Donkey Cons

Trouble at NRSC Corral

2006-07-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

Interesting news and comment about Elizabeth Dole's efforts as chairwoman of the National Republican Senate Committee:

Senator Dole has been the victim of horrible timing. It's tough to be a Republican, right now. ...
But, if there is any room for criticism of the NRSC -- and Senator Dole's leadership -- it lies in their unwavering support of liberal Republicans, such as Lincoln Chafee. Granted, it may be part of the NRSC's charter to support all Republicans, but to what degree they support these candidates is a matter of discretion.

The Doles have never been trusted by conservatives. Bob Dole was once famously denounced by Newt Gingrich as "the tax collector for the Welfare State." He was also known as "the Senator from Archer Daniels Midland." Dole's 1996 presidential campaign was a waste of time and money. By Labor Day, everybody in the GOP knew there was no hope for Dole to win.

Despite conventional wisdom that the GOP is vulnerable this year in the House, I think the greater danger to Republicans is in the Senate, because of guys like Santorum (who was forced to walk the plank for Specter, thus alienating his pro-life base) and Mike DeWine (an open-borders enthusiast).

-- McCAIN

Do the (Non-Profit) Hustle!

2006-07-24T01:25:00.000-04:00

So I'm over at Dan Riehl's site, in which he attempts the impossible task of taking Glenn "Lambchop" Greenwald seriously. And I read this about Greenwald:

He's propped himself up to be something he isn't and it led to Working Assets, in effect, paying him to write a book. Yet, as a first time author, he had 4 or 5 researchers, including a lawyer, an editor, and some others. He has also thanked Jennifer Nix for contributing to his book and spent another 20 hours with his formal editor before typing a word.

Having arrived late at this particular fisking (misplaced my VRWC secret decoder ring last week), I was forced to ask myself, "What the heck is Working Assets?" So I found out:

Working Assets was established in 1985 to help busy people make a difference in the world through everyday activities like talking on the phone. Every time a customer uses one of Working Assets' donation-linked services (Long Distance, Wireless and Credit Card), the company donates a portion of the charges to nonprofit groups working to build a world that is more just, humane, and environmentally sustainable. To date, over $50 million has been raised for progressive causes.

Yuck. A non-profit that hustles gullible liberals on behalf of the professional activists who run such festering sores on the body politic as Friends of the Earth, the Brady Center, Planned Parenthood, Veterans for Peace, and (I'm not making this up) Parents for Public Schools.

Non-profit scams

Let me explain something about non-profit organizations: Just because they're "non-profit" doesn't mean that the career "activists" who run them don't get paid. And in nearly every instance, I'll guess, the CEOs of these outfits are collecting six-figure salaries that far exceed the average income of the earnest donors who -- thinking they are advancing "progressive causes" -- donate to the non-profits via Working Assets.

Such "charity" thus involves convincing middle-class donors to give money that pays the salaries of professional activists who are in the top 2% of all U.S. income earners. It's Robin Hood in reverse.

C'mon: What's the salary of the CEO of the Brady Center? Or what are the salaries of the 5 highest-paid employees of Planned Parenthood? Do you think that even 1% of Working Assets donors have ever asked such a question? Of course not.

And here's another question the clueless liberal donor never asks: What's in it for me? In other words, by giving to some "progressive" non-profit, am I actually accomplishing anything toward the triumph of progressivism? Will this help elect Democrats?

We know that Working Assets has turned Glenn Greenwald into a bestselling author who's honeymooning in romantic Rio with a beau who may (or may not) be his partner in sock puppetry. What we don't know is exactly how the heck Greenwald's good fortune is going to help beat Karl Rove and the GOP on Nov. 7. But if I were a believer in "progressive causes," I think I'd want to know the answer to questions like that.

The 'activism' scam

This is a major reason, I would say, why conservatives routinely mop the floor with liberals. With their Calvinistic understanding of Original Sin and a fallen universe, conservatives are much more skeptical of "causes" and the activists who claim to advance them. Trust me, there are right-wing ripoff artists just like there are left-wing ripoff artists, but ripping off liberals is infinitely easier because liberals are just so dang gullible.

A true believer and his money are soon parted, as George Soros and other wealthy liberals may eventually discover. If I were Soros (or any other major liberal donor), I'd spend part of my wealth on some private detectives to ask such questions as:

These professional activists, who derive their incomes from my politically-motivated "philanthropy" -- where do they live? What is the assessed value of their homes? Have any of them recently purchased vacation homes?
How much time do these aforesaid activists spend working on what I am supposedly paying them to do?
How much expense-paid travel are the activists billing to the "cause," and what are the destinations of their travels?
If the non-profits are hiring outside consultants and contractors, can we ascertain that these are legitimate firms doing useful work directly related to the purpose of the organization?

Every since I took a freelance assignment in 2004 to write about MoveOn.org, I've developed a nagging suspicion that vast amounts of liberal largesse are being soaked up by "activist" types who aren't exactly providing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Soros and his rich friends spent jillions via 527s to defeat Bush in 2004, yet Bush got a higher percentage of the popular vote than any presidential candidate in 16 years. How does that make sense?

I don't have the time or inclination to go chasing this particular hunch. Honestly, if professional activists are partying away millions of dollars in liberal donations with expense-paid trips to exotic resorts, that's a hidden advantage to conservatism that I wouldn't want to see exposed. So if any such scam is afoot, the liberals will have to expose it themselves.

But just in case any liberal happens to have clicked over to this site and read this far, let me point out a bit of recent history: A key aspect of Jack Abramoff's scam involved a non-profit "think tank" whose headquarters was a mansion in Rehoboth Beach, Del., staffed by a yoga instructor and a lifeguard.

If Republicans do that kind of stuff, just imagine what insane tricks the party of Al "Beach Boy" Mollohan and William "Cold Cash" Jefferson might be up to!

-- McCAIN

Ko$ for $ale!

2006-07-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

First, Nancy Pelosi backstabs William Jefferson and the CBC, and now we must ask: Has Markos Moulitsas Zuniga sold out to Cynthia McKinney's opponent? Dummie Funnies says yes:

You might not be able to buy Kos's support with Blogola payments via advertising or the Unknown Jerome "consulting" fees but at least you can buy Kos's silence which is just as important. Poor Joe Lieberman. Had he only paid big bucks for a Daily Kos ad months ago, he could have spared himself the agony of a close race with Kos-supported Ned Lamont.

One Kossack is ALL-CAPS ANGRY:
WHY IS KOS ALLOWING ADVERTISING FOR HER OPPONENT, a Republican stooge, Hank Johnson? This is a guy that Diebold could really get behind. Why is Kos behind it too?
Hey, man, it pays Markos' bills! Besides, as Dan Riehl points out, the whole DailyKos environment is pretty much a Caucasian thing.

But if you want the real explanation for Cynthia's problems, just ask Billy McKinney:
"Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S."
-- McCAIN

Joe-Mentum or No-Mentum?

2006-07-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

Two views of Joe Lieberman in today's Hartford Courant:

Go Joe by Reps. Rosa DeLauro and John B. Larson, both Connecticut Democrats.
No More Joe by Irving Stolberg, former Democratic speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives.

Stolberg gives his game away with this kind of rhetorical bombast:
And his defense of an incompetent president, a vice president who fits the dictionary definition of fascism and an extremist administration that has perpetrated torture, illegal eavesdropping and a general shredding of the Constitution is insulting to the people who elected him in the first place.

You can love or hate the Bush administration, but "the dictionary definition of fascism" is not a phrase intended for persuasion. On whom has this "extremist administration" illegally eavesdropped? Can Stolberg cited even one example? But this is not an argument, it's a sermon preached directly to the choir. Stolberg is parading his Bush-hating credentials before a presumed audience of anti-war Dems, courting the crowd's applause.

Remember when Joe Klein at least tried to pretend that he was an objective reporter/analyst? Check out the peroration of Klein's latest partisan stump speech in Time:
Joe Lieberman is, without question, one of the finest men I've known in public life. I could never imagine myself voting against him. But he was profoundly wrong about the most important issue of the past five years — and now, at the very least, he has to acknowledge that there's an elephant sitting in the pickup truck.

That Connecticut Kool-Aid must be some powerful stuff.

-- McCAIN

Buckley on Dubya

2006-07-23T09:24:00.000-04:00

This is about the only way Bill Buckley could ever get favorable coverage by CBS:

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.
Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq. ... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular." ...
"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress, and in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge," Buckley says. Asked what President Bush's foreign policy legacy will be to his successor, Buckley says "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. … So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable."

Who can argue? Except for tax cuts, Bush's domestic agenda is ... well, "indecipherable" is a good word. Of course, the 9/11 attack completely re-focused the Bush presidency and the administration's defenders would say that the invasion of Iraq was necessary to the war on terror.

How we got here

It should be remembered that in 2002, when the administration began beating the drums for war with Iraq, the Democrats in Congress insisted on a debate. At that time, the Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed the administration's claims that the Iraqi WMD program and Saddam's defiance of the U.N. were legitimate grounds for war. (In 1998, the Clinton administration had made the same arguments.)

The thing that must be remembered about 2002 is this: The White House and leaders of both parties in Congress expected a cakewalk in Iraq. And, at least so far as conventional warfare was concerned, they were right: From the first bomb until the fall of Baghdad took just three weeks. The vaunted Republican Guards were destroyed (or ran away), the dictator and his henchmen went into hiding or fled the country. U.S. combat casualties in the invasion and conquest of Iraq were about 400 dead; considering that Saddam's armed forces had once been the fourth-largest military in the world, this was not a particularly heavy toll.

The war was a success, but the subsequent peace has been marred by what most call an "insurgency," but which is actually a brutal terror campaign -- roadside bombings and kidnappings. (Very few U.S. casualties in the current phase are the result of small-arms fire, or even mortar attacks.) The terrorists are mostly foreigners, who are recruited, funded and supported by Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda. This is not to say that there are no Iraqis involved. But the Iraqis know that the U.S. forces can't leave until order is restored, so they have an interest in stopping the violence. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, then, are opposed to this terrorism, which is killing more Iraqi civilians than U.S. troops.

What's happening

Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda know that the continued large-scale U.S. presence in Iraq is an irritant, so the terrorists -- backed by outside forces -- are escalating the violence in order to force U.S. troops to remain. Why? So they can inflict a Mogadishu-style humiliation on the United States.

Ever since Vietnam, America's enemies have believed that the U.S. does not have the resolve to sustain military operations long-term, if such operations mean significant numbers of casualties. To these enemies, our unwillingness to fight -- if fighting means U.S. casualties -- is weakness and cowardice.

No less an authority than Osama bin Laden has said that it is this weakness, as exemplified by the U.S. retreat from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" incident, that inspired al-Qaeda's belief that it could attack America with impunity. In the Third World, strength is admired and weakness reviled. Because of America's retreat after one battle, we were "a weak horse," and Osama reckoned that the Islamic world would rally behind the "strong horse" of al-Qaeda.
When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.
-- Osama bin Laden, 2001
Whether or not the U.S. invasion of Iraq was wise or good, it has accomplished one thing: It has put American troops on the ground facing al-Qaeda-backed terrorists. Thus, the American military has the opportunity to refute bin Laden's argument, to show that our troops are not afraid to fight in defense of freedom.

This refutation has cost the lives of 2,500 U.S. soldiers -- and the blood of thousands of others wounded -- but this is really a belated payment for more than 40 years of an American foreign policy based on risk-avoidance. The current mess might never have occurred, had it not been for ill-advised actions in Somalia and elsewhere.

Osama's assessment was entirely correct. People prefer the strong horse to the weak horse, and ever since 1968, U.S. policy has put us into the "weak horse" role, at least from the Third World perspective. What Osama did not understand, however, is this: The policies pursued by the American political elite do not necessarily reflect the wishes, interests or character of the American people.

I believe that the American people understand the stakes in Iraq. The American people understand that, if the U.S. military retreats in the face of a haphazard terrorism campaign carried out by a ragtag bunch of young fanatics, this will embolden fanatics everywhere.

Having expended the lives of 2,500 soldiers already, will we not stick it out another year or two -- risking perhaps another 800-1,000 U.S. deaths -- in order to crush the terrorists, and to establish a stable government in Iraq?

Dying for a mistake?

John Kerry likes to talk about war in terms of asking someone to be the last man to die for a mistake. This is foolish. Mistaken or not, wars end in victory for one side and defeat for the other. Having voted to send Americans to war -- back when he expected it to be an easy and popular affair -- Kerry's regrets now are worse than useless. Once war has commenced, the achievement of victory is the only proper object of the statesman.

One might argue that the War of 1812 was a U.S. policy blunder brought about by the anti-British resentments and expansionist ambitions of the "War Hawks," and thus that the last American killed in the Battle of New Orleans "died for a mistake." But New Orleans was a U.S. victory, the war enhanced American prestige in Europe, and the war did, after all, give us our national anthem -- inspired by the bombardment of Ft. McHenry.

Mistakes? I consider the Spanish-American War a folly, and I am still waiting for someone to tell me what good America accomplished by its intervention in World War One. And the 1999 war with Serbia - what was that about? But thinking such foreign adventures a fool's errand does not require me to cheer for American defeat, or to urge that we stop fighting merely because the fighting is difficult and deadly.

War means fighting, and fighting means killing, as Nathan Bedford Forrest once said. If the United States wishes to be as pacifist as Sweden or France, it may be that we may avoid wars in the future ... or not. But I hope that, the next time war fever strikes Congress, someone will speak up to remind them that wars don't always go as planned. Sometimes wars drag on and become unpopular. I hope, before they commit their nation's troops to fight another war, our leaders will be prepared to explain to several thousand American mothers and fathers -- and wives and children -- why their loved ones had to die in some god-forsaken desert or jungle.

It is obvious to me that Democrats like Kerry who voted for the war in 2002 weren't thinking about any of this. They were thinking about the elections, and their own ambitions. Now the Democrats (and not a few Republicans) want to blame the Bush administration for all that's gone wrong in Iraq and pretend that their Monday-morning quarterbacking is "courageous." It's really gutless irresponsibility. If they really believed their own rhetoric, then those who voted for the war but have since turned against it would resign from Congress. But they don't do that, do they?

The only fitting epithet: Weak horses!

-- McCAIN

Democrats: 'Deus dementat ...'

2006-07-22T18:36:00.000-04:00

The sock puppetry of Greenwald -- viciously dismantled by Ace of Spades and Dan Riehl -- is further proof, were it needed, that the rapid rise of the left-wing blogosphere is bad news for Democrats.

Almost from the instant YearlyKos drew national attention to this phenomenon, the Moonbats have demonstrated that they are not ready for primetime. Like the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, the left side of the blogosphere attracted a bunch of get-rich-quick schemers who saw an opportunity to exploit the ignorance of others.

Because the average reader of liberal blogs knows even less about economics than he knows about politics, the first clever guys to tap the market were able to establish themselves as kingpins. It was rather like being at the top of a pyramid scheme.

The left blogs represented different things to producers and consumers. The producers saw an opportunity to earn money and gain influence; the consumers were dazzled by the promise of political success.

Guys like Kos and Jerome made a big show of being political analysts, of possessing some special insight that would enable the "people-powered movement" to defeat Bushitler and the Repugs. Some four years into this enterprise, the Ayatollahs of Kosola are "0-for-eternity," and yet their visitors keep coming back. Why? Because, sad as it is for Democrats to admit, the crackpot paranoid politics of the Kos crowd is their only hope for regaining the power they've been steadily losing since 1994.

The desperation of the Left in the post-Clinton age created a huge market of would-be suckers to be tapped by the likes of Kos, Jerome and Glenn Greenwald -- faux-sophisticates with a knack for articulating the grievances of the hard-core true believers.

Right v. Left

Outside the Beltway points out important differences between Left and Right on the blogosphere. But the biggest difference is this: The Right has been rolling up political victories since 1980.

With the (not insignificant) exception of the Clinton presidency, conservatives can look back on nearly a quarter-century of unprecedented electoral success. From their post-Watergate ebb of 1974, conservative-led GOP has risen to almost complete domination of the political landscape so that, even in 2006 -- with scandals, internal dissent and a discouraging war to hinder them -- Republicans are still odds-on favorites to maintain their congressional majorities.

The Right side of the blogosphere, therefore, doesn't have to offer any "bold new ideas" or esoteric strategies for conservative victory. Conservatives know a thing or two about winning in politics, and so there is no single genius-guru, nor even really an oligarchy, atop the Right side of the blogosphere. Conservative blog activity is diverse in form, content and ideology.

But the Left, grasping at any straw of hope, has thrust wealth, influence and even something like fame onto a relative handful of individuals whose names were unknown before 2000. The estimated annual ad revenue of DailyKos is $631,800; previously it was $832,000, but it seems that Kos has (a) reduced his ad slots from 8 to 6; and (b) increased the price per ad from $2,000 to $2,025 per week.

After less than a year of blogging, Greenwald's ranked in the Technorati Top 100 and his book is a New York Times bestseller. The guys on top of the Left blogosphere are making out like bandits.

Hustling trust

What the Left side of the blogosphere has been hustling for the past 5 years is not merely entertainment (like Michelle Malkin in shorts on a trampoline). They're not jokers like Ace, or online sleuths like Dan, they're not even "proud members of the MSM" like Don Surber.

No, the Blogonistas are faithful leaders of the flock. Like Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart, their stock-in-trade is piety and trust.

How is that trust gained? Flattery:
"Oh, you are so smart and generous and noble, my fellow anti-war liberals. Your politics is destined to triumph over the evils of Bushitler, but you have been betrayed and sold out by the Lieberman-worshippers and the DLC. They are dishonest cowards, not courageous fighters like you! Let's all band together and really FIGHT HARD for our cause!"
Thus, by a sort of a populist sycophancy, trust is gained. And to what use do they put that trust? To enrich and exalt themselves.

And what does the average Kossack get from this transaction? Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The ordinary Kossack is like Erin in Flagstaff: Paying money to hang around losers.

What the Kossacks can't seem to comprehend is this: The advertisers at DailyKos are buying traffic. In other words, every time anyone clicks onto DailyKos, that generates a "visit," the aggregate of which then is translated into revenue for Kos. And this kingpin status then creates other income-generating opportunities for Kos and Jerome, and likewise for Greenwald, et al.

Armageddon looms

All of which would be perfectly fine if the Big Box bloggers of the Left were actually directing the Democratic base toward victory. But they have not delivered victory in the past two elections, and it does not look as if they will deliver victory anytime soon.

We are now within weeks of the 2006 elections. A third consecutive GOP victory over the "people-powered movement" should suffice to disillusion all but the most deranged Moonbats. A well-funded team of political professionals is now hard at work to accomplish such a victory.

Maybe Greenwald can explain away his apparent sock puppetry -- although Allah Pundit isn't buying Glenn's "my Brazilian lover is as obsessed with my blog as I am" argument. Jerome and Kos have managed to keep up their hustle despite their various post-YK embarassments. But what will they say after a crushing defeat in November? Even if the Democrats come close to recapturing Congress but fall short, that kind of horseshoes-and-hand grenades stuff isn't what the Kossacks really want.

And the Right blogosphere isn't going anywhere. On Nov. 8, the whole gang will still be online, to highlight how much money the Kossacks poured into losing campaigns at the behest of the Moonbat Mullahs. Conservative bloggers will remind everyone that Kos and Jerome and Greenwald got paid big bucks for their political insights, and that those political insights were revealed to be entirely bogus.

I'll bet if you clicked over to DailyKos right now, you'd see them almost SCREAMING LIKE THIS about the need for their readers to give, give, give to Democrats. The Left bloggers are within weeks of their own little Armageddon. Those Democrats, like Howard Dean, who have delivered the party into the hands of the Kos crowd are proving once again the ancient maxim:
Quos perdere vult deus dementat prius.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. When Democrats surrender their party to stock scammers, astrologers and "patriots" who've decamped to Rio -- well, don't blame us for reading the omens and portents.

UPDATE 7/23
Ace of Spades finds himself enjoying it too much, hammering some nicey-nice "blog civility" hall monitor like Mark Gastineau in full-blown 'roid rage, sack-dancing over a fallen quarterback:
PS, your blog sucks and always has. Just wanted to point that out.
Oh, good luck on getting linked on this obvious, contrived bit of Insta-bait.
"Oh, look at me, I preen about what good manners we should all have! Let’s stick to the substance, guys!" ...
And then Ace adds this "update":
No one looks cool when they lose their, um, cool.
Serenity now. Perspective. Putting the computer down.

LOL! While Ace looks for his Zen space, I'll say in his defense that there's nothing quite like the feeling of strutting around with a fresh bloody scalp, and it's easy to get carried away. I know. I've done it myself.

I'm thinking maybe Ace ought to consider the Ned Flanders option: Just stop hatin' on Glenn. The man has been exposed as a vainglorious fool, his pride and reputation assaulted. Now everybody else is dogpiling on the guy. If you keep up the attack, you look sadistic. So be the big guy, say "God bless you," and walk away.

I discovered the bliss of Flanders-ism with Cynthia McKinney. Having spent 15 years hatin' on McKinney, I lost my joy just about the time everybody jumped on the anti-McKinney bandwagon. Having been demonized myself, I have some empathy for people who find themselves cast in the "Villain of the Day" role.

McKinney screwed up. Patrick Kennedy screwed up. Glenn Greenwald screwed up. Once somebody like that is exposed for their screw-ups, the continued piling-on is just overkill. Call in Ned Flanders and let it drop. ...

