It’s very simple. Just look at this chart from Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle’s admiring profile of Nancy Pelosi. Tom Delay was the House of Representative’s champion fund-raiser in the 2004 House elections, managing to donate $981,278 to Republican colleagues.

Delay’s K Street Project reversed 40 years of the Washington lobbying establishment overwhelmingly financially favoring Democrat candidates. The turn-around effectuated by Delay moved K Street from contributing 70 percent of its campaign funds to Democrats and 30 percent to Republicans to 60 percent Republican, 40 percent Democrat.

It was all about the money. Delay out fund-raised them, and worse, Delay moved lobbyist campaign contributions in the direction of the GOP. Elimination of Delay is a centerpiece of Democrat strategy for a return to power and long-term Congressional dominance.

Faced with declining poll numbers in his re-election race for the House, Tom Delay chose to step aside in order to keep his seat in Republican hands.

In 2004, we defeated democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle fair and square, campaigning against him on issues and positions. In return, democrats have successfully driven the Republican House Majority Leader out of office, by calculatedly dragging out a partisan prosecution based on trumped up charges. Tom Delay’s career was not brought to an end by wrong-doing. It was brought to an end by ruthless partisanship, the manipulation of the legal system, and by successful use of the MSM propaganda machine.

Today, the left-side of the Blogosphere is celebrating, and the right-side of the blogosphere is blandly reporting Delay’s resignation as a news story, or worse, welcoming it.

Glenn Reynolds shrugs, cites Delay’s unfortunate “no fat left in the budget” line, and says “I was never much of a fan.” Wake up, people, we have suffered a serious defeat.

The left has demonstrated again, as it did with Newt Gingrich, that when a conservative Republican becomes too powerful, too influential, too effective, they can take him out.

First, the media machine goes to work on demonizing him as a personality. An endless series of photos with surly, snarly, or goofy expressions will be published, accompanied by lovingly detailed reporting of every indiscreet expression, gaffe, or unwise remark. After many months, the public naturally develops the sense that there’s this really mean, and strange in a sinister kind of way, guy, who’s somehow suddenly become terribly important in Washington, and who is a threat to everything that’s good.

Then, come the scandals. “We already knew he was nasty and strange, who would have imagined he was also a crook?”

A political career today is like a running a restaurant in the Big City. if they want to close you down, they send in the health and the building inspectors, and there are so many regulations, the building code is so large and so detailed, that is impossible to be in complete compliance, if they need to, they can always find a violation. In Delay’s case, they sent in Ronnie Earle (a leftwing activist who has used the Bolshevik base of a big university to get elected county prosecutor) to cook up a few alleged violations of arcane campaign finance regulations, which charges he had to run repeatedly past rubber-stamp grand juries before he could get one to vote an indictment.

But today, months have dragged by, that bogus Texas prosecution has remained unresolved, a new lobbying scandal has erupted, and the liberal meda has been hammering on him for what seems like forever. NowTom Delay finds himself in the position of some famous outlaw trying to win the votes of a constituency which is wondering why he isn’t already in jail. It’s common knowledge, at this point, that this Delay fellow is some kind of a crook, a nasty customer, and the kind of guy who bullies people and breaks all the rules. Who’s going to vote for Black Bart for Congress?

Delay’s a keen politician. Seeing he was losing, Tom Delay decided he would take a bullet for the Grand Old Party, and resign. The left rejoices, but you cannot find a sympathetic word for poor old Tom Delay on the right this morning. I know a fellow who has been in the Conservative Movement since its early days, who has often remarked that “the Conservative Movement has never learned to care for its wounded, or bury its dead.” Days like today suggest he may be right.

I didn’t like that Congressional budget either, but I know that Tom Delay is one of us: a Republican and a conservative. He has fought with us on the same side for decades, and we owe him something. On mere practical political grounds, we should also not be quite so cooperative, when the left undertakes one of these carefully contrived political assassinations. How many strong and competent Congressional leaders do you think we are ever going to find? If we let our adversaries destroy the reputations of each one of them in turn, and drive all of them from office, the left is certainly going to win.

They seem to be having fun, but I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home.

video

On the back page of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Bathsheba Monk goes back home to Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Coal Region (where this blog’s author also grew up), to teach a course at the community college in Tamaqua, hoping she can help others to escape. Her message of hope is not well received.

Recently visiting Toulon, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin signed the guest book of the city’s town hall: “To Toulon, Upright Before the Sea and Facing the Future. Very Amicably, Dominique de Villepin.”

John Rosenthal wonders if the French are not embarassed to have a prime minister who writes (and thinks) like teenage girl.

Pat Buchanan (even a stopped clock is right twice a day) argues that the British strikes and French student riots represent a futile effort to preserve a Welfare State, doomed by world economic competition, which European demographics in any case could not sustain.

