28%-26%. Their last poll in early August had Fred trailing Rudy by 11. The Mother of all Primaries on February 5 next year will include California, Illinois, and New York along with 16 other states - at least (it is still not clear whether Michigan and Florida will toe the party line and push their primaries back to February 5 or later). Fred’s best chance for a big state win on Mega Tuesday will probably be California since Romney’s dad was a governor of Michigan and Rudy looks unbeatable on his home turf of New York. Florida is another possibility for Fred as several of his key advisors have ties to Jeb Bush. Regardless, all of these numbers should give a little momentum to Fred as he wades in to the money morass and attempts to raise funds.

That, of course, is the key; turning these surging numbers into a flood of mother’s milk. With the constraints on his fund raising abilities off, Fred is going to have to raise at least $1.5 million a week between now and the end of the year by my calculations in order for him to be competitive in the early primaries and caucuses. This is more than doable if his operation is finally set and he has the people he wants in key positions. Any confusion at the staff level from here on out will reflect badly on the candidate and this will almost certainly affect his ability to raise money.

What The Fred Surge says about the race is that it is still wide open. You have to wonder if New Gingrich isn’t seeing the reaction to Thompson entering the race and contemplating his own prospects.

At this point, anything and everything is possible.

UPDATE

Steve Smith emails from the Romney campaign with an explanation of the “PhoneyFred.Org” website that the Washington Post charges a top aide to the campaign with involvement:

As reported in the Boston Globe, the site has no direct affiliation to our
campaign, and we had no knowledge of its development.

The person responsible is not an employee of ours, but we took immediate action
to make sure it was clear the site was not affiliated with the campaign.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/09/romney_camp_dis.html

Attacking the President over his Iraq policies and for the sunny side up way in which the Administration has been reporting progress on the war over the last 4 years is fair game. This is politics in America today, albeit much of the criticism is vicious and personal, and therefore appropriate in the context of what constitutes a debate over our policies.

But leave it to the left to lower the bar so that even rattlesnakes can’t get under it.

This is an ad that appeared in the New York Times today from that bastion of restraint and decorum, Moveon.Org:

At least give them credit for originality. I can’t remember the last time a general officer in the United States Army was all but called a traitor.

The body of the ad is unimportant if only because it links to reports from the GAO and others that show the surge isn’t “working.” If there is anything about Iraq that we can say with certainty, it is that in the relatively short amount of time (about 3 months since our force buildup was complete) that the surge has been in full motion, good progress has been made in some areas, no progress in others, and some places have gotten worse.

Duh.

The fact that al-Qaeda and the sectarian murderers (many of whom are not free agents but are being paid by outside actors) can read the newspapers and watch al-Jazeera, knowing full well the political situation in this country and are further aware that a supreme effort on their part to kill as many innocents as possible will likely bolster calls for an immediate withdrawal of our troops places people like Moveon.Org and the netroots who have also been sliming General Petreaus over the last few days in a de-facto alliance with the killers. Both want exactly the same thing; America totally out of Iraq. To not acknowledge that using the enemy’s deliberate attempt to escalate casualties in hopes that war opponents will gain the upper hand in this country is self-deluding. It doesn’t mean that the left are traitors or unpatriotic or anything else except pure, unadulterated dupes, easily manipulated and trained like dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Only in this case, they are trained to say “I told you so” about the surge after every mass casualty attack.

As long as the situation is even marginally better, we should continue to do all in our power to help the Iraqi government somehow come to grips with its numerous problems. I have little confidence the crew currently in charge - Maliki and his sectarian mob - are anxious to get anything done in this regard. But the “bottom up” reconciliation being effected in Anbar and elsewhere may work to force the national government to deal with the Sunnis sooner rather than later. When 50 Sunni tribes representing the great majority of Sunnis in Anbar form a secular political party to participate in the political life of the country, Maliki and his henchmen will have political difficulty in not working with them and others, although I imagine we will have to exploit the Shia fears of a well armed Sunni population in order to do get them off the mark.

