Right Wing Nut House

SHE MUST DIE NOW! AND DIE BLOODY!

There have been many memorably awful performances by actresses in film and TV. Everyone has their own list of women paid good money to appear in major motion pictures or top rated TV shows who couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag.

But there is something extra special crummy about the performance of Jeanane Garofalo as FBI Agent Janis Gold. I mean really now, are we going to have to put up with Garafolo’s character much longer? Can’t one of Dubaku’s thugs break into FBI headquarters and put us all out of our misery by kidnapping her or simply accidentally discharging his weapon in her general direction? Perhaps my views are colored both by her execreable politics as well as a face even a Pizza Hut owner couldn’t love. But every time she opens her mouth, I am pulled out of the show and realize that there are few actresses on planet earth who are so bad they actually make you wonder who they slept with to get the part. In Garofalo’s case, we should probably send a sympathy card to whoever that was.

As far as other actresses who should never have been let near a film camera, who could forget the all-time worst performance in movie history - any movie that featured Sharon Tate. Tate had a rack that could drop a moose but that didn’t mean she could emote. Valley of the Dolls - so campy a train wreck that it’s actually fun to watch - featured Miss Tate in various stages of undress that didn’t hide anything. Too bad they couldn’t have hid her inability to act from the world.

Then there was the statue-like performance of Sofia Coppola in Godfather Part III. No, not statuesque. For a woman to be described thusly, they should have some kind of shape. Unfortunately, Sofia’s rather lumpen body type didn’t cut it. Not even low cut dresses that managed successfully to take our attention away from her face (where her gigantic schnoz threatened to steal the scenes) could salvage what even Andy Garcia couldn’t accomplish; getting a wooden indian to talk back to you.

Finally, there was the performance by Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Not a bad actress later in her career, her turn as the futurustic sex goddess was so lifeless you almost wanted to call 911 and have them shock some animation into her performance. A truly classic bad movie in the most awful sense of the genre, the pre-Hanoi Fonda was in a couple of these sex clunkers that passed for soft porn back in the 1960’s. Then, of course, after her betrayal of our POW’s, Jane became a Hollywood star, worthy of Oscar consideration for her turn as a prostitute in Klute. Same Jane, same no-talent, except now she was taken seriously for her “courage” in “speaking out” against the Viet Nam war.

Don’t ya just love Hollywood?

SUMMARY

Our FBI is two steps behind the CTU Alumni when they pick up Prime Minister Maboto’s trail by identifying the vehicle in which he is being transported. Meanwhile, Janis, with all the emotion of a three toed sloth, tells Larry that she may have discovered a fragment of the code used by the CIP module to penetrate the firewalls. Larry is dubious but Janis promises to “stay on it unless it gets cold.”

The CTU Alumni have tracked the Prime Minister to a rather ugly office building in downtown Washington. Anyone who has ever been to our nation’s capitol might not be aware of the fact that there has not been a decent looking building constructed in that town since Abe Lincoln’s time. The office structure where Maboto has been taken looks like either a boomerang sitting on edge or a child’s unordered toy box. No matter, the gang disembarks with Renee going in the front door while Jack, Tony, and Bill sneak up to the roof and wait by the door.

Renee works her womanly wiles on the guard at the desk to get past him and goes up stairs to open the door to the roof. Splitting up, Tony and Bill work their way down to the third floor where Dubaku’s suite of offices are located while Jack and Rene will attack from the floor above. Chloe directs Jack to lift some panels that are conveniently located on the floor directly above Dubaku’s nerve center. The crawl space looks like a tight fit and no one can explain how Jack and Renee can walk across the panels of a dropped ceiling without arousing the suspicions of Dubaku’s thugs directly beneath them.

At FBI headquarters, Janis is in competition with the computer to see which of them is the better actress. The computer certainly is more interesting to watch given all the flashing lights and stuff. All they need is a voice interface and they could do away with Janis’s character entirely. But Janis, running her code fragment through a search engine, discovers that very same fragment is being directed at a computer in Kidron, Ohio where a large insecticide plant is Dubaku’s target. She figures it out and gets on the horn with John, the plant manager.

John immediately gets in Janis’s good graces by calling her “honey.” Janis ignores the endearment (or Garofalo is such a horrid actress she couldn’t figure out how she was supposed to react) and asks the plant manager if anything is amiss. Oh, nothing out of the ordinary, John seems to say. Just that three of our ultra-important, can’t do without, safety valves are acting up. Nothing to worry about, happens all the time. Barely worth mentioning.

Janis announces in the most dramatic voice she can muster - which is about the same as you or I giving the time of day - that the plant is under a terrorist attack. Sure enough, they can’t shut down the tanks and the pressure begins to build. We are informed that unless the pressure can be relieved, there will be an “atmospheric release.”

Larry informs the White House and Kamin brings in the Homeland Security Secretary to brief the president. They interrupt her in the process of putting the finishing touches on a speech to the nation about the terrorist attack that caused the two planes to collide. The final line in the speech - “They deserve your prayers and outrage,” would never make it into any speech a real president would give. The press would criticize her for “fostering anger and hate.” All they can do is wring their hands and hope for the best.

