Mitt's Dog: Really, he loved it.

Hearing his explanation makes me like him even more.

Romney strapped dog to car roof. Dog craps. Peta atwitter.

It was 25 years ago.

I guess it's a good thing for Teddy that Mary Jo wasn't a Maltese...how long ago was Chappaquiddick???

I'd like to thank the Media Research Center...

for reminding me about this. How quickly we forget trash talking women of low breeding and no taste.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, has called on Americans to stop conservative Ann Coulter’s “hate words.” But when that campaign hired two hateful, anti-Christian bigots as “official” bloggers, Mrs. Edwards did not object and the campaign decided to give them a “fair shake,” as John Edwards said. The bloggers resigned in February only after their bigoted writings were exposed by other bloggers and conservative talk radio, causing a huge embarrassment. ABC, CBS, and NBC interviewed Elizabeth Edwards this morning to allow her to further complain about Coulter’s “hate words,” but none mentioned the Edwards campaign’s bigoted bloggers.

Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. (Remember these two?)

From Ms. Marcotte: Sen. Rick Santorum talks about sex “lest his lack of self-control be manifested by f***ing his desk on the Senate floor.”

From Ms. McEwan: “When CNN invited Ann Coulter to comment on the 2004 presidential debates, I sniffed, ‘I didn’t realize they had officially transformed into the C*** News Network.”

And how on earth did I forget this one? Elizabeth Edwards scared of Rabid Republican Gun Toting Neighbor?

"I wouldn't be nice to him anyway," Edwards said in an interview. "I don't want my kids anywhere near some guy who when he doesn't like somebody, the first thing he does is pull a gun out. It scares the business out of me. Edwards views Johnson as a "rabid, rabid Republican" who refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her family, whose lavish 28,000-square-foot estate is nearby on 102 wooded acres.

Bonus : The best little tidbit I've heard about this whole exchange? During the course of the call, do you remember hearing a deep male voice booming out the $69,000 question: "Why isn't your husband making this call????"

Well, that was none other than FReeper Extraorinaire, Kristinn.

Way to go Kristinn. Your well timed salvo was clearly the turning point - where it really started to go bad for the Edwards'. Such a pity.

I predict this political stunt will go down in the annals of campaign history screw ups.

Even better it looks like the Edwards campaign has a trifecta going. We've just witnessed Elizabeth's hypocritical jawboning for John, and before that there was the ill-considered protest-the-war-and-diss-the-troops-on-the-day-we-set aside-to honor-their memories strategy. And who can forget the old War-on-Terror-Bumper-Sticker maneuver?

My new slogan for the Edwards campaign.

Vote for John and Elizabeth. Just Because.

(We really do know better than you.)

The truly sad thing? One of Ann Coulter's past beefs with John Edwards is his exploitative use of his dead son's memory in furthering his political career. Me, I'm watching the way this is going down and I have this creepy feeling that I am watching Candidate Edwards exploiting Elizabeth and her situation as well. How can you possible debate poor, brave Cancer Victim Elizabeth without looking like Cruella Deville? Especially when you're that evil, "crazy" Ann Coulter. You wait - they'll be questioning her virtue next. Or who knows? They just might decide to go the "unnatural woman, frigid routine". You can bet that somewhere at Edwards HQ there's an aide sitting in his cube and lamenting the fact that Ann didn't grow up in a trailer park.

(Here's what I mean when I say the Edwards are working it:)

They have made the incident the centerpiece of their fund raising efforts, the campaign has produced a heavily edited You tube vid of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's been making the rounds of the morning "news" shows)

Ms. Coulter's response: That was no lady, that was my husband.

House Members: They have some nerve, don't they?

House Members decide to give themselves a raise.

They must figure their approval rating can't possibly get any lower.

Despite low approval ratings and hard feelings from last year's elections, Democrats and Republicans in the House are reaching out for an approximately $4,400 pay raise that would increase their salaries to almost $170,000.

The cost-of-living raise endorsed Wednesday evening gets lawmakers back on track for automatic pay raises after a fight between the parties last year and again in January killed the pay increase due this year. That was the first interruption of the annual congressional pay boost in seven years.

The blowup came after Democrats last year fulfilled a campaign promise to deny themselves more pay until Congress raised the minimum wage. Delays in the minimum wage bill cost every lawmaker about $3,100 this year.

On a 244-181 vote Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans alike killed a bid by Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Lee Terry, R-Neb., to get a direct vote to block the COLA, which is automatically awarded unless lawmakers vote to block it. The Senate has not indicated when it will deal with a similar measure.