Like the U.S. campus riots of the 1960s, the French protests appear to some of us as the Revolt of the Over-Privileged. For what these pampered young people are demanding seems to be some kind of student deferment from the Global Economy.

The striking public employees in Britain and the young in Paris are protesting something unavoidable, like middle age. For what they see slipping away is something they are never going to see again.

What is happening in Britain and France is happening across Europe: the unwinding of the social welfare state. “Are the good times really over for good?” wailed Merle Haggard, decades ago. In Europe, the answer to Merle’s question is, “Yes, they are.”

University of Texas Biological Sciences Professor Eric R. Pianka has the answer: Ebola!

At the Texas Academy of Sciences 109th meeting held March 3-5 last, Professr Pianka delivered a rip-roaring speech, regrettably overlooked by the MSM. Forest R. Mimms III gives an account of the highlights in Citizen Scientist:

One of Pianka’s earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We’re no better than bacteria!”

Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it’s too late.

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world’s population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.

AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We’ve got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”

With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.

After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.

“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third’s of the world’s population.

How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears on his web site.

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn’t merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.

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Hat tip to Wizbang via PJM.

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We reported previously on an enviromental group which goes the extra 10%.

Here for your viewing pleasure is the first cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, directed by J. Searle Dawley in 1910 for the Edison Company. Actually made to be viewed via kinetoscope. 12 minutes.

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Hat tip (and thanks) to FrancoAlemán. Great stuff!

For all our liberal friends: “Bush Was Right.” music video

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Hat tips to Tim of Angle and Scott Johnson (whose link was better).

Danish cartoonist (with snakes for brains) draws anti-Islamic cartoon, inspired by bribes of bags of money, egged on by a djinn, with a star of David between his horns.

Egyptian blogger Sand Monkey reports that the Syndicate of Egyptian Cartoonists has organized a response to Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten’s Mohammed cartoons. The results were published in al-Fagr (“the Dawn”), the same newsaper which published the Danish cartoons last October.

More of the new Egyptian cartoons can be seen at Sand Monkey‘s blog. They are not very witty, but neither were the Danish cartoons really (though the latter were more colorful, and a bit better drawn). Still, even taking into account the antisemiticism, it is refreshing, and seems a positive development, to see the Islamic world responding cartoon-for-cartoon. not beheading-knife-for-cartoon.

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

APRIL FOOLS

The 1st of April, of all days in the year, enjoys a character of its own, in as far as it, and it alone, is consecrated to practical joking. On this day it becomes the business of a vast number of people, especially the younger sort, to practise innocent impostures upon their unsuspicious neighbours, by way of making them what in France are called poissons d’Avril, and with us April fools. Thus a knowing boy will despatch a younger brother to see a public statue descend from its pedestal at a particular appointed hour. A crew of giggling servant-maids will get hold of some simple swain, and send him to a bookseller’s shop for the History of Eve’s Grandmother, or to a chemist’s for a pennyworth of pigeon’s milk, or to a cobbler’s for a little strap oil, in which last case the messenger secures a hearty application of the strap to his shoulders, and is sent home in a state of bewilderment as to what the affair means.

The urchins in the kennel make a sport of calling to some passing beau to look to his coat-skirts; when he either finds them with a piece of paper pinned to them or not; in either of which cases he is saluted as an April fool. A waggish young lady, aware that her dearest friend Eliza Louisa has a rather empty-headed youth dangling after her with little encouragement, will send him a billet, appointing him to call upon Eliza Louisa at a particular hour. when instead of a welcome, he finds himself treated as an intruder, and by and by discovers that he has not advanced his reputation for sagacity or the general prospects of his suit.

The great object is to catch some person off his guard, to pass off upon him, as a simple fact, something barely possible, and which has no truth in it; to impose upon him, so as to induce him to go into positions of absurdity, in the eye of a laughing circle of bystanders. Of course, for successful April fooling, it is necessary to have some considerable degree of coolness and face; as also some tact whereby to know in what direction the victim is most ready to be imposed upon by his own tendencies of belief. It may be remarked, that a large proportion of the business is effected before and about the time of breakfast, while as yet few have had occasion to remember what day of the year it is, and before a single victimisation has warned people of their danger.

What compound is to simple addition, so is Scotch to English April fooling. In the northern part of the island, they are not content to make a neighbour believe some single piece of absurdity. There, the object being, we shall say, to befool simple Andrew Thomson:

Wag No. 1 sends him away with a letter to a friend two miles off, professedly asking for some useful information, or requesting a loan of some article, but in reality containing only the words:

This is the first day of April,
Hunt the gowk another mile.’

Wag No. 2, catching up the idea of his correspondent, tells Andrew with a grave face that it is not in his power, &e.; but if he will go with another note to such a person, he will get what is wanted. Off Andrew trudges with this second note to Wag No. 3, who treats him in the same manner; and so on he goes, till some one of the series, taking pity on him, hints the trick that has been practised upon him.

