Jonah Goldberg reminds readers that the voters threw out the GOP majority in Congress in 2006 because of corruption scandals. But replacing them with democrats has not proven to be a very effective cure, has it?

Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs about what they called the Republican “culture of corruption.” Their choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean missile launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida congressman who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned and perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.

Of course, it wasn’t as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.

But that’s all yesterday’s news. Let’s look at the here and now.

Read the whole thing.

The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked—for now—by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.

The public verdict on the war is plain. Large majorities have come to believe that it was a mistake to go in, and equally large majorities want to begin the process of getting out. That is what the polls say; it is what the mail to Capitol Hill says; and it is what voters signaled when they put the Democrats back into control of Congress in November. ...

The question that naturally arises is why the strongly expressed judgment of the people—responding to news of increasing American casualties in a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict—cannot be translated into action in Washington. ...

One way or another, public opinion ultimately will be heeded on the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine the Republicans going into the presidential election of 2008 with 150,000 American troops still taking heavy casualties in Iraq.

It’s true that the democrats won control of Congress last November, but many other issues and factors besides the war, and a number of Republican scandals, undoubtedly also played a role in that election’s results. The democrats gained a very narrow Congressional majority, and can hardly be described as possessing a mandate to do anything other than avoid taking bribes and molesting pages.

Which mandate alone should represent a more than adequate challenge, requiring all the moral resolve and political will the democrat party can possibly muster, if not more.

One hears the claim a lot these days that public opinion thinks this, and public opinion demands that, as if opinion polls conducted by news organizations represented some sort of meaningful, objective, binding, and official process. This sort of claim represents the grossest sort of attempt by journalists to usurp political authority.

The poll Mr. Broder cites in his own editorial was conducted by two notoriously biased news organizations, the Washington Post and ABC News. And its results are based on the responses of a mere 1082 adults, including an intentional “oversample of African-Americans.”

Opinion polls of 1000 or so of the people willing to talk to pollsters on the phone prove basically nothing. Opinion polls are typically artfully crafted. The questions they contain steer answers in the direction their creators desire.

That WaPo/ABC poll, which Broder cited, asked:

Do you think (the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties); OR, do you think (the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there)?

But if I asked instead:

Do you think (the United States should abandon the civilian population of Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism and sectarian violence, if that means destroying our future credibility in the eyes of both our friends and our adversaries abroad): OR, do you think (the United States should keep its word and implant stable and democratic government in Iraq, even at the cost of US military casualties)?

the poll results would be quite different.

Mr. Broder’s polls never can produce anything resembling a mandate. They only represent propaganda, typically created by dishonest and dishonorable advocates.

The only opinion polls which count occur officially and in November. The last election was inconclusive, as are the war’s current results.

Members of the left and its allies in the punditocracy looking for a mandate for surrender, withdrawal, and defeat need to look for it in the results of the 2008 election, and stop claiming that they already possess it.

SITE Institute transcript:

To the Democrats in America, Zawahiri states that they did not win and the Republicans did not lose; rather, it is the Mujahideen who have won, and the American forces and their allies those who lost.

Do you suppose Speaker Pelosi will invite him to her 4-day celebration?

Even as I write this I know that people smarter than I will have written their own concise and analytical commentaries as to what went wrong for Republicans during the mid-term elections of 2006 and for me, that’s OK. My intent is not to analyze what went wrong for us but to express my own appreciation to a man often belittled, often maligned, and often unjustly so. That man is my President, George W. Bush, and right now I sincerely believe that the President needs some kind words. He has received damned little in the course of his Presidency. Instead, throughout his Presidency and certainly in the last week he has suffered the most vicious attacks, consistently from the Left but lately even from certain of us on the Right, and it’s time to provide an honest appraisal.

I have a few problems with Gerge W. Bush myself, but I always reconsider when I reflect upon his ability to drive the lefties right around the bend. Nobody who affects leftists the way the crucifix affects vampires can be all bad.

Hear That? It’s The Sound Of Dem Campaign Promises Being Broken

Here’s a round-up of recent headlines that makes it clear that The Party With No Plan has no plans to keep its campaign promises:

” Dems Won’t Find Enacting 9/11 Ideas Easy: Remember how Pelosi & Co. was going to implement every single one of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations? Well, forget it. For one thing, many of the recommendations fall outside the purview of Congress.