As part of an ethics bill in 1989, Congress gave up its ability to accept pay for speeches and made annual cost-of-living pay increases automatic unless the lawmakers voted otherwise.

The annual vote on the pay hike comes on an obscure procedural move - instead of a direct up-or-down vote - and Democratic and GOP leaders each delivered a majority of their members to shut off the move to block the pay hike.

This year's vote was made ticklish by last year's battle. Republicans said Democrats broke a promise not to use the pay raise issue against GOP lawmakers in campaign ads and therefore were, generally speaking, more reluctant to supply votes.

Fairness doctrine in action... Hoyer and Blunt put the arm on House members. Working through Blunt, Hoyer forced twelve (!)Republicans to switch their vote.

The COLA raise is estimated to come in at 2.7% or $4460. The only good news - Dick Cheney gets a raise, too. House leaders and the Supremes will get more $, too.

Like I said, some nerve.

Pelosi threatens to sue George Bush over Iraq

Send lawyers, guns and money.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, “We can take the president to court” if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi’s remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.

“The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching,” a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. “Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president’s non-enforcement of the laws.”

Democrats floated other ideas during yesterday’s weekly caucus meeting. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) suggested that the House consider a measure to rescind the 2002 authorization for the war in Iraq. Several senators and Democratic presidential candidates recently have proposed that idea.

“There was a ripple around the room” in support of the idea, said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).

Sounds to me like they were drinking Ripple if they think this will work. This was tried in the 1970's to get President Nixon to stop bombing in Cambodia. Will they be foolish enough to try it again?

Any legal eagles out there willing to weigh in on their chances of success if they do?

Repub Rats getting ready to jump ship in Iraq?

Rats: Politicians with tails?

Looks like September is going to be the next big skirmish in the Troop funding war.

From the Chicago Tribune.

"This is going to be a step-by-step process, continuing to isolate" the president, said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman. (Speaking of rats and who should appear? Why it's Rahm-bo.) "The key to that is to basically get Republicans who say, 'We're not going to do this anymore.'

"Privately and publicly, some House Republicans and their staff say defections could come as early as September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American troops in Iraq, returns to brief Congress on the progress of Bush's "troop surge" of nearly 30,000 to quell insurgent fighters.Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) said the briefing will be a different sort of "benchmark" for a Republican caucus that has so far stood nearly united behind the president against troop withdrawals.

"That [unity] will change very abruptly and very quickly in September if the report is not good," he said. "People are going to be looking at their next election. Their next election will be right around the corner, and the war will be the big issue."

And if the RNC does not whack the pee-pee of every Republican representative that threatens to jump ship...I am really going to be steamed.

Mitt gives W a call...

I found this tidbit from Politico to be quite interesting.

On the same day that the House of Representatives failed to override his veto of a bill forcing U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, President Bush got a hang-in-there call from former Gov. Mitt Romney. An adviser to Romney said the presidential hopeful reached out to "commend the president for his veto" and to salute his "principled leadership in the war on terror."Chatting for less than 10 minutes, Bush and Romney also talked about the candidate's appearance tonight on Jay Leno and tomorrow's debate.

While Bush's parents are said to be sweet on Romney, the president has been studiously neutral about any preferences he may have.Romney, for his part, has offered mild criticism of the Iraq war, but has largely avoided much talk about Bush on the campaign trail. But the Romney adviser who relayed the conversation made plain that they weren't seeking to distance themselves from a chief executive who still retains support from loyal Republicans.

"On the eve of this debate, it says we're not running from this guy at all," said the adviser on the meaning of the call.

UPDATE: McCain's camp declined to comment on the call, which clearly was done in part to create a bit of daylight between the two candidates on the Bush Factor. McCain, though a vocal proponent of the president's new policy in Iraq, used his announcement last week to offer criticism on the administration's handling of the war, Katrina and Walter Reed.

Accused DC Madam also a stock picker...

You just had to know I couldn't pass this up.

The woman accused of running a prostitution ring serving Washington's elite, including at least one U.S. government official, also appears to be something of a stock picker. The woman, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, asked a federal judge on Monday for permission to sell almost 5,000 shares of Dolby Laboratories Inc. that were in an account frozen by the government because she believed the stock had reached its high point.

"I believe it's reached its peak," she told Judge Gladys Kessler. Palfrey said she bought the shares in the sound system firm at about $22 a share. "I don't want to see it waste away," she said, facing an expensive trial with most of her assets frozen.