But never mind that -- Dan's got video!

-- McCAIN

Reality-based insanity

2006-07-20T02:21:00.000-04:00

It's official: Tree-huggers are crazy.

And if you ever wanted to see video of Michelle Malkin, in shorts, jumping on a trampoline, this is your chance.

Remember: She fed me lunch!

UPDATE

Moonbats have their own video heroes. Is that Markos leading the chant?

-- McCAIN

Erick on Cagle

2006-07-20T02:12:00.000-04:00

Nice post at Red State.

-- McCAIN

Armageddon for Moonbats

2006-07-20T01:36:00.000-04:00

Matt Stoller, ignoring pleas from friends and family, drank the Kos Kool-Aid and is now hallucinating about a Ned Lamont victory.

If and when the effects wear off, maybe Matt will consider some facts:

Lieberman has led every public poll in this primary.
Lieberman stomped Lamont in the TV debate.
The Moonbats are about to be taught a lesson that Hezbollah is currently learning: Genesis 12:3.

So tell me, Matt, how come Jerome Armstrong's astrology charts didn't warn him about the IDF's plans to boost the Joe-Mentum?

The Jihad Johnnies are lobbing missiles into Haifa, sparking talk of World War III, and the Moonbats think they're going to defeat one of the staunchest Zionists in the Senate?

Good night, Ned!

-- McCAIN

Primary hangover

2006-07-19T21:14:00.000-04:00

Kind of worn out after blogging the Georgia primary from 2 p.m. Tuesday until 3:45 a.m. Wednesday. So let's hit some quick highlights:

Casey Cagle's victory in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia is probably destined to be one of those things that the liberal media never understand. The MSM is so focused on Ralph Reed as an icon of the (eee-vill!) "Religious Right" that they just don't get it, although I tried to explain part of it.

Good to see Erick at Peach Pundit giving props to DONKEY CONS (BUY TWO!) as being the first to call the LG race for Cagle at 9 p.m. Tuesday. Of course, without the insight derived from reports by the Peach Pundit gang, even a certified wingnut like me wouldn't have dared call with just 1/5 of the precincts tallied.

Peach Pundit forever remains the best place to find the inside scoop on Georgia politics. Erick did me a huge favor by helping me connect with Republican activists during my 4th of July visit to Georgia. They helped fill me in on the political background, so I could get a good feel for the LG's race, and to all of y'all, I say a big thanks. Next time you're in Washington, look me up. Always good to see home folks.

Rob Huddleston has a great take on the Georgia primary. Rob's a Tennessean, and they've had a particularly brutal 3-way GOP primary for the Senate seat being vacated by Frist's retirement. When the mudbath is over, Tennessee Republicans are going to have their work cut out for them this fall to defeat a united Democratic Party behind Harold Ford Jr.

McKinney's runoff

If you are a normal human being, the news that "Jihad Cindy" McKinney has been forced into a runoff is a "Ren & Stimpy" moment:
HAPPY, HAPPY! JOY, JOY!

There may be crazier liberals in America, but few are so ostentatiously idiotic as the Democrat from GA4. Adorably, and predictably, McKinney's campaign (and a Moonbat or two) saw her embarrassment as the work of a Diebold conspiracy.

Hank Johnson -- who just became Neal Boortz's favorite Democrat -- is to be commended for running an excellent campaign. Yet some Republicans may be asking themselves whether keeping McKinney in Congress might not have some partisan value.

Jihad Cindy's outbursts of idiocy -- as predictable as clockwork -- are the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP. All Republicans have to do every fall is to ask Americans: "Do you really want to vote for the Cynthia McKinney party?" No way 51% of Americans will ever answer "yes."

In a narrow partisan sense, then, it would be a loss for the GOP if McKinney were defeated in the Aug. 8 runoff. But there are times when patriotism requires that we do what's good for our country, regardless of partisan interests, and so ...
Give 'til it hurts!

And God bless America.

Some extra stuff

Just in case you thought Democrats were the World's Worst Political Party, Blonde Sagacity has news for you.

Hat tip to Jeff Emanuel for this from the Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald:

Cagle’s against-all-odds, David-versus-Goliath victory in this race was a parallel of his life story to this point. A living embodiment of the American dream, Cagle was raised by a single mother, who often had to work multiple jobs to provide for them—but who “never took a dime of government assistance.” A public school product who never graduated from college, Cagle rose from unskilled laborer to successful self-made business owner.

Jeff's just posted his own column about Cagle's victory:

Ninth-generation Georgian Casey Cagle defeated his Miami-raised opponent — who was running for elective office for the first time amid rampant speculation he was seeking the office only as a steppingstone to the governorship — both by communicating his positive vision for Georgia, and by convincing voters Reed's values were "for sale to the highest bidder."

The thing about Republicans, they can sometimes manage to look classy even when eating a big ol' steamin' plate of fresh crow, as Georgia state Sen. Cecil Staton shows:

Here we are on the morning after a long bruising campaign and one job remains to be completed. We must pick up the broken pieces and put back together the Republican family in order to form a winning strategy for the general election.
I know it will not be easy. I have never been involved in a more emotional campaign. ... My candidate for Lt. Governor did not win. But I have never for a moment supposed that his opponent was evil or unworthy. ... I am pledging my complete support to our Republican nominees. There is more at stake than my personal feelings or yours. If we want Republican principles to be lived out through state government then we must come together and work for a total victory this fall, from top to bottom.

I only wish Sen. Staton had explained which "Republican principles" were involved in Ralph's pimping for the Louisiana Coushatta tribe and sweatshops in the Northern Marianas islands. But let's let bygones be bygones, and there's no need to bring up Reed's brilliant political advice at this late date.

* * * * *

Here's another poor fellow smitten with desire for Ann Coulter.

-- McCAIN

Cagle win: We called it first

2006-07-18T23:29:00.000-04:00

Just in case anyone cares, at 8:55 p.m. Tuesday, I sent out the following e-mail:

-- Original Message ----
From: Stacy McCain
To: [NAMES REDACTED]
Cc: [NAME REDACTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 8:55:18 PM
Subject: CAGLE WINS!
CAGLE leading by 2,300 votes in Cobb County with nearly 2/3 of precincts reporting. Cagle is running strong in North Georgia, and his strongest counties -- Hall and Gwinnett -- have yet to come in. If Reed can't win Cobb County, he can't win, period. I'm getting ready to call it for Cagle. ...

One of the recipients replied:

"I'd hold off for just a bit longer, Stacy...there's a good bit more of Metro Atlanta, and a whole lot of the rural areas of the state to go. Just need to keep up this double-digit lead..."

Another recipient replied:

"The Cobb numbers haven't moved in a while. It could tighten up. Not likely but possible."

But by the time I saw either of those, I'd already updated the blog:

9 p.m.: CAGLE WINS
Hate to risk a "Dewey Defeats Truman" situation, but the early returns clearly point to a Cagle victory. With Hall and Gwinnett yet to report, and Cagle leading in Cobb, Paulding and throughout North Georgia, this one is an easy call:
CAGLE WINS.

Peach Pundit called it at 9:14 p.m.

Erick asks a good question: "Does Insider Advantage offer refunds?" Matt Towery had Reed leading right up until about a week ago, when Cagle pulled even.

I remember when Brad Alexander told me the Cagle campaign's internal polling showed their guy up by as much as 9 points.

That seemed like braggadocio, but -- wow! -- Cagle won by 12 points. So score one for Cagle's pollsters.

Primary Day

Towery had said (a) Cagle did better among "leaners" but (b) the high level of "undecided" voters meant that a low turnout would help Reed. So when my first call today (from Darryl B. in Cartersville) indicated a low turnout, I figured it would be neck-and-neck.

But as the results started coming in, Cagle established a steady 55%-45% lead, with strong numbers throughout North Georgia. I'd traveled through West and Northwest Georgia over the 4th of July holiday and knew Cagle would be strong there. But Reed, who was supposedly stronger in South Georgia, wasn't getting any really impressive numbers there.

With about 1/5 of the precincts reporting statewide as 9 p.m. approached, Cobb County was breaking against Reed. Knowing that Cagle would win big in Hall County and do well in neighboring Gwinnett, I couldn't see any way Reed could win, so I went out on the limb and called it.

Why Reed lost

Last year, my brother who lives in Douglasville called my attention to the Atlanta newspapers' reporting on Reed's involvement in the Abramoff scandal. At the time, like a lot of other people, I dismissed it as just so much smear-mongering by the liberal AJC.

If you've ever been to the Capitol in Atlanta and seen former Gov. Lester Maddox's official portrait -- featuring a fish wrapped in a copy of the Atlanta Constitution -- you know what most people think about what Maddox always called "those lyin' Atlanta papers." No amount of scandal reporting by the AJC was going to stop Reed from winning the GOP primary. Being attacked by the AJC is routing for Republicans in Georgia.

But in December 2005, as Lynn and I were approaching deadline for DONKEY CONS (buy TWO!), we felt we had to address the Abramoff scandal -- which eventually formed the concluding chapter of the book. And that's when I came across Matt Continetti's article, "Money, Mobsters, Murder" in The Weekly Standard.

After reading that, I felt sure that Reed would have to quit the race. No way, after head sold his soul to the casino lobby, could Reed count on the support of conservative Christians in Georgia. I remembered how they'd fought all-out against the Georgia lottery, and I felt sure they'd resent Reed's involvement in that wretched scandal. And that feeling was reinforced when I read a Bloomberg News article in January:

Campaign-finance reports filed this week show that Reed, 44, lagged behind opponent Casey Cagle in fundraising for the July 18 Republican primary during the past six months, after collecting more than twice as much money as his rival before that. Cagle raised $667,000 from June 30 to Dec. 31 to Reed's $404,000. ...
"There are concerns as to whether Ralph will continue to make headlines that are harmful to the party,'' said Eric Johnson, who as the Georgia Senate's president pro tem is a top Republican. ...
The young Republicans following in Reed's footsteps -- students, budding activists and campaign managers -- now don't want him to run, said Charles Bullock, a political scientist at the University of Georgia in Athens.
"Without exception, they are hoping he's not on the ticket,'' Bullock said.

With his fundraising drying up and the young GOP activists embarassed by Reed, the handwriting was obviously on the wall. And yet, against all logic, Reed stayed in the race.

'Mene, mene, tekel upharsin'

Because of my friendships with several conservative evangelicals in Georgia, I knew that the Abramoff revelations would make it hard for Reed to mobilize his old Christian Coalition "base" for the campaign. That's why, when Erick posted something at Peach Pundit in late February, showing that Reed had the big-money Chamber of Commerce crowd on his side, I was intrigued:

Having alienated his Christian conservative base by prostituting himself to Indian Jack, now Reed is prostituting himself to the same Chamber of Commerce crowd that backed Johnny Isaakson (R-Youkiddingme), who is such a notorious RINO he should be in the Atlanta Zoo instead of the U.S. Senate.

(Apologies to Isaakson, who had a RINO reputation back home but has emerged as a staunch conservative in Washington.)

Most of the media, both nationally and in Georgia, seemed to take for granted that Reed would retain his Christian conservative support, and so interpreted Reed's play for the Chamber of Commerce crowd as an expansion of Reed's campaign. What I saw was Reed attempting to pull in the big money boys to make up for the erosion of his support within the conservative grassroots. (Of course, it was easier for Reed to get the big money during the months when the General Assembly was in session and Cagle was forbidden by Georgia law from raising money.)

That was the same time when WORLD Magazine came out with an article examining Reed's Abramoff connections. People outside the evangelical world don't understand how much impact that had on Reed. WORLD is to the Christian homeschooling community what Newsweek is to the rest of America. I don't know what their circulation is, but they've got a real strong readership among homeschooling leaders, and those people would otherwise have been expected to be strong activists for the Reed campaign.

That was what led me to wonder whether Reed needed Aramaic lessons.

The campaign unfolds

All along, Reed's strongest asset was the sense of inevitability: He was the leader, he had the connections, he had the endorsements, he was going to win. That was the whole point of the big Atlanta fundraiser with Rudy Giuliani: To create an aura of invincibility.

There is a certain bandwagon effect in politics. People like to vote for the winner. So by bringing in Giuliani and basking in a warm media glow, Reed was seeking to create that winning impression. I was almost alone in suspecting that, when the expenses were considered, the Giuliani "fundraiser" was actually a money-losing event.

Yet Reed, because of his service as chairman of the Georgia GOP, still had strong support, and because the public polling showed him leading, the "Fear Factor" was in play. I started picking this up from some of the comments at Peach Pundit: Some Republicans were afraid to stand up and denounce Reed because, if he won the primary, they might become pariahs within the party apparatus. So if there was some kind of anti-Reed backlash among hard-core Republicans, it was going to be a quiet backlash.

One of the reasons Reed was so fear was because of his reputation for being able to mobilize an "army" of volunteers. That just didn't pan out on Tuesday. Why?

Simple: In the past, Reed was always organizing conservatives against liberals. It's one thing to get Georgia Republicans fired up to go campaign against Democrats. It's another thing altogether to get them to go campaign against a conservative Republican like Casey Cagle.

Cagle has a rock-solid conservative record, without being offensive or frightening to suburban soccer moms. Sure, Ralph could always get an "army" to volunteer against whatever liberal menace was represented by John Kerry or Max Cleland. But what's the menace of Cagle? It just doesn't work, see.

Attacks fail, and backfire

Matt Towery explained the strategy of why Reed, in June, began rolling out a series of ads attacking Cagle. Both because of his Christian Coalition background and the Abramoff scandals, Reed had "high negatives." By attacking Cagle, Reed sought to drive up Cagle's negatives to the point that Reed would not be at such a disadvantage.

Negative campaigning also tends to drive down turnout, and a low-turnout race -- where most of the Republican voters were hard-core party regulars -- would be to the advantage of Reed, the former state GOP chairman.

The problem is, Cagle's record and reputation were so solid that Reed couldn't make an honest hit on him. Instead, Reed tried to distort Cagle's record on property rights and other issues. But the Cagle campaign was able to fire back with the facts, and anyone who cared to investigate the claims would surely see that Reed's attacks were misleading.

Reed's negative attacks thus made him look dishonest and unfair. Furthermore, after two or three weeks of attack ads on TV, Reed had no room to complain when Cagle finally unleashed what Towery called "the hydrogen bomb," an ad highlighting Reed's Abramoff connections.

Towery said Cagle should have gone negative earlier, but I think the Cagle campaign played it right. Cagle had a good reputation and strong backing by Republican state senators. He could afford to play a "rope-a-dope" strategy: Take the hits, and wait for the sixth round.

So Cagle waited until July 3 and then lit it up, having hoarded enough money to be able to keep the ads playing in steady rotation as the campaign hit the home stretch. The ad ensured that the Abramoff issue would be a central focus of the televised debates and -- though Cagle supporters felt he spent too much time emphasizing Abramoff in the debates -- in the end, Georgians saw that Reed had no good explanation for his actions in the Abramoff affair.

A solid campaign

The Cagle team deserves credit for keeping their cool and holding back their biggest trump card until the last two weeks. And Cagle, personally, is a strong candidate. An old city editor pal taught me a basic truth of politics: Good candidates win elections. A good campaign, therefore, begins with a good candidate.

If you've met Cagle in person -- as I did on July 2 in Stockbridge -- you know that he is very friendly and approachable. With his boyish blue eyes and his "American dream" story of growing up as the son of a single mom, Cagle is really strong with women voters (as Towery's polls indicated). And as a former football standout, he also has that "one of the guys" quality that most male voters relate to -- he doesn't seem stiff or stuck-up. With 12 years in the state senate, Cagle is very well-informed about the issue, and can sit and talk politics with either "insiders" or ordinary voters.

Cagle's down-to-earth qualities helped him win over one key supporter: My brother. Kirby accompanied me as photographer for the July 2 Henry County event for Cagle, and spent several minutes talking to the candidate and came away convinced that Cagle is a good man. So Kirby got himself some yard signs and became a one-man campaign team for Cagle. (Now, Mr. Cagle: About those highway projects ....)

Reed's future

Reed now will go through the 7 stages of grief over his defeat, but his future is still bright. He's still got his career skills as a political pro and those skills are worth money. I don't think he'll face criminal charges over the Abramoff affair. Not now. He's no longer the kind of "ham sandwich" a Democrat D.A. would find appealing.

Were I Reed, I think I'd spend the next few months out of the limelight, working behind the scenes to help the Republicans win in November. And then I'd start going around to megachurches in Georgia, giving "testimony" about the evils of corruption. I'd take as my text Proverbs 14:12, "There is a way that seems right unto man ...."

Meanwhile, Reed could start doing some charitable work (with a net worth of $4.6 million, he can afford to be charitable) in support of Christian education in Georgia. Reed is a prodigious fundraiser, so why not put those skills to good use, raising money for scholarships at church schools in Georgia? What most evangelical grade schools lack is an endowment -- a pot of money earning interest to pay for improvements, to hire faculty, to give scholarships to deserving students.

If Reed would work to become a benefactor to Christian education in Georgia, he might go a long way toward repairing his reputation among conservative evangelicals. He might also convice more secular Georgians that he is something other than a political hustler. But he would definitely be doing the Lord's work by helping kids escape the toils of the government school establishment.

And who knows? In 2008 or 2010, maybe Reed could run for office again. It might not be the kind of thing that would be a stepping-stone to the presidency -- as it was said Reed viewed this year's lieutenant governor's race -- but America needs congressmen and senators, too.

-- McCAIN

P.S.: And if anybody cares, I'm looking at a clock that says 3:35 a.m. But now it's time to go home to the Missus.

Judgment Day in Ga.: Reed v. Cagle

2006-07-18T02:01:00.000-04:00

CLICK HERE for the POST-MORTEM

CAGLE'S VICTORY SPEECH
When news of Reed's concession reached Cagle's Victory party in Gwinnett County, Clint Murphy reports, the crowd went "out of control." Clint called me back on his cell phone so I could hear the speech live.

When Cagle took the stage for his victory speech about 10:15 p.m., the crowd screamed for about 5 minutes.

"We are so excited," Cagle said, beginning with thanks to "my heavenly father."
"I also want to thank my family. ... They've seen my name dragged through the mud."
Cagle said he was "so humbled" by the victory and added: "It wasn't just for Casey Cagle, because we believe in hope, we believe in opportunity, we believe in the American dream."

He thanked "my senators" and other elected officials "who put their necks out on the line for me."

"The good guys won tonight," Cagle said, prompting cheers from the crowd.

Cagle said, "I do wish Ralph Reed well. He was very gracious when he called." Cagle said Reed pledged his support in November.

"There's another guy we've got to make sure gets elected in November, and that's Sonny Perdue," Cagle said, drawing more cheers. He concluded by telling his supporters: "We've still got one more hurdle to overcome, and that's November, so let's work hard."

9:55 p.m.:
REED CONCEDES!
“Tonight my candidacy for lieutenant governor comes to an end,” Reed said.

10:10 p.m.: Just got off the phone with Clint Murphy, who's at the Cagle victory party. Will blog the victory speech in minutes.

9 p.m.: CAGLE WINS
Hate to risk a "Dewey Defeats Truman" situation, but the early returns clearly point to a Cagle victory. With Hall and Gwinnett yet to report, and Cagle leading in Cobb, Paulding and throughout North Georgia, this one is an easy call:
CAGLE WINS.

* UPDATES & ANALYIS BELOW *

Lt. Gov. REPUBLICAN
(94% PRECINCTS REPORTING)
Cagle 56%
Reed 44%

9:50 p.m.: With 40% of the precincts in, the steady Cagle lead is becoming too much for even Ralph's vaunted spin capacity to deny. I'm looking at Troup County, on the Alabama border north of Columbus, and Cagle's up 1,040 to Reed's 677 with 12 of 18 precincts in. And now Bartow County comes in (12 of 19 precincts) and it's Cagle 1,223 to Reed 1,074. Like I said: Cagle wins.

9:30 p.m.: Just got off the phone with Erick Erickson of PeachPundit/Red State. He's more cautious, and says the Reed people say it's going to be a long night, but Erick agrees that the electoral math looks bad for Reed.

And I got this e-mail tonight from my truck driver brother:

Early last week I went to north Georgia, the latter part of the week I went through south Georgia.
I didn't drive through, I delivered in Hahira, Valdosta, Perry, Waycross, Alma etc. The leaners were leaning Cagle. Casual observation but often times I spoke with the owner.

BTW: My brother took the photos of Cagle and Reed that are featured in this blog post.

8:30 p.m.: Cagle obviously is running stronger in North Georgia (Fannin, Dade, Gilmer counties, etc.), Reed's stronger in South Georgia. Cagle is ahead in Cobb County -- reputedly a Reed stronghold -- with nearly half the precincts reporting. Nothing yet from Hall or Gwinnett, which should be Cagle strongholds.
8 p.m.: Very low turnout was evident in early returns. With 1% of precincts reporting, only 1,664 ballots cast in the Reed-Cagle race. A Peach Pundit blogger wonders what this means.
7:50 p.m.: Mood at Cagle HQ in Gwinnett County is reported to be "optimistic."
7:40 p.m.: Just got off the phone with a Chatam County (Savannah) Cagle supporter who says he saw no evidence today of Reed's vaunted "army" of volunteers.

The AJC is liveblogging the primary, and remember to check PeachPundit for inside scoops.