” Democrats Split On How Far To Go With Ethics Law: After months of yammering about the “culture of corruption” on the other side of the aisle, Dems are dancing as fast as they can away from their promise of a “complete overhaul” of Congressional ethics rules. For one thing, there are no plans to curtail earmarks.

As for Democrats, they have a unique opportunity, one they haven’t had in 14 years, to redefine for the public what their party is. It is their chance to change their public label. Now, with the cameras of the country trained on Capitol Hill, they can throw off the old baggage of the 1960s and ‘70s and erase the cartoon version of their party, which is culturally radical, weak in its defense of America, profligate, McGovernite, bitterly devoted to the demands of its groups as opposed to the needs of America.

In 1992 the young Southern moderate Bill Clinton got a chance to erase the cartoon, and he did, for a while. But he quickly slid back, undone by his own confusion as to the purpose of his power, and reinforced the public’s worst assumptions about his party with everything from the health-care fiasco to using the Lincoln bedroom as a comp room for big rollers to horrifying fund-raising and personal scandals. What he did prove—and the area in which he did break away from the cartoon version of Democrats—was that he didn’t dislike money or its makers. He did nothing to harm Wall Street, little to slow the economy, displayed a personal tropism toward the rich. Beyond that he didn’t change his party’s rep.

Can Nancy Pelosi? She looked radiant when she was elected by the Democratic conference Thursday, and she was careful to speak—everyone was careful to speak—of children and grandchildren. No one held up a sign saying “We’re Normal,” but the message was sent.

Can the Democrats spend the next two years showing a moderate, centrist, mature face to the country? Republicans say—this is the big phrase—“It’s not in their DNA.” But betting on the other guy’s inability to change is not, really, a plan. And these Democrats, or many of them, seem a rising generation of pragmatists. They seem to know what’s at stake. If they scare America, they give Republicans a ready campaign theme for 2008: If you liked the crazy Democratic Congress, you’ll love a crazy Democratic White House.

Can they go down the center, or will radicalism of various sorts erupt and gain sway? No one knows. The Democrats don’t know. The answer is going to help shape America’s future political history. And it will help shape George Bush’s. If the Democrats are radical, he will look more reasonable, not only in the eyes of the public but of history. If the Democrats are moderate, I think he will do something surprising, and yet much in line with his personality and nature.

She predicts, on the other hand, that George W. Bush will outdo both the Paleocons and the Neocons in dumping the Republicans.

Old affection and regard for the White House and the president have dissipated. But fear remains. They have two more years, they have the power to nominate, they have money. And so a party that might begin the process of refinding itself by thoughtfully detaching from the White House will, likely, not.

But I see a surprise coming.

What is the first thing men do when they’re drowning? They save themselves. With the waters rising on every side the president will attempt to re-enact his first and most personally satisfying political success when, as governor of Texas, he won plaudits and popularity for working hand in glove with Democrats. He accepted many Democratic assumptions—he shared them, it wasn’t hard.

The White House’s reaction to the recent election was, essentially, Now we can get our immigration bill through with the Democrats. That was a clue. I suspect the president will over the next two years do to Republicans what he did to Donald Rumsfeld: over the side, under the bus and off the sled.

He doesn’t need them. They’re not popular. They’re not where the action is. He’ll work closely with Democrats, gain in time new and admiring press—“Bush has grown,” etc.

This is the path he will take to build his popularity and create a new legacy. If the Democrats let him. It would be in their interests, so I think maybe they will.

Let me describe what I think is an attractive conservative vision. It begins with supporting and respecting our President and all his accomplishments. And since I and many others still have unflinching support and admiration for the man, I decided to steal some from the commenters here and dub this conservative view “Bush Conservatives”.

Bush Conservatives not only believe in Reagan’s 11th commandment to not speak ill of fellow conservatives – we live it. From the Gang of 14, to Harriet Miers, to Dubai Ports World and to the immigration issue – there has been a brand of Republican which eschewed the 11th commandment. So let the Republicans be defined by that group – Bush Conservatives will be defined by their antithesis. Bush conservatives are not afraid of the word ‘compromise’. They despise the word ‘failure’. If there is a good idea, we do not care what party gets credit – we care that the good ideas get enacted. It is not Party uber America anymore.

Read the whole thing.

