The Great Snatch

13 But (A) we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who (B) are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do (C) the rest who have (D) no hope.

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, (E) even so God will bring with Him (F) those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

15 For this we say to you (G) by the word of the LORD, that (H) we who are alive and remain until (I) the coming of the LORD, will not precede (J) those who have fallen asleep.

16 For the LORD (K) Himself (L) will descend from heaven with a (M) shout, with the voice of (N) the archangel and with the (O) trumpet of God, and (P) the dead in Christ will rise first.

17 Then (Q) we who are alive and remain will be (R) caught up together with them (S) in the clouds to meet the LORD in the air, and so we shall always (T) be with the LORD.

18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

I Thessalonians 4:13-18

Bleep Storm

Wow. From Macaca-gate to the Alfred Dreyfus treatment and now "Who said the n-word thirty years ago?" – it’s getting to the point where it’s difficult to remember that George Allen vs. James Webb is a U.S. Senate race.

Seems like anymore I have become the pooper-scooper of the blogosphere. How appropriate, then, that I start this recap at the beginning of its latest episode.

MONDAY: Dr. Ken Shelton, a radiologist who was a tight end and wide receiver for the University of Virginia in the early 1970s when Senator Allen was quarterback, claims Allen not only used the n-word frequently but also once stuffed a severed deer head into a black family's mailbox. Christopher Taylor, another ex-U of V teammate, accuses Allen of using the racial epithet in the process of joking that "only [black people] eat the turtles" at a pond near Allen’s residence at the time.

"Noted political scientist" and de facto Democrat partisan Larry Sabato blows his cover as an "objective" political handicapper and corroborates the wholly unsubstantiated charges.

RCP’s Tom Bevan immediately smells a rat:

I happen to like and respect Larry Sabato a lot. But tonight on Hardball he was just lat out wrong to declare in one breath that George Allen had in fact used the n-word and then in the next breath to tell Chris Matthews that he "wasn't going to get into" the specifics of how he knew the accusation to be true.

You simply cannot make such a damning accusation on national television without backing it up. It's both irresponsible and unfair. If you're not going to source that kind of remark, you shouldn't make it in the first place.

The Allen campaign promptly produces four other former teammates who refute the Shelton/Taylor/Sabato charges and added that Allen and Sabato were not friends or even acquaintances and never associated in college.

TUESDAY: Professor Sabato quickly begins to backpedal:

Sabato, who made his comments during an interview on Chris Matthews' Hardball program on MSNBC, later declined to specifically identify his sources.

"My sources are former classmates who came to me with stories that matched up," Sabato said late Monday night. "I never solicited them. They came to me during the past few months."

Some other interesting facts begin to rise to the surface:

The Allen camp released a statement from Allen's first wife refuting Taylor's story. Anne Waddell, who was married to Allen from 1980 to 1984, said she recalled Taylor coming to their home to buy a puppy.

"I can say with absolute certainty that his recollection that George said anything at all that could be considered racially insensitive is completely false," she said. "He would never utter such a word."

It also emerges that both Taylor and Shelton are Donk political activists who have political axes to grind against Senator Allen, which makes Sabato’s endorsement of their smear job a naked admission of his own leanings and gives the lie to his credibility as an objective political analyst.

NRO’s Mark Levin fears the smear job will succeed by causing panicky Pachyderms to stampede for the tall grass.

WEDNESDAY: Sabato recants – sort of:

One of Virginia's best-known political analysts said he had never personally heard Senator George Allen use racial epithets, despite saying on television a day earlier that the senator "did use the n-word."

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press, "I didn't personally hear GFA (Allen's initials) say the n-word.

"My conclusion is based on the very credible testimony I have heard for weeks, mainly from people I personally know and knew in the '70s," Sabato wrote.

"Very credible testimony" that the Allen campaign blew to bits.

Meanwhile, James Webb, Senator Allen’s once-noble challenger and the intended beneficiary of all this character assassination, fell into the same, um, turtle trap:

Democratic Senate challenger Jim Webb declined to say definitively Tuesday whether he had ever used a common derogatory term to describe blacks, stepping carefully after watching his campaign rival confront charges of racism.

"I don't think that there's anyone who grew up around the South that hasn't had the word pass through their lips at one time or another in their life," Webb told reporters.

Webb referred to his novel, Fields of Fire, which aides said includes occurrences of the n-word as part of character dialogue. But he added: "I have never issued a racial or ethnic slur."

Asked for clarification of his original answer, spokeswoman Jessica Smith quoted Webb as saying, "I have never used that word in my general vocabulary or in any derogatory way."

She declined to say whether he had ever used the word apart from when he wrote his book.

Fascinating, isn’t it? Senator Allen flatly denies ever having used the "n-word"; Webb never definitively denies it at all. At least that’s the impression I get from "Everybody did it, but I never did most of the time, and if I did I meant it as a compliment."

Mark Levin begins to regain hope that this media mafia hit on Senator Allen will backfire.

THURSDAY: A new poll shows Senator Allen’s lead growing. Dean Barnett, a Webb fan and harsh Allen critic who nevertheless continues to insist that he supports Allen’s re-election, says you can stick a fork in the challenger precisely because of the baboon-like conduct of his campaign, his supporters, and the Enemy Media.

For what it’s worth, Allen launches a purportedly unrelated feminesque attack seeking to link Webb to the infamous "Tailhook" scandal.

Brother Trunk tightens the noose around Professor Sabato as "the hub of a coordinated character assassination."

FRIDAY: Senator Allen introduces introduced a measure intended to benefit black farmers who missed a deadline for a settlement of a discrimination lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture. Nothing of the sort that he hasn’t done before over the past ten years as Virginia’s governor and senator, but now forever to be seen through a jaded lens, if it’s covered at all.

So what do Webb’s nutroot backers do now? What else – hurl more feces. This time about then-Governor Allen allegedly spitting tobaccy juice on a local reporter’s shoes. I seem to recall the last time that particular charge was hurled it was from John Wilkes Booth at President Lincoln after Lincoln visited fallen Richmond after the end of the Civil War. That’s not to say that Jim Webb is out to put a bullet through George Allen’s head. But there are plenty of his supporters who appear ready, willing, and eager to do little short of that on his behalf, and Webb isn’t lifting a finger to discourage them.

~ ~ ~

What are we to make of this? Senator Allen was never considered a vulnerable incumbent in this election cycle. Even after the past month’s sojourn through the gutter his re-election is pretty much a lock. And the past six years have shown time and again that left-wing smear-mongering in the age of the blogosphere and its instant, devastating fact-checking always backfires. So why are Allen’s enemies continuing to try and tar & feather as a "racist" a man distinguished by nearly a quarter century of public service unblemished by racist behavior and distinguished by service to all races?

Do the names "Dan Quayle" and "Jesse Helms" ring a bell?

It has been no secret, at least until the past month or so, that George Allen was considered an upper-tier contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Cutting a Reaganesque image, a former governor from a Southern swing state, son of a legendary NFL head coach, Senator Allen had all the resume ingredients of the successful presidential pedigree that has characterized most White House winners of the past two generations. He figured to be a shoo-in front-runner for the Republican nomination and a tough opponent for Hillary Clinton two years from now.