Things are getting dicey at the plant and John decides to take matters into his own hands. He plans to release some of the pressure by opening an emergency valve but needs Janis’s help with the schematics. Making his way to the valve room, John mentions that Janis better have the plans up, calling her “honey” again. This elicits the first flicker of life from Garofalo who no doubt in real life would be offended by someone calling her that - even if they were in the midst of an heroic act. “Normally I don’t let people call me ‘honey’ but we can deal with that later,” she says. John speaks for all of us when he shoots back “Sounds like you need to lighten up.”

At Dubaku’s headquarters, the show makes up for its mild mannered beginning in one slam bang, in your face firefight. It starts when Bill and Tony take out the two terrorists manning the front desk. Those shots set off a melee in Dubaku’s nerve center with terrorists scrambling to get their guns and Dubaku ordering that the CIP device be disconnected. When things are at their most confused, Jack and Renee crash through the ceiling and the gun battle begins in earnest. In near darkness, the flash of the muzzles supplying most of the light, CTU Alumni does themselves proud in taking out a slew of terrorists. Nicholls, under orders from Dubaku to take Maboto to the car, meets an inglorious end when Renee puts a bullet in his back. She rescues the Mabotos’ and ushers them out the door.

Jack, whose trigger finger must have been real itchy after so little action, got a lot of target practice in - first with his pistol and then with an automatic rifle. He accounts for 5 of the 13 terrorists taken down in the expertly crafted and shot gun battle. The CIP device is destroyed in all the hub-bub never to bother the US again - right? Could Dr. Phlox have made a spare? He had plenty of time. Stay tuned.

Dubaku is escaping. In a storage room where Dr. Phlox has been held prisoner, Dubaku wires up the good doctor with explosives and skeddadles out the back door. Jack and the team find the room, throw open the door, only to be confronted by the harmless alien whose love of exotic animals and even more exotic cures on Enterprise made him the only character worth watching on that travesty of Star Trek entertainment. Jack sees a wire hanging from poor Phlox and screams “Cover!” while the bomb goes off and even an alien with medical knowledge far in advance that of earth would have a hard time putting all the Phlox pieces back together.

The FBI is still clueless even after the terror attack has been averted. They know nothing and Larry is demanding answers. Hillinger is the poor unfortunate who gets his head taken off and he tells Larry that just because the object of his dreams is probably dead doesn’t mean he should be yelling at him. Larry lies and says his real concern is the tens of thousands of Americans whose lives are at risk. He tells Hillinger to get Janis to find where the terrorists were transmitting that signal.

This Hillinger did and it elicited an actual response from Janis. Janis is supposed to be affected by the death of John who successfully opened the temporary valves to relieve pressure but heroically lost his life in the process (from what we can tell, she cares as much as if some varmint passed away on her porch). Hillinger tells her to find where the terrorists were sending the signal before mourning John. Well, it was either a rare piece of acting or she was in childbirth because she said through clenched teeth, “I know - I’m on it.” No baby so we assume it was an attempt to “act.”

At CTU East, Jack convinces Bill and the gang that they can no longer act alone in the matter, that they have to find Dubaku and they need more resources for that. Besides, someone has to tell the president of the United States her administration is more crooked than Ulysses S. Grant’s. Maboto calls President Taylor and cryptically tells her that he will be over in 10 minutes.

After hanging up, Taylor calls in her national security advisor Ethan Kamin and tells him about Maboto’s escape and that he will be coming to the White House. She tells him to bring them to the South Entrance. Kamin scurries off and you have to wonder, is Ethan in on the plot? I think it is evident we are going to find out next week. If Maboto and Bill have a hard time getting to the president or are attacked, we’ll know for sure.

And the First Gentleman? With Gedge dead and AWOL as far as the Secret Service knows, they send out an APB for him and Taylor. The other bent agente Vossler, hurries over to Sam’s apartment and catches Taylor just as he is about to escape. He calls Dubaku who tells him to bring the First Gentleman over to his place.

Dubaku lives in a non-descript apartment and has apparently made some friends while here in America. A woman who works at a diner he frequents and who he appears to be dating stops by to remind him of dinner at her place. Of course, that will give Jack the perfect opportunity to sneak in and rescue Taylor - but not for a few hours yet. Watch as Henry kind of disappears after next week as some plot threads and characters are known to do over the years.

As they are going out the door to meet the president, Tony announces he will not be going with them. Of course he can’t, he’s wanted by the cops. Jack agrees but only if Tony promises to turn himself in after this is all over. Yeah, right. Tony has no intention of doing that. He is going to rejoin the conspiracy - something he and Jack both see in each other’s eyes. Both know that there will be a confrontation later. And given the nature of the show, it can only end with Jack killing Tony to save the country.

BODY COUNT

A correction from last week. I forgot to include Sam in the body count.

I counted 18 terrorists getting it at Dubaku’s headquarters with Jack accounting for 5.

The plant manager gives up his life.

Phlox is sent into orbit.

