The Landscape To Which I Returned

Yesterday wasn't a good one for blogging. Church in the morning, traversing a winterized high mountain pass in the afternoon, and a bunch of odds & ends to attend to in the evening, and after a previous night in a stereotypical morgue-slab hotel bed in which I only managed about three hours' sound sleep followed by six of half-dozing/half-tossing & turning. I didn't last much past 8PM.

Congress also lazed out this weekend, but that doesn't appear to have minimized the commentary fodder.

*Tom Bevan proposes that since Harry Reid and co. are suddenly so bent on smearing Dick Cheney with "manipulating pre-war intelligence" (I guess they've jumped memes again from "Bush is a liar" back to "Bush is a dolt"), the Vice President should challenge Dirty Harry to a senate floor debate on the subject:

My hunch is Reid would almost be forced into taking the bait. Refusing to debate Cheney would be a devastating display of weakness (not to mention cowardice) that would suck the life right out of the Dems' base. If Reid did try and take Cheney on I suspect he'd have a very rough go of it. Cheney is as highly skilled as he is unflappable, and betting money says Reid would do well just to manage a draw. Either way, it would be a maneuver that would keep the White House aggressively on the offensive.

My betting money says Cheney would use Reid's face for a mop.

*Staying the course in Iraq by battling irregular Islamist invaders and nuturing the country's newborn democracy is now paying a big and long-predicted dividend: it is turning the al Qaeda jihadis and indigenous Ba'athist dead-enders against each other:

A civil war has broken out among rival terrorist groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, with Sunni insurgents turning on groups run by al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Last Sunday, a gun battled erupted between al Qaida and Sunni insurgent groups at a central intersection in Ramadi, the capital of the Sunni province of Anbar....

The violent clash left residents speculating that the strong support al-Qaida had in Anbar province "is starting to fracture, if not completely break," Knight Ridder said.

One key bone of contention - the decision by Sunni groups to participate in the vote on Iraq's constitution three weeks ago.

Another is the growing resentment by indigenous Iraqi insurgents angry over al Qaida's continuing terror campaign against Sunni civilians. [emphasis added]

As long as there was a measurable prospect of forcing the U.S.-led Coalition to cut and run from Iraq, the two branches of the "insurgency" could make common cause against a common enemy, or at least stay ouf of each other's way in amicable co-existence. But they haven't come close to attaining that objective, and with their arch-enemy George Bush in power for another three years and change, an Iraqi democratic constitution ratified and an elected government scheduled to be chosen next month, it's crystal clear that they're never going to. And when an evil cause becomes pointless, that's when its principals start dissolving into recriminations and internecene conflict.

With last week's suicide bombings of three Western hotels in Amman, Jordan, not ginning up the popular support Emir Zarqawi was seeking, al Qaeda - or perhaps I should say the al Qaeda franchise - is in increasingly frantic need of either going back to the drawing board or a (you should pardon the expression) "Hail Mary" attack in the United States of 9/11 magnitude or larger if the organization (or chain) is to avoid being eclipsed by other Islamist anti-Western players.

Like Iran, for instance.

*Remember Jimmy Carter's brief dalliance with sanity? Have no fear, peeps, he's been cured again:

Former President Jimmy Carter, on a tour to promote his latest book, is sharply questioning the direction the Bush Administration has taken the country.

"Everywhere you go, you hear, 'What has happened to the United States of America? We thought you used to be the champion of human rights. We thought you used to protect the environment. We thought you used to believe in the separation of church and state,"' Carter said Friday at Unity Temple.

"I felt so disturbed and angry about this radical change in America," he said.

Everywhere he goes, maybe. Which is his equivalent of the woman in academia who couldn't understand how President Nixon won re-election in 1972 because "Nobody I know voted for him."

Perhaps if Mr. Peanut changed his social circles he might realize that the nation that "used to be the champion of human rights" liberated over fifty million people in two Arab countries from two of the most despotic regimes on Earth; the nation that "used to protect the environment" is still doing so as well as trying to expand its domestic energy supplies in order to reduce its dangerous dependence on foreign, and unfriendly, sources; and that the nation that "used to believe in the separation of church and state" never, in fact, did.

Something of which you would expect a "devout Christian" like the Goobernator to be at least superficially aware.

*Speaking of insanity....

The United States has been waging a war on international terrorism for more than four years, but what does Al Gore think is a more serious issue?

Global warming.

'Nuff said. Except, of course, for, "Thank God Almighty that this lunatic never become president."

