The comedian is alarmed at the prospect of Mrs. Pelosi occupying a position two heartbeats away from the Presidency. Miller seems to think Pelosi is just a trifle dim. I’d hate to hear what he’d say if he ever ran into Barbara Boxer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fears of the imminent Republican coup have Lynn Davis Lear reaching for her Fernet Branca, and searching for Street Fighting Man on her iPod, as she scuttles in the direction of the Beverly Hills barricades.
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.
The latest nannystate regulations pushed Jeff Soyer over the edge this morning, and he is in full rant mode. Some (bowdlerized by me) highlights read:
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 (D-NY), 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.
Here is the new Republican Committee Ad. A lot of people on the right are complaining that it’s unoriginal, just a take-off on Bill Moyer’s anti-Goldwater “Daisy” ad. Perhaps so, but as I recall Johnson did win.
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.
P.J. O’Rourke contemplates the twin horrors of the upcoming election.
Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley!…
Actually, the Republicans should be grateful for their lying, thieving scum. It distracts the public from the things the Republicans have done that are honestly bad. Our postwar policy is creating Weimar Iraq. And when the Islamofascist Beer Hall Putsch comes there won’t even be beer.
Social Security privatization was presented to the electorate with a public relations and marketing flair not seen since New Coke. Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection. “Homeland Security” sounds like a failed 1980s savings and loan. Didn’t Grandma lose $20,000 when Homeland Security went under? Then there’s No Child Left Behind. What if the child deserves to be left behind? What if the child deserves a smack on the behind? We have a national testing program to test whether kids are . . . what? Stupid? You’ve got kids. Kids are stupid.
Immigration policy will fence the border, providing economic stimulus to the Mexican ladder industry. The National Guard is stationed on the Rio Grande–U.S. troops standing between you and yard care…
I am so moved by principle and idealism, so indignantly high-minded, that I’m changing sides. At least the Democrats aren’t hypocritical about being scum. After Gerry Studds was censured for molesting an underaged congressional page, he was reelected six times. Therefore, in the mid term elections, I’m working to get Demo crats into office.
And work it is. There’s the problem of putative speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose very name summons images of children coming home from day care madly scratching their scalps. Then, when you see Pelosi speak, it’s impossible not to think of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. I hope her campaign slogan isn’t “A New Kick-Off for America.”
There is also the problem of issues for the Democrats to run on. You’re going to elect Democrats to control government spending? And you’re going to marry Angelina Jolie for her brains. The privacy issue–government spying on U.S. citizens–isn’t going to work. True, NSA has been collecting all our telephone information, but anyone who’s answered the phone during dinner knows that every telemarketer on earth has that information already. Illegal immigration? When the Democrats were in charge, the illegal immigrants were from al Qaeda. And as for Iraq, the best the Democrats have been able to do is make the high school sex promise: “I’ll pull out in time, honest.”
As a much-predicted democrat electoral victory looms, Glenn Reynolds discovers a response by businesses and the media to new priorities is already underway.
No one not professionally involved ever reads any studies, as the left understands only too well. But leftists control a great many prestigious academic positions, institutes, and publications, and have all the allies they could possibly desire in the mainstream media. Consequently, we are continually, at decreasing intervals, subjected to the shabby and contemptible tactic of the appeal to the purported facticity of yet another carefully contrived research study.
Figures lie and liars figure. And today’s sophisters, calculators, and economists habitually design the methodologies, choose the selection basis of the data, project the extrapolations, massage the numbers, and juggle the math. Then, hey, presto! out pops the great Herr Professor authority figure, waving his formulae in our face in precisely the manner of the witch doctor menacing a tribe of gaping savages with his rattle, and we too are supposed to fall to the ground and bury our faces in the dust, grovel, and obey.
The moonbats are barking with joy over what is becoming an election year tradition: the Lancet-published, Johns Hopkins-produced, October-released study of Iraqi war casualties, currently headlining in all the MSM, including the New York Times.
It is particularly sad to see so famous a medical journal as Britain’s Lancet, reduced to serving as leftist propaganda organ, but no wonder. Just look at that journal’s editor, Richard Horton raving at a leftwing rally. Horton is manifestly an extremist opponent of the Iraq war, who has previously damaged that journal’s reputation by publishing sensationalist junk science.
The Iraqi casualty study pre-election press release was invented by Les Roberts in 2004. Roberts ran unsuccessfully in the democrat primary this year in the 24th Congressional District in New York (Utica and neighboring environs). Gilbert Burnham, the 2004 second chair, took the lead this year.
Some of the better responses to this nonsense come from:
But the definitive answer came from an Iraqi, Omar Fadil:
Among the things I cannot accept is exploiting the suffering of people to make gains that are not the least related to easing the suffering of those people. I’m talking here about those researchers who used the transparency and open doors of the new Iraq to come and count the drops of blood we shed.
Human flesh is abundant and all they have to do is call this hospital or that office to get the count of casualties, even more they can knock on doors and ask us one by one and we would answer because we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.
We believe in what we’re struggling for and we are proud of our sacrifices.
I wonder if that research team was willing to go to North Korea or Libya and I think they wouldn’t have the guts to dare ask Saddam to let them in and investigate deaths under his regime.
No, they would’ve shit their pants the moment they set foot in Iraq and they would find themselves surrounded by the Mukhabarat men counting their breaths. However, maybe they would have the chance to receive a gift from the tyrant in exchange for painting a rosy picture about his rule.
They shamelessly made an auction of our blood, and it didn’t make a difference if the blood was shed by a bomb or a bullet or a heart attack because the bigger the count the more useful it becomes to attack this or that policy in a political race and the more useful it becomes in cheerleading for murderous tyrannical regimes.
When the statistics announced by hospitals and military here, or even by the UN, did not satisfy their lust for more deaths, they resorted to mathematics to get a fake number that satisfies their sadistic urges.
When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.
To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do this…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust me…
This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.
Behind every drop of blood is a noble story of sacrifice for a just cause that is struggling for living safe in freedom and prosperity.
Let those fools know that nothing will stop us from walking this road and nothing will stop our friends and allies from helping us reach safe shores. There’s simply no going back even if it cost us more and their fake statistics will not frighten us…our sacrifices, like I said, make us proud because our bloods are not digits in those ugly papers. Our sacrifices are paving the way for future generations to live the better life we couldn’t live.
David Zucker, producer of Scary Movie 4, turned out this little bombshell for GOP use in the final days running up to the 2006 election.
All those big brains who have brought Republican prospects to their current point of success thought Mr. Zucker’s ad was “too extreme,” “way over the top.”
Democrats may be poised to elect Keith Ellison, a convert to Islam, to the House of Representatives from the Fifth District of Minnesota, a seat held by democrats since 1962, representing the city of Minneapolis and portions of Anoka and Ramsey counties. The candidate, who formerly called himself Keith E. Hakim, has also conveniently renounced previous associations with Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, along with inflammatory newspaper columns written in 1989 and 1990 during his period as a law student at the University of Minnesota.
Ellison’s slender primary victory featured strong support from a new Minneapolis Somali community, whose members began arriving in Minnesota in 1993 as refugees fleeing the civil war in Somalia.
If elected, he is expected to take the oath of office on the Koran.