Unfortunately, Baghdad and its environs are a different story. Here, the national polity has been so fractured, the factions so numerous and violent that it would be best if we allowed the Iraqi army alone to handle security there. Given that the army and police are riven with Shia militia sympathizers, this probably means a virtually “Sunni free” Baghdad in the future. This, along with the power of the Shia militias in the south are beyond our military’s capability to deal with. The militias ultimately are a political problem for the government.

Is the situation likely to turn around in 6 months? A year? No one, including Moveon and their smear machine can say. But given the stakes and given what has occurred so far, we should at least give General Petreaus the benefit of the doubt and allow him to continue his work, revisiting the issue again next March and on a regular basis after that.

Sliming General Petreaus, calling him a liar, a stooge, an Administration lackey is a sign that the left can’t win the debate on the merits of their arguments. All they have left is to attempt to kill the messenger by destroying his credibility. General Petreaus has more integrity in his little finger than all those who have sought to damage his well deserved reputation have collectively. And judging by what I’ve been hearing at the Congressional hearing this morning, their tactic has backfired badly.

I just got this from my super secret source over at Daily Kos; Osama Bin Laden has agreed to post a daily diary over at the founding netroots web site.

Why, you might ask? The master terrorist made clear in the transcript of the soon to be released tape that he agrees 100% with the netroots about the cowardly performance of the Democratic party when it comes to Iraq:

“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there.”

Visit just about any netroots blog and peruse any post since the beginning of the year and you’ll find almost the exact same criticism using pretty much the same words.

Then there’s the “Haliburton angle” brought out by some (not all) lefty bloggers - certainly many other Kos diarists:

According to the transcript, bin Laden says there are two ways to end the war:

“The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you.”

The second is to do away with the American democratic system of government. “It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.”

Sounds like Osama is the perfect lefty revolutionary to me. I’m sure he’d have some insightful things to say about changing our system of government in order to blunt the interests of major corporations.

Maybe Osama and Al Gore can team up to write a climate change entry:

He also speaks to recent issues grabbing headlines in the United States, referring to “the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes…”

Sounds like he could do a duet with John Edwards as well.

And here, Osama gives full rein to Bush Derangement Syndrome:

He says to the American people, “you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld…”

“You permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you — with your full knowledge and consent — to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then you claim to be innocent! The innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th — were I to claim such a thing.”

Bin Laden says President Bush’s words echo “neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle.”

At least he kidney punched the 9/11 truthers by taking responsibility for the attack - not that those loons believe him anyway.

But everyone else will recognize the words and phrases - exact phrases - used by lefties from the start of the war. The desire to charge Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld with war crimes. The criticism of the American people for re-electing Bush. And like most of the left, Bin Laden wouldn’t know a “Neo-con” if one came up and bit him in the ass.

Yes, Osama would fit right in with the folks over at Kos. Of course, they’d have to ignore the “religion thing” but I’m sure they’ll make some allowances just so they can grab a leading political personality like Bin Laden.

I can’t wait to see some of the comment threads on those posts…

I must confess to being something of a closet Fredhead. Long before Thompson was even thought of as a potential candidate for president, going back to the late 1990’s, I had been impressed with the Tennessee Senator’s thoughtful, measured approach to the issues and the fact that he seemed willing to buck the GOP establishment at times.

It’s not a surprise that he’s running for president. It is something of a puzzle as to how he’s gone about it. I realize that there were sound, tactical reasons for his delay in entering. But I think it only served to make his long shot candidacy even more difficult.

But that doesn’t lessen my admiration for a man who I consider one of the more interesting and thoughtful men to come along in public life in recent years.

Catching him on the cable news nets and the occasional appearance on the Sunday morning talkies, it was clear that there was an intelligence and depth behind the folksiness and the aw-shucks, good ‘ole boy demeanor he carefully cultivated. Besides, he was the political protege of a man I considered one of the great and honorable public servants in my lifetime. A former Minority and Majority Leader, candidate for President, and another thoughtful, serious conservative, Howard Baker saw something in Fred Thompson as far back as 1972 when he asked the young attorney to manage his re-election campaign. And it was Baker who finally convinced a reluctant Thompson to run for the Senate in 1994, overcoming his objections by appealing to his loyalty. It seems the Democratic candidate had defeated Baker’s daughter in a House race and Baker wanted a little payback.