Dolby was at about $37 a share on Monday morning, a possible pre-tax profit of $75,000.
However, about two hours after the hearing ended, the stock started to fall and closed down 5.5 percent to $35.42 on the New York Stock Exchange. It was not immediately clear what sparked the selloff and one analyst doubted a connection.

Ouch. I didn't realize that Randall Tobias was the ex chairman of Eli Lilly.

Latest Lib Hypocrisy: GOP sex scandal

You knew it was coming.

From the Herald Sun: Sex scandal rocks Washington.

The US State Department announced yesterday Randall Tobias, the embattled head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was resigning for unspecified personal reasons.

Foley Redux.

But then there's this: Woman in Escort Case Plans to Name Names in Defense

Once a toe sucking hound dog, always a toe sucking hound dog...

Mr. Tobias is the third prominent Washington figure to be identified as among Ms. Palfrey’s clients. This month, she identified an adviser to the Pentagon as “one of the regular customers” of her service. She included in a court filing and posted on her Web site the man’s photo and tax records. Dick Morris, the television commentator and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, who resigned in 1996 after reports that he was seeing a prostitute, was also a customer, Ms. Palfrey’s lawyer has said in court. Mr. Morris has denied the accusation.

Nancy and Keith's Excellent Adventure Day 2 - Pics!

Nancy's advance team in Syria. The Three Stooges; Wolf, Pitts, Aderholt.

And the chinless opthalmologist or whatever he is.

Wearing her red power suit, Nancy proudly pledges allegiance next to Israeli hottie. Hope she at least remembered the words.

(P.S. Nan - turned up toes? Could you pls. buy a decent pair of shoes?)

Nancy waves dogtags of Israeli soldier hostage around in one hand and cuts off funding to the troops with the other.

God, I hate women who don't know how to shake hands.

Looks like Nancy has a weak girly, limp fish handshake. Ick.

Nancy, Keith and Kim, Keith's wifey. I wonder what number wife she is?

Hah-hah. Just kidding. I think.

At last a cocktail! Nancy sure looks like she enjoys her wine but like she's a little afraid of the Israeli hottie here. What will happen when she faces off with Assad?

This is a joke...

House Reps visiting Syria announce: Opportunity for dialogue. Yeah. Right.

U.S. House members meeting with President Bashar Assad Sunday stated they believed there was an opportunity for dialogue with the Syrian leadership.

The U.S. House members, who included Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts and Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, added they had raised with Syrian officials the issue of stopping the alleged flow of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq.

In a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Damascus and cited by the AP, the congressmen said they had talked about "ending support for Hizbullah and Hamas, recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security, and ceasing interference in Lebanon."

"We came because we believe there is an opportunity for dialogue," the statement said. "We are following in the lead of Ronald Reagan, who reached out to the Soviets during the Cold War," it added.

Syria's official news agency (SANA) said Assad discussed U.S.-Syria ties and the latest developments in the Middle East with the representatives.

The congressional delegation earlier in the day held talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, who voiced damascus' wish to bring security and stability to the Middle East and called for dialogue with the U.S., SANA reported. He said discussions between the two countries could produce "common stands conducive to putting an end to current crises in the region."

Why do I get the feeling the Syrians are laughing their asses off at these puffed up clowns? Wait til La Pelosi hits town. That's going to be a scene. And I think their comparison of themselves to Ronald Reagan is a total stretch. Feh. They're no Ronald Reagan!

Hobson's Choice to go to Syria

Hobson defends trip to Syria despite criticism via spokesman, Sara Perkins.

Hobson, the lone Republican on the trip, was irritated by the White House criticism, according to Perkins, who noted that the White House did not criticize a Republican-led visit to Syria also scheduled for this week. "If administration officials felt that strongly about the planned visit to Syria, they could have denied the (Department of Defense) plane and State Department assistance that have been provided for this trip," Perkins said. (I wondered what kind of plane they were in.

Perkins also said White House discussion of this trip created "some serious security issues" for the group. (yeah, right.) She added that Hobson went on the trip because he wanted to be part of a bipartisan group, and feels strongly such overseas trips should be bipartisan. (and he wanted to suck up to the new Speaker.) Perkins said the trip is a follow-up to a January trip to Iraq and Afghanistan and is focused on diplomacy to bring stability to Iraq. (or what we'd call appeasement.)