But now? Forget about it. The "macaca" gaffe caused the bloom to start rapidly wilting off that rose, and the opening it gave for the ultra-Left to run wild with another trademark vicious hate campaign has torn the entire rose out root and branch and ground it into mulch. They can’t stop George Allen’s re-election to the Senate, but they can turn him into the next Jesse Helms, another good, decent conservative senator who was indelibly tarred with the "racist" label. And like Dan Quayle, another one-time GOP rising star and presidential timbre whose public image was unjustly and permanently destroyed, they have through despicable innuendo eliminated what was arguably the greatest threat to the Democrats’ re-ascension to Executive power in 2008.

This "coordinated character assassination" is, indeed, no coincidence. Almost makes me wonder if, given enough digging, we’d find the Clinton machine behind it all.

Booming Through The Stonewall Of Silence

The Dow set a new record this week. U.S. consumer confidence rose sharply in September. Also in September the Bush Boom surpassed the post-WWII average of fifty-seven months’ length, proving once again, as if further proof is necessary…well, any number of things: (1) the Bush Boom has legs; (2) it was triggered and continues to be sustained by the Bush tax cuts; (3) the Democrats have been wrong, are wrong, and always will be wrong about tax cuts.

Ditto their anti-"Big Oil" BS from last spring, which Rich Lowry had a ton of fun chronicling Tuesday:

When will someone call for an investigation of the oil companies for their latest transgression? In a blatant and unconscionable violation of their responsibility to their shareholders, oil executives are apparently manipulating the market to drive down prices and their own profits.

Why? Perhaps they enjoy the power rush that comes from yanking around such a vast worldwide market. Perhaps they are feeling less greedy this month. Perhaps they grew bored with rising prices. Whatever the reason for the drop in the price of gas lately, it cannot simply be a product of the forces of the free market — at least not if we remember the rhetoric of Democrats just a few months ago.

Back then, Democrats issued thunderously stupid denunciations of oil executives for engineering the price increases, and blamed the Bush Administration for not doing anything to stop it….[but a]s Cato Institute energy expert Jerry Taylor patiently explains for the umpteenth time, the price of gas always increases in the spring, in advance of the surge of demand in the summer driving season, and then declines in the fall, when demand slackens.

This is an entirely predictable economic rhythm. So, with their spring-time demagoguery over increasing prices, Democrats set a trap for themselves in the fall, just as the election heated up. Brilliant. They created their own pro-Bush "September Surprise."

I gotta differ with Lowry on one thing. Today’s plunging pump prices aren’t a Big Oil conspiracy; they’re just the minions. It has to be a Karl Rove conspiracy. Because, you know, Karl Rove rules the world. Or so we’ve been told.

How can you not love this bit of springtime prophesying from The Other Senator From Connecticut:

"I think the American public on this issue, on this issue alone, may decide the election this fall," said Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd.

Hey, he said it, I didn’t.

Martial Spirit Is So Ephemeral

Am I the only one who was heartened to learn that the Colin Powell State Department, via the mouth of the infamous Plamegate leaker Dick Armitage, threatened Pakistani ruler Pervez Musharraf with being "bombed back to the stone age" if he didn’t cooperate with our post-9/11 retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan to crush al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that Pakistani intelligence installed into power in Kabul?

Sure made the man knuckle under awfully damn quick, didn’t it?

In a memoir released on Monday, President Pervez Musharraf recounted how he decided it would have been suicidal to confront a U.S. attack after being threatened by Washington a day after al Qaeda's strikes on September 11, 2001.

With the United States demanding Pakistan's help to launch attacks on al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan, Musharraf recalled how the then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had telephoned him with an ultimatum: "You are either with us or against us."…

Elaborating on how he decided to take a foreign policy U-turn by dumping support for the Taliban, Musharraf described how he first weighed the option of fighting the United States.

"I war-gamed the United States as an adversary," he wrote, saying he assessed whether Pakistan could withstand the onslaught.

"The answer was no, we could not, on three counts."

Pakistan's military would have been wiped out, its economy couldn't be sustained, and the nation lacked the unity needed for such a confrontation, Musharraf wrote.

Furthermore, Musharraf was worried that if Pakistan did not accede to Washington's demands, the United States would take up an Indian offer to provide bases….

He also expected the United States would seek to destroy Pakistan's newly developed nuclear weapons. And he feared the infrastructure built since Pakistan's formation in 1947 would be decimated.

Finally, Musharraf said he had to answer whether it was worth Pakistan destroying itself for the sake of the Taliban, though Pakistan had supported the Islamist militia's government.

"The answer was a resounding no," Musharraf concluded.

What is present throughout Musharraf’s narrative that is most missing from today’s dismal foreign policy debate? Isn’t it obvious? Will. Resolve. Courage. Determination. Anger – of the righteously indignant variety. We were the United F’ing States, dammit, and those demonic ragheads had just attacked us on our own soil and slain three thousand of our countrymen. We were pissed as hell, we had every right to be, and anybody who tried to stand in our way was going to get steamrolled. And Musharraf knew it.

That is what is missing from the foreign policy landscape - fear of the United States. From 9/11/01 through the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 the global bad guys got the message loud and clear: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, or you’ll get a lot worse than being pulled out of a spider hole. Muammar Khaddafy couldn’t turn over his WMD stocks and specs fast enough, and Syria’s Bashar Assad and the Iranian mullahs kept a VERY low profile.

The last of that "Behold our works, ye rogues, and tremble" momentum petered out in early ’05 with Syria’s retreat from Lebanon. The Democrats’ never-ending jihad against the Bush Administration continued unabated, escalating to the seditious serial leaking of national security secrets, open defeatist sedition from top Democrat leaders, and agitation for the bloodless coup de’tat of impeachment. And the Bushies themselves made it abundantly clear that Iraq was the end of the war rather than the mid-point, emboldening Iran to clinch their nuclear weapons status and move toward an apocalyptic endgame against the West that looms in the very near future.

This re-encroaching flaccidity and weakness has had its effect on the man who once pissed himself with fear at our potential wrath: the formal surrender of an entire Pakistani province to al Qaeda and the Taliban, which has already more than doubled the number of jihadi attacks against NATO and Afghan troops. Does Musharraf fear U.S. retribution for his thinly-veiled double-cross?

Judge for yourself:

At a news conference at U.N. headquarters Wednesday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told a reporter that his government "would not give permission" to the U.S. military to enter Pakistan even if it meant capturing Osama bin Laden.

"If we know where he is, we will go and get him ourselves. We need no help," professed Musharraf.