More likely, the canny Baker simply knew what buttons to press in order to get Thompson out on to the hustings. But for me, if Fred Thompson can impress Howard Baker, then he’s already got a leg up on the rest of the field.

There has been great turmoil in the Thompson campaign of late. Part of that is no doubt the fact that he had to go from a standing start in May when the buzz around the candidate first became pronounced to a full blown, national organization less than 90 days later. Mistakes were made. Mistakes are still being made if you believe Jim Geraghty (and Jim is one of the sharpest observers of campaigns out there).

Time has telescoped and magnified Thompson’s staff problems compared to other campaign organizations. Other campaign shakedowns occur over several months, even a year. For Thompson, he’s had to work out the kinks on the fly over a matter of weeks. It remains to be seen whether this will doom his candidacy before it starts or whether his moves to hire on experienced campaign hands rather than go with the eager but relatively untested people they are replacing will help him regain some of the momentum he has lost over the last month.

Does he have a chance? Realistically, no. He’s too far behind in too many states. And he is woefully outgunned financially and organizationally by both Romney and Giuliani. I haven’t read much about what his strategy will be but I think we can make some educated guesses. For Fred, he must be able to emerge on the morning of February 6 still within spitting distance of the leader who will probably be Rudy Giuliani. For that to happen, he has to hope that neither Romney or Giuliani are able to dominate the early contests, either one never getting more than a third of the delegates in any one state, while Fred is hitting threshold numbers everywhere (most states have a minimum percentage of the vote requirement in order for a candidate to get any delegates). He must also hope he can win a few primaries in the south and border states on the 5th by hefty enough margins so that he can walk away with the lion’s share of delegates.

I think he will raise enough money to carry him through those Super Tuesday primaries on February 5. After that, if it is a 3 man race, people may start to look very carefully at what they are about to do by nominating a northeastern moderate Republican for president. It is still a long slog for either a Romney or Gillian to get the support of 50% of Republicans. So it is possible in this scenario that Fred will emerge as a consensus conservative candidate and begin to attract the money and endorsements necessary that would allow him to have a fighting chance at the nomination.

But the problem is that more than half the delegates will have been selected by February 6 and unless Fred is within a couple hundred delegates of the leader, he will have no chance of making up the lost ground, not with delegates being apportioned according to the percentage of vote in the primaries. Fred could win most of the remaining primaries and never catch up if his wins are narrow enough.

I think this is the most realistic scenario for a Thompson candidacy. Then again, Fred could surprise everyone by showing up Romney in Iowa, Giuliani in New Hampshire, and sweeping Super Tuesday. I just don’t think that is in the cards considering the deep pockets of both Giuliani and Romney. But stranger things have happened. Just ask Howard Dean.

For a look at the Thompson announcement video and some choice cuts from his appearance on Leno last night, Allah has it for you. And he adds this critique of the 15 minute announcement piece on YouTube:

Re: the web announcement video, that’s a lot of talking, son, and a lot of talking points, all of it synced up with head-bob choreography. I thought he’d start with a minute or so of addressing the camera and then segue into 10 minutes of video biography, a la McCain’s recent Vietnam ad, but on and on he goes. Clearly he’s trying to leverage the success he’s had with his radio commentaries: no frills, just a straight shooter calling it like he sees it, sans gimmicks — a neat trick for a Hollywood actor delivering a 15-minute oration with stagy head turns at key moments built in. The sheer volume of information and the pace at which he runs through it is daunting, though. God, family, peace with honor, secure borders, small government, a frisson of horror at the thought of another Clinton administration — it’s all in there, but it’s a lot to digest in one go and he seems to be rushing to shoehorn it all into the time available. How many people will sit through the whole thing?