Beth agrees with him, and takes a firmer line with the Paleocons:

I’m still very, very angry at the Buchanan Conservatives/neo-right/cannibals/whatever you wanna call ‘em. It is THEY who I blame more than anyone for the GOP/conservative loss in the election. I suppose it’s irrational to blame them first, but they are the ones with whom I have the most contact, if you will, or at least the most in common (in that we are bloggers). They worked for over two years, slandering everyone on their own side whenever there was a point of disagreement. How the hell did they think the media wouldn’t lap that up? Dissension within the conservative ranks? A gift to the liberal media! And as a result, rather than putting real pressure on those who needed it, they simply allowed the left’s sound-bite slogans, “culture of corruption” and “pork-loving Republicans” to penetrate the usually-disengaged voters’ minds.

We have just witnessed an epic battle between a courageous, novel, and, of course, risky strategy for transforming the very conditions that have made us powerless against victimary Islamist blackmail, on the one hand, and the forces of continuity with pre-9/11 policies (I would say “illusions,” but part of my argument here will be in favor of stepping back from these more immediate polemical stances), in particular foreign policy realism and transnational progressivism, the political form of White Guilt, on the other. The forces of continuity have won…

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to truepeers.

I’m depressed about the election…

It’s the failure of Americans to support the war. It’s the folding and crumpling because things didn’t go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They’re going to use that information…

What I’m concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I’m upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country—a country we conquered with overwhelming military power—merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won.

Who can blame her?

Vaya Con Dios, Rummy!

Here is the record of Donald Rumsfeld. (1) Tried to take a top-heavy Pentagon and prepare it for the wars of the postmodern world, in which on a minute’s notice thousands of American soldiers, with air and sea support, would have to be sent to some god-awful place to fight some savagery—and then be trashed live on CNN for doing it; (2) less than a month after 9/11 he organized the retaliation against al Qaeda in the heart of primordial Afghanistan that removed the Taliban in 7 weeks, when we were all warned that the U.S., like the British and Russians of old, would fail; (3) oversaw the removal of Saddam in 3 weeks—after the 1991 Gulf War and the 12-years of 350,000 sorties in the no-fly-zones, and various bombing strikes, had failed. (4) Ah, you say, then there is the disastrous 3-year insurgency—too few troops, Iraqi army let go, underestimated “dead-enders” etc.?

But Rumsfeld knew that in a counterinsurgency (cf. Vietnam 1965-71) massive deployments only ensure complacency, breed dependency, and create resentment, and that, in contrast, training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer—although that is a long process that can work only if political support at home allows the military to finish the job (cf. the turn-of-the-century Philippines, and the British in Malaysia). He was a good man, and we were lucky to have him in our hour of need.

And Chris Lynch offers (an imaginary) interview:

ALR: Mr. Secretary – thank you so much for taking this time on what I’m sure is a difficult day. Can I ask if you are perhaps feeling a little bitter at the President right now?

Rummy: I always have time for my friends Chris. As far as feeling bitter towards the President – goodness no. I serve at the pleasure of the President and have offered my resignation a number of times. If truth be told – I’m a little bit in awe. I mean I don’t think I’ve seen such a fine piece of political Jujitsu in my whole time in public service.

ALR: Political Jujitsu? I’m sorry Mr. Secretary but I don’t follow you.

Rummy: Nobody saw this move coming yesterday. Nobody was prepared. It was a brilliant shifting of weight. Yesterday was supposed to be the Democrats big day. They were all going to wear new suits and dresses and give speeches congratulating themselves and talking about how they were going to fix the country. Instead all the news programs spent that time speaking about my resignation and today all the print media will be talking about me and my successor. The Democrats can’t even complain because they have been practically begging for my resignation. By the time this dies down – nobody will want to look at their new suits or pretty dresses and they sure won’t want to hear their flowery speeches because the time would have been well past that. The bonus is that the Main Stream Media doesn’t even see how they were used. Brilliant move by the President.

Read the whole thing.

Bush was incompetent at PR. The GOP got infiltrated by garden variety pols posing as conservatives.

You guys control the MSM, and when that hurricane provided impressive visual images to hang the media’s propaganda on, they finally sucessfully nailed Bush, convincing the general public that the President had failed to employ his god/king powers to still the fury of the winds, make the waters recede, overcome spectacular local incompetence and corruption, and cause vehicles and airplanes to travel successfully instantly over flooded roads and through hurricane winds to the disaster site.