Cheer up, U.S. Republicans

From our friends over at Religion of Peace.

"Cheer up, U.S. Republicans... at least your Democratic heirs aren't dressing like this heir"

Thanks ROP, I needed a laugh this morning.

2006 Elections

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”: Edmund Burke
Or they can vote Democrat...

here we go -
Sunnis threaten to pull out of Iraq govt, take up arms
Hamas chief: Truce with Israel is over
Hamas calls on Muslims to attack U.S. targets
DPRK demands total Dismantlement of S. Korea-U.S. "Combined Command"
WALL STREET OUTLOOK - Weaker on US mid-term election result uncertainty
Iran to continue buying nuke technology
World sees US vote as start to Bush as lame duck

To read with your morning coffee...

November 03, 2006

Before Iraq:
The assumptions of a forgetful chattering class are badly off the mark.
by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

What is written about Iraq now is exclusively acrimonious. The narrative is the suicide bomber and IED, never how many terrorists we have killed, how many Iraqis have been given a chance for something different than the old nightmare, or how a consensual government has withstood enemies on nearly every front.Long forgotten is the inspired campaign that removed a vicious dictator in three weeks.

Nor is much credit given to the idealistic efforts to foster democracy rather than just ignoring the chaos that follows war — as we did after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, or following our precipitous departure from Lebanon and Somalia.

And we do not appreciate anymore that Syria was forced to vacate Lebanon; that Libya gave up its WMD arsenal; that Pakistan came clean about Dr. Khan; and that there have been the faint beginnings of local elections in the Gulf monarchies.Yes, the Middle East is “unstable,” but for the first time in memory, the usual killing, genocide, and terrorism are occurring in a scenario that offers some chance at something better.

Long before we arrived in Iraq, the Assads were murdering thousands in Hama, the Husseins were gassing Kurds, and the Lebanese militias were murdering civilians. The violence is not what has changed, but rather the notion that the United States can do nothing about it; the U.S. has shown itself willing to risk much to support freedom in place of tyranny or theocracy in the region.Instead of recalling any of this, Iraq is seen only in the hindsight of who did what wrong and when.

All the great good we accomplished and the high ideals we embraced are drowned out by the present violent insurgency and the sensationalized effort to turn the mayhem into an American Antietam or Yalu River. Blame is never allotted to al Qaeda, the Sadr thugs, or the ex-Baathists, only to the United States, who should have, could have, or would have done better in stopping them, had its leadership read a particular article, fired a certain person, listened to an exceptional general, or studied a key position paper.We also forget that Iraq, contrary to popular slander, was not “cooked up” in Texas or at a Washington, D.C., neocon think tank.

Rather, it was a reaction to two events: a decade of appeasement of Middle East tyrants and terrorists, and the disaster of September 11. If one were to go back and read the most popular accounts of the first Gulf War, The Generals’ War by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor of Cobra II fame, or Rick Atkinson’s Crusade, or research the bi-partisan arguments that raged across the opinion pages in the 1990s following the defeat and survival of Saddam Hussein, certain themes reappear constantly that surely help to explain our current presence inside Iraq.One was shared regret that Saddam was left in power in 1991.

No sooner had the war ended than George Bush Sr. appeared, not joyous in our success, but melancholy, and then distraught, once images of the butchered and refugees beamed back from our “victory” in Iraq. Culpability for thousands of dead Shiites and Kurds, the need for no-fly zones, and worry about reconstituted WMD were the charges then leveled.The heroes? A troubled former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz (read The Generals’ War) who almost alone felt tactical success had not translated into strategic victory, and that we were profoundly amoral to have let a mass murderer remain in power, while thousands of brave revolutionaries were butchered just a few miles away from our forces.

We praise the first Gulf War now. Yet, almost immediately in its aftermath, critics accused us of overkill, of using too many soldiers to blast too many poor Iraqis. The charge then was not that we had too few troops, but too many; not that the Pentagon had understated the need for troops, but overstated and sent too many; not that we had too few allies, but an unwieldy coalition that hampered American options; not that the effort was too costly, but that we were too crassly commercial in forcing allies to pony up cash as if war were supposed to be a profitable enterprise.

The generic criticism in the 1990s of the United States, both here and abroad, was that America bombed from on high, and sometimes, as in Belgrade or Africa, even indiscriminately — its only concern being fear of losses, not worry over civilian collateral damage or ending the war decisively on the ground. Indeed, in Europe there was voiced a certain cynicism that we were cowardly turning war into an antiseptic enterprise (the “body bag syndrome”), adjudicated only by our concern not to engage with the enemy below.