Governor DEMOCRAT
Taylor 51%
Cox 44%

Lt. Gov. DEMOCRAT
Hecht 36%
Martin 42%
Miles 14%
Lotson 5%
Terrill 3%

Runoff for McKinney
With 98% of the precincts counted in District 4, Rep. Cynthia McKinney had 47% to Hank Johnson's 45% and will face an Aug. 8 runoff -- a huge embarassment for McKinney, who had been expected to coast to victory in the Democratic primary.

You've got to envy Hank Johnson. He just became Neal Boortz's favorite Democrat!

* * * * *

UPDATE 6 p.m. Tuesday
Linked at Hotline's "On Call" blog.

Polls will close at 7 p.m. EDT. Some precincts -- especially in Fulton County -- are expected to extend voting hours, but none past 7:30 p.m., the AJC reports.

UPDATE 5 p.m. Tuesday
Turnout "predictably light" in Douglasville, our correspondent reports. "I feel very confident that Casey will take the day," says the Cagle supporter, offering what he calls " the most hair-brained reasoning I've ever articulated":

You see ... the elderly will turn out in their usual numbers. They're the bingo players and those bingo players who aren't particularly informed will vote for the first name on the ballot. I think you might find some experts who will validate my rather casual observation. My prediction is that the bingo players will push Cagle past Reed.

The scary thing: He might be right!

UPDATE 2:15 p.m. Tues. 7/18
Turnout reported light statewide. Georgia pollster Matt Towery has said a light turnout would work to Reed's advantage. We will see.

Our first exclusive Primary Day report comes from Cartersville (exurban, 45 mi. NW of Atlanta), where Darryl B. says about 50 people were on hand at 7 a.m. when the polls opened at Mission Road Elementary School. Darryl voted for Cagle.

Sign wars
Darryl mentioned something that I noticed during my visit to Georgia over 4th of July weekend. Outside metro Atlanta, Cagle has a strong advantage as measured by campaign signs. You see a good many Reed signs in suburban areas like Cobb County, but once you get out into the sticks, Cagle signs are far more numerous.

Towery explained this to me: Cagle has the active support of 3/4 of the GOP state senators, and these senators have combined their campaign-sign work with Cagle's. So if you are a supporter of a pro-Cagle senator, you're probably also a Cagle supporter, so when you put up your sign for the senator, you also put up a Cagle sign. And on roadsides and street corners , the senator's campaign crew also puts up a Cagle sign every time they put up a sign for the senator.

I suppose, then, that Cartersville's state senator is a Cagle man, which is why Darryl reports that Cagle signs outnumber Reed signs "about 10 to 1" up there.

* * * * *

As of Tuesday morning, the word from WXIA-TV in Atlanta:
TOO CLOSE TO CALL.
(Video here.)

I've been blogging the Georgia Republican primary race between Ralph Reed and Sen. Casey Cagle since March. (For archives of our coverage CLICK HERE.)

As the only blogger outside Georgia to have paid this much attention to the Reed-Cagle race, I'll try to keep this site up-to-the-minute Tuesday with news of Primary Day in Georgia. I'll be phoning and e-mailing friends in Georgia to try to get their take on the election.

Our friend Joe at NoVa TownHall has praised DonkeyCons' coverage of the Reed-Cagle battle. However, from the beginning, the absolute #1 source for inside news on this race -- and for all Georgia politics -- has been the excellent Peach Pundit site. So if you can't find it here, be sure to check there.

The AJC reports that the candidates spent Monday making their final campaign tours of the state:

On the Republican side, Reed's whirlwind tour began in Savannah and stopped in Augusta, Macon, Valdosta, and Columbus, before wrapping up in Atlanta. ....
Cagle kicked off his tour in Albany, and then stopped in Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Augusta, Lawrenceville and Madison. He and Reed nearly bumped into each other in Macon; both had scheduled a news conference at the city's small airport at just after noon. ...

AJC's Baxter and Galloway give you a taste of the last-minute campaign battle going on in Georgia:

“You’ve probably heard that Ralph Reed worked for casinos and gambling interests. Reed even used Christian groups as a front to do that.

“But did you see that Ralph Reed was paid to lobby against protecting women in the Northern Marianas Islands from employers who pushed them into prostitution and even forced them to have abortions? Is that what you believe in?

“And to this day, Ralph Reed remains unrepentant and refuses to admit he was wrong. Paid for by Campaign Money Watch.”

Readership decline: Why?

2006-07-17T21:36:00.000-04:00

Don Surber dissects a media critic's analysis of declining newspaper circulation, and makes some good points, especially in his conclusion:

The problem is new readers are not there. People can already get the news and opinions elsewhere quicker. Quality does not matter. One look at memeorandum.com shows more heat than light are generated by the blogs.

In 25 years of newspapering in West Virginia, management has tried its best to attract young readers: More sports, more entertainment, more personal finance. I’d go back to the basics: Who, what, where, when, how and why.

Don, as usual, is basically right. But let me add my $1.89 worth (inflation has been tough on the old "two cents worth").

Three major reasons
for declining newspaper circulation

1. TV
I am constantly being shocked at the way people plan their lives around television. There is only one show ("America's Most Wanted") that I consider must-see-TV. I don't watch much TV (life's too short), but when I do, I prefer news and documentaries. I have zero appetite for the poorly-written crap that passes for "entertainment" on TV nowadays.

I remember when there was so much buzz about "Ally McBeal," with everyone raving about how fresh and innovative it was. Then, by chance, I happened to see an episode: simple-minded twaddle. And don't even get me started on "reality" shows.

TV, which was condemned in its early days as a "vast wasteland," has gotten so much worse in recent years because it now panders to a pre-fabricated audience that was weened on TV. Extensive early exposure to television (and the average kid nowadays spends endless hours glued to the tube) stunts the imagination and corrupts taste. No one ever explained why this is so better than the late Neil Postman, and if you haven't read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and The Disappearance of Childhood, you most certainly should.

A child who, as toddler, learns the habit of constant TV-watching will automatically acquire certain associated mental traits. The child may be bright, and may learn to read, and may even be a "good student." But he will never learn to read for pleasure. To the TV-trained child, pleasure is forever something that comes from a TV screen.

Most adults over age 40 don't understand this. "But ... I watched TV when I was a kid. Didn't hurt me." Yes, but when we were kids, TV meant three network-affiliated broadcast channels, PBS and maybe, if you were lucky, a couple of UHF stations. Prior to the late 1970s, few Americans had cable TV, and broadcast TV in the pre-cable days was not generally geared toward kids. There was Saturday morning cartoons, and "The World of Disney" on Sunday night, and maybe an hour of cartoons at 4 p.m. on weekdays. The rest of it was mostly soap operas in the daytime, comedies and detective shows at night.

Since about 1980, however, the TV-viewing environment for kids has changed dramatically. First, there was the advent of cable, then VHS, now DVDs, so that children now have almost infinite options for satiating their immature appetites. They need never sit through a "boring" (e.g., non-animated) minute. Second, the multiple-TV household has become the norm. TV in the living room, TV in the kitchen, TV in the car (!), TV in every bedroom, so that no one in the family ever has to argue over what to watch.

Certainly, no one under 30 today can imagine the situation of my youth. At 6 p.m. nightly, Dad watched the news, and if you didn't want to sit quietly and watch the news, you weren't going to watch TV. (Same thing with college football on Saturday afternoons.) Because there was only one TV in the house, and a limited selection of programming, children either learned to enjoy "grownup" shows (my Mom loved detective shows, which may explain my continuing interest in Court TV and other "true crime" fare), or else they went and did something else ... like read.

There were huge swaths of my childhood during which there was nothing on television that any boy would be interested in watching, and therefore I learned to read for pleasure. For the past 25 years, most American children have been raised in a TV-saturated environment in which there is always something fun to watch on TV. And so the habit of reading as a pastime is something they've never learned. This obviously shrinks the potential readership for newspapers.

2. Public education
One thing that shocks me is why more journalists don't share my hostility toward the public education establishment. Our nation's schools are content to hand diplomas to semi-literate philistines who are almost completely ignorant of history, philosophy and literature, and then "media critics" wonder why newspaper circulation is declining.

Yet, despite the devastating impact of these "schools" on the newspaper business, most journalists defend the government's universal youth detention system (which is what public education has in fact become). Whether it's "creative spelling" or "rain forest math," the schools can pawn off any poppycock pedagogy or curricular claptrap as "innovation" and "reform." Most journalists -- practiciing a craft where skepticism is a prerequisite -- seem completely gullible whenever some education "expert" starts preaching the miracles that will be accomplished via some new "innovative" curriculum.

The theoretical bases of such "reforms" (can you say "NCLB," boys and girls?) usually contradict observable facts and ordinary common sense, but most journalists just regurgitate whatever the experts say. It's a disgusting thing to watch.

I am literate and, though I am now middle-aged, I still have pretty clear memories of how it was I became literate. Today's public education establishment seems to have declared war on literacy. If the government-certified experts who operate American schools had set out with the explicit intent to ensure that our children never learn to read and write fluently, they could scarcely have matched what they have accomplished over the past 30 years.

Please don't send me e-mails telling me about that wonderful teacher of your acquaintance, Mrs. So-and-So. This is not about personalities or anecdotes. It is about systemic failure: The public school system is broken, and every attempt to repair the damage via "reform" seems only to aggravate the problem. Therefore, we may expect further declines in literacy, which will lead to further declines in newspaper circulation.

And yet almost 100% of the idiot reporters and editors who cover education are cheerleaders for the status quo.

3. Bad journalism

From the most prominent publishers (Gannet, Sulzberger, etc.) to the most obscure reporters, there seems to be a resistance to what I consider the most essential element of journalism: Appealing to the reader.

If you have to commission a marketing study to figure out what makes people want to read a newspaper, you are probably too stupid to be in the newspaper business.

What do people like? They like drama, conflict beauty, excitement. They like sex, sports, politics, war, crime, celebrities, scandal.

Years ago, when I lived in Georgia, I was occasionally tasked to compile the "years ago" feature: Go to the library, scroll through the microfilm, and look at what was in the paper 50 years ago (25 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago) that week.

If you go back to the 1950s or '60s, you'll notice that newspaper editors used to know some basic truths about human nature. For instance:

Everybody loves a pretty girl. Newspapers used to run, without apology, what used to be called "cheesecake" shots. There would be a pretty model in a swimsuit, with some kind of prop or seasonal backdrop, providing the merest pretext of a "news" hook for a photo caption. For instance, the Eufala (Ala.) Watermelon Queen posing with some fine specimens of that year's crop (and the Watermelon Queen was usually a fine specimen herself). The one newspaper in America that seems not to have forgotten this principle is the NY Post., which is always finding some excuse to run photos of beautiful models and actresses. To be fascinated by beauty is not "sexist," or else every great artist or poet in history was "sexist."
Famous people are interesting. Aristotle understood this, which was why he insisted that the protagonist of a tragedy must be a Great Man. USA Today does a good job of covering famous people though, again, nobody does this better than the NY Post. A good celebrity-news page (or half-page) with lots of pictures is a reader-friendly feature. But a smart local newspaper editor can turn local politicians into "celebrities" (again, think of how the NY Post covers politicians). With the right treatment, a small-town sports editor can turn a high-school point guard into a local celebrity. And people like to read about celebrities.
People can't resist a good crime story. Truman Capote knew this. So did William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Hunter S. Thompson, Mario Puzo, and Mickey Spillane. This is why, for instance, the Disappearing Blonde is always a ratings winner on FoxNews. But a good writer can turn a dead crack dealer into a good story. Give me a first-class cops-and-courts reporter, and I'll give you a popular newspaper.
Funny is good. Jay Leno ain't going broke. Neither are Dave Barry or Ann Coulter or Mark Steyn. The best cartoons are always the funniest cartoons, and if something funny happens in the news, you ought to try to get that in the paper. People love to laugh. They even like to laugh at themselves. When Doonesbury is actually funny -- even if the joke (as usual) is at the expense of Republicans -- not even most Republicans will be offended.
Write with the reader in mind. After 10 years as a news editor in Washington, I know a thing or two about reporters who want to "write for their sources." Capitol Hill reporters want to write for Capitol Hill staffers, and it is a rare Supreme Court reporter who understands that his job should be to turn the arcana and esoterica of constitutional jurisprudence into something that Joe Blow can understand. Clarity and concision are the basics of good news writing; people will not read what they cannot understand.

Most big-city newspapers nowadays are pretentious and boring affairs, with stuffy snobs for editors. I am reminded of the insufferably grandiose Bill Kovach, who tried to turn the Atlanta Journal-Constitution into a "world class" institution and damn near ruined it. Howell Raines was another such type, the kind of editor who's always plotting a 12-part Pulitzer-bait series about some trendy PC subject:

PRESCRIPTION: DEATH
The Human Cost of the Health Care Crisis

Uggh! A pox on "Eat Your Vegetables" journalism.

Give me Watermelon Queens and Disappearing Blondes! And corrupt politicians, too!

-- McCAIN

Dead men don't write books

2006-07-17T17:36:00.000-04:00

The nurse walked in. She had a mouth like a mail-slot, slathered over with cheap red lipstick.

Blonde and busty, she might have been a good-looking dame once, but the years and the whiskey had taken their toll.

She glanced at the patient. And she knew. You see enough stiffs, you learn to spot 'em after a while. She checked his pulse. Her hunch was right -- the poor sap was deader than her second marriage.

Her ample breasts heaving with each step, she walked to the door and leaned out, shouting to the slack-jawed orderly loitering in the corridor: "You can toe-tag this one, Louie. New meat for the county morgue."

Mickey Spillane is dead.

The sob sisters in the press are crawling all over this story now like maggots on a week-old corpse. But you heard it here first -- right, pal?

I sent a note to this cute little number I know, to tell her that the Big Guy had bought the farm. She's a nice dame -- broke a million hearts when she married some palooka -- but she's still kind of wet behind the ears. She sent me back a note:

I may only be young enough to remember the parodies, not the real thing.

Yeah? Well, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night, honey. So I sent her this message:

She was a young dame. Pretty poison, Hammer said to himself as he poured another shot of whiskey.
Young, maybe, but no dummie. She knew the moves. He watched her pull a cigarette from her purse, and slide it seductively between her luscious lips.
"Got a match?" she said.
Hammer turned up the shot glass, the whiskey setting his throat ablaze as he reached for his Zippo.
"No, not a match," he told her, gazing coolly into her hazel eyes. "But I can light your fire, sister."

They're all over him now like a cheap suit: Oddball Observations, Howling Hobbit, Rap Sheet, ToobWorld, Thomas Roche ...

Yeah, every two-bit blogger with a laptop and a hunger for the bigtime is gonna cash in on this one. But are they gonna link the guy who blogged it first?

Nah, those Johnny-Come-Lately bloggers -- they're a dime a dozen around this town, the ungrateful bastards.

Around the Blogroll

2006-07-16T21:10:00.000-04:00

Don Surber sees the upside of the Valerie Plame suit, and also wonders who would buy a CD of jailbird lullabies.

Jiblog: Paul Harvey, hate criminal?

Alpaca Burger: Nuke Iran!

Moonbat Patrol
Dan Riehl examines the increasingly bizarre paranoid projections of a left-wing blogger, which seem to have been touched off in the wake of the Kosola/JeromeGate meltdown and the frightening Frisch freakout.

Greenwald, it seems, is calling for an investigation of right-wing bloggers. But Glenn, here's the thing: When did Jeff Goldstein or Glenn Reynolds (a) hold online fund-raising drives for Republicans, (b) become consultants to leading GOP candidates, (c) organize a campaign to unseat an incumbent Republican senator, or (d) hold a Vegas convention, invite the national media, lots of top candidates, and declare themselves the future of American politics?

Answer: Never. Kos and Jerome did all that, thus exposing themselves to scrutiny. I can't explain what happened to Frisch except a possible object lesson in why drinking and blogging don't mix.

* * * * *

American Idle: Who votes for Democrats?

BlackFive: "I question your patriotism."

Brian Maloney: Garofalo's gone!

Right-Wing Howler treats us once again to the Chick of the Week. (Vilmar, I specifically requested this one.)

Rob Huddleston says, "What 11th Commandment?"

-- McCAIN

More Smoosh-mania

2006-07-16T19:42:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I criticized Smoosh -- the adolescent girl-pop sister act -- because one of them displayed a "NO BUSHIT" button in a publicity photo. This prompted some criticism from Smoosh fans, and then I got an e-mail:

I read your post about Smoosh and I have to say, you're an idiot. Of course Smoosh are allowed to wear Anti-Bush badges etc. Bush is an idiot, and the girls know it. I don't know why you want to boycott them! If I had to pay taxes in the US, I'd cut out everything that went to the War and Bush. I think you should delete that post and formally apologise, otherwise go stick your head in a blender.

The writer identifies himself as Edmund Townsend, a 14-year-old from Cardiff, Wales, who is an aspiring novelist. (Keeping in mind what I call The Steiner Principle, I don't know if this is even a real person.) I replied:

Thanks for visiting the blog. You have a right to your opinion. Smoosh has a right to their opinion. And so do I. When middle-school pop stars decide to make political statements, they invite political criticism, especially when their "statement" takes the form of a scatological wordplay.

I suppose the Smoosh girls could have chosen other ways to express their disdain for the president, or they could have just kept their political opinions to themselves. But they didn't, and none of the "adults" -- parents, producers, publicists, record company executives -- who are responsible for guiding these girls thought to intervene.

So welcome to the culture war, Smoosh.

-- McCAIN

Your Reed-Cagle source

2006-07-16T16:54:00.000-04:00

The OP has some good background on the Georgia GOP fight, but the basics of this story were reported a couple weeks ago by our favorite journalist:

Georgia candidate raises
Abramoff tie against Reed
July 3, The Washington Times

Reed brushes off new attack ad
July 4, The Washington Times

And now the New York Times plays catch-up, quoting PeachPundit's Erick Erickson (now with Red State):

“There are more dynamics in this lieutenant governor’s race than there are in any other race in the country,” said Erick-Woods Erickson, a conservative blogger based in Macon, Ga., who has followed every nuance of the campaign ....

Of course, Donkey Cons started linking to PeachPundit .... let me check ... oh, well, they were added to our blogroll before March 5, so we were about four months ahead of Pinch's boys.

But the NYTimes notes this classic dodge by Reed:

In his latest advertisement, Mr. Reed points out that he has not been accused of a crime, adding: “I’ve always worked for what we believe in: faith, family and freedom. That’s why the liberal media has attacked me. Because I’ve stood for you and our conservative values.”

Three facts:

Reed was a GOP political strategist long before this Abramoff thing made headlines
Not all Reed's enemies are in "the liberal media."
The previous two facts are not unrelated.

-- McCAIN

GQ on Ralph Reed

2006-07-16T14:26:00.000-04:00

GQ does a brutal takedown on Ralph Reed:

Reed doesn’t talk to reporters anymore. His campaign manager, a boyish redhead in a turquoise golf shirt named Jared, has already made that clear. “We don’t do anything with out-of-state press,” he said earlier, striding across the parking lot with a can of Tab in his hand.
Why not?

“Because we’re running for lieutenant governor of the state of Georgia.”

Jared says that as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world, as blatant and transparent as the giant red pickup Reed’s driving as a campaign prop. It’s also silly. Senator Cagle is running for the same office, and he’ll talk to any reporter who rings his campaign office. That’s what candidates do, and usually with the same grace and charm with which they shake hands and kiss babies and ask for money. Not Reed, though. He hasn’t given an on-the-record quote of any substance to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in six months, and he hasn’t granted a serious interview to any paper big enough to have a Nexis account in at least as long. And sit-down interviews? Not a chance.

The reason he doesn’t talk to reporters is that he can’t afford to. If he does, they’ll just start asking him all those uncomfortable questions that have nothing to do with being lieutenant governor. Mostly, they’ll ask about his relationship—his multimillion-dollar relationship—with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And that’s if they’re only skimming the surface. Give them some time and they’ll ask about his work for eLottery or Enron or Microsoft; or his shilling for China; or his close call with the statute of limitations in Texas; or the way John McCain got slimed in the 2000 South Carolina primary; or something called the Black Churches Insurance Program. Maybe they’d even ask how he squares up his professed salvation through his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with…well, with everything else.

Those would be awkward conversations.

Big hat tip to BBBBlog, and you can read the whole thing here.

A gay Georgia Democrat explains why he'll vote for Reed in the July 18 primary:

His involvement with the Abramoff scandals is just now coming to light, and his presence on the GOP slate drags down the entire ticket, from Governor on down. His opponent in the primary is Casey Cagle, who is just as anti-freedom and anti-gay as Ralph is. The only weak GOP candidate in any of the big-ticket races is Reed. If Cagle wins the primary, he wins the race. If Reed wins the primary, the Democrats still have a chance to hold on to the seat.

Very good analysis, and if I was still a Democrat -- and still lived in Georgia -- that's exactly what I'd do. If Georgia Democrats are to have any hope in November, they want Reed to beat Cagle. A vote for Reed is a vote that hurts the Georgia GOP.

--McCAIN

"Grotesque" argument

2006-07-16T13:58:00.000-04:00

Condoleezza Rice, appearing on ABC's "This Week," hotly rebuked George Stephanopoulos' suggestion that U.S. actions in Iraq were to blame for Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli incursion into Lebanon:

Rice rejected the notion that U.S. operations in Iraq have shaken Middle East stability, arguing, "Those hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on Sept. 11, and so the notion that somehow policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism, I find grotesque."