I can’t help but have a bit less confidence in that attempt at reassurance than I once would have. I also can’t take much satisfaction in seeing my predicted scenario unfolding pretty much to the letter:

The implications of Musharraf's surrender are....unpleasant to consider. "Pakistani lawyers" notwithstanding, it seems unlikely that the Pakistani strongman would have openly betrayed his patron – us – and turned loose thousands of jihadis unless he felt that his own position was sufficiently untenable as to leave him no choice. Taken in concert with the now evidently concurrent truce with the Taliban over the northwestern Pakistani province of Waziristan, it appears that, whatever the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, it is Pakistan – nuclear Pakistan – which is in significant Islamist jeopardy.

The best case scenario is that we have several thousand theocratic psychopaths to round up again (or, better yet, just liquidated en masse). But this will be made a great deal more complicated by Musharraf’s de facto ceding of Waziristan to bin Laden. If we respect Pakistani territorial integrity, al Qaeda has a secure base of operations once more, and we already know how that tends to turn out. If we begin attacking into that province to try and clean it out once and for all, we either force Musharraf to turn against us to save his own ass or kiss his ass goodbye in an Islamist coup, yielding us the worst case scenario of twin Islamic nuclear theocracies, one Shiite, one Sunni, possessed of annihilation fantasies and competing against each other to see who can trigger Armageddon first.

Small wonder, then, that Tony Blankley echoed my words a few days ago:

Whatever is going on in Pakistan (and we must hope that the men who replace Musharraf sooner or later will not be more sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and will be at least as careful in controlling their nuclear weapons) [fat chance – ed.], our effort to stand up Afghanistan and suppress the Taliban and al Qaeda in the region has suddenly taken on an even more formidable dimension.

There are no ready solutions to the dilemma. With Pakistan now hors de combat, our already undermanned forces in Afghanistan will soon have to engage the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan - fighting some of the world's most resourceful and cruel fighters in the most unforgiving lands on Earth.

We ask a lot - and we get even more - from our brave and smart young warriors. But from Iraq to the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan and now to northern Pakistan, there is a limit to what our current number of active forces can possibly accomplish. And the list of danger spots will only grow in the coming years. Whether we like the fact or not, the ranks and lands (and confidence) of the enemy are growing. And they can't be sweet talked-out of taking the fight to America.

We must come to terms with reality - and soon. We are going to have to substantially increase the size of our army and Marines to face the growing threats to our national security.

We also must come to terms with why the enemy’s confidence is growing: They no longer fear us. They believe that our decadence guarantees our attention span will always be vanishingly short, and that belief is reinforced daily in and by the Enemy Media. And they think that We, The People, don’t really believe in our hearts that we’re at war, desperately do not want to internalize that reality, and will do anything to escape it.

The inevitable consequence of that line of reasoning is another big bang; here; and soon. The only way to stop it is the resurrection of a "neo-September 11th mentality": If Musharraf crosses us, the mullahgarchy defies our demand that they abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons, Syria doesn’t stop subverting Iraqi democracy….prepare for our bigger bangs to land first.

I fear the resurrection of that martial spirit will need another devastating "helping hand" – if it can be resurrected at all.

This Brought Tears...

Read this caller transcript from Rush's show. The caller's anguish, pride, love, and most of all his anger at the Democrats is palpable. It brought tears to my eyes when he was talking about his daughter. We all need to feel like this guy, and I think a lot more of us do than the MSM will admit.

JASmius adds: This call brought me winces, actually. God knows I share his sentiments, but his was a classic example of emotion overwhelming reason. What the objective numbers show is the Donks nibbling at Republican margins but not regaining the majority in either house of Congress. The momentum of late is moving in their direction (renewed emphasis on the war, falling gas prices, meteoric Dow), meaning perhaps breaking even or even gaining a little bit. But come on, Katherine Harris?

Look, I'm happy to make full disclosure: At one time I was one of her biggest marks. Here was a Republican woman who had won more than one statewide race in Florida as well as a congressional seat that was hers for pretty much as long as she wanted it. She already had name-recognition, as well as the enthusiastic backing of the GOP base for heroic attempts to simply uphold Florida election law during Al Gore's 2000 insurrection. Florida is a substantially, if not overwhelmingly, "red" state. And Bill Nelson, no "moderate" Democrat he, was one of this year's most vulnerable incumbents. Seemed like a natural, even inevitable, GOP pickup, and the Bushies' stubborn opposition to KH therefore almost RINOesque.

But that was over a year ago. Katherine Harris' nascient senate campaign has long since collapsed into absurdity. They're not even polling that "race" much, if at all, and the one poll I have seen reported showed Nelson leading by forty-three points.

Nobody exceeds my frustration at wading through the pessimism of commentators and pundits on our own side of the aisle, to say nothing of others of them who are actively hoping for Republican defeat in order to "teach the party a lesson" about "abandoning conservative principles." If I've said it once, I've said it a zillion times and doubtless will growl it zillions more: You don't win by losing. If life hands you a lemon, you can make lemonade, as the GOP did in 1994 after the 1992 debacle, but that isn't, and can never be, a "strategy." Just ask the Dems, who were just positive that Bush would hand them Congress back in 2002 and was already beaten in 2004, before this little thing called 9/11 came along and "changed everything" - at least for a while.

However, you also don't win by assuming that everybody else thinks the same way you do, or that the inherent justice and righteousness of your cause makes its triumph inevitable. Were that the case none of us would ever have heard of Bill Clinton; because that wasn't the case, we never beat him. And the sober fact is, the longer we go without another major terrorist attack here at home, the more the "neo-September 10th mentality" is going to spread and the stronger it's going to become. Eventually it won't matter how many times the President reminds the nation of the elusive nature of the enemy and of the diffuseness of this particular conflict or how many terrorist attacks occur elsewhere. It's simply human nature: until something happens to you, it's not real. And after it does, once it recedes far enough into the past, that reality fades into an abstraction susceptible to infinite rationalization.

Eventually the Democrats are going to stumble into another winning national candidate, like they did with Bill Clinton, who will capture the imagination of a public that thinks it's "war-weary" ("politics-weary" is a lot closer to the bullseye) with the shining promise of a return to "normalcy" (or whatever catch phrase she comes up with) which will be exampled by....the Clinton '90s. This figure will also have built up a massive warchest of "hawk" capital as a buffer against the return to suicidal pacifism she has in store.

I trust I don't need to actually name who this person will be. We'll get more of her than any of us will be able to stomach soon enough.

It's something Nick from Daytona, Florida needs to get his mind around, for the sake of his emotional health.

Ravings Of A Lunatic

Honestly, could Al Gore get any nuttier?

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

What a moron.

God's Patriot Act

11 Therefore remember that (A) formerly (B) you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called "(C) Uncircumcision" by the so-called "(D) Circumcision," which is performed in the flesh by human hands - 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, (E) excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to (F) the covenants of promise, having (G) no hope and (H) without God in the world.

13 But now in (I) Christ Jesus you who (J) formerly were (K) far off have (L) been brought near (M) by the blood of Christ.

14 For He Himself is (N) our peace, (O) Who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by (P) abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is (Q) the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might (R) make the two into (S) one new man, thus establishing (T) peace, 16 and might (U) reconcile them both in (V) one body to God through the cross, by it having (W) put to death the enmity.