JACK: 7

SHOW: 302

I have written extensively on a man I consider one of the most brilliant conceptualists in the conservative movement, Newt Gingrich. There is little doubt that Newt drives both friends and enemies batty at times and, like all conceptualists is given to vagueness and a maddening circular logic when it comes to describing problems.

But those lefties unable to see any human being in more than one dimension fail to understand Gingrich, seeing him as some kind of partisan ogre rather than the political theorist and historian he can be when the mood strikes him. No doubt that when the partisan juices flow, Gingrich can and has been a lightening rod for liberal hate of conservatives. This was probably most true when Newt was a GOP backbencher in the early and mid 1980’s and Republicans in the House were nearly somnolent, allowing Democrats to run roughshod over them. Virtually accusing Speaker Tip O’Neil of being complicit in communist atrocities in Nicaragua did not endear him to the left and his subsequent role in Clinton’s impeachment while Speaker himself no doubt made him an inviting conservative punching bag for liberals.

That being said, there is no one who has a better grasp of “The Big Picture” among politicians right or left. But listening to Gingrich is dangerous because the threads of his logic are so clear and riff so easily from one to the next that he can hypnotize the listener with the power of his presentation. His grasp of history, his ability to weave a narrative that traverses the past, present, and future can leave one breathless - until you realize that his conceptualizations, while impeccably logical, don’t go anywhere. Ideas and observations have no purpose, no destination. He rarely offers solutions and when he does, they are high concept dissertations that are long on rhetoric but short on practical, real world applications.

One of his oldest friends, ex-Congressman Vin Weber:

“I never saw a lot of crackpot ideas. I saw a lot of good ideas. But there was difficulty in assessing a cost-benefit ratio. Even if every idea is good, resources are limited. With Newt, it didn’t matter if we were overreaching, we had to do everything.”

A staffer noted that “He would always get people started on a project or a vision, and we’re all slugging up the mountain to accomplish it. Newt’s nowhere to be found…He’s gone on to the next mountaintop.”

Gingrich is afflicted with the same disease that brought down another brilliant conceptualizer in politics Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson set liberals on fire with the suppleness and power of his intellect but his problems in taking the next step and putting those concepts into a framework that was politically actionable had the Kennedy’s dismissing Adlai as a lightweight. That feeling of disdain persisted right on up to the Cuban Missile Crisis when, after proposing the solution that inevitably became the basis of agreement between the Soviets and the US - removal of the Jupiter Missiles from Turkey and a “no-invasion” pledge for Cuba - Stevenson was lambasted by Bobby Kennedy as “an appeaser” and there was serious thought given to replacing him at the UN (Bobby calling anyone an appeaser was a joke dripping with irony considering his father was the world’s #1 appeaser of Hitler.).

In the end, Stevenson performed more than adequately at the UN and history has judged him correct with regard to the eventual concession on the Turkish missiles - a fact not revealed about the crisis until fairly recently due to the Kennedy’s fears that the luster would be lost on JFK’s “victory” over Khrushchev in the crisis if it became known we gave up the strategically relevant Jupiters for missiles in Cuba. There was also the immediate matter of the 1962 mid term elections where Kennedy did not wish it known he had folded on the Jupiters thus giving the Republicans a club to beat him with.

Gingrich and Stevenson are similar in that they could mesmerize an audience with their brilliance but when it came to offering solutions to the problems they so exquisitely described, they were already on to talking about the next problem that needed addressing. Such men do not make good executives which is why any talk of Newt in 2012 scares me. Still, this piece in The Hill today gives us some vintage Newt in a real tour d’horizon performance:

“The world is much more difficult than any American realizes, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better,” Gingrich said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

From an economic system in tatters to dangerous enemies abroad and a culture of corruption among politicians from coast to coast, Gingrich said President Obama faces truly mountainous tasks. The country, he said, will require “changes on a scale that is going to drive the establishment crazy.”

Gingrich voiced disappointment with the economic stimulus package moving through the Senate this week, saying any package should focus on boosting small businesses rather than on bailing out big corporations and banks.

“What they’re trying to do now is bail out the guys who failed, and I think that’s very dangerous,” Gingrich said, comparing the latest stimulus plan with bailout legislation signed by former President Bush. “That’s not change you can believe in. That’s more of the same.”

Facing increasingly well-educated generations of Indian and Chinese citizens, Gingrich also called for an overhaul in the nation’s education system. While high schoolers in India get four years of physics training, “this country is aggressively preparing for the 1956 Olympics,” Gingrich said.

Warning that foreign challenges are mounting just as quickly as domestic concerns, Gingrich pointed to Mexico, where violence fueled largely by drug cartels has exploded, and Pakistan, where terrorists roam freely in some parts of the country, as two of the nation’s top concerns.

“We are piling up risks, and one morning one of those risks is going to break loose,” he said.

Gingrich never concerns himself with solutions, believing that identifying the problems clearly and concisely is enough - at least for him. But if he wants to be a force in presidential politics, he is going to have to get used to the idea that most people prefer a candidate who can both articulate what’s wrong and propose common sense solutions to fix it. To date, Newt is more enamored with that “next mountaintop” rather than slogging along, doing the grunt work of pushing solutions forward.