"For all of those who believe that we somehow had stability in the Middle East over the last 60 years and it's now been disturbed: Where do we think Hezbollah and Hamas and these other extremist forces came from?" she added. "They weren't born yesterday, these forces have been developing and threatening the Middle East and arresting positive developments for decades."

Rice defended Israel's right to counter the attacks.

"No state is going to sit and allow rockets to be fired into its country and not defend its citizens," she said. "While Israel defends itself, we would hope that it does it in a way that preserves the way for a broader peace."

Go read the whole thing. Bravo, Condi! Stephanopoulos was making an argument based on a falsehood. The Middle East was not a happy place of peace, harmony and brotherhood prior to 2003.

Whether or not war in Iraq has improved the situation in the Middle East, that war cannot be blamed for the acts of Hamas and Hezbollah, who had been terrorizing Israel for years before George W. Bush became president. The idea that the U.S. somehow provoked the situation in Lebanon is therefore absurd ... and grotesque.

Moonbat Update

A Kossack blames Rice for 9/11 ... and Hurricane Katrina.

-- McCAIN

How NOT to report a poll

2006-07-15T18:44:00.000-04:00

In recent years, the Associated Press seems to have decided that maintaining a reputation for fairness and credibility is far less important than crusading for liberal causes and promoting the Democratic Party line.

Case in point: Donna Cassata's Friday poll-mongering story, which claims that Democrats are favored by a 3-to-1 majority over Republicans. What utter tripe!

The most important words in the story are found in the fourth paragraph: "AP-Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults ..."

Adults! Random freaking adults!

As I explained in March: Random adults don't vote. All political polls of "random adults" will skew leftward for the very reason that Democrats do much better among people of limited education, people who don't know anything about the issues, people with limited interest in politics, the kind of people who NEVER VOTE.

This dirty little secret explains why Democrats have to run those "knock and drag" voter-turnout efforts, with activists going door-to-door on Election Day in low-income districts, offering bus rides to the polling places.

If you have a job and an education, chances are you've never experienced this treatment. Why? Because Democrats know that somebody like you is (a) civic-minded enough to get to the polling place on your own, and (b) disproportionately likely to vote Republican.

So you, the suburban homeowner, have never seen a knock-and-drag operation, and you don't understand why this type of activity is absolutely essential to the existence of the Democratic Party. This AP poll is a reminder: Democrats have an overwhelming majority of support among ignorant people, the kind who can't even name their U.S. Senators.

The less you know about the issues, the more likely you are to support Democrats but ... the less likely you are to vote at all. And these "random adults" who aren't likely voters tip the AP poll heavily to the left.

But Donna Cassata of the AP doesn't explain this to the reader. She doesn't distinguish "adults" from "likely voters," nor does she explain that this telephone poll probably tells us absolutely nothing about what's going to happen on Nov. 7.

Because any poll includes a number of non-voters -- even when they're trying to screen for likely voters -- all polls tend to overpredict the Democratic vote, because Democrats do better among non-voters. In fact, the person who tells a poll-taker that he will vote, but doesn't actually vote, is just about always a Democrat.

The Associated Press's poll-based reporting has become almost as bad as the New York Times, which notoriously misrepresents poll results in its coverage.

Sweetness & Light does a good job of dismantling this AP poll:

The AP article goes on to reiterate in several variations how impossible it will be for Republicans to hold onto their majority in Congress.
But, as regular readers of this site will recall, the French company Ipsos always over-samples Democrats. And this case is no different

...
The larger picture, in terms of press bias, is this: The U.S. electorate has been trending steadily toward the Republicans for about 40 years. Yet every election gain for the GOP is greeted by the press as something shocking. The press was stunned by the three consecutive landslides (1980, '84, '88) during the Reagan-Bush era. The media gasped at the 1994 "Republican Revolution."

What have we seen in the past six years? Bush barely squeaked by in 2000, but scored a surprising off-year victory in 2002, then in 2004, became the first U.S. president to win an absolute majority of the popular vote in 16 years. Still, the press clearly wishes to believe that Bush and the GOP are widely hated; the press slants the news to put Republicans in the worst possible light; and yet, somehow, year after year, the election results don't match the media slant. Hmmmm.

Is it possible that the GOP could lose on Nov. 7? Sure, anything's possible. But it's not bloody likely. And this kind of slanted AP reporting, while perhaps helping the DNC's fundraising, will only increase Democratic voters' sense of betrayal and disappointment when (as we might reasonably expect) the Dems once again go down to defeat.

-- McCAIN

Very sad

2006-07-15T18:26:00.000-04:00

A former Commerce Department official killed his 12-year-old son and then killed himself.

Motive unknown at this point, but of course some idiot has the answer: Halliburton!

His wife, who escaped alive, was a government lawyer.

-- McCAIN

Pelosi's implausible deniability

2006-07-15T17:40:00.000-04:00

Nancy Pelosi is now claiming that the flag-draped coffin ad the DCCC sent out with a fund-raising letter wasn't really about fund-raising: It is not a solicitation, it is not a fundraising solicitation. As far as the Republicans are concerned, politicizing the war, if it weren't so tragic, it would almost be funny with Karl Rove going around the country talking about politicizing the Iraq war. ... I don't know why they are making an issue of this except that, again, it speaks truth to power about what is happening in Iraq.
So Pelosi lies about the ad, and then blames Republicans for "politicizing the war." AllahPundit is exactly right when he says they're just stupid:
If they’re willing to sow the wind with death photos, so be it. They’ll reap the whirlwind when the backlash comes.
The Democrats were stupid to think they could get away with that trick, and they are even stupider to think they can lie, and act like innocent victims, and blame everything on Republicans. The American people can see through cheap lies like that, and the Democrats only hurt themselves with such dishonest tactics.

ALSO BLOGGING: Sister Toldjah, Old War Dogs ...

Captain Ed said:

The DCCC talked about moving onto another subject, but they aren't fooling anyone -- it got chased off the air.

-- McCAIN

DONKEY CONS: Buy TWO
DONKEY CONS: Rave review
DONKEY CONS: Another rave review
DONKEY CONS: Yet ANOTHER rave review
DONKEY CONS: Vilmar loves it!
DONKEY CONS: WorldNetDaily loves it!
DONKEY CONS: About the book
DONKEY CONS: On Book TV
DONKEY CONS: On Capitol Hill
DONKEY CONS: About the authors
DONKEY CONS: FREE Chapter!

Thanks, Nancy! Thanks, Rahm!

2006-07-14T18:20:00.000-04:00

Greetings, THOR TOLO fans!

From page 14 of DONKEY CONS:

Maybe Democrats think Americans are stupid. ... But just how stupid do they think we are? At this writing, Nancy Pelosi and her friends are talking about how Democrats will win control of Congress in 2006 by campaigning against a Republican "culture of corruption." ...
If Democrats try to make "corruption" the central issue of their campaign, they'll surely lose — and we'll probably sell a lot more books.
Hey, Nancy: You go, girl!

Nancy Pelosi put Rahm "Hired Truck" Emanuel -- who owes his seat to the corrupt Daley machine in Chicago -- in charge of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And now Emanuel's DCCC runs an ad with a doctored photo of Tom DeLay along with photos of flag-draped coffins (ugh), etc.

Guess what, you stupid Democrats? Our phones are ringing, and I'm just about to go on a top afternoon drive-time show on the West Coast.

Talking Point #1: If the problem is corruption in Congress, Democrats are not the solution. We've got an entire book -- with over 600 notes -- covering the astonishing history of Democratic Party corruption. In fact, you might say Democrats invented political corruption in America.

In Chapter 2 of Donkey Cons, we document that over the past 30 years, corrupt Democrats in Congress have outnumbered corrupt Republicans by a 3-to-1 ratio. (The final tally is on page 36 of the book.)

Want some good examples? Let's see, very quickly, from the index of DONKEY CONS:

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), pp. 133, 221, 224. Dingy Harry. Fight. Corruption. Right ....
Rep. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson (D-La), p. 140-141.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Chappaquiddick), pp. 38-43.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-U.I.), p. 221. Before trying to do a Chappaquiddick on dry land, Paddy was already the #1 House Democratic recipient of campaign funds in the Abramoff scandal.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Abscam), p. 35.

Somehow, alas, we managed to overlook Rep. Al "Beach Boy" Mollohan (D-W.Va.), but if Nancy and Rahm want to help us sell out the first edition -- BUY TWO COPIES! -- we'll make sure Al gets into the updated paperback.

Oh, and you can download a FREE CHAPTER in PDF format and learn all about the real "party of the rich."

* UPDATES *

For more information on the DCCC's flag-draped fund-raising video, it's also being blogged by: Red State, Hot Air, Protein Wisdom, Captain's Quarters, Right Angle ...

Thanks to Bioinformaticus Maximus for the link at Red State. I should point out that the sentence, "Rahm Emanuel is corrupt," goes beyond the known facts. Emanuel was elected by the corrupt Daley machine, but this does not mean that Emanuel is personally guilty of any wrongdoing. (The same was true of Harry Truman and the Pendergast machine in Kansas City.)

We might compare Emanuel to Her Fraudulency, Christine Gregoire of Washington state, who took the governorship because the corrupt King County Democrats stole the election. Gregoire herself may have done nothing wrong personally, but her election by illegal means renders her incapable of claiming any "moral high ground."

So it is with Emanuel. As long as the head of the DCCC holds an office gained by illegal means -- and more than a dozen people have gone to prison because of the "hired truck" scandal in Chicago -- then the Democrats have no moral standing to condemn Republicans for a "culture of corruption."

-- McCAIN

DONKEY CONS: Buy it
DONKEY CONS: Buy TWO
DONKEY CONS: Rave review
DONKEY CONS: Another rave review
DONKEY CONS: Yet ANOTHER rave review
DONKEY CONS: Vilmar loves it!
DONKEY CONS: WorldNetDaily loves it!
DONKEY CONS: About the book
DONKEY CONS: On Book TV
DONKEY CONS: On Capitol Hill
DONKEY CONS: About the authors
DONKEY CONS: FREE Chapter!

Liveblogging Armageddon

2006-07-14T02:40:00.000-04:00

Michael Young is in Beirut.

The revolution will not be televised, but the Apocalypse will be blogged.

-- McCAIN

Border fence roll call

2006-07-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Senate voted 71-29 Thursday against an appropriations amendment that would have funded 370 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate voted to build the fence in May as part of their "compehensive" immigration-reform bill -- a/k/a, The Amnesty That Dare Not Speak Its Name -- and so now they are like Kerry on Iraq: The were for the fence before they were against it.

Only two Democrats voted to authorize funding for the fence, while Republicans split with 27 yeas to 28 nays.

Please notice that the four most vulnerable incumbent Republican senators facing re-election this fall -- DeWine, Santorum, Burns and Talent -- all voted "yes" for the fence. This is especially key for DeWine, who was excoriated by conservatives when he voted for the amnesty bill in May. His vote Thursday in favor of funding the border fence gives DeWine a chance to portray himself as a "get tough on illegal aliens" candidate and differentiate himself from his centrist Democrat challenger, Sherrod Brown.

Democrats voting YES (2)
Carper, Del.; Nelson, Neb.

Republicans voting YES (27)
Allen, Va.; Brownback, Kan.; Bunning, Ky.; Burns, Mont.; Burr, N.C.; Chambliss, Ga.; Coburn, Okla.; Craig, Idaho; Crapo, Idaho; DeMint, S.C.; DeWine, Ohio; Dole, N.C.; Ensign, Nev.; Enzi, Wyo.; Grassley, Iowa; Hatch, Utah; Inhofe, Okla.; Isakson, Ga.; Lott, Miss.; Roberts, Kan.; Santorum, Pa.; Sessions, Ala.; Shelby, Ala.; Talent, Mo.; Thomas, Wyo.; Thune, S.D.; Vitter, La.

Democrats voting NO (42)
Akaka, Hawaii; Baucus, Mont.; Bayh, Ind.; Biden, Del.; Bingaman, N.M.; Boxer, Calif.; Byrd, W.Va.; Cantwell, Wash.; Clinton, N.Y.; Conrad, N.D.; Dayton, Minn.; Dodd, Conn.; Dorgan, N.D.; Durbin, Ill.; Feingold, Wis.; Feinstein, Calif.; Harkin, Iowa; Inouye, Hawaii; Johnson, S.D.; Kennedy, Mass.; Kerry, Mass.; Kohl, Wis.; Landrieu, La.; Lautenberg, N.J.; Leahy, Vt.; Levin, Mich.; Lieberman, Conn.; Lincoln, Ark.; Menendez, N.J.; Mikulski, Md.; Murray, Wash.; Nelson, Fla.; Obama, Ill.; Pryor, Ark.; Reed, R.I.; Reid, Nev.; Rockefeller, W.Va.; Salazar, Colo.; Sarbanes, Md.; Schumer, N.Y.; Stabenow, Mich.; Wyden, Ore.

Republicans voting NO (28)
Alexander, Tenn.; Allard, Colo.; Bennett, Utah; Bond, Mo.; Chafee, R.I.; Cochran, Miss.; Coleman, Minn.; Collins, Maine; Cornyn, Texas; Domenici, N.M.; Frist, Tenn.; Graham, S.C.; Gregg, N.H.; Hagel, Neb.; Hutchison, Texas; Kyl, Ariz.; Lugar, Ind.; Martinez, Fla.; McCain, Ariz.; McConnell, Ky.; Murkowski, Alaska; Smith, Ore.; Snowe, Maine; Specter, Pa.; Stevens, Alaska; Sununu, N.H.; Voinovich, Ohio; Warner, Va.

Independent voting NO (1)
Jeffords, Vt.

Whither Stooksbury?

2006-07-13T15:20:00.000-04:00

Meet Clark Stooksbury, lover of Crunchy Cons, defender of Smoosh, hates Donkey Cons.

Stooksbury: Has written for Chronicles and the American Conservative.
McCain: Has written for Chronicles and the American Conservative.

We are both thus clearly associated with paleoconservatism.

This is what is interesting to me: My review of Crunchy Cons, which apparently so antagonized Mr. Stooksbury, includes a reference to economist Mark Skousen:

Others have chastised Dreher for praising Hillary Clinton’s mantra “it takes a village,” but I’m more disturbed by his economic views. Crunchy Cons mentions neither Ludwig von Mises nor F.A. Hayek, and it seems entirely possible that Dreher has never read anything by the free-market Austrian economists or their successors. Instead he relies on Small Is Beautiful author E.F. Schumacher, practically the only economist mentioned in the book.
This is a telling choice. As the economist Mark Skousen has pointed out, Small Is Beautiful has a substantially Malthusian message that “enslaves everyone in a life of ‘nonmaterialistic’ values.” For Skousen, Schumacher’s Buddhist economics was a primitive mysticism that “clearly results in a primitive economy.” Dreher, no doubt, would dismiss Skousen as a soulless libertarian.

That review was published in the libertarian journal Reason. Mr. Stooksbury is a contributing editor to another libertarian journal, Liberty. If we look at the masthead of that journal, we see among Mr. Stooksbury's fellow contributing editors Reason associate editor Brian Doherty, plus several other people whose work I have long admired: Dave Kopel, a staunch Second Amendment defender; Wendy McElroy, dissident feminist; Bill Kauffman, a Burkean critic of "progress"; homeschooling advocate Sheldon Richman; and ... Mark Skousen!

What we have here, then, is a most curious misunderstanding. Mr. Stooksbury and I seem to inhabit almost synchronous orbits within what might be called the paleolibertarian region of the political galaxy, our chief points of disagreement being:

Mr. Stooksbury's admiration of Crunchy Cons, a book based on the Buddhist economics detested by the libertarian Skousen, and generally panned by conservative critics. (In the latest issue of The American Spectator, Florence King may have outdone us all.)
Mr. Stooksbury is anti-war and seems to have conceived me as some sort of neocon chickenhawk warmonger type. In fact, as friends will attest, I was a confirmed skeptic of the casus belli for the Iraq invasion -- at least so far as it was publicly articulated by its advocates. But once the war began, I was for victory. In other words, if this is ancient Athens, then I am not the rash and ambitious Alcibiades, but the wise statesman Nicias, who advised against the expedition to Sicily but, once the assembly voted to go, urged them to make the expedition with the strongest possible force.
Mr. Stooksbury seems to have been afflicted with a variant strain of Bush Derangement Syndrome that is widespread among my paleolibertarian friends.

If I could wangle an invite to speak at the next John Randolph Club, I would like to address the tendency of which Mr. Stooksbury's case presents such a typical example.

We are living in weird times and, as Hunter S. Thompson said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, but for crying out loud, this is getting too weird even for me. Some of my paleolibertarian pals, it seems, would rather make common cause with the anarchist Noam Chomsky or conspiracy theorists like Michael Moore than to be caught associating with any conservative who supports a "hang tough" policy in Iraq.

Such is their loathing for Bush that I keep waiting for them to start arguing for tax increases. After all, Bush supports tax cuts and if Bush is Satan incarnate -- which seems to be the operative principle for some people -- then tax cuts must be part of the satanic plot.

If I were invited to speak to the JRC, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't like my speech, but as long as I weren't shouted down, I think I could use the opportunity to ask some important questions:

Why haven't the follies of the Bush administration caused more conservatives to reconsider the Platonic/Straussian dominance of the movement?
What are the central and fundamental flaws of (and not merely the latest blunders caused by) the ideology generally called neoconservatism?
If neoconservative ideology is flawed, why then has it become so popular?

and

Why have rival ideas within the Right -- including traditionalism and libertarianism -- failed to make inroads again the neoconservative ascendancy?

I've been pondering this question for a few years, and have some ideas about the answers. And in those answers, I think, lie some implications for what should be done to remedy these problems and make some headway for a change.

As I say, I would be glad to address this topic in depth at the next JRC meeting. But the first thing I'd suggest is that we call a ceasefire -- or at least invoke the Geneva Conventions -- in these kinds of feuds amongst those of us on the Right who have been been for so long systematically excluded by the powers that be within the Official Conservative Movement.

That means let's stop quarreling, Mr. Stooksbury (and I'd say the same to Mr. Dreher), and see if we can't find some common ground for cooperation. But first of all, let's stop the circular firing squad routine, OK? We all seem to agree that the conservative movement has gone badly astray, though our interpretations differ as to the causes and nature of the problem.

But let me make one thing clear: I am not the problem. Nobody at Official Conservative Movement headquarters has ever solicited my advice, nor do I expect an invite to the next state dinner at the White House. So if you don't like the war or George Bush, if you're annoyed by Sean Hannity's latest rant or the most recent betrayal by the Republican Senate, please don't vent your frustrations on me. I've got enough enemies already without becoming your personal scapegoat.

-- McCAIN

Homegrown Jihadis

2006-07-13T02:51:00.000-04:00

He hates America and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

I guess you could say Adam Gadahn is sort of like the New York Times, except fat and hairy.

Michelle has video.

-- McCAIN

Anti-Smoosh

2006-07-13T02:21:00.000-04:00

Smoosh is the name of a Seattle-based "girl group" featuring two sisters ages 12 and 14. They are getting lots of media hype. (More here.)

Are they the female Second Coming of Hanson? Or ... could it be something else?

Notice a political slogan in this publicity photo?

They're the Bubble Gum Moonbats.
Pre-Teen Dixie Chicks.
Anti-American Top 40.
Adorable Dhimmis.
Middle School Cindy Sheehans.

Don't buy it. Don't let your kids buy it.

* UPDATE 7/13 *

Some Smoosh fans have been upset by this posting. But who was it that decided that Smoosh should inject politics into its act, via the anti-Bush button prominently displayed in the publicity photo? It's a free country, but why would Asya (or Chloe, since I can't tell them apart) wish to alienate the 51% of American voters who backed Bush in 2004?

If Smoosh is free to be anti-Bush, are we not equally free to be anti-Smoosh? More to the point: Are we not free to resent vulgar political sloganeering from a couple of middle-school musicians?

Actually, I like Smoosh's music. I also like Green Day, purely as music. But the trend of entertainers intruding fashionable left-wing politics into their acts -- actors who lecture us about global warming, guitarists hectoring us about foreign policy -- does not promote unity in a nation so deeply divided between Red and Blue. (As Laura Ingraham puts it: Shut Up and Sing.)

In Seattle (where the corrupt King County Democratic machine stole the governorship for Her Fraudulency, Christine Gregoire), I suppose it's considered cute for an adolescent pop star to sport a "NO BUSHIT" button in a publicity photo. But, in case the parents of Asya and Chloe didn't notice, John Kerry is not president, and such cheap partisan posturing will have the effect of reducing Smoosh's potential audience by half.

Or, as our good Marine buddy Cpl. Josh Belile might put it:
"Durka durka, Muhammed jihad!"

* * * * *

LOL! The Kossacks go Smooshie:

With all that is happening in your country and the world why would a Right Wing Blogger go after 12 and 14 year old sisters?

Good question. Another good question: What kind of parents would allow their daughter to pose for a publicity photo while wearing a "NO BUSHIT" button?

* * * * *

Crunchy Con Smoosh-ophile Clark Stooksbury thinks I'm attacking his patriotism.

Mr. Stooksbury, I'm not saying that the Smoosh girls don't have a right to hold negative opinions of Bush -- since I myself have expressed such opinions vis a vis The Amnesty That Dare Not Speak Its Name, among other issues, including NCLB. But such policy-specific criticism is not what a "NO BUSHIT" button is about.

It's one thing when Neil "I'm Still Canadian" Young makes himself obnoxious via crude political posturing, or when a propagandist like Michael Moore starts retailing conspiracy theories. They're grown men, and are at least responsible for their own idiocy.