*Clinton hypocrisy isn't exactly news, but with Hillary the prohibitive favorite to succeed GWB in the WH, it's still worth mentioning:

Just last week, Bill Clinton decried the Bush tax cuts as "unethical" and "immoral," because they allowed wealthy folks like himself to avoid "paying their fair share."

And Hillary, of course, has argued for years for higher taxes. She told wealthy San Francisco contributors during the 2004 presidential campaign, for instance, that if Democrats win, "we're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

But in his blockbuster new book Do As I Say, [Not As I Do], Peter Schweizer blows the lid off the Clintons' tax hypocrisy....[A]s Schweizer discovered, the Clintons have been paying a good deal less than their fair share in taxes for years.

"A study of their income tax returns reveal that, since 1991, the Clintons paid on average about 7% less to the IRS than others in their income group," he writes. "While most Americans in their bracket were paying 27% in taxes [what's called the "effective" tax rate], the Clintons were bumping along at 20%."

How did Bill and Hill keep their taxes so low? They did it the old fashioned way - they cheated.

According to a Money Magazine report unearthed by Schweizer, "The Clintons appear to have repeatedly overstated their charitable contributions."

What's more, according to Gaines Norton, the former first couple's one-time accountant, some of the Clintons' deductions were "probably illegal."

Norton told Whitewater probers that when he urged Mr. Clinton to pay his fair share, the then-Arkansas Governor told him: "Back off and leave the issue alone."

Other tax dodges employed by Bill and Hill include:

-Not reporting as income Hillary's $100,000 in profits from commodities trading. Instead, says Schweizer, they actually claimed a loss.

-The Clintons also failed to report as income "$74,234 in loans, payments, and forgiven debts that the IRS code counts as income."

-Then there's the personal property tax that was due on a sports car Hillary owned, which the then-first couple declined to pay.

-They also took thousands of dollars in deductions on their Whitewater investment that "Hillary admitted at the time she knew they were not entitled to."

-In a bid to further reduce their tax exposure, the Clintons set up a contract trust, which "among other things will allow them to substantially reduce the amount of inheritance tax their estate will have to pay when they die."

You would think that New York's Miss Manners might want to make some hay with a record like that. Not that it would derail Mrs. Clinton's senate re-election or anything, but at least it would re-establish in the public consciousness the intrinsic sleaze that permeates every nook, cranny, and fibre of the Clintons' personal and public operation. After all, it would be nice for George Allen to have an opposition research platform already in place when the '08 presidential campaign begins in earnest.

*As our readers undoubtedly know by now, I am no fan of New Jersey's designated Republican jabrone Doug Forrester, the insufferable RINO who has now dutifully "done the job" (i.e. lost) in two statewide races in four years, one for U.S. Senate and one for the governorship.

Now perhaps with that longer perspective in mind, which includes the fact that Forrester was royally screwed by the Jersey Supremes when they threw out state election law to allow the Dems to switch the cratering Bob Torricelli for Frank Lautenberg on the '02 ballot, I could be a bit more tolerant of of the Rockelleroid palooka. But not when I read stories like this one:

Republican Douglas Forrester, who lost by a wide margin to Senator Jon Corzine in the race for governor in New Jersey, says President Bush’s unpopularity is largely to blame for his defeat.

Forrester said his campaign had done "all the right things we were supposed to do,” but he could not overcome voter dissatisfaction with Bush, particularly over his Administration’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, he told the Star-Ledger of Newark.

"If Bush’s numbers were where they were a year ago, or even six months ago, I think we would have won,” said Forrester, who lost to Corzine by a margin of 53% to 44%. "Katrina was the tipping point.”

Katrina is a pathetic, piss-poor excuse that makes Forrester sound like as big a finger-pointer as Kathleen "Babbling" Blanco and Ray "School Bus" Nagin combined. The closest this man ever came to catching Jon Korzine was a 4% deficit in one poll that proved to be an outlier. And that was a full month after Katrina slammed into New Orleans. In every other poll of that campaign Forrester trailed by no less than the high single-digits, which proved to be his ultimate margin of defeat.

Moreover, it should also be noted that four years earlier, another New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate, Brent Schundler, got waxed by his Democrat opponent, Jim McCreepy McGreevey, by double-digits at a time when President's Bush's approval numbers were in the eighties. And for that matter, the GOP owned the governor's mansion in Trent throughout the Clinton detour. So whatever mystic connection there is between presidential approval numbers and Garden State elections, it's one that ol' Douggie boy is probably not in an great hurry to disclose.

Not when obnoxious, backstabbing sour grapes are so much easier. Just ask the RINOs on Capitol Hill that are returning majority control to the Democrats a year early.

But that's another post.