It is perhaps less glamorous to labor to bring about change rather than simply announce that change is necessary as Obama is finding out. In the case of both men, their success or failure will depend on how each of them perceives the enormous challenges we are facing and goes beyond the atmospherics of electoral politics to enter the world of policy making where the power of one’s ideas count only as much as the viability of solutions those ideas bring forth.

So far, neither Obama or Gingrich has set forth any convincing solutions to the problems they both have so brilliantly defined.

This is pretty surreal. There have been dozens of posts on the discontinuation of PJM’s ad network and the majority of them seem to think that PJ Media is going under or has gone under.

It re-confirms a longstanding suspicion of mine - one that I’ve shared with other “long form” bloggers and essayists on the web. The fact is, the majority of people do not read what we write. They either skim the piece and choose one bone to pick with the author or, even more commonly, don’t even bother to do that and simply glean the subject matter from the title of the post and say any old thing in the comments about what we wrote.

This becomes painfully obvious when some commenter throws 200 words at me, complaining I didn’t raise this point or that one when, in fact, the point was raised - sometimes repeatedly.

Now, I will be the first to say (although I can guarantee you it will appear in the comments at least once) that I am pretty full of myself if I actually believe most people want to read a 1500 word blog post from some guy named Moran - at least on a daily basis. No doubt, some of what I write is indeed worth reading from beginning to end. Other posts, not so much. My beef isn’t necessarily with those who think I’m a crummy writer but rather with those who comment on what I write pretending to have read and absorbed what I’ve written. If I demand honesty from myself when writing, shouldn’t I hold my readers to the same standard?

A few years ago, I actually took to banning people who played that game but in the end, realized it is a function of the internet that very few have the time or interest to read an essay - unless it’s by Bill Whittle, Mark Steyn, or some other brilliant writer. So I relented and allowed all the banned folks back in. (I will do the same on “Blogroll Amnesty Day” this week. My list of banned IP’s over the last year runs to less than 2 a month.)

So it is not a shock that people have substituted their own interpretation of the news regarding the demise of PJM’s ad network, pulling from it the erroneous information that PJ Media is toast, that the website is kaput, that PJTV is on the ropes (or a hopeless cause), and that the company will be out of business in a few months. Some of this is surely wishful thinking on the part of long time critics. Some of it may be jealousy or hurt feelings (lots of that over the years). Some of it is political partisan warfare as the left universally celebrates the “downfall” of a conservative media platform - not recognizing because they never read it, that the range of opinion on the PJ website so far outstrips anything on “progressive sites” that it is obvious lefty detractors don’t have a clue what kind of site PJM actually strives to be or they wouldn’t reveal their ignorance so proudly.

We have had liberal writers in the past contribute to the site and I hope we can increase the participation of the left in the future. We have featured many dozens of articles that were highly critical of conservatives, Republicans, and Bush with many dozens more supportive. We have had religious conservatives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, and moderate liberals write on every political and public policy topic you can think of. I am sorry but the idea that The Huffington Post or any comparable site on the left has one tenth the range of opinion and thought featured regularly at the PJ Media site just doesn’t hold water. And liberals would realize that if they bothered to visit every once and a while. The fact that the demise of the ad network has smoked them out of the walls and has them trying to outdo one another in snarky tropes, gloating at the perceived “failure” of PJM without even being familiar with what regularly appears on the webpage reveals PJM’s critics to have the intellectual shallowness we’ve come to know and love.

This becomes painfully obvious when the reader of these screeds is informed that PJM is a “far-right” website. (Since most liberals believe anyone to the right of Che is “far right,” I suppose it makes sense - in a twisted sort of way.) Even if you were to stop by the site and read a couple of articles once a month, anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence would realize immediately the falsity of that statement. If one wants uniformity of opinion, go left, young man, go left.

I doubt whether any left wing site would have featured a pro-con argument at the top of the webpage that defended and criticized a controversial decision made by the parent company and yet PJM did exactly that regarding the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel. (There were also a couple of other articles that examined the issue and criticized the decision.) PJM has featured other writers that went entirely against the grain of conservative thought on torture, immigration, the war, health care, and other policy prescriptions. We have featured several articles highly critical of Sarah Palin, John McCain, the Republican leadership, and yes, the far right of the movement.

To refer to PJ Media as a “far right” website is ludicrous. Worse, it is ignorant. It reveals the writer of such nonsense to not know what they are talking about - something that is not unusual even among the largest lefty blogs. And to top it off, gloating over the demise of a website that will not be demising adds a little schadenfruede right back at ya. To spend 1000 words doing a verbal sack dance over a foe that is still on its feet and has just tossed a 50 yard bomb for a touchdown only makes the writer look silly indeed.

I have taken some time to defend PJ Media not just because I work there but because the amount of false, misleading, and just plain dumb information that has exploded on the net as a result of the news that the blogger network has been discontinued requires a response. Setting the record straight is not my job (what I write here is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thinking of PJ Media’s management or employees). But long time readers of this site know I take particular pleasure in showing the right’s critics to be shallow, stupid, obstinate, and without honor. And the inability of PJM’s critics to even get the elementary facts of the story correct continues to prove my point.