But Asya and Chloe aren't even old enough to sign a contract without parental permission. Some adult -- parents, publicist, manager, record executive -- must have thought, "Hey, a 'NO BUSHIT' button -- great idea!" So these girls, whose youthful cuteness helped them gain an audience as musical performers, are thus made an advertising vehicle for political messages. It's a bait-and-switch.

What next? Will Smoosh hire Jerome Armstrong as a consultant?

* * * * *

Notice the completely uncritical "oh my gosh aren't they wonderful" tone of this CBS News feature. That seismic tremor you feel is caused by Edward R. Murrow rolling in his grave.

* * * * *

Critic's corner

You can download a video of Smoosh's latest song, and see what technology makes possible in the 21st-century music industry.

Myself a singer-guitarist-songwriter of some experience, I am friends with some real musicians. I gave up my music career ambitions in the late '80s, just a few years before affordable, high-quality home digital recording became widely available. What has struck me about the trend of the past 15-20 years is a steady decline in pop songcraft and musicianship: vague lyrics, badly rhymed; guitarists slogging out power chords rather than picking riffs and leads; vocalists who whine or shout rather than sing.

As much as I got bored with the "album rock" sound of the mid-'70s -- what a relief when the Ramones and Elvis Costello appeared on the scene! -- in retrospect it must be admitted that groups like Bad Company, Steely Dan, Styx, and Foreigner (to name but a few) represented something of a zenith of pure musicianship in rock. They could play their instruments.

Not to knock the Smoosh girls (as musicians), but you see how the advance of technology has elevated amateurism. They are the musical equivalent of a TV "reality show": the fact that the performers are not professionals, that they have not paid their dues, is the raison d'etre of the act. Their untutored youthful earnestness is presented as authenticity. They are "real people."

This is where technology has a cultural impact: Smoosh is now in the big leagues of show biz because, unlike 30 years ago, one doesn't need to spend years playing cover tunes in honky-tonks and gin joints, then rent a recording studio, cut a demo, land a recording contract and score radio play in order to reach a mass audience. (Go back and listen to Skynyrd's early Muscle Shoals sessions and realize that in 1972, this popular club band couldn't even get a contract with those professional-quality demos, which included songs like "Freebird" and "Gimme Three Steps" that later became classics.)

Now it goes like this: Buy some digital recording gear, cut a CD in your basement -- the "studio" time is effectively free, so you can overdub and retake infinitely -- and put it up on the Web. Then do your own video and put that online. You can become tomorrow's "next big thing," even if you're just a couple of middle-schoolers.

This is where Smoosh is definitely unlike Hanson. Before they became suddenly famous, the home-schooled Hanson brothers had spent years listening to and attempting to imitate the old classics in their dad's record collection. For all its bubble-gum pop silliness, "Mm-Bop" had discernible roots: Those kids had obviously listened to a lot of Motown and early Beatles. Smoosh's music seems to reflect no influences that predate the MTV rotation of recent years.

Ask yourself how Smoosh compares to earlier pop prodigies. Do they hold a candle to 12-year-old Stevie Wonder?

My 13-year-old twins have a garage band. I've helped them just a little. Among other things, I helped them learn the chord progression to Green Day's "Holiday." But I've resisted the urge to meddle or to give them too much fond encouragement. If they're ever really going to be any good, they need to figure things out for themselves. They need to struggle and stumble and pay some dues. They'll either quit or stick with it, but whatever they do, they'll have to do it on their own.

Pushing a couple of half-trained musicians into the glare of the national spotlight, before they're even old enough to play in a nightclub? You can say it's cute. I call it crazy.

-- McCAIN

DailyKos "implosion"?

2006-07-13T00:03:00.000-04:00

Noel Sheppard notices the impending collapse of Kosistan. Sheppard leaves out something important, that I keep repeating:

The estimated gross annual ad revenue
of DailyKos is $832,000

I've tried to explain to Dan Riehl why I think that number is one key to understanding the Ko$ola/JeromeGate scandal. There has been a noticeably reluctance on the part of some bloggers to "follow the money," and I think I know why:

Conservatives don't like the "class warfare" angle, and don't wish to appear to be criticizing Kos for making money from what is, after all, the #1 political site in the blogosphere.
Nearly all bloggers have ads, and so if the DailyKos ads are more lucrative ... well, so what?

OK, please let me explain. This will take a bit -- it's complex, almost nuanced -- but I think if you'll read for a minute or two here, I can describe why the revenue numbers point to the heart of this thing. Focus your mind on three areas of inquiry:

Who are the advertisers on Daily Kos, and why is that space so valuable? What are advertisers paying for?
What do the Kossacks think they're getting from Daily Kos? What is the demand that is being supplied?
What is the difference between blogs on the Left and blogs on the Right?

We shall take these questions in reverse order. But before we do, let me remind you how this whole thing started.

The 'pump and dump'

After YearlyKos, some Kossacks wondered why former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (a DLC guy who is to the right of Joe Lieberman) got the big push at YK. Chris Suellentrop then (a) reminded us that the "Blogfather," Jerome Armstrong, was a consultant to Warner, and (b) mentioned that Armstrong had been accused by the SEC of unethically touting dot-com stocks.

Those who recall the late-'90s dot-com bubble used the term "pump and dump" to describe the BluePoint scam that Armstrong was accused of participating in. Armstrong (allegedly) presented himself on the Internet as an honest provider of securities information. Instead, Armstrong was (allegedly) in the pay of persons who stood to profit by hyping sales of certain securities, and his (alleged) failure to disclose this financial interest was therefore (allegedly) a species of fraud.

Now consider what happened with MyDD and DailyKos after 2002. In the beginning, Kos was a MyDD contributor. Then Kos started his DailyKos site, and in 2003, the partnership of Armstrong Zuniga LLC was formed, with a contract to provide Internet advice to the Dean campaign.

Ask yourself this: If Armstrong were to apply his (alleged) "pump and dump" knowledge to politics, what would the result look like? How would it work?

Blogs, Left and Right

What is the most noticeable non-political difference between liberal sites like DailyKos, MyDD, etc., and conservative sites like Instapundit, Malkin, HotAir, etc?

The conservative sites are all about news. Some of the news is strictly Dem/GOP politics, some of it's about the war, some of it is the sort of culture war "Outrage of the Day" stuff, e.g. ACLU vs. Boy Scouts, "teachers gone wild," liberal judge going easy on recidivist child molester, etc. And some of it's just fun stuff: World Cup, "American Idol," jokes, whatever.

The leftist "Big Box" political blogs are different in that they are quite narrowly focused on Democratic partisanship, liberal ideology, the anti-war movement, and attacking the Bush administration. You never expect to go on one of the big leftie sites and see, for example, an "Amber Alert" headline where some kidnapper is on the lam. They don't seem to be much interested in chitchatting about celebrities, sports or anything like that.

The Big Box lefties, then, provide very little non-political news and offer virtually no entertainment value beyond politics.

Furthermore, and this is key: Big Box lefties are all about picking Democratic candidates, promoting their campaigns, and especially fund-raising. Virtually every significant left-wing blog has those "click here to contribute" posts about giving campaign cash to Democrats. And lots of the "news" is the same kind of stuff: "Oh, here's a candidate in this Democratic primary" and "Democrats have a good chance to pick up a House seat in District 47."

It's been this way almost constantly with mega-Moonbat blogs since McCain-Feingold was passed in 2002. The action is very election-focused, very campaign-focused, very money-focused.

And yet they keep picking losers.
Losers.
Losers.

Think about that. More on Thursday.

* MORE TO COME *

The sexiest blogger?

2006-07-12T19:03:00.000-04:00

I'm often asked: Who do you think is the sexiest blogger?

Frankly, I can't answer this question. At least not for the record. In terms of female bloggers, the totally hottest one ... well, she's married. And I'm married, too. So it would simply be uncouth, unchivalrous and un-Christian for me to answer this question.

I also have a problem in judging the sexiest male blogger category -- but not the problem you think.

Despite being notoriously heterosexual (married nearly 20 years, 6 children), I am actually a pretty good judge of men's looks. I'm comfortable saying that, since I am merely observing an objective fact: Men are good-looking, or are not.

No erotic desire is implied if I say, for instance, "I totally understand why chicks went wild for Joe Namath. If I was a chick, I would too." Also, Patrick Swayze: That guy could probably make Rosie O'Donnell go straight and praise Jesus, y'know? (Admit it, Rosie!)

See? Objective facts. It's just like me saying, "Vilmar's latest Chick of the Week is a total hottie ... but not quite as hot as Week #7." This doesn't mean that I would betray my wife or anything like that (stop spamming me, Estella, it's no use begging). I am merely observing and analyzing aesthetic criteria, OK?

So being able to judge male looks is not the problem that disqualifies me from declaring who the sexiest male blogger is. The problem is this: I know the guy personally, and there might be certain ethical problems.

Josh just added Donkey Cons to his blogroll. And so, by identifying Josh as the sexiest guy in the blogosphere, it might hurt the feelings of my blog buddies like Ace, Dan Riehl, Don Surber and Rob Huddleston. Those guys have been kind enough to link me, and I don't want to offend them when I tell all you lonely ladies: Josh has got it going on.

It's an ethical dilemma, you see. But in my totally fair, objective and neutral way, let me tell you ladies about Josh: The boy's got this total babyface thing happening, and these big ol' puppy-dog eyes. If the blogosphere were Tiger Beat in 1974, Josh would be Leif Garrett. Or maybe even Shaun Cassidy.

This fall, he will start his senior year at college, but Josh looks so doggone young ... Let me put it this way: If Debra Lefave or Pamela Rogers ever makes a jailbreak, Josh might need police protection.

Josh is also a fine, upstanding, Christian conservative guy from Alabama. So in addition to the babyface thing, he's also very polite and charming in an aw-shucks, Southern gentleman kind of way.

Did I mention that Josh loves Ann Coulter? I don't mean raw, carnal lust -- at least, not merely that. (He's only human.) No, Josh also seems to admire Miss Coulter the way only a future conservative journalist could admire her. Thoughtfully. Respectfully. Yea, almost reverently.

Anyway, Miss Coulter, if you've ever wanted to enjoy the frisson of a Mrs. Robinson-type fantasy -- guilty pleasure, minus the guilt -- you really need to bookmark Josh's blog. He's young, he's cute, he's conservative and (lucky you) he's totally legal.

But you need to hurry, Miss Coulter: This town is crawling with shameless "skinterns" who, as one of them confesses:

[W]ear plunging necklines and short skirts to work. ... [T]hey wear outfits to work that make their bosses' jaws drop.

Interns! We know what an intern did to Bill Clinton. Don't let them get to Josh.

By the way, Miss Coulter: The last sentence of your latest column was brilliant. Julius and Ethel are now what I call "good Communists."

And one more thing: Even though he lost out to Josh on the "sexiest blogger" title, Don Surber also greatly admires you.

-- McCAIN

Castro dead? Thank you, God!

2006-07-12T17:28:00.000-04:00

Just a rumor so far but it's a reason to smile -- even if it's, say, 47 years too late.

It would be the answer to years of prayers of many millions of people.

That Commie bastard took over Cuba in 1959 -- the year I was born -- so I've been waiting my entire life for that lying bloodthirty SOB to collect his one-way express ticket to the Bottomless Pit.

There's one line from "Scarface" that sums up my feelings on this subject:

I kill a communist for fun. But for a green card? I gonna carve him up real nice.

-- Tony Montana

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Communists? Really. The only good Commie is a ...
Well, if the rumors are true, Fidel just joined the ranks of the good Commies.

* UPDATES *

CROAK CASTRO PRAYER CIRCLE: Jonah Goldberg, Dangerous Extremist, Right Angle, Babalu Blog, Malkin , Fausta, Uncommon Sense ...

Independent Sources points out that Cuban women are smoking hot, with a bikini-clad Daisy Fuentes to illustrate the point. (Remember: Both hands on the keyboard.)

Erick at Red State -- who, being from Georgia, should know a thing or two about smoking hot babes -- keeps both hands on the keyboard long enough to predict:

Cuban-American relations will be effectively normalized within 48 hours of the verification of Fidel Castro's death. 72 if it happens on a weekend.

* * * * *

I just talked to a friend who fled Cuba with her parents decades ago.

She: "I don't know. It seems like he's never going to die. Castro's like a cockroach. You could nuke him and it probably wouldn't kill him."

Me: "Well, it wouldn't hurt to try ..."

* * * * *

Won't you help the cause? Buy DONKEY CONS now! (Buy TWO!)

Hey, to celebrate this happy occasion, we'll even give you ...
a FREE CHAPTER!

-- McCAIN

Ralph Reed = ham sandwich

2006-07-12T13:31:00.000-04:00

"You can indict a ham sandwich," defense attorneys like to say, and that's a point that Republicans in Georgia must think about as they step in the voting booth for the July 18 primary.

Whenever the subject of the Abramoff investigation has been raised, Ralph Reed's campaign has stuck to its talking points:

Reed has not been charged with a crime.
Reed is not under investigation.
Reed did not know that the millions he got from Abramoff were from casino interests.
Anything that seems to contradict Reed's version of the story is a smear made up by the liberal media.
Reed is very sorry, even though he didn't do anything bad, but he promises never, never ever to do anything bad again. Scout's honor! Honest Injun!

But ... wait. While the Democratic Party has suffered tremendous statewide setbacks in Georgia over the past 15 years, the party can still elect officials at the local level in areas where the party's strength remains.
Among such Democratic local officials in Georgia are dozens of sheriffs, judges and, perhaps most importantly, district attorneys.
A good district attorney can almost always get an indictment, if he wants to indict somebody bad enough. A good D.A. has lots of friends, and if he's got friends on the grand jury -- which, of course, he does -- they can help sway the votes of the other grand jurors when the question of indictment comes up for a vote.
(Ever heard of Ronnie Earle?)
So picture a Democratic stronghold in Georgia -- Fulton County? -- and picture the district attorney's office.
Look there, on his desk. What's that?
Why, it's a thick file folder bursting at the seams: Lots of newspaper articles, FEC records, a copy of the Senate report on the Abramoff affair, etc., etc.
But look, there's another folder, too. It's from the Georgia Department of Revenue, and it's got about seven or eight years' worth of Ralph's tax records. And there's another folder with Ralph's bank records.
See, there is this thing called a "subpoena," boys and girls, and when a district attorney gets hungry for a ham sandwich, he can always get his good friend the judge to let him subpoena records.
And what else do we see on our loyal Democratic D.A.'s desk? Why, it's several volumes of Georgia statutes and case law! Let's see: Fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, banking laws, forgery, tax evasion ...
Tsk, tsk, you nasty Democrat D.A.!
What you've got there on your desk ... why, it's a fire hazard, is what it is! What if all those newspaper clippings were to catch fire? They could start a big bonfire -- big enough to burn a witch!
Wonder which witch our friend the Democrat D.A. wants to burn? Well, he might have to get himself a witch hunt to find one.
Let's see, who will help him with his witch hunt?
I know! His good friends on the grand jury!
And you know when the best season is for a witch hunt? C'mon, guess.
That's right! October is witch season in Georgia -- a couple of weeks before Halloween is a good time to hunt for witches. And ... guess what?
That's right! (Oh, you are so smart!) Right after Halloween this year is another big holiday, even bigger and scarier than Halloween. It's called Election Day, boys and girls.
How do they celebrate Election Day in Georgia? With parties. There is a Democrat party and a Republican party.
And what happens in Democratic districts on Election Day? The dead rise from their graves and vote for Democrats! (That's why it's so scary!)
But pity poor Ralph the Witch. Even if he's as clean as a whistle, as pure as the driven snow, he can't get elected in Georgia on Election Day. Dead Democrats don't vote for Republicans, and even some Republicans won't vote for Ralph after that mean old witch-hunting district attorney does his thing.

Think about it, boys and girls. Ralph Reed may be a Good Witch or a Bad Witch, but if a Democrat D.A. wants to take him down before Election Day, we know what kind of witch he'll be:
A ham sand-witch.

Gee, and isn't it funny what how those greedy trial lawyers are always so eager to help Democrats?

-- McCAIN

More LoseOn.org idiocy

2006-07-11T13:12:00.000-04:00

If you're a Democrat looking to waste your time, read the latest fund-raising letter from MoveOn.org. If you're a Democrat who also wants to waste your money, they're be glad to help with that, too:

Dear MoveOn member,
Right-wing Congresswoman Nancy Johnson (R-CT) is kicking her campaign into high gear this week. Her strategy: distance herself from the bad decisions she's been a part of (like Iraq), and hope to eke out a win under the radar this November.
It ain't going to happen. Starting next Monday, we're deploying our organizers to manage new on-the-ground visibility campaigns with MoveOn members in EVERY competitive Republican district.
We'll make sure Republicans can't hide from the truth.
Because this work is powered by MoveOn volunteers the program is pretty inexpensive—just $3,000 per district for a week-in, week-out campaign for the next two months. For every 60 people who chip in $50, that'll be one more district we can go to. Can you contribute? ...

For the last few months, we've worked together to air "Red-Handed" TV ads that get out the truth about Republicans' ties to big corporations. The ads have been very effective: highly respected polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research just issued a report on how the ads did. The verdict: the program made a big impact, changing all four races we targeted.

But four races are only a fraction of the total number of seats up for grabs. We need to take our "Caught Red-Handed" message to every competitive district—making sure voters there are armed with the facts about the amount of special interest money their member of Congress took and the bad votes he or she cast.

We know the message works. And through Operation Democracy, our local field program, we know MoveOn members can organize to make a difference. The organizers are raring to go. Now, we just need to raise the money to pay organizers and put the program in motion.

Can you chip in?

There's another piece of good news from our "Red-Handed" TV ads: even in strongly Republican districts, when you provide voters with information about what their Congressman has been up to, they change their allegiance. That's not just good news for us—it's good news for democracy. ...

–Eli, Marika, Carrie, Tanya and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

Another stinking heap of lies from the MoveOn Moonbats.

Nancy Johnson -- "right-wing"? That would explain her endorsement from the tree-hugging League of Conservation Voters. And there's this analysis from the highly respected, non-partisan Rothenberg Report: "Murphy will be hard-pressed to sneak up on, out-work or out-raise Johnson, as he did with previous opponents. And it will be difficult to label Johnson as a conservative ideologue."

According to the (again, highly respected) Almanac of American Politics, Johnson's voting record is about 60% liberal on social issues, 5o% liberal on economic issues, and 50% liberal on foreign affairs. Some right-wing monster, this 71-year-old Nancy Johnson, who's been in Congress since 1982.

Johnson's Democratic challenger, state Sen. Chris Murphy, actually moved from the neighboring 1st District (where the congressman is a Democrat) in order to run against Johnson. Her 5th District is 80% white with a median household income over $53,ooo, and more military veterans (12%) than people below the poverty line (8%).

Connecticut, and Johnson's district, were pro-Clinton and anti-Bush. But Johnson, a sweet old middle-of-the-road Republican lady who's been in Congress for 24 years, is well-known to her constituents and was sitting on $2.5 million in campaign cash as of April 23.

So, while MoveOn.org is pumping sunshine up the skirts of their suckers ... er, donors, Johnson is actually a quite formidable opponent. Being targeted by MoveOn.org is a sure-thing fundraising appeal for any Republican incumbent. The obvious Democratic strategy is to try to tie Bush around Johnson's neck in a district where Bush has never been popular.

But this is not a presidential year -- no Kerry on the ticket to boost the Dem vote -- and because this really is one of the more vulnerable Repulbican incumbents, the GOP campaign machine will have this district thoroughly canvassed and organizer. Nancy's got plenty of campaign money, and the NRCC will send its A-team to help.

You watch: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, maybe even Arnold Schwarzenegger -- every big-name Republican with crossover appeal to swing voters will be popping into CT5 between Labor Day and Election Day. The phone canvassers will work the district and the moderates will get recorded calls from Rudy or John, the solid conservatives will get recorded calls from W. or Laura.

I keep telling people: The GOP didn't get to this point without knowing a thing or two about winning elections. The Democrats haven't won a national majority since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (Clinton got 43% in '92 and 49% in '96.) The Democratic donor base keeps frittering away their money on hopeless campaigns, hiring blogger/astrologer/consultants and trying to pass gay marriage in Oklahoma. The GOP hoards its resources and picks its battles.

But the idiots on the MoveOn mailing list (and the folks who give money in DailyKos fundraising campaigns) only get one side of the story, as if the Republican Party was just going to sit and watch while the Dems run their game. It doesn't work that way in real-life elections. Name recognition and incumbency are powerful weapons, especially in a House race, where TV ads are less effective. A lot of the action occurs by phone and direct mail, and $2.5 million will buy a lot of that stuff.

It is, of course, possible that Nancy Johnson can lose this race. It is also possible that a huge unsuspected tsunami of anti-Republican sentiment will come crashing down in November, and if you get that kind of vibe, anything is possible. But when one of MoveOn.org's best prospects for a pickup involves an effort to portray a sweet 71-year-old moderate as a ferocious right-winger ... they're pretty desperate, folks.

--McCAIN

Judith Levine & her pedophile admirers

2006-07-11T11:53:00.000-04:00

A couple months ago, I talked about my old feud with Judith Levine, author of the pro-pedophile book Harmful to Minors. Levine gets angry at the accusation that her book is an encouragement for, and defense of, child molesters, but if you Google her name and her book title, you quickly find that pedophiles are some of her biggest fans.