There was far too much Congressional inertia and scandal. The MSM lovingly counted up every US casualty day after day, and Al Qaeda agreeably timed a Fall offensive to capture Congress. The Republican Congress deserved to lose. But your side only won by filling up your candidate team with conservatives. This Congress lost. Conservatism did not lose. You guys elected a lot of abortion and gun control opponents. I’m not sure we don’t have a better chance of killing the death tax, and confirming right wing judges now than we did before.

True, Bush is now certainly a lame duck, and we have to fear a degringolade in Iraq, if the House moonbats kill military funding. But after that happens, the terrorist bombs will go off in cities, and then there will be fewer liberals. C’est la vie.

You see, we nefarious Republicans will prevent dead and non-existent democrats (particularly those of color) from voting, and we are again going to go right ahead and fail to count all spoiled ballots as democrat votes.

Officials call it “spoilage.” I call it, “inaugurating Republicans.” Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will “spoil” this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or “blank” are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP.

All this just makes me think they’ve got some pretty racist statisticians working at that Civil Rights Commission.

A classic leftie blog post, this one is so ill-documented, irrational, and based on an extravagant series of self-indulgent assumptions that you wonder that they can be so stupid. But it is good for a laugh.

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

what (Kerry) said fits what too many upscale Dems believe: that America’s soldiers are only there because they’re too poor and too ill-educated to know any better. That’s what they mean when they say “we support our troops.” They support them as victims, as children, as potential welfare recipients, but they don’t support them as warriors and they don’t support the mission.

So their “support” is objectively worthless. The indignant protest that “of course” “we support our troops” isn’t support, it’s a straddle, and one that emphasizes the Democrats’ frivolousness in the post-9/11 world. A serious party would have seen the jihad as a profound foreign-policy challenge they needed to address credibly. They could have found a Tony Blair—a big mushy-leftie pantywaist on health and education and all the other sissy stuff, but a man at ease with the projection of military force in the national interest. But we saw in Connecticut what happens to Democrats who run as Blairites: You get bounced from the ticket. In the 2004 election, instead of coming to terms with it as a national security question, the Democrats looked at the war on terror merely as a Bush wedge issue they needed to neutralize. And so they signed up with the weirdly incoherent narrative of John Kerry—a celebrated anti-war activist suddenly “reporting for duty” as a war hero and claiming that, even though the war was a mistake and his comrades were murderers and rapists, his four months in the Mekong rank as the most epic chapter in the annals of the Republic.

Read the whole thing.

November 7, 2006—THE screenwriter William Goldman changed history in Hollywood with three simple words: “Nobody knows anything.”

He was giving a simple and profound explanation for why some movies succeed and others fail. His answer: Nobody knows anything until the audience decides.

In the world of political punditry, it’s time to invoke the Goldman rule. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of high-profile blabbermouths out there (me included) trying to tell you which way the electorate is going to go. Chances are, if you’re reading these words, you are the sort of person who pays attention to our blabber-mouthery.

And guess what? Nobody knows anything.

If you’d spent the year avoiding all the paid political prognostication and theorizing, you’d be as enlightened right now as if you had read every single word pundits have written this year.

Last week, everybody in the business was certain a huge Democratic wave was going to wash over America.

Then, over the weekend, three major national polls purported to show a Republican rally, and suddenly the certitude was gone. Maybe there’d be no wave. Maybe there never was one. Maybe there was, but John Kerry’s offensive remarks about being “stuck in Iraq” crashed the wave onto the rocks.

You could see them on the news channels, sweating, worried that they’d gone out too far on a limb predicting the Democratic triumph, wondering if perhaps they could just pull it back a little . . . .

Because guess what? Nobody knows anything.

Read the whole thing.

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Read the whole thing.

Success in 1994, 2000, and 2004 largely led to Republican cowardice, compromise, complacency, and SPENDING. If the GOP goes down in flames in 2006, let’s just hope many of the current pilots meet their political demise in the crash.

The Conservative Movement has come back, more than once, from grave reverses, each time stronger than before. We need to do now, as we did then: wage the battle of ideas; and, after winning, go on to govern on the basis of those ideas.

A democrat majority, resting on its hard left base, is a recipe for disaster. If we are forced to step aside, we will have the opportunity to recover ground with every democrat blunder, every democrat outrage, and every democrat scandal. And they may be relied upon to supply plenty of all three.