Doesn’t much matter. He’s trying to make an impression and an extended Reaganesque soliloquy does that, at least. Thank god he’s in a den in a suit and tie, too. If he tried this in a denim shirt with the pick-up truck in the background, I’d be heading for the lifeboats.

Yeah, it was long. But it was just folksy enough to keep me interested. And it won’t be long before that head bobbing shows up in impressions of him on Saturday Night Live.

BTW, Allah - don’t give up on that denim shirt and pickup truck quite yet. The campaign may yet find a way to incorporate it into some of his appearances.

It’s no longer a question of “Who is Hsu” but rather “Where in the world did this guy escape to?”

California businessman Norman Hsu, a former New York apparel executive and major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing Wednesday, leading to speculation that he again is a fugitive from the law, FOX News has learned.

Hsu’s attorneys say they do not know his whereabouts, and that their client did not surrender his passport.

A little more from the LA Times:

Hsu’s attorney, James Brosnahan, explained that he had lost contact with Hsu and that the financier had failed to deliver his passport as promised.

“Mr. Hsu is not here and we don’t know where he is,” Brosnahan said outside court. “We expected him to be here.”

Brosnahan told Foiles that a legal assistant for his law firm went to Hsu’s New York City condominium last week and spent 90 minutes searching for Hsu’s passport.

Well, that’s just peachy. His defense team has known for a week that his passport is missing and didn’t bother to tell authorities? Especially given this guy’s past history of skedaddling when the heat is on?

That leaves the investigation with basically nothing. The Paw family - who acted as a blind for Hsu’s numerous contributions - probably don’t know much even if they were in a mood to talk. Investigators may track down other donors but it is equally unlikely they could be any more helpful than the Paws.

So the story will die and Hillary is safe. Funny how this kind of thing always happens to the Clinton’s just in the nick of time.

Malkin has updates and reaction.

I feel obligated to warn you not to read this post if you have just eaten. That’s because swimming in this pool of sickly sweet, syrupy slop written by Politico’s Roger Simon may give you cramps - or cause you to blow your lunch:

Looking into Bill Clinton’s eyes is like falling into a swimming pool.

His eyes are deep and blue and comforting and, as person after person will tell you, when his eyes lock onto yours, you feel like you are the only other person in the world.

Margarida Perreira, 48, of Manchester, N.H., can stand it no longer.

“Can I give you a kiss?” she asks him.

“Sure you can,” he says.

She hugs him fiercely.

Holy Christ! If the guy got any gushier, he’d have to register himself as an off shore oil well.

It gets worse:

Somewhere around here, his wife, the junior senator from New York, is campaigning for president. They started out at the fair together, but she has her pace and he has his.

They both have entourages: staff, Secret Service, local police, press. But Bill wanders freely, never letting anybody really get between him and the crowds. Most politicians like serving far more than they like campaigning, but Bill Clinton loved doing both.

“He wanted to win the voters one by one,” his former spokesman, Mike McCurry, once told me. “He would have gone to all 250 million of them if we could have figured out a way to do it.”

I think that Politico should put a warning label on this guy’s columns: “Reading this column may be hazardous to your gastro-intestinal tract.”

Or maybe they should simply supply free barf bags with each subscription:

Whenever there are groups of children, Clinton bends down so their parents can get a picture of them with the former president. Whenever he sees people in wheelchairs who cannot get through the crowd to him, Clinton moves through the crowd to them.

Many people are too nervous or excited to initiate a conversation, but they soon learn that is not necessary.

“Where are you from?” Clinton asks a woman.

“Cologne,” she replies.

It is like turning on a switch. “Beautiful town,” he says. “I have been there many times. The first time was December 1969. I crossed the Rhine at midnight and walked up the hill to the cathedral. It was breathtaking. You must be so proud of it.”

Is there a hackneyed political cliche this guy has missed? Clinton loves children. Clinton showing off his smarts. Clinton, the rock star. Clinton, the kindly.

What’s next? Clinton as - dare I say it - God?