ADDENDUM:

I didn’t mention that there will be a new approach to bringing revenue in through the website. One model has been discarded and another will take its place. To be completely accurate, one could say that the original model has indeed failed but how you can stretch that notion and say the entire enterprise is a failure is beyond me.

With nearly 1.5 million people in the mid-west without power during a cold snap, what other possible reason is there that this new “competent” administration and FEMA would be failing so spectacularly in helping in this natural disaster?

IT’S GOT TO BE THAT OBAMA HATES WHITE PEOPLE AND WANTS THEM TO DIE!

Of course, I am just aping what lefty blogs were saying about Bush less than 24 hours after Katrina’s hurricane winds stopped blowing. But AP is reporting that Midwest disaster relief people are none too pleased with our new president’s FEMA.

In Kentucky’s Grayson County, there are 25 National Guardsmen there to help - but no chain saws to cut away fallen limbs and trees. EM Director Randell Smith is quoted as saying, “We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”

Smith is also quoted as saying that FEMA is a “no show.”

And then there’s this:

FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak said some agency workers had begun working Friday in Kentucky and more help was on the way. Hudak said FEMA also has shipped 50 to 100 generators to the state to supply electricity to such facilities as hospitals, nursing homes and water treatment plants.

“We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions,” she noted.

Gee - you mean the conditions of the roads has something to do with FEMA’s response time? Now, don’t you wonder what the roads near New Orleans looked like after a Category 4 storm made landfall?  If you listened to all the screaming coming from the left about FEMA inaction, you would have to believe that those roads were as clean as a whistle, just like driving down the Interstate on a summer day. The only reason FEMA failed was because George Bush HATED BLACK PEOPLE AND WANTED THEM TO DIE!  And in this case, FEMA is being stopped by a few trees, not roads made impassable due to flooding and other debris.

Here we are, 5 days after the storm ended and STILL NO FEMA? I demand a Congressional investigation. And let’s get all the anchors and media people down here pronto. People’s lives are at stake. For all we know, there are babies being eaten and people jumping off their roofs committing suicide because FEMA is nowhere to be found.

And where is our president? Shouldn’t he be visiting these ravaged areas? It must be that he HATES WHITE PEOPLE AND WANTS THEM TO DIE. That is the only possible explanation for this incredible failure of our national government to relieve the suffering of these people.

Isn’t it interesting that now that we have a Democrat as president that all of a sudden, disaster relief is a state and local matter and the federal government should stand aside and allow them to do their jobs?

Just wondering…

I have received several emails on this news - some of them gloating, some solicitous of my supposed loss of a job. To set the record straight, the ad network that PJ Media supported will cease on April 1. The site itself will continue as before and I will continue as Chicago editor.

I understand why many are angry and upset. I also understand the gloating, although I wonder what empty space in a man’s soul would motivate him to write an email to someone and gloat over their supposed loss of a job. But you get used to that if you make a living on the internet. And since I am still working - and will continue to work at PJM - for the forseeable future, the three gloaters who emailed me about how happy they were that PJ Media was going under and I would be unemployed are now exposed as the idiots and dolts they truly are.

I have less understanding with regard to the hundreds of comments I read this morning at Goldstein and Ace’s sites. There seems to be the notion abroad that PJM “betrayed” bloggers who signed up. And this from conservatives on a conservative website? PJM and bloggers like me entered into a contractual business arrangement. The contract simply said that PJ Media would use our websites to place ads while the participating bloggers received remuneration for their consent. There were no promises made in the contract - stipulated or otherwise - that the arrangement would last forever. Bloggers who went with PJM rather than another ad company made a business decision. The market has had its way and has now spoken. How this constitutes a “betrayal” is a mystery.

The fact is, as Reynolds points out, online ad revenue is tanking. Part of that is the economy and part of it is certainly that the ad industry has yet to figure out how to exploit and pay for internet advertising. All those eyeballs and no one can truly measure the impact of online ads. I’m sure it will work itself out eventually but in the meantime, sites like PJ Media suffer the growing pains.

So, those who find something to celebrate in the loss of revenue for bloggers, I wish you a peaceful night’s sleep. To those who are affected by the demise of the network, I sympathize. I hope you land on your feet by being able to find alternative ads for your site. I tried to get Blogads for my site when it was larger than it is now and was turned down so personally, I am not optimistic in my own case.

And to those critics reporting on and doing a sack dance on the supposed death of PJM, I would suggest a remedial course in reading comprehension. We aren’t going anywhere. And I have no doubt you will continue to hear from us in the future.

Note: The views expressed above are my own and not those of PJ Media, its employees, managers, directors or even the commenting trolls.

I did a piece last week on Obama’s first few days in office and was rightly chastised by some who thought it a bit premature to be judging the performance of a president who had been in office for so short a time.

Yeah, so bite me. Everyone else wrote about Obama’s first week too, I just got the jump on them that’s all.