Moreover, there is reason to believe that any democrat majorities which occur will be built upon the electoral success of far more conservative democrat candidates than have been seen in a long time. If they win in 2006, the democrat party’s radical base loses anyway.

And the inimitable Scott Ott replies with Because of Iraq II.

“Is Kerry getting paid by the Republicans?” asked the young, cat-hating liberal who helps me with the column. “Did [White House strategist] Karl Rove pay him or what?”

What would you pay a guy to slice off his party’s feet in the last week of a campaign that is the Democrats’ to lose?..

Kerry’s ridiculous elitism, burbling out of him as if he lives, as I suspect, entirely on a diet of lentils and club soda, is what the Republicans needed. It’s a big chunk of wood floating just above Republican hands in deep water.

Read the whole thing.

video

Hat tip to José Guardia and Dean Esmay.

In 1989, Newt Gingrich rose to the number two leadership position in the House after a contentious three-way race pitting young backbench conservatives such as myself, Bob Walker, Joe Barton and others against old bulls such as Minority Leader Bob Michel and other ranking members. We thought they suffered from a minority party mindset and were too accommodating of the Democrats. Out of congressional power for nearly two generations, Republicans had become complacent. Senior members of the party were happy to accept the crumbs afforded by Democratic chairmen. Life was comfortable in the minority as long as you did not rock the boat. Members received their perks—such as travel abroad and special banking privileges—and enough pork projects for reelection. The entire Congress lived by the rule of parochial politics.

Gingrich and I and a handful of true believers in Ronald Reagan’s conservative vision set the goal of retaking the House. The “Contract With America” outlined our platform of limited government. This vision appealed to both the social and economic wings of the conservative movement; equally important, it included institutional reforms for a Congress that had grown increasingly arrogant and corrupt. The contract nationalized the vision of the Republican Party in a way that unified our base and appealed to independents. We championed national issues, not local pork projects or the creature comforts of high office.

In 1994, this vision was validated when Republicans took 54 seats in the House, eight seats in the Senate and control of both houses of Congress.

Welfare reform in 1996 only affirmed the revolution. Bureaucrats, special interests and the White House all claimed that the sky would fall if we touched this failed Great Society program, but we held firm. When you take on a sacred cow, you must kill it completely—tinkering on the margins is ineffective. In the end, the reform proved so successful and popular that President Bill Clinton (who rejected the original bill twice) considers it one of the best ideas his administration ever had.

At one point during the welfare reform debates, a member approached me and said, “Dick, I know this is the right thing to do, but my constituents just won’t understand.” I told him, “So you’re telling me they are smart enough to vote for you but not smart enough to understand this?” He ended up voting to pass the bill.

Yet despite such successes, we didn’t learn the right political lessons. A few months before the victory on welfare, we lost the battle over the federal government shutdown of 1995, when we were outmaneuvered by Clinton, a masterful political operator. After that fight, too many Republicans apparently concluded that America wanted bigger government. This misreading was the first step on the road away from the Reagan legacy.

We emerged as a wounded party; we stopped trusting the public; and we internalized the wrong lesson. Since the party won the majority in 1994, the GOP Conference had been consistent in requiring offsetting spending cuts for any new spending initiatives. (In fact, during the aftermath of a large Mississippi River flood, Rep. Jim Nussle even waited to find and approve offsets before moving the relief legislation for his own state of Iowa.) But by the summer of 1997, the appropriators—rightly called the “third party” of Congress—had begun to pass spending bills with Democrats. As soon as politics superseded policy and principle, the avalanche of earmarks that is crushing the party began.

Read the whole article.

I noticed that Dick Armey failed to discuss how in 1997, with Newt Gingrich under fire from ethics charges trumped up by democrats, House Republicans led by Armey himself attempted to remove Gingrich as Speaker. Consequently the following year, after unexpected electoral setbacks (Republicans lost five House seats), Gingrich was blamed. He resigned the Speakership and left the House, rather than face another rebellion. It’s impossible to avoid comparing the quality of Republican leadership, and ideological commitment, before and after Gingrich’s departure.

video
————————————-

And, as a matter of fact, only today Nancy Pelosi declared: I have supported legislation, including H.Res.316, that would properly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize this atrocity.

The Armenian Genocide is a term applied to deaths resulting from the forcible mass evacuation of Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915.

Armenians want to play the victim card and refer to genocide. Turks say Armenian deaths were inadvertent, and blame ethnic strife, disease, and WWI.