17 And (X) He came and preached (Y) peace to you who were (Z) far away, and peace to those who were (AA) near; 18 for through Him we both have (AB) our access in (AC) one Spirit to (AD) the Father.

-Ephesians 2:11-18

Bush On The Offensive

Keep it up, Mr. President.

President Bush fired a shot across the bow of the Democratic Party Thursday, saying "the party of FDR... has become the party of cut and run."

Amen. No doubt about it.

"Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in history, the Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing. The party of FDR, the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run," Bush said.

Keep the pressure on. The thought of the Party of Wimps in power during this time of war is terrifying.

Jihadi Squirrels

There were four country churches and a mosque in a small Texas town: The churches were Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal. All the churches and the mosque were overrun with pesky squirrels.

One day, the Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do about the squirrels. After much prayer and consideration they determined that the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.

In the Baptist church the squirrels had taken up habitation in the baptistry. The deacons met and decided to put a cover on the baptistry and drown the squirrels in it. The squirrels escaped somehow and there were twice as many there the next week.

The Methodist church got together and decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creation. So, they humanely trapped the squirrels and set them free a few miles outside of town. Three days later, the squirrels were back.

The Episcopal church came up with a better solution. They baptized the squirrels and registered them as members of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter.

But the mosque came up with the best and most effective solution. They whipped the squirrels into a jihadist frenzy, strapped bomb belts around them, and sent them out to blow up the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians, along with the other squirrels and the rest of the infidel town, which is now ruled by the religion of peace.

Allahu Akbar.

The Power Of Sin

14 For we know that the Law is (A) spiritual, but I am (B) of flesh, (C) sold (D) into bondage to sin.

15 For what I am doing, (E) I do not understand; for I am not practicing (F) what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with (G) the Law, confessing that the Law is good.

17 So now, (H) no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my (I) flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

19 For (J) the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, (K) I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

21 I find then (L) the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in (M) the inner man, 23 but I see (N) a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the (O) law of my mind and making me a prisoner of (P) the law of sin which is in my members.

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from (Q) the body of this (R) death?

25 (S) Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our LORD! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh (T) the law of sin.

-Romans 7:14-25

Fearing The Worst

2 (A) Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill (B) the law of Christ.

3 For (C) if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

4 But each one must (D) examine his own work, and then he will have reason for (E) boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another.

5 For (F) each one will bear his own load.

6 (G) The one who is taught (H) the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him.

7 (I) Do not be deceived, (J) God is not mocked; for (K) whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

8 (L) For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap (M) corruption, but (N) the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

9 (O) Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we (P) do not grow weary.

10 So then, (Q) while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the (R) household of (S) the faith.

-Galations 6:2-10

The Emperor Strikes Back

Just to refresh our readers on the latest McCain caper (i.e. fighting for terrorists' rights):

I think that if McCain's chances at the 2008 GOP presidential nomination were still on life support, this stunt would pull the plug. But the so-called "maverick outsider" is in fact a creature of the Beltway, immersed to his beady little eyeballs in all the "corruption" he preeningly and pharisiaclly decries, and cannot help but soak up all its faux "wisdom." And nothing is more appealing or irresistable to such a roaring moral narcissist than to use one "moralistic" crusade to engineer his own party's defeat in order to set himself up as its white-chargered savior. And if several thousand more American civilians have to die to get him to the White House? Well, I suppose they'll have "died for a worthy cause."

Toward the end of last week it appeared that, to-be-expected Enemy Media reports to the contrary, the McCain Mutineers had beat a hasty retreat on their intra-party dispute with the White House.

The first counter-blow was a blunt threat from Majority Leader Bill Frist to filibuster the MM's alternative bill:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist signaled yesterday that he and other White House allies will filibuster a bill dealing with the interrogation and prosecution of detainees if they cannot persuade a rival group of Republicans to rewrite key provisions opposed by President Bush. Frist's chief of staff, Eric M. Ueland, called the dissidents' bill 'dead.'"...

Frist struck a jarring tone, telling reporters that the trio's bill is 'unacceptable,' despite its majority support. 'For a bill to pass,' Frist said, 'it's got to preserve our intelligence programs, and it must protect classified information from terrorists.' He said 'the President's bill achieves those two goals, but that the Warner-McCain-Graham bill falls short.'

Evidently Senator McCain wasn't expecting so stout a push-back, as the subsequent "compromise" his coven of rebels reached with the Bush Administration constituted a decisive victory for the latter:

* Precludes a private right of action (i.e., the ability of a person to enforce in court) in either habeas corpus litigation or a civil case, the "rights" granted under the Geneva Conventions;

* Specifies the war crimes that will comprise violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and says no foreign or international law can be used by US courts to further define those crimes;

* Gives the President further authority to promulgate higher standards of conduct for terrorist interrogators;

* Defines, reasonably well, the "cruel or inhuman treatment" vague terms used in the McCain amendment of 2005 and Common Article 3;

* Restores the definitions for "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" in the pre-McCain Amendment Title 18 Section 2340, US Code; BUT

* Retains the McCain amendment definitions as well.

The last one is the PR fig leaf graciously handed to the Supreme Chancellor as a face-saving gesture, allowing him a symbolic claim to having upheld his "anti-torture" principles while the White House walks away with nearly all the substance (which has disrupted at least eight al Qaeda plots since 9/11).

Don't think so? Just review the President's post-deal statement versus that of "Sailor":

I had a single test for the pending legislation, and that's this: Would the CIA operators tell me whether they could go forward with the program, that is a program to question detainees to be able to get information to protect the American people. I'm pleased to say that this agreement preserves the single most potent tool we have in protecting America from terrorist attacks, and that is the CIA free to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets.

Sounds unequivocal to me. At the very least, Dubya is convinced that he got what he wanted.

Now listen to his arch-nemesis:

The agreement that we've entered into gives the President the tools that he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice. I also believe that it's consistent with the standards under the Detainee Treatment Act, and there is no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved, and this business people say, "Who's the winners and who's the losers?" There's none. We're all winners because we've been able to come to an agreement through a process of negotiation and consensus.

This, peeps, is a lame "victory" speech. McCain has to emphasize - doubtless for the ears of GOP primary voters - that his obnoxious dissidence hasn't damaged the President' war-fighting capabilities, as well as acknowledging that the very same terrorists he was trying his damndest to elevate to undeserved legal protections are "evil." He "believes" the deal is "consistent" with his DTA - not exactly a bold declaration of certitude. And in a roundabout way he can say that he's upheld the GC because his attempt to re-write it to al Qaeda's liking was comprehensively squished.

Annnnnd, in the mean time, it took away the PR fig leaf that the McCainiacs were providing to their "Democratic friends" to cover their politically untenable opposition to any measure that wouldn't bend over backwards to pamper captured jihadis. As Byron York points out in his comprehensive recap, the Donks' kook base, led by the ACLU, will mount irresistable pressure on Dirty Harry, Crazy Nancy and their minions to resist this "compromise" legislation to the death right before Election Day.

So all's well that ends well, right?