There were other issues now forgotten. After the acrimony in the debate over Iraq in 1990, followed by the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, Democrats were determined never again to be on the wrong side of the national security debate. So they supported the present war because they were convinced that after Panama, Gulf War I, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, they could regain credibility by supporting muscular action that seemed to pose little risk of failure.

That is why only recently have Democratic supporters of the war bailed — and only when polls suggested that any fear of “cut and run” or McGovernism would be outweighed by tapping into popular dissatisfaction with Iraq.Realism is much in vogue these days, with James Baker returning as the purported fireman, and even Democrats demanding talks with horrific dictators in Iran and North Korea. That was not the mantra of the 1990s. The Reaganism that rejected Cold War realpolitik and risked brinkmanship to bring down a rotten and murderous Soviet Empire was considered both the wiser and more ethical stance, as even Democrats reformulated their opportunistic criticism after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Mutually Assured Destruction, Kissingerian tolerance for the status quo, and mere containment — all that was scoffed at in the afterglow of Reagan’s squeeze that popped the Soviet bubble.Not long ago, abdication — from Rwanda or Haiti, or from the Balkans for a decade — not intervention, was the supposed sin. There were dozens of Darfurs in the 1990s, when charges flew of moral indifference. The supposition then — as now — was that those who called for boots on the ground to stop a genocide would not unlikely be the first to abdicate responsibility once the coffins came home and the military was left fighting an orphaned war.

Apparently all the high-minded talk of reform — Aristotle rightly scoffed about morality being easy in one’s sleep — was predicated only on cost-free war from 30,000 feet. Now the wisdom is that Colin Powell — the supposed sole sane and moral voice of the present administration — was drowned out by shrill neocon chicken hawks. But that was not the consensus of the 1990s. In both books and journalism, he was a Hamlet-like figure who paused before striking the needed blow, and so was pilloried by the likes of a Michael Gordon or Madeline Albright for not using the full force of the American military to intervene for moral purposes.

That was then, and this is now, and in-between we have a costly war in Iraq that has taken the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans.The unexpected carnage of September 11 explains so much of our current situation. It has made the realist, neo-isolationist George Bush into an advocate for Wilsonianism abroad, but only on the calculation that the roots of Islamic fascism rested in the nexus between dictatorship and autocracy — the former destroys prosperity and freedom, and the latter makes use of terrorists to deflect rising popular dissatisfaction against the United States.

The U.S. Senate and House voted for war in Iraq, not merely because they were deluded about the shared intelligence reports on WMD (though deluded they surely were), but also because of the 22 legitimate casus belli they added just in case. And despite the recent meae culpae, those charges remain as valid today as they were when they were approved: Saddam did try to kill a former American president; the U.N. embargo was violated, as were its inspection protocols; the 1991 accords were often ignored; the genocide of brave Kurds did happen; suicide bombers were being given bounties; terrorists, including those involved into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were given sanctuary by Saddam; and on and on.

So it is not those charges, but we who leveled them, that have changed. Americans’ problem with the war is not that it was not moral, but that it has been deemed too costly for the perceived benefits that might accrue. The conventional wisdom was that, after Afghanistan (7 weeks of fighting) and its postbellum stability (a government within a year), a more secular Iraq (3 weeks of fighting) would follow the same timetable.

In September 2002, well after the “miracle” in Afghanistan, I listened to a high-ranking admiral pontificate that war on the ground was essentially over in the new age of Green Berets and laptops, that after Bosnia and Afghanistan, air power and Special Forces were all that were needed.This did not come from Rumsfeld surrogates, but was a fair enough reflection of the wild new intoxication before Iraq — that a supposed “revolution in military affairs” had changed the ancient rules of war, as if our technology would now give us exemption from hurt.

Many of those who now most shrilly condemn the war had in fact years ago rattled their sabers for “moral” wars to eliminate dictators — predicated on just this foolish utopian notion that GPS bombing and laser-guided missiles had at last given us the tools needed for removing the tumors with precision and at little cost, as we conducted lifesaving moral surgery on diseased states.

No, nothing has changed about Iraq other than its tragic tab. Changes of view are fine, as long as those who now criticize the effort at least acknowledge the climate in which fighting in Iraq was born, and the real conditions under which they themselves once supported the war — and lost heart.

Thank God for Victor Davis Hansen.