A successful affair of this kind will keep rustic society in merriment for a week, during which honest Andrew Thomson hardly can shew his face.

The Scotch employ the term gowk (which is properly a cuckoo) to express a fool in general, but more especially an April fool, and among them the practice above described is called hunting the gowk.

Sometimes the opportunity is taken by ultra-jocular persons to carry out some extensive hoax upon society. For example, in March 1860, a vast multitude of people received through the post a card having the following inscription, with a seal marked by an inverted sixpence at one of the angles, thus having to superficial observation an official appearance:

‘Tower of London.—Admit the Bearer and Friend to view the Annual Ceremony of Washing the White Lions, on Sunday, April 1st, 1860. Admitted only at the White Gate. It is particularly requested that no gratuities be given to the Wardens or their Assistants.’

The trick is said to have been highly successful. Cabs were rattling about Tower Hill all that Sunday morning, vainly endeavouring to discover the White Gate.

It is the more remarkable that any such trick should have succeeded, when we reflect how identified the 1st of April has become with the idea of imposture and unreality. So much is this the case, that if one were about to be married, or to launch some new and speculative proposition or enterprise, one would hesitate to select April 1st for the purpose. On the other hand, if one had to issue a mock document of any kind with the desire of its being accepted in its proper character, he could not better insure the joke being seen than by dating it the 1st of April.

The literature of the last century, from the Spectator downwards, has many allusions to April fooling; no references to it in our earlier literature have as yet been pointed out. English antiquaries appear unable to trace the origin of the custom, or to say how long it has existed among us. In the Catholic Church, there was the Feast of the Ass on Twelfth Day, and various mummings about Christmas; but April fooling stands apart from these dates.

There is but one plausible-looking suggestion from Mr. Pegge, to the effect that, the 25th of March being, in one respect, New Year’s Day, the 1st of April was its octave, and the termination of its celebrations; but this idea is not very satisfactory. There is much more importance in the fact, that the Hindoos have, in their Huli, which terminates with the 31st of March, a precisely similar festival, during which the great aim is to send persons away with messages to ideal individuals, or individuals sure to be from home, and enjoy a laugh at their disappointment. To find the practice so widely prevalent over the earth, and with so near a coincidence of day, seems to indicate that it has had a very early origin amongst mankind.

Swift, in his Journal to Stella, enters under March 31, 1713, that he, Dr. Arbuthnot, and Lady Masham had been amusing themselves that evening by contriving ‘a lie for tomorrow.’ A person named Noble had been hanged a few days before. The lie which these three laid their heads together to concoct, was, that Noble had come to life again in the hands of his friends, but was once more laid hold of by the sheriff, and now lay at the Black Swan in Holborn, in the custody of a messenger. ‘We are all,’ says Swift, ‘to send to our friends, to know whether they have heard anything of it, and so we hope it will spread.’ Next day, the learned Dean duly sent his servant to several houses to inquire among the footmen, not letting his own man into the secret. But nothing could be heard of the resuscitation of Mr. Noble; whence he concluded that ‘his colleagues did not contribute’ as they ought to have done.

April fooling is a very noted practice in France, and we get traces of its prevalence there at an earlier period than is the case in England. For instance, it is related that Francis, Duke of Lorraine, and his wife, being in captivity at Nantes, effected their escape in consequence of the attempt being made on the 1st of April. ‘Disguised as peasants, the one bearing a hod on his shoulder, the other carrying a basket of rubbish at her back, they both at an early hour of the day passed through the gates of the city. A woman, having a knowledge of their persons, ran to the guard to give notice to the sentry. “April fool!” cried the soldier; and all the guard, to a man, shouted out, “April fool!” beginning with the sergeant in charge of the post. The governor, to whom the story was told as a jest, conceived some suspicion, and ordered the fact to be proved; but it was too late, for in the meantime the duke and his wife were well on their way. The 1st of April saved them.’

It is told that a French lady having stolen a watch from a friend’s house on the 1st of April, endeavoured, after detection, to pass off the affair as un poisson d’Avril, an April joke. On denying that the watch was in her possession, a messenger was sent to her apartments, where it was found upon a chimney-piece. ‘Yes,’ said the adroit thief, ‘I think I have made the messenger a fine poisson d’Avril!’ Then the magistrate said she must be imprisoned till the 1st of April in the ensuing year, comme un, poisson d’Avril.

Wikipedia is keeping track of today’s gags.

I got this one in the mail from the Life Liberty, Property list this morning:

Sorry, everyone, but I’ve had a change in philosophy, reflected in my blog’s redesign.

http://eidelblog.blogspot.com

Take care, comrades. May the chains of the evil capitalists rest lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were ever part of the proletariat.