Come on, this is Darth Queeg we're talking about. And he made sure he got in the last, spiteful word:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) named three measures that he said would no longer be allowed under a provision barring techniques that cause serious mental or physical suffering by U.S. detainees: extreme sleep deprivation, forced hypothermia and "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. He also said other "extreme measures" would be banned.

McCain's remarks were unusual because public officials involved in the lengthy public debate about U.S. interrogation practices have rarely made specific references to the CIA's actions, choosing instead to make general claims about the need for rough interrogations or a desire to stop abusive behavior.

"It's clear we have to have the high moral ground," said McCain, a former POW tortured by prison guards in Vietnam, on CBS's Face The Nation. "I am confident that some of the abuses that were reportedly committed in the past will be prohibited in the future."

On behalf of al Qaeda and every other Islamist terrorist out there, thank you, Senator McCain. Now they know what techniques they don't have to worry about, and by inference which by-definition less onerous ones are still on the table.

Cap'n Ed notes that SML Frist said on ABC's This Week that, "No responsible person would list the specific techniques allowed and disallowed in a public forum." But a RINO Sith lord obsessed with revenge for power denied would.

"From hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake...I spit...my last breath...at thee..." So Khan Noonien Singh intoned at Admiral Kirk at the end of Star Trek II as, with his last living act, he activated the Genesis device in an attempt to take Kirk and his crew down with him. John McCain isn't nearly that flamboyant, but as his beans-spilling on MTP illustrates yet again, he does have the same penchant for grand, (politically) suicidal gestures - if on a far pettier, more spiteful scale.

Rush Quote

"People say the Democrats don't have an agenda. I think they do: 'Impeach Bush, impeach Cheney, get Rumsfeld to resign, pull out of Iraq, raise taxes, then do what we can to increase the number of abortions in this country.'"

Yup.

JASmius adds: Here's just a brief list:

***Corruption (profligacy goes without saying)

***Quitting the war on terror

***Charlie Rangel said this week that he would use the chairmanship of the House Ways & Means Committee to defund it outright.

***And of course, John Conyers has made no secret of his intention to impeach the President if he gets the gavel of House Judiciary.

It ain't hyperbole, ladies and gents. The Democrats are no longer capable of guile. This is who they are and what they're about, and if returned to power, what they will do.

I mean, if even Bill Clinton can't keep his mask from slipping....

What a Wimp!!

Hillary's bold defense of her husband:

Senator Hillary Clinton has spoken up in support of her husband Bill’s defense of his anti-terror efforts, saying she’s tired of Democrats being pushed around on national security issues.

"I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this,” she said on Monday in remarks reported by Newsday.

Take what, for heaven's sake?? A relevant question? Bill Clinton is so used to being handled with kid gloves that he can't take it when he actually has to answer for something he did - or didn't do - during his presidency. What a weenie.

JASmius adds: According to Dick Morris (who was on Hannity & Combs last night as I was channel-surfing), Mr. Bill's outburst caught Hillary by surprise. This would make sense, since it's obvious that the {*ahem*} unpresidential blowup on live television couldn't possibly have been scripted if Hillary didn't take the opportunity to triangulate off of it, as I speculated she would. Her deer-in-the-headlights response tells me that she was being as involuntarily "real" as he was, to the detriment of both.

Yesterday in The Hill, Morris wrote that the real Bill Clinton - "the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch" - emerged on Sunday, at long last, for the entire world to see. If so - and I have no doubt that it is - it really speaks to the desperately unwise choice that voters twice made in the '90s, and about which we in the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" [tm] repeatedly warned. That such a man had control of the nuclear command codes and police powers for eight years without getting more than three thousand-plus of us killed seems like a miracle.

Morris closed his column thusly:

One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?

Never. His narcissism will never allow him to admit his dereliction. He's never been held to account for anything in his entire misbegotten life. He rose to a two-term presidency by being the real-life Gingerbread Man, a scandal-Houdini, a relentless scammer who always managed to stay two or three steps ahead of the law and the people. And he got away with it all.

History, though, is the one thing - in the absence of full-blown totalitarian fabrication - that Sick Willie cannot escape. Having made such a virtue of mere political survival, he ensured that he would forever be denied the historical greatness - i.e. "legacy" - that his brittle, titanic ego unquenchably craves. Unwilling when he had the chance to reach for greatness by actually doing something, anything, that might have jeopardized his precious approval numbers - such as denuking North Korea, pre-empting al Qaeda, or toppling Saddam Hussein - he guaranteed that his lilliputian reign will never be anything more than a ribald historical footnote.

For the first time in his pathetic existence, Bill Clinton faces consequences that he can't tap-dance around or make go away. On Sunday it finally cracked the once-impregnable phony mask that fooled America for all these years. And there's no fixing it.

Or maybe it was all a work to get the anti-war crowd off Hillary's back for a while. With the Clintons, can anybody ever really know for sure?

No Terror

9 Be gracious to me, O LORD, for (A) I am in distress; my (B) eye is wasted away from grief, (C) my soul and my body also.

10 For my life is spent with (D) sorrow and my years with sighing; my (E) strength has failed because of my iniquity, and (F) my body has wasted away.

11 Because of all my adversaries, I have become a (G) reproach, especially to my (H) neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.

12 I am (I) forgotten as a dead man, out of mind; I am like a broken vessel.

13 For I have heard the (J) slander of many, (K) terror is on every side; while they (L) took counsel together against me, they (M) schemed to take away my life.

14 But as for me, I trust in You, O LORD, I say, "(N) You are my God."

15 My (O) times are in Your hand; (P) deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me.

16 Make Your (Q) face to shine upon Your servant; (R) save me in Your lovingkindness.

17 Let me not be (S) put to shame, O LORD, for I call upon You; let the (T) wicked be put to shame, let them (U) be silent in Sheol.

18 Let the (V) lying lips be mute, which (W) speak arrogantly against the righteous with pride and contempt.

19 How great is Your (X) goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You have wrought for those who (Y) take refuge in You, (Z) before the sons of men!

20 You hide them in the (AA) secret place of Your presence from the (AB) conspiracies of man; You keep them secretly in a shelter from the (AC) strife of tongues.

21 (AD) Blessed be the LORD, for He has made (AE) marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged (AF) city.

22 As for me, (AG) I said in my alarm, "I am (AH) cut off from before Your eyes"; nevertheless You (AI) heard the voice of my supplications when I cried to You.

23 O love the LORD, all you (AJ) His godly ones! The LORD (AK) preserves the faithful and fully (AL) recompenses the proud doer.

24 (AM) Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the LORD.

-Psalm 31:9-24

Men Behaving Badly

Almost everything that could be said about Venezuelan Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez's brazenly vile "stand-up routine" before the UN General Assembly last week has been written by now. So I will make that mammoth mound of verbiage complete with a light fisking of my own (via Newsmax):

On the Bush speech at the U.N. General Assembly: "An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: The Devil's recipe."

Two observations: (1) Serious world leaders don't shoot off their mouths like that, particularly in the country whose leader they're attacking; (2) Bad guys know they can get away with it, and these days also know they have an indigenous audience for talking such smack.