Fascinating as all this is, the precise relationship of Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915 to the government of the United States in 2006 is less than obvious to me. All this ethnic pandering may get Cher to vote for Pelosi, but the rest of us are not impressed.

In the middle of a successful career, he had the terrible misfortune to be struck down in 1991, at age 30, with Parkinson’s disease. He retired from a television series in 2000 because of the progress of his disease, but has since produced a television pilot and made guest appearances on programs.

He recently made this video advertisement for the democrat Senatorial candidate from Missouri Claire McCaskill.

video

In this video, Michael J. Fox is visibly trembling, and he appeals for voter support for McCaskill, who he says “shares (his) hope for cures” through stem cell research. Fox charges that incumbent Republican Senator Jim Talent “opposes expanding stem cell research… (and) wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.”

This charge is, of course, a tremendous oversimplification of a complex issue.

CBC story

Rush Limbaugh reported yesterday:

I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson’s disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease. So lest there be any misunderstanding, we talked about a half hour ago of the commercial that’s running for Claire McCaskill featuring Michael J. Fox on what appears to be when he’s off his meds. I have never seen him this way and I stated when I was commenting to you about it that he was either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all, and started hearing from people, “Oh, no, I’ve seen him on TV this way, this is how the disease has affected him when he’s not on his medications.” Then the e-mails started coming in saying he’s admitted not to taking them in certain circumstances so as to illustrate how the disease affects people. All of which I understand, and I’m not even critical of that. Parkinson’s disease is hideous.

Let me just stress once again in what I said in closing this out, that I think this is exploitative in a way that’s unbecoming either Claire McCaskill or Michael J. Fox, because in this commercial for Claire McCaskill he’s using his illness in a way to mislead voters that there’s a cure for Parkinson’s disease if only Claire McCaskill gets elected, if only Jim Talent is defeated…

Mr. Fox was allowing his illness to be used as a tactic to trying to secure the election of a Democrat senator who is going to somehow, her election is going to lead to the cure for Parkinson disease via stem cell research because her opponent, Jim Talent, opposes it, which is not true.

Michael J. Fox appears also in essentially the same video on behalf of the democrat Senatorial candidate in Maryland Ben Cardin.

video

Washington Post story

I couldn’t find on the web the interviews Rush Limbaugh referred to, but I have seen Michael J. Fox appearing recently sans tremors on the television show Boston Legal, and I’m inclined to believe that what Rush Limbaugh’s email correspondents are telling him is correct.

The use of stem cell research as a campaign tactic in the way democrats use it is objectionable, because the issue is always presented in seriously misleading ways.

Avoiding federal subsidies for stem cell research is an example of government neutrality in matters of faith and morals, which liberals ought to applaud. In cases where substantial numbers of Americans differ on the basis of religious conscience, government funding should not be the preferred approach. It is perfectly possible to fund stem cell research privately, and other forms of stem cells besides embryonic can be used in research.

The great promise democrats find in this particular area of research seems to be completely related to Republican opposition to funding it federally. There is no real reason to suppose that any unique opportunity lies in this direction. If it did, doubtless private foundations and private companies would be devoting very adequate resources to it.

Everyone feels sorry for Michael J. Fox’s bad luck in life, but his deliberate and calculated efforts to exploit the sympathy of others, while cynically misstating the issues, represents a low approach to politics, demeaning to the voters and to the process.

video

also here.

All week I’ve been reading in disparate sources from Drudge to US News and World Report about Bush, Rove and Cheney being overly confident about the midterm elections. Even Republican strategists are increasingly concerned because the White House doesn’t have a plan if they lose. This lack of planning shouldn’t surprise anyone, but if you really think about it a creepy, crawly feeling grows in your gut.

Here are some questions: Are these guys simply narcissistic idiots Rove-ing around in some never-never land bubble or do they know something we don’t? Have they planned a grab bag nose punch of an October/November surprise? Or have Diebold, ES&S, and local state secretaries assured them that they will do “whatever it takes” to get a Republican Congress elected again? Or are they just planning to outspend us? Karl Rove recently told the Washington Times, “For most Americans, particularly the marginal voters who are going to determine the outcome of the election, it started a couple of weeks ago… Between now and the election we will spend $100 million in target House and Senate races in the next 21 days”. That is $30 million a week in 15 or 16 key races. Knowing this group, the answers must lie in a clever blitzkrieg combo of all of the above.