So here we go again: An avowed pedophile who declares himself a fan of Harmful to Minors. (He's also a big fan of Dakota Fanning.)

Among his commenters: ILGO, GLMeister, and the Lepidopterist, who likewise considers Dakota Fanning a "hottie," and who has a "girl lover" group blog here.

Here's a classic: ILGO has another site dedicated to the proposition that fathers are a greater danger to their own daughters than are child molesters. This is totally bogus, and even dangerous. In fact, the greatest sexual risk to girls -- something that Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson has examined in the context of divorce -- comes from stepfathers and "mom's boyfriend." Fretwell sees the increase of non-traditional family forms (via divorce, remarriage and single parenthood) as the basic cause of the rise in child sexual abuse, especially for girls. This is ironic, because feminists have led the way in demonizing fathers and the traditional marriage-based family, thus encouraging the trend toward fatherless households -- and little girls have suffered as a result.

But to return to the author of Harmful to Minors: Levine writes a book about how bad it is to protect children from sex, the sources cited in the book include notorious pedophiles, she argues in that book for lowering the age of consent to 12, and the book draws almost universal praise from avowed pedophiles BUT ... it's not a pro-pedophile book.

-- McCAIN

Reed & Cagle: TIED in Georgia Poll

2006-07-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

Georgia Lieutenant Governor -- Republican
Casey Cagle ...... 37%
Ralph Reed ....... 37%

500 likely GOP primary voters, surveyed July 5-6 by InsiderAdvantage

The sample was weighted by age and gender, according to pollster Matt Towery who adds: "Cagle made major progress in eight days - moving up from a 32 percent-to-27 percent deficit, to even at 37 percent each. There is little doubt that his hard-hitting ad dealing with Reed's casino gambling lobbying issues, along with equally hard hitting direct mail and 'push' phone calls have damaged Reed a bit."

It's now one week until the July 18 primary, and this is the first time since the campaign began that a public poll has shown Cagle even. (Cagle's campaign people say their own internal polling has shown their guy leading since May.)

The candidates had their one and only TV debate Sunday night. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff became the third man in a live, statewide debate between the two Republican candidates for lieutenant governor on Sunday, as Casey Cagle prodded Ralph Reed for his association with the convicted influence-peddler.

For the first 20 minutes of an hourlong debate, Reed's relationship with his lifelong friend and former business associate dominated the most tense meeting yet between the two candidates.

"It's clear that the Abramoff scandal is a national scandal, and it's one that will continue to haunt my opponent," Cagle said.

My brother who lives near Atlanta says Reed is counter-attacking hard with negative ads on Cagle, which is exactly what Cagle spokesman Brad Alexander predicted last week:

"Their first ad was an attack on Casey, and I expect them to continue that strategy. If Ralph's desperate, all he knows how to do is attack."

Oh, and here's an article about Ralph Reed's Abramoff connection:

Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, a respected evangelical group with close ties to Focus on the Family (FOTF), says his group became active in opposing the Jena casino in 2002 after Mr. Reed called: "He gave us the early intelligence on this." Mr. Mills says Mr. Reed told him that he had "some outside organizational interest" in seeing the casino defeated, and urged the Louisiana Family Forum to jump into the fray.
Mr. Mills said he exchanged information with Mr. Reed in the early stages of the opposition effort, but that's all: He didn't ask Mr. Reed to identify his "outside organizational interest," because "I knew that Ralph was a staunch opponent of gambling." That's the way other evangelicals acted as well: They trusted Mr. Reed, and apparently had no inkling that he was involved with Mr. Abramoff and was being paid by Coushatta funds. ...
Overall, the Senate Committee reported not only Mr. Reed's actions but noted a pattern of cover-ups. The report also showed scoffing at Mr. Reed's earlier reputation as a moral leader: When a tribal public-relations representative observed that Mr. Reed was an "ideologue," the report quotes Mr. Abramoff's reply—"as far as the cash goes."

That's from WORLD Magazine, an evangelical news weekly whose editor is Marvin Olasky -- the Christian activist often credited with helping inspire George W. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda. My co-author, Lynn Vincent, is features editor at WORLD.

-- McCAIN

Genesis 12:3

2006-07-11T08:29:00.000-04:00

Does anybody else remember former Rep. Denise Majette (D-Ga.)? Remember when word got out that Cynthia McKinney was taking campaign cash from the Jihad Lobby? And remember how Majette stunned the world by beating McKinney?

And yet, David Frum is skeptical of Joe-Mentum:

I'm inclined to think that Lieberman will squeak through the August primary, but what do I know? ... And whether he wins or loses. ....

Squeak through? Mr. Frum, did Joe "squeak through" that debate? Or did he mop the floor with that Exeter-educated Moonbat sock-puppet?

These are providential times, dear David. By Aug. 8, Joe's going to have enough campaign cash to pave Connecticut in $100 bills stacked five deep, and the streets will be packed solid with Lieberman volunteers.

You think G. Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Michael Savage and Bill Bennett are just going to sit around and watch while the Moonbats take down Lieberman? Uh-uh.

Judgment Day is coming for Ned Lamont and there is going to be a mighty tribulation for the cyber-ayatollahs who staked their reputations on that loser. $832,000 a year! By November, Kos is going to be the biggest laughingstock in American politics.

Wake up and smell the Joe-Mentum!

UPDATE: Ned Lamont has a new ad. Exactly what he expected it to accomplish, I don't know. But it's good to see that he's wasting money. He's a gazillionaire. Let him spend his last dime on stupid ads, if he wants. He can't win.

-- McCAIN

I'm plagiarizing Don Surber

2006-07-11T08:05:00.000-04:00

Some of the words in this sentence have probably been used before by Don Surber, who demonstrates the Left's secret method of detecting Ann Coulter's plagiarism.

-- McCAIN

Kos "Let's pick a loser" update

2006-07-11T06:30:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I told you how the Ayatollah Kosola had picked yet another loser candidate to endorse, a former Clinton aide who's trying to get elected in an upscale Chicago suburban district. I described the incumbent, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, as "a razor-sharp candidate" who was also "sitting on $1.3 million campaign cash."

Surprise, surprise! Guess who Morton Kondracke just named "one of Congress’ most effective moderates"? And guess who is the architect of "the GOP’s 'Suburban Agenda,’ a set of bills designed to appeal to the majority of American voters who live in the suburbs."

Rep. Mark Kirk, naturally.

So while the Moonbat Mullahs of Kosistan cry "jihad" and waste resources in vain efforts to defeat a Democratic moderate like Joe Lieberman -- Joe-Mentum, baby! -- Republican moderate Mark Kirk is cooking up a GOP mini-agenda, perfectly sized for the mini-vans driven by suburban soccer moms.

(Remember this the next time Schumer or some other Democrat starts ranting about how the GOP is controlled by dangerous extremists and the Religious Right.)

Did you know that Mark Kirk has been endorsed by NEA and Planned Parenthood, and that the Chicago Tribune called this Republican "one of the brightest members of the House"? Well, I knew that because I visited the Kirk for Congress campaign Web site.

Now, what did I say on June 30?

I just don't see a smart Republican guy like Mark Kirk getting rolled by a left-wing Democrat running his first-ever campaign. And the fact that this is one of the "key races" targeted by Kos gives you a good idea of just what dim prospects the Democrats have for '06.

I'm just an objective reporter of facts, and certainly I'm no big fan of NEA or Planned Parenthood. But if I were a gambling man I'd bet that if Republicans (even conservative pro-life Republicans) realized that the left-wing Moonbats were targeting Mark Kirk as part of their plan to take over Congress, put Nancy Pelosi in charge and impeach President Bush ... Well, if the high-rolling rich Republican fat cats knew about that, I bet they might want to help Mark Kirk lay a huge lopsided defeat on that former Clinton aide who's running against him.

Because whatever else Mark Kirk votes for, he'll vote to make a Republican speaker of the House when the 110th Congress convenes after the next election. And as Bob Barr once told me in reference to Connie Morella, that's the vote that really matters.

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb blogger. I don't generate $832,000 a year in annual ad revenue like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga does. And I don't know anything about astrology or dot-com stocks like Jerome Armstrong does. No 2008 presidential candidates have signed me as a campaign consultant, either.

It's kind of a funny thing about Republicans: They manage to win elections pretty regularly, without making a lot of headlines about how they pay so much attention to bloggers. Maybe that's because politicians who pay attention to bloggers are crazy.

So please, Republican politicians, don't listen to bloggers. Dan Riehl, Don Surber, Allah Pundit, Ace of Spades, Red State -- don't listen to any of those guys. They're nice guys and all that, but they're just bloggers, OK? If bloggers ever say anything important enough that you need to know about it, you'll hear about it on talk radio or see it on Fox News.

Whatever you do, Republican politicians, don't do like the Democrats. Don't surrender your campaign strategy to a bunch of clowns just because they happen to have a URL on their business cards, OK? And don't let bloggers pick your next party chairman. That would be crazy.

You beat Democrats. We'll blog about it. Deal?

-- McCAIN

How stupid are they?

2006-07-11T04:50:00.000-04:00

We recently got linked by Cold Fury, who asks:

Can the Moonbats really be that stupid?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes!

Here Democrats are looking at their A-Number-One Primo chance to re-take the House of Representatives, and they're in the process of pissing it away because they've somehow managed to surrender operational control of their party to Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of pathetic BDS-afflict losers.

By the way, I got a HUGE traffic from a single link Sunday by Ace of Spades, who is very popular because he is laugh-out-loud funny. Go over there right now, and chances are you'll find something that's just coffee-spewing hysterical.

I met Ace at CPAC 2006 but -- because I knew almost nothing about the blogosphere in February -- didn't realize what a comedic genius he is. If I'd known that, I might have bought him a drink or something. Or at least been more polite when I bummed a smoke from him.

But meanwhile, I've got something I think Ace will love: The federal government spent tax money for ...
a study to "discover" that psilocybin makes you trip(!!).

Meanwhile, a friend of mine compares and contrasts two recent videos:
"Hadji Girl" vs. Sheik Muhammad Sharaf Al-Din.

Man, either this formatting is screwed up, or else it's another psilocybin flashback: I could have sworn I just saw a well-known libertarian reviewing a Superman movie ... for Christianity Today?

-- McCAIN

Re: Crunchy Cons

2006-07-10T18:33:00.000-04:00

Both Rod Dreher and I seem to have gotten angry over my review of Crunchy Cons, his critique of my review, etc., etc.

Rod's friends have sprung to his defense, as might be expected. Since I don't have any friends -- at least, no blogger friends who give a crap about an internecine dispute like this -- I'll have to defend myself.

First of all, I like Rod. I've never met him in person, though we've exchanged e-mails and I interviewed him when Crunchy Cons was first published. We have mutual friends, like the mighty Cinecon, and probably have some mutual enemies as well. Besides which, I am a "Rogers and Hammerstein" conservative: I believe the traditionalist farmer and the libertarian cowman can be friends.

Paleo, neo, me-o

Nothing so wearies me as the bitter infighting among rival conservatives, either as individuals or factions. Especially I regret the murderous jihad between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives. My strongest allegiances are among palecons, but I have many neocon friends, and it so happens -- a long, long story -- that I am more pro-war than my paleocon brethren, most of whom take an Old Right/libertarian/isolationist stance against foreign military adventures. So when David Frum assails "Unpatriotic Conservatives," he's badmouthing some of my friends, and when the paleocons fire back, some of my other friends get hurt.

My desire to de-escalate such feuding is largely personal and self-interested -- as a Madisonian, I see nothing untoward in the honorable pursuit of legitimate self-interest. Among other things, the paleo-neo combat makes it much harder for me to earn a living, since paleoconservatives are persona non grata at National Review, and the Weekly Standard would hire Osama bin Laden to freelance a cover story before they'd give a dime to anyone who'd ever written for Chronicles.

The "No Paleos Need Apply" signs prominently displayed outside the offices of the largest-circulation conservative journals are the major reasons why this feud is still so bitter and ugly. You might think that -- just on a whim -- Rich Lowry might say, "Oh, let's ask Pat Buchanan to review this book," or that Fred Barnes might look at Bill Kristol and ask, "Why not ask Peter Brimelow to do an immigration piece?" But no: When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way ....

As vehement and rancorous as I can be when I get worked up about something, when my passion cools, it's quickly forgotten, and I try to let bygones be bygones. Life is too short to waste time holding grudges over every political quarrel I've ever had -- but others are not nearly so forgiving. And so when I see two conservatives going at each other like a pair of rabid pit bulls, I know that the wounds inflicted will be remembered far longer than the immediate dispute --- and that other people will suffer as a result.

Let me tell this story: A few months ago, I sent out an e-mail that was CC'd to several friends. One of these friends is a paleocon histoian who wrote a book which had been (unfairly) savaged by another historian who is a friend of one the neocons I'd CC'd on the same e-mail. Pretty soon, I found myself a CC'd spectator to an angry exchange of messages between the neocon and palecon. This seemed to me a tragic situation -- if we could all go out for dinner, we might not all agree, but at least there would't be such enmity and resentment.

And that, you see, is why I am both:

Deeply sorry that I lost my temper in dispute with Rod Dreher; and
Seriously concerned that Crunchy Cons is a wrong turn in the debate over conservative principles.

Bradford & Bennett

The paleo-neo feud, so far as it has a definite beginning, goes back to the dawn of the Reagan era. Many staunch conservatives supported University of Dallas professor M.E. "Mel" Bradford to be chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities. But others, who supported University of North Carolina professor Bill Bennett for the job, seized upon Bradford's writings critical of Abraham Lincoln -- and on Bradford's involvement in the earlier independent presidential candidacy of George Wallace -- to paint him as, if not necessarily a racist, then certainly a potential embarrassment to the new administration.

It is generally conceded, I believe, that columnist George Will struck the fatal blow against Bradford, thus catapulting Bennett to eminence and, ultimately, to great wealth. Bradford was not exactly consigned to outer darkness, but he had been grievously wronged. No apology has ever been offered by his enemies, and his friends have never forgotten it. Nor should they. I suggest that anyone who would bother to read Bradford's unequalled volume on the Constitution, Original Intentions, will find the author a man of great learning and judgment, a worthy heir of Kirk and Weaver.

While I certainly have no desire to cast aspersions on Bennett, I could not help but think of M.E. Bradford when -- in recent years -- Bennett was first scandalized by revelations of his gambling habits, then nearly destroyed by misunderstanding of his comments about race, crimeand abortion. In both of these cases, Bennett was victimized by those who wished him ill. But I could not help but note the irony: If Bennett had been known as a compulsive gambler in 1980, or if he had spoken even hypothetically in 1980 about a possible eugenic benefit to abortion (an idea derived from the book Freakonomics, and one which I suppose every Christian must reject), then it might have been Bennett who was rejected, and Bradford who marched onward to glory.

A debate gone awry

This game of "gotcha" among conservative rivals -- which has since blighted the careers of many others I might name -- is a destructive thing. An old friend of mine used to talk about the "urge to purge" that sometimes crops up in these matters: The desire for "purity" that leads some people to seek to exile, ostracize and blackball their rivals. If you look at the left-wing Moonbats nowadays, you can see this self-defeating tendency in action.

This is why, despite my many disagreements with NRO's Jonah Goldberg, I believed Goldberg was mostly correct in his criticism of Crunchy Cons. (I suspect some personal enmity between Goldberg and Dreher might be involved, but that just shows my cynical bent, I guess.) It seemed to me that Dreher wrongly sought to make invidious distinctions between himself and "the conservative mainstream" over matters that have little if anything to do with the fundamental purpose of the conservative project.

In the decade or so since I finally abandoned my native loyalty to the Democratic Party, I have had many occasions to denounce what I saw as basic mistakes by GOP politicians and their conservative supporters. I was about ready to strangle Christopher Caldwell for his 1998 Atlantic Monthly cover article, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP." Months before that, I had warned that certain "prissy Whig nationalists" were engaged in a dangerous hunt for "new" conservative ideas. Nobody would even publish that essay, but I was proven prophetic when the hopelessly wrongheaded juggernaut of "national greatness" conservatism got rolling, leading to much of what today ails the Right.

Back to basics

What is wrong with conservatism is not, as Dreher insists, whether we live in McMansions or bungalows, dine on organic veggies or bioengineered chickens raised in heinous conditions. What is wrong with conservatism is that it refuses to stick to its basic issue of limited government under the Constitution.

Why is this so? Well, because you couldn't elect Ron Paul to Congress in suburban New Jersey, and because Jeff Sessions could never be elected a senator in Illinois. The people in such places are not conservative. They may not be genuinely liberal, either, but they aren't conservative -- at least not in a way that the people of Alabama or the 14th District of Texas understand "conservative." (Almost any rank-and-file Alabama Democrat is more conservative than the average rank-and-file New Jersey Republican.)

In order to give non-conservative voters to vote Republican, Republicans must do things that are not conservative. This is where the conservative intellectual class gets tangled up in contradictory allegiances.

Conservatism and the GOP

Every day that passes without the privatization of Social Security or the abolition of the federal Department of Education is a rebuke to conservative principles. (I've chosen two notorious examples from a long list of unconstitutional encroachments by the federal government.) But the Republican Party cannot accomplish these things if it hopes to win elections. Therefore, a certain sort of "conservative" intellectual finds an eager audience for his arguments that returning the government to its constitutional moorings is not really important, or even that it would be un-conservative to attempt such a thing.

Thus, rather than do what they should be doing -- using their persuasive powers to convince the masses of the merits of genuine conservatism -- many "conservative" intellectuals instead spend their time discouraging the Republican Party from pursuing conservative policies. These are the sorts of people who saw great promise in "National Greatness" conservatism, which is nothing but the Welfare State under Republican auspices. While there may be good (and conservative) reasons to entrust the GOP with the supervision of the trillion-dollar Leviathan, that's small potatoes compared to the fundamental question of whether the Leviathan is legtimate. (It isn't.)

Conservative intellectuals have got to stop acting as if they're afraid somebody will embarass the Republican Party by speaking the plain truth. No Republican congressman is going to lose an election because Ann Coulter got carried away with her hyperbole, or because Rush Limbaugh said something that offended some swing voter in the suburbs of Chicago. The GOP's share of the Hispanic vote in 2006 is not dependent upon whatever Michelle Malkin or John Podhoretz write about immigration. We need to quit overreacting to every hyped-up faux pas by some talk-show pundit and to every overheated ideological conflict between columnists.

Conservative intellectuals surrender their independence the minute they start thinking of themselves as PR agents for the GOP. And there is an annoying tendency of some in the conservative establishment to act like third-grade hall monitors:

"Michelle was mean to Denice Denton!"
or
"Ann called Ahmedinejad a bad word!"
or
"I saw Peter Brimelow kissing Pat Buchanan!"

Well, anyway, you get the idea.

Blue State conservatism

I am deeply sympathetic to Rod Dreher's desire to distinguish himself from the run-of-the-mill GOP flacks and wonks who inhabit the conservative punditocracy. Based on my own personal observation, what most of these people tend to have in common is not an ideology, but a socioeconomic profile.

Most conservative intellectuals in Washington are natives of Blue States, from upper-middle-class backgrounds, who graduated high school near the top of their class, attended a prestigious university, and went directly from campus into the hive of conservative activism. Among other things, the "pointy-heads" of the conservative movement tend toward nerdiness (thus the seemingly endless discussions of sci-fi TV on NRO's the Corner) but that's not the worst of their problems.

Most conservative intellectuals in Washington -- and I speak here specifically of the up-and-comers under 40 -- have nothing in common with the rank-and-file voters who elect Republicans. Most conservative intellectuals don't own guns or trucks. Nor do they usually listen to talk radio. The tend to live in close proximity to Starbucks. They are temperamentally cautious, and generally lack the easygoing confidence of ordinary folks in the Red States. I have attended many think-tank discussion seminars in Washington where there wasn't a man in the room who looked like he'd ever won a fistfight or driven more than 15 mph over the legal speed limit.

I realize these are broad generalizations, but I'm pretty sure most folks who'd spent much time in conservative circles in Washington would agree with this characterization. Conservatism in America is a phenomenon of Red State grassroots and Blue State leadership, and nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in Washington, D.C. Try this:

Look down a roster of recent speakers (excluding members of Congress) at events sponsored by the major conservative think tanks in Washington;
Google the biographies of these speakers, noting their hometowns;
See if you can figure out how often a Mississippi drawl or an Oklahoma twang is heard in the assemblies of Washington conservatives.

Are there no conservatives with college diplomas who were born south of the Potomac River? Then what can explain the striking absence of Southerners from the conservative intellectual establishment in Washington? There must be something systemic at work, something that's hard to describe in concrete terms. But I submit that the reason you find silly debates over Star Trek vs. Star Wars in The Corner is the same reason you don't see many graduates of LSU or Florida State addressing the seminars at AEI.

And this is a problem for the conservative movement, in that it is very hard for elite-educated Manhattanites to give voice to -- or even to understand -- the sentiments that motivate Republican voters in Tulsa, Tullahoma or Talladega.

Rod in NRO-land

Did Rod Dreher, a humble expatriate Louisianan, feel like a fish out of water amongst all those city slickers in the Manhattan offices of National Review? No doubt. But in expressing his alienation from this "mainstream conservatism," I believe, he missed the big point. What's chiefly wrong with National Review -- other than its location -- is that, like the conservative movement generally, it has become intellectually insular, an echo chamber. It's like one of those big churches with a tiny, aged congregration, where the ministrer is concerned more with preaching to the converted than with winning souls.