On the United Nations: "I don't think anyone could defend this system, let's be honest . . . it is worthless."

How can words that are so true hide a meaning that is so false? But it does shed light on how our enemies envision the UN: as a collective global dictatorship through which the West in general and the U.S. in particular can be crushed once and for all.

On his visa fight: "You know, my personal doctor had to stay on the plane. The chief of security had to remain in a locked plane. None of the gentlemen were allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all."

His "personal doctor" and "chief of security" were undoubtedly spies. Chavez as much as says so, or at least so I surmise from the raucously silly "abuse of power" crack.

Have you ever noticed that it isn't the Ronald Reagans or George W. Bushes who claim the Almighty's partisanship, but the murderous pagans who shake their fist in His face? Besides, didn't Adolph Ahmadinejad stake dibs on God's alliegance? Or has Comrade Hugo converted?

As Chavez moved out of the General Assembly hall, the party moved onto the press briefing room where the president said: "Venezuela's campaign to get elected to the Security Council is well founded, an independent voice that would represent not only Venezuela, but also the peoples of the third world." (The United States is supporting Guatemala as the Latin American council representative.)

"Independent" as in "anti-American." And apparently not so well-founded after all, since Guatemala is the front-runner to be elected to the Security Council from Latin America - an election that Chavez would have a more difficult time fixing. Maybe Jimmy Carter will lend Comrade Hugo a hand.

On the Middle East: "I love Damascus (Syria's capital), beautiful Damascus. I was in Damascus only a month ago with my "brother" President (Bashar al) Assad. . . . Satan, the Lord of Sulfur (a.k.a. Bush) says I supported Saddam Hussein. . . . I went to Baghdad once and I went to speak to Saddam. What did I tell Saddam? At the time, the price of oil was $7 (a barrel), we were giving it away. We were following the mandates of the White House imperialism, so that oil would be cheap. . . . So my first foreign trip was to all the countries, the members of OPEC. . . . and oil rose to $20 a barrel.

Did Chavez deny supporting Saddam? Or disclose what he told Saddam on his Baghdad visit? When was oil $7 a barrel in my lifetime? When did Comrade Hugo ever follow "White House mandates"? How did his OPEC tour single-handedly triple the price?

You weren't expecting answers to these questions, were you? That's the occupational hazard of attempting to analyze gibberish.

"Yes, I supported Syria and Iran, the position of Venezuela is the same as the position of the non-aligned movement. We support Iran, we support Lebanon and demand that all imperialist troops leave Iraq."

"Non-aligned" {chuckle}. I wonder if he realizes the contradiction he offered of supporting the country that is subverting and attempting to imperialistically vassalize its western neighbor.

And to the White House: "They (the United States) should not even think about invading Iran or even Venezuela unless they want to see oil reach $200 a barrel."

There's some doubt about that, actually.

But getting back to the tone of Comrade Hugo's remarks, it really wasn't any different than what he spews on a perpetual basis from Carracas. Only the venue, and therefore the stage, shed additional spotlightage on the spectacle of high-octane Bushophobia of such power and magnitude that you could have sworn it came from the Democrat National Committee.

I don't know if Chavez and Ahmadinejad would have been deterred from running wild on our country and our president by a united domestic political front where foreign policy and the war are concerned, or at least a modicum of civility, maturity, and class from the DisLoyal Opposition. As it is, the two would-be world rulers - the Mussolini and Hitler, respectively, of their time - were plowing already amply plowed rhetorical ground, and they knew it.

So, dimly, did House Donks Charlie Rangel and "Crazy Nancy" Pelosi, who made some lethargic, half-hearted attempts at damage control.

After Comrade Hugo went to Harlem - in Rangel's district - and dispensed the sort of left-wing racist garbage to a black church audience that one would have expected to hear at any large American college campus, along with calling Bush "sick" and a "drunk," Comrade....er, Congressman Rangel called an impromptu presser to, in essence, cry "gimmick infringement":

We are deeply appreciative to the Venezuelan government, and this is so because we buy millions of barrels a day, the United States, and it just seems to me that those that supply us that are sensitive to the higher price and the ability of the poor to meet it, that the United States oil firms ought to take a page from the Venezuelan book and do the same thing.

Gotta kiss Chavista ass for his "home heating oil for the poor" PR scheme, dontcha know, or he might get offended and cut off Rangel's freeloading constituents. Plus he can't be seen as actually and sincerely defending President Bush, or those constituents might lynch him.

I want President Chavez to please understand that even though many people in the United States are critical of our president, that we resent the fact that he would come to the United States and criticize President Bush. He has to understand that while we have problems politically sometimes with President Bush, that we - he is still our president, and that we resent foreigners coming and condemning our president.

Such deference. Such a pre-emptively apologetic tone. As if to say, "Bear with me, Comrade Hugo, I don't really mean any of this, but we haven't advanced the revolution as far here as you have in Venezuela; we're losing ground, actually, and we'll lose more if you don't leave the ripping of that malaproping, criminal, warmongering boob from rectum to belly-button to us."

And make no mistake, the apologetic tone wasn't directed solely at Chavez. The Dem base had to be eating this up. Which helps explain Rangel's descent back into moral equivalence:

Even though I'm fully aware that he and President Bush enjoy these personal attacks on each other, they can do politically what they see fit to do, but you don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district, and you don't condemn my president. If there's any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans whether he voted for him or not.

When has Dubya ever said word one about Hugo Chavez, much less "personally attacked" him? Hell, when has Bush ever said a cross word about anybody outside of al Qaeda? How is it that the architect and sole practitioner of "The New Tone" is the only one who acknowledges its existence in his own conduct?

This "boys will be boys" crap won't cut it. Especially in light of what Rangel himself said about Bush only a year ago:

When George Bush took this country and tried to abolish every progressive step that we've made, when he took this nation into war against a country that was no threat to the United States of America, when he made certain that all of the distortions of weapons of mass destructions and terrorists and attacks on 9/11 and identification of al-Qaeda, when 1900 Americans have died, 25,000 people are maimed in the hospitals around this country, and tens of thousands Iraqis, all God's children, have been killed because of democracy which is really oil in disguise. When you're able to see not the Emmett Tills, not the murders of children, not just the fire hoses and the Bill Connors, but you're able to see Katrina, when you actually see that if you're black in this country and you're poor in this country, it's not an inconvenience, it's a death sentence.

How is the above any less disgusting than what Chavez or Ahmadinejad said? Chavez called Bush "the devil"; Rangel called Bush a racist mass-murderer. The only ostensible difference is that the former is not an American and the latter is. And that excuses it?

No, it does not. There are some lines you do not cross. There are some things you do not say. Partisan differences are not supposed to be blood feuds. That the Left considers them as such, and provides a rhetorical template for enemies who want to kill all of us regardless of party registration, is the core of why the Democrats remain - and will continue to be - out of power.