Be that as it may, now it has been two weeks since The One alighted from heaven to bring peace and justice to the galaxy and we are getting a glimpse into the way the Obama White House works. I think any fair minded observer would have to be troubled by the way things are going - unless you are a conservative in which case you are probably turning handsprings. On major issues regarding competence, understanding of Congress, and opposition management, this White House is surprising a lot of people by fumbling the first snap from center and watching as the behemoths on the offensive and defensive line scramble for possession.

Forgive the football analogy but I am anticipating my yearly withdrawal from the game on Monday and want to get a head start on feeling miserable for the next 7 months until I can mainline my addiction again.

In truth, the “Stimulus Package” may be slipping under the bus - at least the package in its present incarnation. The monstrosity is loaded up with so much pork it resembles a livestock exhibition at the Iowa State Fair. Didn’t anyone at the White House actually sit down and, like, you know, read the entire 647 pages of this thing to discover what was inside? Did they really believe Republicans - and the rest of the country - would buy $100 million in Planned Parenthood pork as a way to stimulate the economy? Ditto The $7 billion for sprucing up federal facilities and the $600 million for people who don’t want to pay for cable TV but won’t be able to see The Messiah on the tube unless they are given a digital converter box so they can worship him every day.

Education monies, money for Medicare, for food stamps , and the income tax credit might be supportable - as a separate bill. None of these monies will do anything to create jobs. In fact, the Wall Street Journal informs us that around $30 billion of this lemon will go to “infrastructure improvements” with another few billion spent on cutting tax rates where they will do the most good - small and medium sized businesses that create about 80% of the new jobs in good times and bad.

Everyone knows this already so I’m not breaking any new ground. The question is why is the White House surprised that no Republicans leaped to stand by Obama’s side in the House vote and 11 Democrats jumped ship entirely? Did they really believe Obama’s PR stunt of going up to the Hill to meet with Republicans would convince anyone that this bill is anything but a gigantic payoff to Democratic constituencies for their votes last November? Only Obama sycophants and toadies on blogs and the media saw Obama’s sojourn to Capitol Hill as a “reaching out” to Republicans. The rest of us who possess more than half a brain saw it for what it was - an empty gesture aimed at his own supporters who would then trumpet “The New Politics” being pushed by their man-crush.

If as many Republicans went off the reservation to support the bill as Democrats who rejected it, we would hear no end of Obama’s “success” in splitting the Republican party. But you have to wonder how many more responsible Democrats would have bailed if this wasn’t Obama’s first big game. The point being, the Stimulus is Obama’s primal thrust, his Ur issue. And judging by what we’re seeing in the Senate, I think it is going to be dicey for the new president. I expect that bill to shrink substantially - perhaps by a couple or three hundred billion dollars. I expect more tax relief, less Mickey Mouse, and perhaps more targeted infrastructure spending.

Clearly, the White House has lost control of the process in Congress as support among the public plummets; only 42% now support the stimulus down from the mid-50’s last week. The White House PR strategy is obviously failing. Every time Obama opens his mouth about “doing something” to help the economy, someone else points to some cockamamie bit in the bill that only helps a Democratic constituency. The press, while still touting the bill as the saving of America, has also been wondering about some of these specifics.

The Administration strategy of loading up the bill with pork - trying to combine what should have been 3 or 4 bills and then counting on the fear of the people to pressure their Members of Congress to ram it through before anyone had time to digest what was in it now has to be abandoned. The rank dishonesty in plugging in so much that had nothing to do with economic recovery and then trying to say it was vital to keep us from sliding into a depression has been exposed.

What else has been exposed is a basic incompetence in the White House that they believed they could get away with it. Also, the new Administration is feeling its way in Congress - something all new Administrations must do as they work the kinks out of their whip operation and Congressional lobbying efforts. Then again, most administrations don’t have the kinds of majorities enjoyed by the Democrats.

So the stimulus will pass eventually. But Republicans should take note; this guy and his people are not the geniuses of the campaign you were so frightened of. Nor are they the infallible political operators they have been built up as in the press. They make mistakes. They miscalculate. And, they may be a touch too arrogant for their own good.

Contemplate that while you decide whether to break faith with your constituencies and vote for this piece of crap.

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s on Mayor Daley’s efforts to expand O’Hare Airport - unnecessarily in the opinion of almost everybody - by getting a slice of the bail out money Congress just passed.

Now that Governor Rod Blagojevich is, politically speaking, pushing up daises, attention in the Land of Lincoln is going to be drawn to efforts by Chicago’s Mayor Daley to latch on to a portion of the coming “stimulus package” in order to fund his dream of expanding O’Hare Airport.

Never mind that no one wants to pay for it — including the city, the county, the state, the airlines, the taxpayers, or, until now, the federal government. Never mind that the FAA’s own studies show that the expansion will not relieve the heavily congested runways or mitigate the problem with delays. Never mind that getting around the expanded airport would be a nightmare for passengers, some of whom would be forced to take an hour-long shuttle ride from one parking lot to the American Airlines terminal. Never mind that an airplane that lands on the northern runway will have to taxi 45 minutes to get to the United terminal. And never mind that hundreds of residents from tiny Bensenville, IL, have already been forcibly removed from their homes despite the fact that the next phase of the expansion is in financial limbo and may never be completed.