Where once upon a time National Review was home to a mixed bag of Taftites, ex-Commies and dissident Democrats, it is now a sanctum sanctorum, staffed almost entirely by those whom we might call Professional Conservatives -- people who've never earned a living outside the arena of political debate.

It is the professionalization of the conservative intellectual class which has caused this insularity. Today's conservative movement seizes upon downy-cheeked college youth, runs them through minor league training camps, and whichever ones show the most promise are then boosted up to the big leagues. If you're not a syndicated columnist, a published author or a "senior fellow" by the time you're 30, you might as well hang up your conservative cleats. And if you ever fall afoul of the system -- say the wrong thing, offend the wrong people -- you're off the team.

Through the systematization of its recruiting and training, the conservative movement has achieved an increasing homogenization of thought. It's perhaps not so much about enforcing an ideological party line as it is about achieving a harmony of class interest, a certain characteristic attitude, a stylized manner of discourse.

And here's the big thing: Whether the Republicans win or lose the next election, whether gay marriage is triumphant or vanquished, whether Roe v. Wade stands or falls -- whatever the outcome, the Professional Conservatives will still be employed. They will still have their think tank offices, their book contracts and their Fox News guest appearances.

To real rank-and-file Republican voters, the political fate of the conservative cause is vitally important. To a masthead editor at a right-wing magazine or a "senior fellow" at a think tank, it's all just fodder for his next op-ed column. If Democrats sweep to victory in November, a dozen such characters will sign book contracts to explain why it happened, with a concluding chapter featuring a 10-point formula of "What We Must Do to Take Back America." All of these books will be at least partly in error, and several of them will probably be entirely wrongheaded, but what all these books will have in common is that the author got paid to write them. Win or lose, they get paid.

I don't blame Rod for hating such an environment. I hate it, too. But hating what the conservative movement has become should not, on the one hand, lead us toward a distracting concern with apolitical trivia. Nor, on the other hand, should it lead us to disdain the primary objective of the America conservative movement: namely, to put the federal government back into a Constitution-sized box, and keep it there.

Envy? Guilty as charged

Clark Stooksbury writes:

The real reason for McCain's antipathy seems to be jealousy. In Reason he wrote, "Right now, I'm envious of Dreher, whose anti-materialist conservative book is selling like crazy at Amazon.com."

Well, of course. I was merely confirming Dreher's observation that "Western economics is ... based on exploiting greed and envy." Western economics also exploits lust, pride, gluttony and the rest the Seven Deadly Sins. Three cheers for profitable exploitation!

Or would you prefer to live in Zimbabwe? Pyongyang? Sweden? No. None of us who call ourselves conservatives would truly prefer to live in some non-Western "utopia" like that. For better or worse, we like our freedom -- including the right to bitch and moan about what our fellow Americans do with their freedom.

I don't like seeing chicks in low-rise jeans displaying their whorish tattoos and the whorish bellybutton rings. I don't like the lousy rock-'n'-roll that passes for "country music" nowadays. I don't like Starbucks or MTV, and I don't like "The O'Reilly Factor" -- especially because O'Reilly's producer wouldn't book Lynn on the show, where a 6-minute appearance might have sold 5,000 copies of DONKEY CONS.

Rod's in his third printing, so of course I'm envious of his success. I got paid to write a book -- or half a book -- and I am a highly competitive person. The only sport I was ever any good at was football, and in football "second place" is just another word for "loser." I have therefore done everything in my power (including praying for divine assistance) to sell DONKEY CONS (buy TWO).

Lynn has the "face for Fox," and I've got a face for radio, so I told our publicist to book me onto every talk-radio show that would have me. I've also been blogging like a fiend to promote the book, and spent my own money on promotional mailings. I spent over $400 of my own money to purchase copies to send to reviewers. I spent $125 of my own money to produce a poster-sized blow-up of the cover, which I used for my Capitol Hill speech, which was televised by CSPAN-2.

Shameless? Of course!

Now, all of this will be tax-deductible, but was based on my belief that Lynn and I have written a book that has an important and timely (and therefore commercially valuable) message for America: Democrats are historically more prone to crime and corruption than Republicans (a fact statistically demonstrated in Chapter 2), and thus that anyone who goes to the polls in November and votes Democrat out of disgust with the "culture of corruption" in Washington is going to make the problem much worse, not better. (A conclusion that Reps. William Jefferson and Al Mollohan have recently helped validate.)

Not only that, but DONKEY CONS (buy TWO) delineates several distinct patterns to Democratic corruption. For instance, Chapter 5 talks about the role of corrupt unions in the Democratic Party, Chapter 7 talks about the Democrats' pro-criminal policies, and Chapter 8 discusses how Democrats have wrecked America's cities.

Of all the chapters in DONKEY CONS, however, I think I am most proud of Chapter 9, which you can now download free in PDF format. This chapter is -- or would be, if anyone would ever bother to read and understand it -- a stake right through the heart of the Democratic Party, because it attacks head-on the party's most powerful myth, namely that it stands for the interests of "the little guy."

On dozens of talk radio shows, after I've described the various wrongdoings of Democrats over the years, I've been asked, "How do they get away with it?" And that's when I bring up the basic point of Chapter 9: It's the class warfare, stupid! By posing as the champions of the poor and downtrodden, Democrats immunize themselves against scandal.

Ted Kennedy is a drunken, lecherous buffoon, but as long as the people of Massachusetts remain convinced that Ted cares about poor little children -- and if you listen to a true-believer Democrat, they'll try to convince you that Ted cares more about your children than you do -- that drunken, lecherous buffoon will have a vote in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, Ted Kennedy is a pampered son of privilege, whose most notable personal qualities are his extreme vanity and intellectual flaccidity. To my knowledge, Ted's never been accused of committing any act of charity unless it was a publicity stunt to gain some political advantage.

And Ted is just the tip of this particular iceberg. Throughout DONKEY CONS, we chronicle how Democrats lie, cheat and steal to enrich themselves, and in Chapter 9 we contrast this dishonest avarice with the party's altruistic rhetoric.

Demonizing free enterprise

I have no quarrel with a man getting rich by his own labor and ingenuity. What I cannot stand is the towering hypocrisy of liberals, who tirelessly promote political schemes to defraud honest people of their earnings -- indeed, to wreck the entire free-enterprise system and thereby impoverish us all -- while at the same time greedily (and often dishonestly) enriching themselves. (Dorothy Rivers is a textbook example.)

Worst of all, by demonizing honest enterprise -- the hard work and thrift necessary to success in business -- Democrat discourage the poor from pursuing their best prospect for escaping poverty. Democrats' demonization of business, by its implication that all successful men got their success through dishonest and selfish "exploitation," encourages poor people to turn to crime, or to sink into dependency and drug-addled self-pity. I used to be a Democrat, and I know that I never could have achieved anything in life if I hadn't finally broken free of their class warfare lies.

One of the problems with Professional Conservatives is that most of them have never been anything but Republicans. They take for granted that the Democrats' class-warfare rhetoric is false, and too often take for granted the basic truth that the free-enterprise system is the system which offers the most hope for the improvement of the condition of the poor. So they have an annoying tendency to get bogged down in squabbles over minor issues and fail to keep urging the merits of the market economy.

Ronald Reagan -- like me, an ex-Democrat -- never made that mistake. From the 1950s onward, Reagan unrelentingly sang the praises of the free market, because he knew that this upbeat, positive message changes hearts and wins elections.

Once a majority of Americans understand the importance of economic freedom, and understand the threat to that freedom posed by Democrats, the Democratic Party will be permanently out of power. With no power, they'll have nothing to offer their donors, and with no donors, they'll be out of business.

What the conservative movement needs is people not merely dedicated to defeating the Democratic Party in the next election, but dedicated to driving the Democratic Party completely and permanently out of existence.

Ronald Reagan once summarized his plan for peace with the Soviet Union thus: "We win. They lose." Why not take the same attitude toward the Democrats? Once conservatives have driven the Democratic Party to extinction, then maybe we can do something about fixing the GOP, which is in a mighty sorry condition lately. I would suggest fixing the GOP first but -- given the newfound influence of DailyKos and MoveOn.org among the Democrats and considering that Hillary Clinton's their best candidate for '08 -- I think Operation Abolish Democrats will be quicker and easier.

I never voted for Mr. Reagan (remember, I was a born-and-bred yellow dog Democrat until the mid-'90s), but as fortune would have it, The Washington Times assigned me to write his memorial obituary. This I consider one of the signal honors of my career.

The Invisible Hand

Mr. Stooksbury, you say that you got paid to review my book for an upcoming issue of Chronicles, just like I got paid to review Rod's book for Reason, so it seems that the Invisible Hand's working overtime for all of us. I concluded my review of Rod's book with a benediction:

Hate the sin, but love the sinner. I’m praying for Dreher, who, thanks to the Invisible Hand, gave me the chance to write this greed-motivated review. God bless you, Rod. Go in peace.

Whatever faults you have found in DONKEY CONS, Mr. Stooksbury, I hope you will point them out in a similar spirit of Christian goodwill. But whatever the case, all of us -- you, me and Rod Dreher -- write for money, and each hopes to prosper. Being competitive by nature, I hope to sell more books than Dreher, and will count myself a loser if I fail to achieve that goal.

Failure, however, will only spur me to try harder next time. As a matter of fact, I recently pitched a few new ideas to my publisher:

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN DA VINCI CODE, by Robert Stacy McCain
HOW TO GET RICH IN PUBLISHING (featuring NAKED PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS, PAMELA ANDERSON, and PARIS HILTON) by Robert Stacy McCain
MY GODLESS SLANDEROUS TREASON WITH ANN COULTER, by Robert Stacy McCain
SALVATION ON THE AIRWAVES: HOW BILL O'REILLY, LARRY KING, AND ESPECIALLY OPRAH WINFREY SAVED AMERICA'S SOUL, by Robert Stacy McCain.

So far, I haven't heard back from the publisher, but I'm optimistic.

-- McCAIN

Your tax dollars tripping out?

2006-07-10T16:59:00.000-04:00

Funded by a federal research grant, a Johns Hopkins study that finds "profound mystical experiences" from psilocybin is yet another example of how the government wastes taxpayer money.

I could have told them all they needed to know about the "mystical" effects of psilocybin in 1979 without a penny from the feds -- provided they'd caught me in a lucid phase.

Psilocybin mushrooms grow abundantly in Alabama cow pastures after it rains and -- without benefit of double-blind studies or grants from the Department of Health and Human Services -- we undergraduates at Jacksonville (Ala.) State University conducted extensive research "in the field," as it were.

It's sometimes said that young people "experiment" with drugs. OK, I was the Enrico Fermi of drug "experimentation." Like Dennis Miller, I not only inhaled, I drank the bong water (which is nasty, by the way).

Given my own personal "research" findings, it is hardly surprising to me that, 15 years after Woodstock, Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a 49-state landslide. Thus, Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" strategy may have been misguided: I know lots of right-wingers who were stoners back in the day.

Let this be a warning to young dopeheads out there: The long-term after-effects of illegal drugs may include a tendency toward fundamentalist religion and anti-government political views.

-- McCAIN

Lovely Lisa defends Ann Coulter

2006-07-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

Lisa De Pasquale is one of the nicest folks you'll meet in Washington. For many years, she was program director for the Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute -- "the Luce Ladies," as they sometimes mischievously call themselves -- and as such was responsible for helping schedule many events for Ann Coulter.

Today, in Human Events Online, lovely Lisa unloads on those accusing Coulter of plagiarism:

In his second article citing “plagiarism expert” and CEO of iParadigms John Barrie, New York Post recycler Philip Recchia gave no examples of passages that were plagiarized by Ann Coulter so the reader could compare them. Barrie, a graduate from the People’s Republic of Berkeley, is the creator of the iThenticate computer program that claims to root out plagiarism. But according to Universal Press Syndicate, the company that distributes Coulter’s widely-read column, a representative for iParadigms suspiciously said that he wasn’t sure the company “could provide the same information about Coulter as was given to the Post.”
Recchia simply offered vague references to old claims, including “10 facts” that were also in a Heritage Foundation paper. These facts were descriptions of projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. How many ways can a columnist describe a picture of “Christ submerged in a jar of urine” to its gentle readers?
Columnists for at least three publications -- the Manila Times, San Diego’s Daily Transcript and the Southern Illinoisan -- described the work of “art” in those exact same words after Coulter did so in her June 29, 2005, column. Given that it’s more likely that they read Coulter’s column than a 1991 Heritage paper that isn’t available online, does that mean they knowingly plagiarized Coulter? Of course not.
There are only so many words one can use to describe the filth funded by the NEA. Likewise, there are only so many arguments liberals can use against Coulter. Her detractors are as predictable as Pavlov’s dogs. Devoid of critical thinking, they have a conditioned reaction to successful conservatives. By the way, you may find that I am not the first person to describe the Pavlovian theory with the words “critical thinking” and “conditioned reaction.”

Please, go read the whole thing. Buy GODLESS ... and buy DONKEY CONS -- no, wait, buy TWO copies! (Hey, we'll even give you a FREE CHAPTER!)

-- McCAIN

Democrat strategy memo

2006-07-10T14:18:00.000-04:00

In their latest strategy memo for Democrats, James Carville and pollster Stan Greenberg are forced to make two important admissions:

Bush's poll numbers have improved, especially with the conservative base.
Democrats still have not been able to take advantage of the GOP's problems.

The two top Democratic strategists -- political professionals, not Moonbats -- are telling their clients:

Bush has improved his standing modestly in the last month, particularly with conservatives and past Bush voters, but produced no change whatsoever in the number of intense supporters or intense opponents. In short, nothing has happened to change the structure of the race, diminish the desire for change or reduce the Democrats’ lead in the races for the U.S. House and Senate. In fact, there is some evidence that the ongoing debate on Iraq has increased the Democratic margin.
That argues for Democrats not being distracted from their main strategic task – how to bring up their vote and margin to the level that one would expect given the tumultuous political mood in the country. Democrats are doing well – ahead by 9 points in the real congressional (not generic) ballot and at 51 percent of the vote. But they need to do better to win control. Fortunately, 63 percent believe the country is on the wrong track, 57 percent want a significantly different direction than Bush’s and another 57 percent support virtually every Democratic message tested in comparison with the Republicans. Democrats’ 9-point vote margin is about half of the margin they get when testing the key choices before the country.
The Democrats need to catch up with the country, which wants to vote for outsiders, is demanding change and ready to respond to the Democrats’ message and definition of the election. All things considered, this is not a bad problem to have, but it requires a new intensity and focus to grab ahold of the forces for change and take the Democrats to a new level.

You can go read the whole thing here, and they also have a new "Democracy Corps" poll.

The conventional wisdom, as usual, is wrong. This was supposed to be the year that Democrats took back the House -- not going to happen. Instead, the Republican Senate (which the conventional wisdom said would be safe) is in serious danger, as Robert Novak points out today:

Rick Santorum remains far behind in Pennsylvania. Conrad Burns is in trouble in Montana. Jim Talent trails in Missouri. Mike DeWine is threatened by a noxious Republican atmosphere in Ohio. Lincoln Chafee is endangered in Democratic Rhode Island. Jon Kyl faces a surprisingly tough race in Arizona. Despite excellent candidates in Minnesota and Washington state, no Republican challenging for a Democratic-held Senate seat is in the lead. Thus, a six-seat takeover capturing the Senate is possible.

The reason why the GOP is relatively safe in the House, but endangered in the Senate is simple: Immigration. Republican senators pushed for amnesty, but the House GOP stopped them cold. Yet, as Novak reports, Graham still doesn't get it:

Graham is one conservative Republican who supports President Bush on immigration. He and Bush advisers agree that the immigration hard line may alienate the Hispanic vote with disastrous consequences. But Graham has little backing at the White House for a softened party line on global warming and entitlement reform that includes greater contributions by upper-income Americans.

Fool! If you can't win with your voters, how are you going to win with theirs?

In other words, Republican voters support strengthening the borders -- win those votes now. You can worry later about how to win over Democrat-supporting immigrants (almost all immigrant groups, historically, support Democrats in the first and second generations).

Because Republican voters oppose the "path to citizenship," this majority, if mobilized, will prevent most illegals from gaining citizenship, thus effectively reducing the future base of the Democrats. Graham's folly -- the claim that the Republican Party can win votes any time soon from illegal immigrants and their supporters -- is based on nothing more than misleading and self-serving myths promoted by the business lobbies that want cheap labor.

If Graham speaks for the Senate Republican leadership, smart conservative donors won't waste money trying to save endangered GOP seats in the Senate, especially those -- like DeWine and Chafee -- who voted for the amnesty bill. To elect Republican senators merely to empower amnesty-supporting sellouts like Graham would be to reinforce a losing strategy. Instead, smart conservatives will concentrate their efforts on protecting those senators, like Kyl of Arizona, who voted against the amnesty, and on ensuring that conservatives maintain control of the House.

-- McCAIN

Frisch: Your tax dollars at work?

2006-07-10T00:34:00.000-04:00

Deborah Frisch apparently got federal grants to do research on decision-making for the National Science Foundation, and got hyped by National Public Radio!

I've seen federal tax money spent on some crazy stuff:

"AIDS prevention" programs that included workshops to help gay men inprove their "cruising skills" and "pick-up strategies" and how to use sex toys.
A CDC "youth resources" site that directed teenagers to places "where you can meet other queers your age."
Paying women to watch porn while measuring their arousal.

But paying Frisch to analyze decision-making processes ... wow!

To start with, what's the decision-making process behind that mullet?

* * * * *

I went back to Protein Wisdom and tried to figure where this all started. It appears that shortly after noon on Monday, July 3, Frisch (aka Southwestpaw) posted this comment:

Lemme get this straight - your boxers are in a knot because the NYT leaked information that threatens the security of the US?

Are you COMPLETELY out of your mind? Do you really not understand that George Dubya Bush threatens the security of the US a trillion times more than the NYT by continuing to order the occupation of Iraq?

Got neurons?

A few exchanges and two hours later, Frisch was mocking Christianity:

Icing on the cake would be a couple of kooky kristians who believe:
There’s this guy.
His name is god.
He lives in the sky.
He had a son named Jesus by a virgin named Mary.
Jesus died for YOUR sins but he lives for ever.
What a guy.
Of course, what would you expect from the Son of GOD!

Come on, I know you’re out there kooky kristians - doncha wanna play?

Frisch continues baiting the commenters:

I don’t buy into the idea of tolerance. We make you want to puke and you do the same to us! Why should either one of us pretend that we have anything but revulsion, contempt, disgust for each other? Really - what’s the point?
You wouldn’t tolerate it if your neighbors’ kids defecated in your back yard, would you? Some things are too disgusting to be “tolerated” - that’s how I feel about you and I reckon, that’s how you feel about me.

And here:

i could retaliate by making jokes about your flaccid attempt at humor and how you probably haven’t been humped in a decade, etc. but why bother?

A little past 3 p.m., she's taunting Goldstein, demanding to be banned:

Your neuronless leader has shown his stripes by threatening to ban me, but not yet, because I’m useful to him.

I guess this is his way of feeling powerful - like it would matter to me if I had to cross this pathetic little cesspool off my list of places to flex my first amendment.

Come on tough guy - ban me!

She then starts posting links to her anti-Christian diatribes and homophobic attacks on Republicans, and by 4:20 p.m. she's touting her credentials:

I’m a decision scientist. That’s why I was hired for a gig as the Director of the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation from July, 2001 through August, 2003. My area of psychology is in judgment and decision research. It’s a big ephing deal - Danny Kahneman the psychologist who is a co-founder of my subtribe of psychology won the fauxbel prize in economics in 2002 for this research. As you know, it’s rare for a psychologist to get a nobel prize in economics.

At this point, the best possible explanation for Frisch's rants is that she's blogging with a .012 blood-alcohol level. "Fauxbel prize"?

She then goes "to my so-called real life" and returns at 6:35 p.m. to declare:

This is the first time I have garnered this much attention with a bit of trolling and people disparaging my looks, Curriculum Vitae, publications (e.g., Counterpunch piece), job, field, etc. ...
I regret that I do not have time to respond individually to every put-down, snub, diss, bitch and moan. ...

One clarification: I am not a tenured professor. I was denied tenure at the University of Oregon for being a gadfly.

OK, she seems to be upset that Goldstein and his regular commenters went to her blog, did some research and figured out who she is. But "denied tenure ... for being a gadfly"? Eh?

It seems Frisch didn't hit it off well with the department head at Oregon, then found herself at age 32 that great tragedy of academia: The untenured Ph.D.

In most cases nowadays -- considering that Ph.Ds in psychology are in surplus -- this portends a much less glorious career path. Adjunct teaching jobs, or perhaps a more-or-less permanent job at some Podunk College in the sticks.

Without tenure, however, one's opportunities for off-duty activism are limited, you see? If you get tenure -- guaranteed employment for life! -- you can be a superstar political activist like Chomsky and the administration can't touch you. But ... no tenure? Well, that's a year-to-year contract and who knows if the failure to renew your contract was a result of your activism with the Progressive LGBT Environmentalists for Palestine?

So it was the Monday before 4th of July, and Dr. Frisch -- sober or not -- was 12 years into her non-tenured existence and evidently deep in the throes of depression. She's an untenured, menopausal lesbian Ph.D. who can't even get "partner" benefits at the University of Arizona. She wades into the first open-comment conservative blog she finds and tries to pick a fight with the right-wingers she blames for her depressing situation.