The aforementioned House Minority Leader-cum-Gloria-Swanson-reject at least had the PR acuity to recognize the need for actual strong rhetoric, and slammed Comrade Hugo as a "thug" and "a modern day Simon Bolivar." Which made her sound patently phony as opposed to Rangel's snivelry. This Orange County Register cartoon pretty much nails it.

The rest of the Donks apparently didn't get Crazy Nancy's memo. Senator Tom Harkin actually defended Chavez, essentially saying that Bush brought the abuse on himself. This is a variant on the "Bush has damaged our international reputation" canard, as though the eight years of Bill Clinton traveling the world vicariously prostrating his country before one dictator after another, to say nothing of running away from every genuine national security threat (North Korea, Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda), was a prestige enhancer. And, of course, the fever swamp was apoplectic at Pelosi's rare episode of public relations lucidity, so much so that you get the impression if Chavez ever returned to our shores at the head of an invading army, the Kos-hacks, Sorosians, and Moveon.orgers would take up arms and fight right alongside him. Makes it hard to argue with Rush Limbaugh's take that this confession of de facto fifth columnism, despite Pelosi's and Rangel's tepid damage control, will add considerably to the minority party's negative home stretch momentum.

For their part, the Bushies are doing the usual rope-a-dope:

The verbal attacks Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez launched against President Bush should not affect diplomatic relations between the countries, the U.S. ambassador said Monday.

William Brownfield said officials in Washington would try to overlook the string of insults uttered last week by Chavez, who called Bush "the devil" at the U.N. General Assembly and an "alcoholic" at a church in Harlem, New York.

"My government's position is that we are going to ignore, we can ignore and we should ignore the words. It's the actions that count," Brownfield told the local Globovision television network.

Precisely what I would expect a diplomat - a breed that has not the slightest clue as to the meaning of honor - to say. But sometimes words are not so easy to discount, because they portend actions to follow. Case in point:

While the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement nations were making speeches at the 14th conference of their movement in Havana in mid-September, three groups of intelligence experts were off in a well-guarded corner next door to talk about matters far from the conference’s main theme of how to develop backward economies and societies. Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan teams were putting their heads together on ways of translating their leaders' hostile rhetoric and slogans into effective war action against the United States.

DEBKAfile’s Exclusive intelligence and counter-terror sources disclose that the three teams were made up of intelligence officers and civilian officials on the staffs of the three rulers; their job is maintaining clandestine ties with underground and terrorist organizations.

After the NAM conference ended, the Iranian and Venezuelan teams moved their talks to Caracas where Ahmadinejad continued his talks with Chavez on September 17 and 18.

Why Chavez as opposed to Castro? Apparently, as the quoted story goes on to explain, because Castro was only willing to be a Soviet stooge, not an Iranian one.

Enter Comrade Hugo:

Castro is too old a hand to be manipulated in matters of subversion and terrorism. Chavez in contrast is just as anti-American but also rated by Tehran an easier mark. Although he needs to be handled with kid gloves as head of an oil-exporting country, the Iranians have noted that the Venezuelan leader is also open to cooperation in the politics of oil.

On September 18, he insisted that Ahmadinejad attend a ceremony celebrating the gushing of the 7th Aya Well of the Kuchouy Oil Field developed by a Venezuelan-Iranian partnership. This was to be a landmark on the road to a merger between the two oil industries. Tehran is not too happy about this partnership but is going along with small, symbolic steps while extracting from Caracas – and eventually it hopes from Havana – forward facilities for running Iranian clandestine agents in North and South America. [emphasis added]

This burgeoning axis has greater ambitions than just espionage and subversion, however:

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad also talked persuasively to Chavez about making a show of deploying a few Iranian-made 2,000-km range Shahab-3 missiles – first in Venezuela then in Cuba – as a menace to the United States.

Chavez has not given Tehran his answer. But both he and Castro will think twice about granting this request, for fear of crossing one line too many for the Bush Administration to swallow. However, Iranian ambitions to harm America know no limits. [emphases added]

Iranian ICBMs. Based in our hemisphere. And they're hell-bent for nuclear weapons capability. Didn't we get into a crisis about something like this the year before I was born?

Words mean things. The words of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad couldn't more openly express their malevolent intent. It isn't a question of being "big enough to take a few insults"; it's a question of pre-empting the rapidly approaching crisis they telegraph while - if - there's still time.

Is anybody listening?

UPDATE: The Anchoress sure was:

If tinpot tyrants and madmen now come to the United Nations and believe they can say anything they wish about The American President, it is because - as some of us have been warning, for some time - while all manner or irresponsible nonsense and hate has been directed at this president…the world has been watching.

And now, these tyrants and madmen sound eerily like the Democrats and the press and the left. One ideology, the world over, has completely lost its bearings, its self-control and its manners concerning one man who has never - not once -repaid them back in kind. Not in speeches. Not to the press. Not to “friendly audiences.” He came to town talking about “changing the tone,” and that’s what happened, in a perverse way. One side’s tone went rabid, the other side went nearly-silent, but this one man…kept his tone.

And it may yet end up being the political death of him - and the literal death of the rest of us.

Hey, Keith!

I can say to you in two words what you took ten minutes to say to the center/right last night.

And I would be the more eloquent.

You Go, Girl!

Condoleezza Rice calls a spade a spade, or in this case, a liar a liar:

Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush Administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Everyone who isn't a Clinton sycophant knows he was lying because his mouth was moving.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush Administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.

The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hour-long session.

Bill Clinton was, is, and has always been interested only in what is best for himself. Not the country, not our security, not even his own family as evidenced by his behavior with women other than his wife. It's all about Bill. The idea that he would try and help his successor regarding al Qaeda is ridiculous. He was obviously not interested during his entire term, why would he come up with a "comprehensive plan" when his presidency was over?

He's a pathetic weasel.

JASmius adds: And the novel thing is he's no longer making any effort to hide it. Tells me he knows his cherished "legacy" is toast.

Just a hunch, but it wouldn't surprise me to see Hillary triangulate off of hubby's outburst.

UPDATE: Guess not:

Senator Hillary Clinton has spoken up in support of her husband Bill’s defense of his anti-terror efforts, saying she’s tired of Democrats being pushed around on national security issues.

"I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this,” she said on Monday in remarks reported by Newsday.

Take what? The truth? When have Democrats ever been able to take the truth? It never favors them, and nowhere less than on national security and terrorism.

Showing that my Clinton analysis muscles have gotten flabby, it fell to Bill Kristol to point out Mr. Bill's angle in this PR scrum:

"In this interview, Clinton rallied Democrats. He reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity in his first eight months in office....

"If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week . . . and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how ‘to fight back.’”

It won't and they won't because Bill Clinton is the least qualified man on the face of the planet to be attempting to "discredit" anybody on "the terror issue." His eruption only further discredited himself (especially after his furor over The Path to 9/11) and ought to have embarrassed the Democrats.

But, disconnected from reality as they are, it probably will rally them - right off another cliff. And then we can revel in the lefty conspiracy theories of when Bill Clinton sold out to Karl Rove.