No one contests the idea that the traffic problems at O’Hare are serious and must be addressed. Anyone who has spent an hour on a runway waiting to take off or circled the airport for even longer waiting to land cannot deny that what once was “the busiest airport in the world” has become a quagmire of delays, impossibly long lines for security, and a traffic nightmare guaranteed to give even the most even tempered driver a severe case of road rage.

But Hizzoner, for personal, political, and financial reasons, insists that expanding O’Hare is just the ticket. And when Mayor Richard Daley gets it in his head that something is absolutely necessary for his beloved city, he can be a fearsome force with which to tangle. You don’t cross Daley in Chicago unless you’re on pretty solid footing, which is why he has a legion of opponents who are making his life miserable by trying to block the expansion.

Read the whole thing before commenting please.

No “hope and change” for the Iranian people - not if Obama’s State Department gets their way regarding a new “overture” to Tehran.

It will apparently take the form of a letter - either addressed directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei or an open letter. The letter may do something that no American president - not even Jimmy Carter - was willing to do; guarantee the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Iranian regime.

In othe rwords, both a “no invasion” pledge as well as the US promising not to seek regime change by proxy or otherwise:

State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour. The letter would be addressed to the Iranian people and sent directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or released as an open letter.

One draft proposal suggests that Iran should compare its relatively low standard of living with that of some of its more prosperous neighbours, and contemplate the benefits of losing its pariah status in the west. Although the tone is conciliatory, it also calls on Iran to end what the US calls state sponsorship of terrorism.

The letter is being considered by the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as part of a sweeping review of US policy on Iran. A decision on sending it is not expected until the review is complete.

In an interview on Monday with the al-Arabiya television network, Obama hinted at a more friendly approach towards the Islamic Republic.

Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he was waiting patiently to see what the Obama administration would come up with. “We will listen to the statements closely, we will carefully study their actions, and, if there are real changes, we will welcome it,” he said.

Ahmadinejad, who confirmed that he would stand for election again in June, said it was unclear whether the Obama administration was intent on just a shift in tactics or was seeking fundamental change. He called on Washington to apologise for its actions against Iran over the past 60 years, including US support for a 1953 coup that ousted the democratically elected government, and the US shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988.

Will Obama give in to Ahmadinejad’s demand that we apologize? If we are going to go as far as guaranteeing their legitimacy, why not? Bill Clinton toured the world his second term apologizing for America’s past behavior to anyone who was ever even slightly offended (or pretended to be) at US actions over the years. Given the critique by Obama of our Iran policy during the campaign, I certainly wouldn’t put it past Obama to grovel before the Persians.

There may be some political gamesmanship at work here as Allah points out at Hot Air:

In fairness, there may be an ulterior motive to this: Ahmadinejad’s up for reelection in June and Khatami, the “moderate” who preceded him in office, is evidently planning to challenge him. By showing a conciliatory face now, The One may be trying to swing Khamenei towards backing Khatami and the reformists and leaving Ahmadinejad and the hardliners out in the cold. Although if Khamenei’s planning to dump the tiny terrorist for anyone, I’d guess it’s for his protege Larijani. He is high on Hopenchange, after all.

Good points and I would add that Larijani, who resigned as chief nuclear negotiator last year, has been slowly gathering support in the Guardian Council which could prove to be very significant. The Council chooses who gets to run for president and the Iranian Majlis. They can nix a candidate for the most specious of reasons - that they do not interpret the Koran correctly or commit some other religious faux pas. It is possible Larijani could out manuever Khatami, even to the point of having him denied access to the ballot.

Khamenei, who is reported to be in poor health, has no interest in making Obama look good but may see a lessening of tensions as a godsend for the Iranian nuclear program. The drive for ever more biting sanctions in the UN will be slowed if there is any kind of a rapproachment with the US. Russia and China, who have subsumed their own commercial interests in Iran to go along with the sanctions, will almost certainly reject any further efforts to punish Tehran for their nuclear program. There is even a possibility that the sanctions already in place will be lifted - at least there may be more of an effort to circumvent the sanctions.

This is a pretty bad idea in my view. Anything that legitimizes the Iranian regime condemns the Iranian people to further indignities under the rule of the religious crazies who still beat women in the streets for not covering themselves and jail anyone who breathes opposition to them. And any idea that improving relations with Iran will keep Hezb’allah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any number of terrorists groups at bay is wishful thinking.

Seems to be a lot of that at the White House since Obama took over.

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker

I am not a well read man - or, at least, not as well read as I should be. Nor do I claim any extraordinary intellectual gifts. I regularly fail the test of possesing a “well ordered mind” in that my insights at times lack depth and even coherence. I admit to emotionalism when logic and reason are called for. And I lack the discipline to rigorously examine concepts that do not generally conform to my own, narrow view of the world.