Dang it, y'all! I'm feeling a Ned Flanders moment coming on again. Dr. Frisch doesn't need to be hated and hounded. She needs prayer and understanding. She's a profoundly depressed (and possibly alcoholic) basket case who just trolled her way into the unemployment line.

So what if she's an anti-war lesbian? Anti-war lesbians are people, too! Goldstein's already accepted an apology (and a bottle of tequila). Who are we to keep hatin' on Deb?

Look, I'm sorry about the mullet jokes, Doc. I used to have a fine mullet myself, back in the day ....

* * * * *

OK, huge hat tip to Alcibiades for this Deb Frisch quote:

After 911, I got into the idea that my current status in academia (migrant professor) is analogous to being a Palestinian in Israel. The only difference is, I used to be a Jew (tenure-track professor). But somehow, in my mind, I've started to identify with Palestinians and Iraqis and this increases my desire to throw metaphorical rocks....

Wound? Salt! Alcibiades, you sadist:

In real life, Deborah is a Jew. But obviously one that has been brainwashed by the Edward Said school of alternate history and one sided scholarship.

With a screwed up internalization process like that, I don't think it takes a psychologist to understand why an articulate Jewish conservative like Jeff Goldstein would become such a source of primal rage for her.

Ouch. You know that's gotta hurt. Because I'm thinking about Deborah's parents right now: "Miss Bigshot Lesbian Ph.D., thinks she's a Palestinian!"

-- McCAIN

Reports: Reed tops Cagle in TV debate

2006-07-09T22:43:00.000-04:00

Even guys who oppose Ralph Reed are saying he outdebated GOP opponent Casey Cagle on Sunday night.

But (a) it's Sunday on public TV, not a big GOP audience, (b) when it came to substantive issues, Cagle reportedly did well.

One blog commenter is already out with his November prediction:
Reed - 55%
Hecht - 40%
Buckley - 5%

Wonder if he'd put money on those numbers? For Reed to get 55%, he'd have to get nearly all the Cagle vote, and Reed's spent three weeks running negative ads against Cagle.

One way or the other, the Georgia GOP's going to need some healing after July 18.

Meanwhile, the GOP candidate for Ga. Sec. of Agriculture promises to protect your breakfast cereal from Osama bin Laden. Thanks, I needed a laugh.

-- McCAIN

The Weirdo Coalition

2006-07-09T19:57:00.000-04:00

* UPDATE *

Y'know, I thought the Moonbat crowd were all chic and cutting-edge and stuff. But ... a mullet?

Some of the comments ("Nancy McKeown from The Facts of Lesbian Life") are hopelessly cruel. Not quite as cruel as threatening a 2-year-old, perhaps ....

Six Meat Buffet's post indicates a potential downside of the Frisch Fry: With 25,000 hits on a single day, she might be able to parlay that into the 2,500-a-day average necessary to get into the "Advertise Liberally" syndicate. (Which, as I keep saying, generates $832,000 a year for DailyKos.)

OK, somebody please explain this pro-Frisch way of thinking:

They Dish It Out But Can't Take It ...
The outrage and vitriol poured on Deb Frisch is just another sterling example of the Right's hypocrisy.

No.
It.
Is.
Not.

Let's see if we can follow the sequence:

Frisch goes to Goldstein's site, and begins posting bizarro psycho-sexual comments about his 2-year-old son.
Goldstein cries foul.
A denial-of-service attack is launched against Goldstein's site.

Frisch began by using Goldstein's bandwidth to make abusive comments about his family, then when that didn't work so good, some hacker decided to take down his site altogether. It's a completely one-sided aggression against Goldstein.

Excuse me for not noticing any "dish it out" action by Goldstein which merited this assault. Out of all the sites in the blogosphere, why did she attack Protein Wisdom? That's the mystery to me.

* ORIGINAL POST *

The more you learn about the Moonbats, the easier it is to understand their 0-for-eternity track record. They're just ... weird.

Let's start with their leaders:

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (as noted here June 26) is a 34-year-old who except for a brief Army stint at Fort Sill, Okla., never lived in a Red State, but has bounced between Chicago, El Salvador, Boston and San Francisco. He spent seven or eight years in college --- getting a law degree he never intended to use -- then hired on at a San Francisco-based Web site in 2000. He disdains "lily-white" suburbia. When upset, he expresses fantasies of persecution by "Lieberman-worshipping neocons."

Jerome Armstrong's biography talks about his Peace Corps service in Costa Rica and Sierra Leone, his activism with Greenpeace, and his 18 months in a Buddhist monastery. A 42-year-old perpetual student (master's degrees in conflict resolution and applied linguistics from Portland State), Armstrong's first known attempt at remunerative activity was, according to Security and Exchange Commission records, hustling lousy dot-com stocks circa 1999. He's into astrology and has also been accused of being a troll at Free Republic.

Yet somehow, these two weirdos had, by 2003, hired on as consultants to the Howard Dean campaign and have since emerged as the Moonbat Mullahs, the Ayatollahs of Blogola, the mightiest force in the Democratic Party, having claimed credit (along with MoveOn.org) for installing Dean as chairman of the DNC, and boasting of their intent and ability to destroy the careers of Lieberman and any other Democrat who doesn't bow before the awesome power of the progressive blogosphere.

The 2% constituency

With me so far? OK, with this kind of leadership, what kind of followers can we expect to find? Early on, I made note of Joe Wilson groupie "Erin in Flagstaff" who was running around YearlyKos with a hopeless loser of a congressional candidate. And in the past few days, we've been introduced to another Moonbat weirdo, abusive commenter Deborah Frisch, who trolled her way out of a job at the University of Arizona.

Flopping Aces noticed that Deborah Frisch was featured in an Arizona Daily Star article about the fact that Arizona universities don't offer "partner" benefits:

Cecile McKee, an associate linguistics professor, would be able to get medical insurance for her partner if she worked for Harvard University, the University of Colorado or Pima Community College. But she can't because she works for the University of Arizona, and her partner is also a woman. "It can't go on forever," said McKee, who arrived at the UA as a postdoctoral fellow 16 years ago. She said her colleagues, her students and her lab are great. But she has started looking at other universities for job opportunities.

The story features a photo of the McKee household with this caption:

Cecile McKee, left, a UA faculty member, has started looking for work where she can get benefits for partner Deborah Frisch.

Well, it's a free country -- whatever floats your boat. But however prevalent such lifestyles might be within academia nowadays, you're talking about something like a 2% minority in America.

Gay marriage has become a sine qua non of Moonbat politics (which is the secret reason why Howard Dean, ex-governor of civil-unions-pioneering Vermont, became their hero). Outside the Deep Blue regions of America, however, anti-gay-marriage referenda keep steamrolling to victory with majorities as high as 81%. It should be obvious that a huge proportion of the 98% of non-LGBT America strongly opposes it.

Still, when a court rules against gay marriage, Moonbat dominance of the Democratic Party requires that the DNC chairman denounce the decision as an expression of "outdated and bigoted notions about families."

In other words, Dean calls an absolute majority of American voters bigots. Moonbats occupy a bizarro-world in which, by right, the 2% gay tail should wag the 98% straight dog. However much this formula might satisfy the Kool-Aid drinkers' notions of "social justice," it's no way to win an election. You can't win elections by campaigning on the platform that a majority of the voters are bigots who don't know what's good for them.

Which brings us to Lamont v. Lieberman ....

Their populist hero

Whatever you think of the Moonbat Jihad against Lieberman, it's obvious that Ned Lamont is not ready for political prime time. This is from Matt Continetti's new article in the Weekly Standard:

On paper, [Ned Lamont] is a caricature of a limousine liberal. His great-grand father was a partner of J.P. Morgan who accumulated dynastic wealth. His great-uncle, Corliss Lamont, was an outspoken pacifist and Socialist. He attended Phillips Exeter, then Harvard, then the Yale School of Management. In between his undergraduate and graduate degrees he dabbled in journalism at a small paper in Vermont. In his inherited fortune, in his elite schooling, in his antiwar politics, and in the demographic makeup of his supporters, he resembles no other American politician so much as Howard Dean--whose brother James, the chairman of Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group, is supporting Lamont's attempt to topple Lieberman.

Phillips Exeter? Democrats go hunting for a populist hero to take on the Establishment, and they come back with a J.P. Morgan heir who went to Phillips Exeter? Yeah, I bet the rank-and-file Longshoremen and Teamsters -- the beer-and-a-shot guys -- are just really excited about this one, huh?

My God, the Kossacks make David Brooks sound like a populist!

In a dark parody of the old struggle between Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party has turned liberalism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity.

However much noise they generate, however much money they raise, however often they proclaim themselves the future of American politics, the Moonbats can never win for the simple reason that they are weirdos who represent the views of an extremist fringe of American society. Only the fawning flattery (or fear) of the liberal media prevents this from being blindingly obvious.

Even if Lamont should defeat Lieberman, even if the Moonbats somehow could elect Lamont to the Senate, this does not change their fundamental problem: They are a minority of a minority, a fringe of a fringe, with no chance of making inroads among middle-class swing voters in the Red States. The Moonbats' success in gaining power and respectability among the Democrat powers-that-be is further evidence of the continued decay of the Democratic Party coalition.

After Nov. 7, this will be as obvious to most Democrats as it is to me now.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl, who's been all over the Kosola/JeromeGate story, wonders if the Moonbat meltdown will hurt bloggers generally. (I don't think so, but it may cool the MSM hype for political sites.) Dan also notices some interesting hypocrisy by Ko$.

The Lamont campaign says the Lieberman campaign used a fake bumper sticker. Don Surber says, "Zzzzzzzzz ..."

Fresh from Hot Air, some Moonbat comments that highlight the liberal sensitivity we've come to love:

At least Dr. Frisch didn’t go around pushing the UC-Santa Cruz chancellor to suicide like your chipmunk-faced chink bitch friend Michelle Malkin.
Only conservative fags like to play the victim. You have a small dick.

1. "Chipmunk-faced chink bitch"? Why does the Left, when provoked, start slinging these kind of childish ethnic epithets?

2. Ditto "conservative fags." Hey, I thought we wingnuts had a monopoly on homophobia?

3. "Play the victim": With no apparent provocation, Frisch threatened his 2-year-old, and his blog got hit with a DOS attack. He didn't have to "play" anything.

4. "Small dick." It's still "just about sex," right?

--McCAIN

Kiss of death watch: Ned Lamont

2006-07-09T15:55:00.000-04:00

How to win over those upscale suburban swing voters in Connecticut?

Maxine Waters!

What, Al Sharpton had a previous engagement?

Let's count the kisses of death for Ned:

1. Ridiculous Kos ad.
2. Arianna Huffington's endorsement.
3. Dick Morris picks Ned.
4. Backed by LoseOn.org.
5. Pimp-slapped by Joe in debate.
6. "Kerosene Maxine" comes to Connecticut.

Next: Billy McKinney endorses Ned?

It's all over but the whining.

Also reporting and/or blogging Joe-Mentum: Matthew Continetti, Jonathan Chait, Joe Gandelman, Blue Crab Boulevard, Mark Noonan ...

Moonbat Update!

Meanwhile, the Kossacks -- having been sucked into the Kos "let's pick a loser" vortex once again with Lamont -- have commenced quarreling amongst themselves.

Commentary at Little Green Footballs, Riehl Worldview, Ace of Spades HQ, The Commisar, Hot Air ...

The inter-Kossack feuding, IMHO, all goes back to the question: How is that $832,000 revenue stream divvied up? Once the left-wing lemmings in the Million Moonbat March figured out that Kos and Jerome were getting filthy rich via "progressive activism," it was only a matter of time before the long knives came out.

It's a lot easier to understand Democrats' get-rich-quick schemes once you realize that Enron was a Democrat scandal.

Blog Hottie Update!

Just noticed that Ace of Spades was commenting on the personal attractiveness of dissident Kossack Mary Scott O'Connor. Given that some of us blogdudes are well past the sell-by date of our studliness, I think it grossly unfair to play Rate-a-Date with blogchicks.

However, Ace points out that while the Other Paper's photographer portrays Mary Scott as a desperate wacko, the lady actually has a degree of hottitude.

I'm strictly non-partisan when it comes to beauty. In fact, during the Lewinsky scandal, I risked ostracism among fellow conservatives by pointing out that, however many "fat chick" jokes you want to throw at her ... Monica is hot.

All of which is, however, merely an excuse to point out that Vilmar has just posted his Chick of the Week.

-- McCAIN

DONKEY CONS: Buy it
DONKEY CONS: Buy TWO
DONKEY CONS: Rave review
DONKEY CONS: Another rave review
DONKEY CONS: Yet ANOTHER rave review
DONKEY CONS: Vilmar loves it!
DONKEY CONS: WorldNetDaily loves it!
DONKEY CONS: About the book
DONKEY CONS: On Book TV
DONKEY CONS: On Capitol Hill
DONKEY CONS: About the authors
DONKEY CONS: FREE Chapter!

Gay marriage ... or else!

2006-07-09T15:47:00.000-04:00

This is weird: Gay marriage is now compulsory!

A good thing, says Andrew Sullivan, and Dale Carpenter agrees.

So ... it's all about the health insurance. Nice to see this admission, at least. Perhaps the first step toward recognition that the whole "gay marriage" hype is really about qualifying for Welfare State subsidies.

-- McCAIN

"Fritsch": Self-immolation

2006-07-09T09:50:00.000-04:00

A commenter at ProteinWisdom defines "Frisch": (verb) To self-immolate in public. BlackFive expands the definition:
To Frisch: Writing something on the internet so creepy and offensive that you are forced to quit your job before getting canned. Ex. Deb really frisched herself when she threatened that blogger's 2 year old child with death and sexual molestation.
Michelle Malkin and Hot Air are all over it, and our buddy Dan Riehl adds some important insight. A summary with lots of links at Tel-Chai Nation.

Of all the "unhinged" behavior by BDS-afflicted moonbats over the past few years, this episode is above and beyond the call of left-wing lunacy. A woman with a Ph.D in psychology, an adjunct instructor at a public university, decides to launch an unremittingly personal attack on a conservative blogger, of such frantic and frightening intensity that she resigns her position when her identity is exposed.

Why? Because his name is "Goldstein"? C'mon, Deb, was that it? Were you afraid he was one of those "Lieberman-worshipping neocons" that Kos has warned about?

What's weird is how, when they flip out like this, the moonbats always resort to the kind of ethnic scapegoating they otherwise insist is the Right's exclusive province. For example, some idiot commenter at ProteinWisdom refers to Malkin as "the Anchor Baby." In case you don't know anything about immigration law, this is an insulting reference to Malkin's Filipino immigrant parents.

A moonbat's choice of insults would not interest me at all, except that the Left is constantly accusing conservatives of all manner of hateful bias toward blacks, Jews, immigrants, women, homosexuals, etc. It's as if the Left is so convinced of its moral superiority vis a vis "social justice" that they can unleash any cruel epithets or ugly insinuations that suit them, and never be guilty of any wrong, nor even suspected of bad motives. So:

Malkin is subjected to a constant stream of references to "comfort women," LBFMs, and (egads!) pingpong balls;
Coulter is Photoshopped into pornographic poses (I won't link those);
Condi Rice is likened to Aunt Jemima; and
Conspiratorial references are made to the Jewishness of various Iraq war supporters.

All this is fair game for the Left, you see, because they know how superior they are to us racist, sexist, nativist, xenophobic jingo hatemongers. Such is the all-encompassing virtue of their politics, they can quite literally do no wrong. This is what their slogan "By Any Means Necessary" really means. Lee Siegel is correct in saying that this is a totalitarian perspective. It's Animal Farm, and they are the animals who are more equal than others.

Once the election is over, someone should convene a panel to explain exactly how the Left's blogosheric manifestatons of hate contributed to the Democratic Party's unexpectedly crushing defeat on Nov. 7. I'd love to get my two-cents' worth into that discussion.

-- McCAIN

Cut-and-paste "plagiarism"

2006-07-09T08:10:00.000-04:00

Back in March, at the time of the Domenech debacle, I commented on one of the perils of journalism in the computer age, "cut and paste" plagiarism:

The first big plagiarism scandal at the [Other Paper] I remember was Ruth Shalit, and I suspect that what Domenech did was basically what Shalit did: Accidental "cut and paste" plagiarism, an ever-present hazard of the digital age.
Shalit was very good at using Nexis searches to gather facts for the news-feature profiles she did at the OP. But the problem there is, in the process of assembling a story from Nexis files -- and this is true of just about any computer-assisted writing -- it is possible to forget what is from your sources and what is your own original wording.
I've never had this problem, but that's probably because I'm Old School, having learned the trade as a first-source reporter: There wasn't anybody to plagiarize from, because I was the only journalist covering whatever it was I was covering.
Now it transpires that Ann Coulter is accused of plagiarizing online sources, and I suspect that this happened in the same way, and for the same reason, that it happened to Ruth Shalit: In the process of compiling information from Nexis searches, Coulter simply forgot what was from her sources and what was her original writing.

We know that Coulter makes extensive use of Nexis in her research, because of a quote of hers that we used as the epigraph for Chapter 12 of DONKEY CONS:

"Liberals simply can't grasp the problem Lexis-Nexis poses to
their incessant lying."
According to the Associated Press, Coulter's "plagiarism" consisted of the unattributed use of factual material available in the Nexis database. In some cases, she appears to have reworded the material, in other cases she did not. But it is the failure to attribute the material -- to include a note indicating her source -- that is the key error.

Hurry-up errors?

Coulter states in the acknowledgments of GODLESS that she fell behind deadline on the project. Having recently co-written a book with over 600 endnotes, I know what a hassle it can be to compile notes for such a project. And if you're in a hurry -- if the publisher is demanding that you produce the manuscript on short notice -- this might lead to negligence and sloppiness. Direct quotations appear without quote marks around them, secondhand material appears without proper sourcing.

And what of the plagiarisms alleged in Ann Coulter's columns? Same thing: A busy schedule, pushing too close to a deadline, she fails to reword material gathered from Nexis searches or to properly attribute sources.

Such, I think, is the nature of the problems facing Coulter. I don't think it will really harm her career, however, for three reasons:

The evidence suggests negligence rather than malice. It does not appear that she set out purposefully to gain credit for work that was not her own; rather, she got in a hurry and failed to "cross her T's."
The alleged plagiarism was not wholesale, but piecemeal. Unlike Ben Domenech who, for instance, appears to have lifted nearly the entire idea for a Britney Spears column from Salon.com, Coulter's overall work is original.
Coulter's stock-in-trade is her attitude. She gets paid for taking the news and filtering it through her sarcastic mind. Having been sloppy with her Nexis files does not detract from her "value-added" factor.

I suspect that, in the future, Coulter will be more careful in her research methods, and that her editors will check her copy a bit more closely. No doubt she will resent the accusations of plagiarism, but surely she will see that it was her own hasty mistakes that exposed her to such charges, and will do what is necessary to avoid any future repetition.

I recall years ago reading Al Franken's book "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot." Franken described in that book of how he had gotten himself set up to search the Nexis database. It would be interesting to know if Franken had, however inadvertantly, done the same thing that Coulter is now accused of doing.

Red State has more.

What it's really about

In case anyone is wondering what's going on with all this scrutiny of Coulter, think about Dan Rather and the fake National Guard documents. The Left seems to have become convinced that, because scandals involving MSM journalists have benefitted the conservative cause, the way for the Left to achieve victory is to discredit conservative journalists.

Coulter, however, wasn't using fake documents in an attempt to influence a presidential election. She was not, as CNN did in its "Tailwind" report, making bizarre accusations of human-rights violations against the U.S. military. She did not, as Jayson Blair did, file a West Virginia dateline from an apartment in Brooklyn.

Or consider the Plamegate "scandal": Two journalists faced criminal prosecution for refusing to reveal their sources for a story that discredited left-wing darling Joe Wilson. Normally, the Left staunchly defends any sort of national-security leak in the pursuit of "the public's right to know." But when Matt Cooper and Judith Miller got on the wrong side of the Left, this "right to know" standard went flying out the window.

There was a time, before Rush Limbaugh, before Fox News, when liberalism enjoyed almost a monopoly on the news business. If Walter Cronkite said the U.S. couldn't win in Vietnam, well, "that's the way it was." If the editors of the New York Times decided to publish the "Pentagon Papers," then that decision must be right. But now that other voices have found ways to be heard, challenging the dominant liberal narrative of news, the Left's screaming accusations of bias and malfeasance are almost deafening.

This is an important admission of sorts by the Left. For years, we were told by the grand poobahs of journalism ethics that while, yes, most people in the media were a bit liberal, this had no influence whatsoever on the strictly neutral and objective way in which they reported the news. Yet the poobahs seem not to think the same is true of conservatives; if Fox News is conservative, then their reporting must be biased. In other words, the press poobahs fear that Fox is doing what the liberal media did for years, except with a rightward spin. We should at least be grateful for this tacit admission that the opinions of journalists might sometimes influence how they report the straight news.

I have myself been subjected to the Left's suspicion that my politics affect the way the news is reported by my employer. That these suspicions are founded on a profound misunderstanding of my job -- I have been ludicrously described as a "key editor" -- is tangential to what the Left's snipe-hunt for bias reveals about how the Left uses the news business, and has used it for decades. The Left views journalism as a means of advancing its politics, and this is why they're now examining conservative journalists with such intense scrutiny -- they're afraid that conservatives have decided to play the same game.

-- McCAIN