ONE MORE UPDATE: The New York Post gleefully piles on:

Clinton insisted that his version is backed both by Clarke's book and public testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

In fact, Clarke told the commission a very different story during hours of private testimony behind closed doors - one that jibed with a 2002 background briefing he gave to reporters.

Back then, he said: "There was no plan on al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush Administration. . . . [a] plan, strategy - there was no, nothing new."

Indeed, Clarke said, the Bush team in 2001 "changed the [Clinton] strategy from one of rollback [of] al Qaeda over five years to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline."

Bush, he added, took action on several "issues that had been on the table for a couple of years," such as instituting a new policy in Pakistan that convinced Islamabad "to break away from the Taliban" and boosting "CIA resources...for covert action five-fold to go after al Qaeda."

In fact, a 1999 Clarke after-action memo - the one top Clinton aide Sandy Berger later stole from the National Archives - identified national-security weaknesses so "glaring" that only sheer "luck" prevented a cataclysmic attack back then. [emphases added]

Eight years trumps eight months. Period. It is the one truth that not even Bill Clinton can escape.

LAST UPDATE - REALLY; SERIOUSLY; NO FOOLIN'; ON THE LEVEL: The American Thinker puts the lie to Sick Willie's claim that there was no GOP support for his getting Osama bin Laden.

I have to point out the contrast between Bill Clinton going on a network that doesn't kiss his ass and going ballistic at a single tough question and George W. Bush weathering a seven year fusillade of unprecedented personal abuse, defamation, vituperation, and character assassination, along with a full-blown insurrection of treasonous and dangerous national security leaks, and remaining cool as a cucumber.

If the Enemy Media were still practitioners of professional, objective journalism instead of propagandists for the Democrat Party, that entity would be defunct as Enron. The Land of Make-Believe would cease to exist. And America would be so much better off.

That is the message that Chris Wallace flushed out of that incompetent narcissist. It's the best PSA I've seen in years.

OKAY, ONE MORE UPDATE: Does Clinton's claim that Republicans were "obsessed with his obsession with getting bin Laden" not sound like classic psychological projection of his own party's obsession with "Bush's" war on terror?

Hitler @ The League Of Nations

If the infamous Nazi dictator ever had given a keynote address, complete with trademark wild gesticulations and crazed, quasi-demonic raving, I tend to think that Iranian frontman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech to the UN General Assembly last week was as close a fascimile as we'll ever get.

Substitute Adolph Jr.'s crazoid Shia apocalypticism for Adolph Sr.'s Teutonic racial supremacism and the parallel borders on the verbatim. Same ingrained dishonesty, bordering on delusion; same unshakeable confidence in his country's inevitable global conquest; and the same imprudent recklessness based upon that overconfidence and the galloping contempt the West has gone out of its way to cultivate in the mullahgarchy and its public spokesman.

Double-H called it "chilling":

He asserted that the US was behind the Hezbollah-Israel War, repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and made a lengthy attack on the legitimacy of the Security Council. "Is it appropriate to expect this generation to submit to[to the Security Council]?" he asked, and demanded the General Assembly take on the reform of the UN and equip others with the veto power.

In truth, that wouldn't be all that big a step from where the UN is already. Packing the Security Council or, conversely, stripping the United States of its veto power or expelling us altogether would simply formalize a reality that now has to flow through "unofficial" channels, greased by a never-diminishing flood of illicit corruption of which Oily Food was but the iceberg's tip. Unlike the League of Nations that preceded it, the UN wouldn't fall into irrelevancy; it would, rather, finally complete its transmogrification from bulwark of post-WWII international democracy and peace to twenty-first century Legion of Doom.

Not that Ahmadinejad will likely wait around long enough for that to happen on its own, as his closing Islamist benediction, translated by Powerline reader Michael Stalker, unambiguously indicates:

“If wisdom, ethics and justice Islam prevail[s], then oppression and aggression will be uprooted, threats will wither away, and no reason will remain for conflict. This is a solid proposition because most global conflicts emanate from injustice infidels and from the powerful not being contented with their own rights striving to devour the rights of others. People across the globe embrace justice Islam and are willing to sacrifice for its sake. Would it not be easier for global powers to ensure their longevity and win hearts and minds through the championing of real promotion of justice, compassion and peace Islam, than through continuing the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and the threat of their use?”

***

“We can adopt firm and logical decisions, thereby improving the prospects of a better life for current and future generations. Together, we can eradicate the roots of bitter maladies and afflictions and instead, through the promotion of universal and lasting values such as ethics, spirituality and justice Islam, allow our nations to taste the sweetness of a better future. Peoples driven by their divine nature Muslims intrinsically seek good, virtue, perfection and beauty. Relying on our peoples Muslims, we can take giant steps towards reform and pave the road for human perfection. Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue Islam will sooner or later prevail in the world with the will of the Almighty God. It is imperative, and also desirable, that we, too, contribute to the promotion of justice and virtue Islam.”

***

“All divine prophets, from the Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) to the Prophet Moses, to the Prophet Jesus Christ, to the Prophet Mohammad have all called humanity to monotheism, justice, brotherhood, love and compassion Islam. Is it not possible to build a better world based on monotheism, justice, love and respect for the rights of human beings Islam, and thereby transform animosities into friendship? I emphatically declare that today's world more than ever before longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity Muslims, and above all, longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior Hidden Imam who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood Islam on he planet. Oh, Almighty God, all men and women are your creatures and you have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice Islam, the perfect human Hidden Imam being promised to all by you, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.”

Can you imagine the reaction of the Enemy Media if President Bush had closed his remarks with a prayerful invocation of the Great Commission? Yet Ahmadinejad's extollation of "evangelism by the sword" got not a peep of press attention. Probably because the objects of his hatred - Jews and Christians - are looked down upon by Western libs with contempt and disdain (at best) as well. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," as the old saying goes.

Yes, Adolph Jr. is, indeed, one seriously disturbed fruit loop. And no, he doesn't possess unstoppable conventional military capability, as his historical antecedent did. What he does possess, or shortly will, is something Hitler never did: nuclear weapons. Hitler didn't resort to terrorist tactics until after his war was already lost. For the mullahs, terrorism IS their war, the will of their enemy - us - not our military capability, their target. With nukes at their fingertips, they believe we would bow at their feet rather than resist them.

As if to confirm that, the Iranian "president" made his regime's sentiments promiscuously clear to the Council on Foreign Relations:

On Wednesday Ahmadinejad met senior US government officials at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; the top American officials present at the meeting, some of them members of the George Bush senior administration, left with the feeling that a confrontation with Iran is inevitable.

The meeting was held despite staunch opposition from US government officials and Jewish community leaders.

Among those present were former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.

Robert Blackwell, who served as head of the Iraq desk at the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, said following the meeting, “If this man represents Tehran’s position, we are heading toward a massive confrontation with Iran.” [emphasis added]

He does, and we are - "whether we like it or not."

The mullahgarchy keeps giving us one Mein Kampf after another. If we refuse to pay heed until the screeding is punctuated by a flash and a roar, it'll be our own damn fault.