I guess that makes me human. And a blogger. “Humility is truth,” said my favorite philosopher Erasmus. Would that all of us take those words to heart and perhaps even etch them onto our monitors. “A man’s got to know his limitations,” said my favorite movie character Harry Callahan. That adage should be branded on our hearts to remind us that an examined life is a fulfilling life.

One can immediately see the connection between the 16th century Dutch humanist and Dirty Harry. If we give ourselves permission to not have all the answers, it liberates our minds from the slavery of formalism and allows us to freely explore ideas that we otherwise might reject out of hand or worse, adopt without question as dogma.

If, at times, it seems to some of my regular readers that my conservatism appears “inconsistent,” it is only because the principles upon which my political philosophy is based might be unchanging but the ideas that animate those principles are in a constant state of flux. For instance, I believe in the conservative principle of a just moral order being necessary for a society to thrive. But the idea of what constitutes a “just moral order” has changed for me - from one informed by a belief in a diety to one informed by a belief in the ultimate wisdom of man to manage his own affairs.

Does being an atheist make me any less of a conservative? Some would say yes, judging by the outcry over Obama including “non-believers” in his inuagural address. But I think I share most of the same basic principles of conservatism with conservatives of faith. The difference is in how we internalize those principles through our own, individual and unique life experiences and beliefs. There’s more than one way to skin a cat as there is more than one way of seeing the world through the prism of bedrock conservative principles - immutable and unchanging as those principles are.

I have taken some pains to explain my personal thoughts because the subject is so important. I don’t claim to have all the answers or have any better insight into the great issues of the day than anyone else. But to my mind, the question of whether we in the United States will be living an “easier life” in a European style welfare state were the poor and middle class are dependent on government for many things they could or should be doing for themselves or enjoying an “earned life” in a state that promotes individual responsibilty and self sufficiency will be answered in the next 4 to 8 years. And as it stands now, conservatives haven’t come up with a philosophical or political answer to the idea that whatever the people want from government, they should receive even if, as is many times the case, individual liberty is the price to be paid.

The transformation of American society from one that values liberty to one that embraces dependency has taken longer than any other western nation. This has largely been due to American conservatisms steadfast refusal to abandon what Kirk calls the “voluntary community” in favor of the stifling hand of collectivism. Where once only the poor felt the deadening hand of statism which created a permanent underclass, destroyed the family, and smother ambition, now the middle class is in line to be granted similar attention. Health care, education, even important life choices such as whether to open one’s own business or questions about child rearing are soon to be made at least partly matters of state and not wholly questions to be resolved by individuals and families.

Liberals do not like to discuss the loss of freedom their collectivist ideas entail. But we are clearly in an era where choices are to be limited for the middle class in order to make life less of a burden . And any society that limits choice, limits freedom.

But isn’t this what the people want, what they are demanding? How can you live in a democracy and tell people that government acting to make your life easier is wrong and that the alternative - struggling to make the right choices for yourself and your family and where not choosing wisely might cost you - is the preferred, indeed the “American” way of self sufficiency and taking responsibility for your own life?

There is nothing noble in suffering but I would posit the notion that independence is, in and of itself, enobling and in any society that values freedom, the slide into dependency cannot be allowed without a recognition of what we lose as well as what is gained. There are 400 years of struggle behind us to create a society where the individual took responsibility for his own well being and that of his family, his fortunes rising or falling based on his native abilities and talents. The reward was “an earned life” of personal satisfaction and a feeling of self worth and accomplishment that you simply cannot experience if you depend on government for as much as we do today. Or as much as we will in the near future if more of our freedoms are given up in the name of personal security and comfort.

What do we care how our ancestors lived? This is, after all, the 21st century and the need for a large government is self-evident. A nation of 300 million people have legitimate needs that no one except government can fill. We can’t walk out our door and shoot a deer to feed our families. Nor can we build a cabin to house them. And few of us have the skill necessary to make our own clothing. There’s no alternative to modern medicine if we get sick - a hugely expensive proposition as we all know. Beyond that, we must be protected from those who would abuse the freedoms they’ve been given to deliberately pollute the land and water, make dangerous products, place workers in unnecessarily hazardous conditions, and take untoward advantage in the marketplace.

On the one hand, we are presented with the abstract - the ideal as it were - of self sufficiency and independence while on the other the real world problems of living in an industrialized democracy. But recognizing the value of possessing as much independence as possible within that reality seems to me to be an unargued proposition. We don’t say “this far and no farther.” We don’t even think it. Government is a juggernaut with a life of its own, gathering momentum over the last half century like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and size, until it is impossible to control only get out of its way.

Does any of this matter? I believe it should. The issue is choice not the size of government. Restraining government growth would be nice but it is not necessary in order to restrain it from taking away our choices. I would say to my friends on the left that everything you wish to accomplish for the middle class and the rest of us that will unburden our lives and supposedly make them easier also involves a price that we pay in independence of action. And it disturbs me that I hear nothing about how that affects the manner in which liberty is diminished and we become that much farther removed from our roots as a people who valued freedom more than life itself.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show,, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, Jennifer Rubin of Commentary Magazine joins me to talk about the stimulus bill, Obama’s interview with al-Arabiya TV, and other political hot topics.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.