When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.

We all know the neocons won’t cede power easily. They have to be aware that if the tide of Congress turns, Bush’s last two years will be mired in gridlock and perhaps even be punctuated by several embarrassing congressional investigations. Of course, Cheney did say last week that everything in Iraq is hunky dory, which leads one to believe that after James Baker’s devastating report and the escalating mass destruction of the war, Dickey-boy has simply lost it. But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House’s freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don’t win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.

The upcoming election is darned depressing. Thank goodness, we still have the hilarious and absurd self-dramatizing antics of the moonbats to provide us with a badly needed belly laugh.

Hat tip to Sister Toldjah.

Smoking. Yeah-yeah, I should just give it up. Sorry, I still reserve the right to kill myself, albeit slowly.

Now that NY, VT, and apparently NH require cigarettes to be “self-extinguishing” I’m seriously pissed. I know the intention is good; to prevent fires from drunk/sleeping smokers, but if I put my cigarette down in the ashtray for a minute, it burns out. What a damn annoyance! It just makes me light-up more often and puff on the coffin-nail more often.

I hate the “nanny-state” and hope a bunch of meteorites fall on every single statehouse across the country.

And on Washington DC, too

We’ve become a nation—no, make that a world—of whiny-babies, of perpetual-victim-invalids and their dog-shit greedy lawyers, who are incapable of self-thought, personal responsibility, and freedom of action; even to make stupid mistakes if they chose to do so….

I hope every ****ing politician in this country is thrown out of office. Or maybe worse than that.

Hell will freeze over before I vote for ANY ****ing Democrat or Republican again. And spare me your ****ing “would you rather…lesser of evils…throwing away your vote” bullshit. We need a revolution—in politics, in thinking, in rights, in America and the world,—and you will NEVER get it from anyone in the two major parties. We need a nation where men start acting like men again. This country needs a big ****ing shot of testosterone.

And this guy is gay!

Lord knows, I can understand where he’s coming from. We all feel that way several times a week, typically after reading the newspaper. But, the consequences of a democrat House majority are no joke.

“This list of the bills most likely to be championed by committee chairmen in a Pelosi-led House of Representatives would be great fodder for the latenight talk show hosts if it weren’t true,” House Majority Whip Roy Blunt said. “Instead, it’s just plain scary…

Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act—H.R. 3760: Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and 74 Democratic cosponsors propose a new “Department of Peace and Nonviolence” as well as “National Peace Day.” Cosponsors include three would-be Democratic Chairmen: John Conyers (Judiciary), George Miller (Education and the Workforce), and Charlie Rangel (Ways and Means).

Gas Stamps—H.R. 3712: Jim McDermott (D-WA) and eight Democratic cosponsors want a “Gas Stamps” program similar to the Food Stamps program to subsidize the gasoline purchases of qualified individuals….

Voting Rights for Criminals — H.R. 1300: John Conyers (D-MI) and 32 Democratic cosponsors, and H.R. 663: Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and 28 Democratic cosponsors would let convicted felons vote. Rep. John Conyers is the would-be Democratic Chairman of the Judiciary Committee which would consider this legislation.

Expand Medicare to Include Diapers—H.R. 1052: Barney Frank (D-MA) supports Medicare coverage of adult diapers. Barney Frank is the would-be Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Nationalized Health Care — H.R. 4683: John Dingell (D-MI) and 18 Democratic cosponsors want to expand Medicare to cover all Americans. John Dingell is the would-be Democratic Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee who along with cosponsors Charlie Rangel, would-be Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Henry Waxman, would-be Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, would have jurisdiction over the proposal.

Federal Regulation of Restaurant Menus—H.R. 5563: Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and 25 Democratic cosponsors authorize federal regulation of the contents of restaurant menus.

Taxpayer Funded Abortions & Elimination of all Restrictions on Abortion, Including Parental Notice — H.R. 5151: Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and 66 Democratic cosponsors want to overturn even minimal restrictions on abortion such as parental notice requirements. The bill would also require taxpayer funding of abortions through the various federal health care programs. John Conyers, the would-be Chairman of Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over the bill, is an original cosponsor.

Bill of Welfare Rights—H.J. Res. 29-35: Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) proposes a Soviet-style “Bill of Welfare Rights,” enshrining the rights of full employment, public education, national healthcare, public housing, abortion, progressive taxation, and union membership. On some these measures, Rep. Jackson is joined by up to 35 Democratic cosponsors, including would-be Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers.