He talks about pumpkins and watermelons — are you surprised that he knows about pumpkins and watermelons? — and how these competition fruits cannot have any holes or breaks in the skin.

“It’s seeds plus soil plus care,” he says. “Too much water and the skin breaks and you are eliminated. Use too little, and somebody beats you. It is about constant judgment. Like the presidency. Make it as big as you can without breaking the skin.”

I guess there wasn’t a lake nearby where he could walk on water but perhaps we can petition to have the above added to the bible.

“The Parable of the Mustard Seed.” Big things come in small packages.

“The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Lost sheep are best.

“The Parable of the Pumpkins and Watermelons!” And Clinton said: “Thou shalt not break the skin of thy watermelon lest thou presidential judgement be tainted like bad water .”

Inspiring, yes?

I can’t recall ever reading such drivel on a serious political website. If this is a parody then I admit to being taken in. But it’s not. The writer is dead serious.

I’m actually jealous. Simon is getting paid to write this stuff? Give me a shot and I’ll write the most glowing and adoring piece on Bush you ever saw. By the time I was finished with him, there’s be a movement to canonize him. I would write things that would make you think someone had sprayed cotton candy all over you, so lovable I could make him.

But then, if I did that I would lose all credibility as a serious writer - something Roger Simon should know after this piece of sybaritic claptrap that Politico should be ashamed of publishing.

You’ve probably seen that headline a half dozen other places. Everyone and their mother feels a compulsion to tell us what the addition of 30,000 US troops and a modest change in strategy (along with, perhaps, a more competent commanding general?) means for the immediate and long term future of Iraq.

Have you noticed that no one seems to be able to agree on anything? Are US troop fatalities down, up, or relatively unchanged? Take your pick. How about Iraqi civilian casualties? Ditto. “I hear you can walk through the streets of Ramadi without body armor.” Yeah, but don’t lose your military escort. The Brits bug out of Basra thus securing one third of the country for the militias and their patrones in Iran. “Yeah, but Basra isn’t part of the surge, ya know?” Perhaps. Praytell, how do we intend to recapture that rather large slice of Iraq from al-Sadr and the Badr Organization not to mention keep Iran’s grubby mitts out of Iraqi politics??

I don’t know if American casualties are down. I surely hope they are. I don’t know if civilian casualties have dropped significantly. Looking at the big picture, it hardly matters. Iraqis are still being found in the streets of Baghdad with holes drilled through their heads or worse, no heads at all. And Iraqi families are still hearing knocks on the door in the middle of the night telling them they have 15 minutes to pack up and leave as the de facto partition of the country into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish enclaves continues apace - surge or no surge.

No one is denying al-Qaeda is on the run although they seem quite able to set off mass casualty car and truck bombs whenever they want to garner headlines and goose the left in this country into another round of “I told you the surge wasn’t working” Bush bashing. It is one thing to be duped into falling into the enemy’s propaganda trap. But it is quite another to use al-Qaeda’s PR strategy and knowingly incorporate it into your domestic political critiques of your opponent. That is just one of the amazingly ignorant and dangerously naive components of the left’s strategy to counter any and all good news coming out of Iraq.

And then we have the hilariously ironic spectacle of the left using body counts to justify withdrawal. It was an article of faith for the left during the Viet Nam War that body counts didn’t mean anything, that they were used by the military to justify continuing the war. My how times have changed, no? Today, it is an article of faith on the left that we should leave Iraq because of the body counts.

Of course, this kind of deliciously corrupt irony is totally lost on the left. In order to appreciate irony, one must be capable of introspection. And as we all know, the left don’t do introspection. Such things as self examination may lead to an emotional and intellectual crisis as the riot of conceits that make up modern American liberalism with all of its contradictions and hypocrisy could very well cause a short circuit somewhere between their brains and their mouths - if there hasn’t been such a breakdown already.