A note about this list: While by no means an exhaustive list of the liberal, out-of-the-mainstream bills introduced by Democratic Members, these bills deserve particular attention because the principle advocates are the very individuals who would be in a position to schedule committee markups and move the legislation through the Congress should the Democrats take control.

For more details on the would-be chairmen….

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) Elected 1969, 18th term Rep. Obey voted with the AFL-CIO 100% of the time. Obey voted against the Deficit Reduction Act, against Defense Funding (FY06), against the Legislative Line Item Veto, and against funding the Global War on Terror (FY04).

“Mr. Obey was one of those Democrats who ripped Mr. Clinton for endorsing a balanced budget in 1995. Rather than cut spending, his goal would be to spend less on defense and more on domestic programs and entitlements.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) Elected 1970, 18th term Rep. Rangel voted with the ACLU 94% of the time. Rangel consistently voted against free trade agreements, against the Bush tax cuts, against Pension Reform, and against Welfare Reform.

Rep. Rangel “opposed the Bush tax cuts and recently voted against free trade with tiny Oman. His committee’s crucial health care subcommittee would be run by California’s Pete Stark (1972), who in 1993 criticized Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal because the government wasn’t dominant enough.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

“No question about it.” Rep. Charles Rangel (DNY), when asked whether tax increases across the spectrum would be considered should Democrats take control of Congress. (CongressDaily, 09/26/06)

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) Elected 1964, 21st term Rep. Conyers voted with the AFL-CIO 100% and the ACLU 100% of the time. Conyers consistently voted against any liability reform, against the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization, against REAL ID, against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification bill… “He recently made his plans clear in a 370-page report… the report accuses the Administration of violating no fewer than 26 laws and regulations, and is a road map of Mr. Conyers’s explicit intention to investigate grounds for impeaching President Bush.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) Elected 1955, 25th term Rep. Dingell voted with the AFL-CIO 100% of the time. Dingell voted against exploring for American-made energy in ANWR and OCS, against reforming the Endangered Species Act, and against the Telecom Reauthorization bill. “The Michigan Congressman would do his best to provide taxpayer help to GM and Ford. But telecom companies would probably get more regulation in the form of Net neutrality rules, and a windfall profits tax on oil would be a real possibility.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) Elected 1974, 16th term Rep. Miller voted with the ACLU 95% of the time. Miller voted against Higher Education Reauthorization, against Head Start Reauthorization, and against Pension Reform. Rep. Miller is “the chief sponsor of the ‘Employee Free Choice Act,’ which would make it much easier for unions to organize by largely banning secret elections… The Californian also wants to raise the minimum wage and fulfill the National Education Association wish to spend more federal dollars on local school construction.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Elected 1980, 13th term Rep. Frank voted with the AFL-CIO 100% and the ACLU 95% of the time. “…the ascension of Barney Frank (1980) would mean a reprieve for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite $16 billion in accounting scandals. His main reform priority has been to carve out a new affordable housing fund from the two companies’ profits. And forget about any major review of Sarbanes-Oxley.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) Elected 1974, 16th term Rep. Waxman voted with the AFL-CIO 100% and the ACLU 95% of the time. Waxman voted against the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, against the formation of the Bipartisan Katrina Committee, and against 527 Reform. Rep. Waxman “would compete with Mr. Conyers to see who could issue the most subpoenas to the Bush Administration.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

Intelligence Committee Chairman Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) Elected 1992, 7th term Rep. Hastings voted with the AFL-CIO 92% of the time. Hastings voted against declaring that the U.S. will prevail in the Global War on Terror, against the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, against Supporting Terrorist Finance Tracking, against the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization… Rep. Hastings “who, should Ms. Pelosi succeed in pushing aside current ranking Member Jane Harman, would take over the House Intelligence Committee. Before he won his Florida seat in 1992, Mr. Hastings had been a federal judge who was impeached and convicted by a Democratic Congress for lying to beat a bribery rap. He would handle America’s most vital national secrets.” (WSJ, 08/31/06)

And think how many of them are in favor of more gun control.

There’s no doubt about it. Republicans deserve to lose this election, but we Americans do not deserve a democrat Congress.

The embedded player is a bit too small for easy reading. If you have a problem, just catch it at the original GOP web-site here.