Fred Kagan believes that not only is the surge working but that Bush’s visit to Anbar yesterday was a “Gettysburg” moment - a hinge of history, so to speak, a turning point. While I will grant that the article makes some cogent and encouraging points about the Sunni “awakening,” as is Kagan’s wont, he glosses over some of the more troubling aspects of the strategy of arming Sunnis who just a few months ago were trying to kill us in order to fight al-Qaeda.

For instance, Kagan’s thesis is that this “bottom up” reconciliation will work because it is in the self interest of all parties involved that it happen. Ditto the reason Sunnis won’t suddenly turn on their new found American friends and blast them with the weapons with which we have recently armed them.

But that “self interest” argument can be a trap as well. Who’s to say that in the near future, the Sunnis wouldn’t believe it in their own interest to start killing Americans again? There could be an “incident” that sets them off or perhaps the realization that we are facilitating a permanent division of Iraq into 3 slices - something that may become a reality with or without our blessing. Or the Democrats could win the argument in Congress and yank the troops just as they are starting to do some good, something that might be seen as a betrayal by the Sheiks who have laid their lives on the line by almost certainly going against the wishes of many younger men in their tribes and making common cause with the Americans against al-Qaeda.

There are a half dozen reasons why the Sunnis would find it in their “self interest” to begin taking pot shots at Americans again. Kagan dismisses this with a wave of his magic wand and the bland assurance that this is a permanent change in Sunni behavior. I certainly hope he’s right. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, once again, Kagan is proven to be wrong.

So that part of the surge’s success may be ephemeral. And I think that the idea of a “bottom up” reconciliation is also a mirage. It doesn’t hurt, mind you. But only a strong central government can save Iraq from its own stupidities and hate. Kagan points eagerly to the 2009 parliamentary elections and believes that it will be at that point that the unreasonable Sunni and Shia politicians in Baghdad will go down to ignominious defeat to be replaced by level headed democrats. Don’t count on it.

The Shia religious parties have the power and will fight to keep it. There may be more Sunni representation after the next election but probably not enough to form a coalition with secularists and take control of the legislature. The Kurds have already cast their lot with the Shias, seeing in them the quickest way to independence - perhaps cynically believing that the Shias will so alienate the Sunnis that the partition of Iraq will become a foregone conclusion. At any rate, it is unlikely that the Kurds would ally themselves with their former oppressors.

None of this has anything much to do with answering the question of whether the surge is “working” or not. Petreaus has cleverly kept the goals of the surge limited. The Congress and White House have added all the bells and whistles having to do with political benchmarks and the like. This probably means that Petreaus can go before Congress and show that the surge is working but that the political questions involving reconciliation have a long way to go.

Petreaus deserves every day of funding that Congress can give him to continue what he is doing in the Sunni provinces. As for the rest - Baghdad and the south - there really isn’t much to be done. The entrenched nature of the sectarian conflict in Baghdad is probably beyond our military to deal with - even with the additional troops. This would seem to indicate that the Iraqis themselves will have to sort out the situation. And given the sectarian nature of the Iraqi government, I would not be very encouraged if I were a Sunni living in Baghdad.

The political argument over whether the surge is “working” or not has degenerated into a food fight of facts and figures, each side using whatever charts and graphs showing progress or lack thereof as if by inundating us with numbers and arrows and decimal points, some magic truth will emerge and one side or the other will “win” the argument. This is so much bullsh*t. My 5 year old nephew can make facts and figures say pretty much whatever he wants them to say. The ultimate question, as always, is do we stay or do we go?

Given the alternatives, it seems that the Iraq tar baby has us firmly in its grasp. And there isn’t a big enough briar patch in all the Middle East to save us.

Much of this blog post originally appeared in The American Thinker

Everyone knows that politics is a rough game and not for those with weak stomachs or too many skeletons in their closet.

But there used to be lines that just weren’t crossed regardless of the provocation. Letting it be known that a candidate’s wife was a drunk or a floozy was one such barrier although what earthly difference it would make to voters was never quite made clear. Regardless, the press was usually pretty good about refereeing the political playing field, coming down hard on any campaign that crossed the boundaries of taste and what passes for “fair play” in such a cutthroat world.

Where’s the line now?

Soon, a new name will pop up on Mike Rogers’s hit list.

Larry Craig wasn’t “the first on my list,” the gay blogger says. And the Idaho senator, who announced his resignation Saturday, “won’t be the last.”

Rogers, sitting on a club chair in his Northwest Washington apartment, is basking in the attention. For three years now, he’s been a feared one-man machine, “outing,” he says, nearly three dozen senior political and congressional staffers, White House aides and, most damagingly, Congress members on his blog. On Capitol Hill, a typical phone call from Rogers — “Are you gay?” he’d ask — is “a call from Satan himself,” says a former high-ranking congressional staffer whose name is on the list.

Rogers reasons that there’s justice behind his tactics — “odious,” “outrageous” and “over-the-line” as they might seem to his detractors.

In the twisted, gutter mind of Rogers, if you oppose “gay rights” (whatever that is) and you are a closet homosexual, “all bets are off.”

To say that this is perhaps the most nauseating example of how the left can justify using double standards to advance their political agenda is to state the obvious. But where Roger’s transgressions against decency and humanity really sink to levels unseen before in American politics is his towering conceit about what constitutes “hypocrisy” and how that self defined character flaw in someone else should lead to either ruining their political careers or their lives.

Someone like Larry Craig who is “outed” by his own behavior is something different entirely. The people who Rogers has deemed unworthy of being allowed to maintain their privacy regarding their sexual preference have not broken any law nor have they transgressed against any rules in Congress that would make their homosexuality an issue in any way, shape or form. Instead, Rogers applies an extraordinary narrow, close minded, indeed ignorant yardstick to determine whether someone “deserves” to be “outed.

In short, if you oppose his own definition of “gay rights” and refuse to “out” yourself, Rogers will do it for you.

Patterico mixes exactly the right amount of outrage with unmitigated contempt:

Mike Rogers is an extortionist. He is a blackmailer. He is a thug. And today, he is lionized on the pages of the Washington Post.

It should be utterly uncontroversial that Rogers is nothing more than a political shakedown artist. He makes this quite clear in the Post article, eschewing the usual indirectness of the professional blackmailer for the shockingly direct threat:

Of course, to Rogers, any vote against gay rights is cast “to gain political points” — because he can’t conceive of such a vote being cast on principle.

And so, Rogers’s message to politicians is simple and straightforward: if he doesn’t like the way you vote, he will expose embarrassing information about you. If you toe the line, however, he will protect you.

That is the classic position of the extortionist.

Indeed, Patterico (who is a prosecutor when not blogging) convicts Rogers from statements out of his own mouth several times over. How any decent Democrat can stomach this worthless specimen of humanity is one reason I will never switch parties. I may be very angry with the Republican party at the moment, despise parts of its agenda, and have nothing but contempt for a broad swath of its leaders. But the GOP has nothing comparable to the Rogers operation.

Oh, they have their oppo researchers and underhanded tactics. But that’s politics boys and girls, get used to it or get out. What Rogers does has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with personal aggrandizement and the accumulation of power. And the fact that the Democratic left latches on to this lickspittle of a man and gives him encouragement puts them beyond the pale in my book.

There are many gay Republicans who oppose much of what Rogers considers “gay rights” including gay marriage. Conservative gays have wide ranging opinions on what constitutes gay rights. For Rogers to set himself up as an arbiter of opinion among conservatives - gay or not - about what people should believe is an astonishing demonstration of arrogance.

Quite simply, it’s none of his business. This is especially true of Congressional staffers who are not responsible to the voters but rather to the Member of Congress they work for. To “out” a staffer just because Rogers hears rumors about him is beyond belief. What possible difference can it make to Rogers except by outing the aide, he can put another notch on his gun. One more victim of his one man pogrom against gay Republicans who won’t slavishly think as he does.

This man is a blight on American politics and should be banished from public life forever. Instead, like his partner in “exposing Republican hypocrisy” porn magnate Larry Flynt, they receive the plaudits and adoration of the left for their efforts.

Times have changed…