Quarantined Truths

Hope you all liked the Muzak....

***Doomed Connecticut Donk senatorial challenger Ned Lamont has belly-flopped again:

Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who recently denounced Senator Joe Lieberman for his public scolding of President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, lauded the senator at the time for his eloquence and moral authority.

Lieberman's staff called Lamont's recent criticisms hypocritical in light of a 1998 letter sent by e-mail. However, Lamont said he stands by his position that the public rebuke exacerbated the situation.

Well, natch. Flip-flopping again would only make l'il Neddy look like an even bigger empty suit. Besides, eight years ago he had two things he no longer possesses: a brain and shame. Why reclaim them when doing so would only blow another hole in his sinking ship?

***The Saddam Hussein Fan Club has gained another member: The other senator from West Virginia, who now considers the deposed dictator to be a more credible source of information on his regime's terrorist ties and pursuit of WMD than Rocky's own President. So says the same Jay Rockefeller who is, after all, the ranking Donk member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus saw the very same intel on Saddam's Iraq that the White House did, and who went farther in his jingoistic rhetoric at the time of the Iraq war resolution four years ago than the President - even describing Saddam as "an imminent threat."

Is there anybody who still wonders why one of my slogans for that two-faced, lying, honorless petaQ party is "any port in a storm"?

***John O'Sullivan, David Hogsberg, and Ann Applebaum give the lie to the left-wing myth of post-9/11 "national unity" - and O'Sullivan broaches the "T" word for good measure.

***What John Kerry claims:

Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qaida has spawned a decentralized network operating in sixty-five countries, most of them joining since 9/11. Only Dick Cheney could call this a success.

It's time to refocus our military efforts from the failed occupation of Iraq to what we should have been doing all along: destroying al-Qaida. We need to redeploy troops from Iraq - keep up the training and counter-terror operations, establish an over the horizon military capacity - and free up resources to fight the War on Terror.

The truth:

Since 9/11, the United States and its allies have destroyed more than 75% of al-Qaeda. That statistic does not come from the White House press office. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest noted it in a talk at the Cato Institute [two weeks ago]. Priest, whom no one would call an apologist for or ally of the Administration, also noted how the Bush Administration skillfully used diplomatic relationships - particularly with France [!!!] - to pursue, capture, detain and interrogate al Qaeda terrorists. Through a combination of military force and diplomacy, the United States has crippled al Qaeda.

Not only has the United States done exactly what Kerry and his fellow Democrats claim has not been done - use diplomatic relationships to decimate the group that attacked us on 9/11 - but the war in Iraq has marginalized al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. That is one of the conclusions of a new report released last week by the UK's Royal Institute for International Affairs, also known as Chatham House....

If the measure of success in the War on Terror is, as Kerry suggested, wiping out al Qaeda, then the Bush Administration can hardly be called a failure, as Kerry did. al Qaeda is, in fact, not only on the run but reduced to a fraction of its former self, which is almost certainly one of the major reasons there has been no al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil in five years. [emphasis added]

***On Democrats' self-conscious caterwauling over being compared to the 1930s appeasers of Adolph Hitler:

Before that fateful day five years ago, it was arguably understandable for people to have underestimated the threat posed by radical Islam (President Bush certainly did). But after Sept. 11, it is simply inconceivable that anybody would want to return to the way things were done before. Comparing Nazi appeasers to today's liberals is unfair to the appeasers of the 1930s, because at least they spoke out of ignorance about how dangerous Hitler was - they weren't still arguing for appeasement in 1943. [emphasis added]

Wow, home run.

***Pavlov had his dogs, Republicans have Democrats.

1) President Bush gives an address to the nation on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It is characteristically soaring, uplifting, inspiring, idealistic, and, most irritating to the DisLoyalists, resolute: no bugging out of Iraq, staying the course, finishing the job. What it was not was partisan.

2) Democrats' definition of "partisan" has obviously distorted into the same incoherence that mentally cripples them across the policy spectrum. This time Senator Minority Leader "Dirty Harry" Reid was the vomit spewer:

The American people last night deserved better. They deserved a break from politics that honored the spirit of 9/11. They deserved a chance to reclaim that sense of unity, purpose, and patriotism that swept through our country five years ago. Feelings only the commander-in-chief could have inspired.

He should have tried to inspire. He didn't. Last night was not a time for a political speech, a partisan speech. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity for President Bush, who obviously was more consumed by staying the course in Iraq and playing election year partisan politics than changing direction for this wonderful country.

Let's see; did Bush mention the Democrats in his speech? No. Did he criticize their opposition to war? No. So what made his words "partisan" to Senator Pencil-Neck? Only thing I can think is that Bush refuses to cave in to the Democrats and cut & run from the Middle East, and had the unmitigated gall to say so publicly. They consider it an afront that he doesn't just resign like Nixon did and slink off to an ignominious Crawford exile. They consider it an outrage that he continues to draw breath. Consequently even Dubya's getting up in the morning and taking a leak is "partisan" and "political," much less presuming to speak and act like he's the twice-elected President of the United States.

On the other hand, if the worst that Reid could come up with is the tiresome "playing politics" canard, it shows how substantively untouchable the President is on national security issues. That the Barney Fife doppelganger violates his own suborned standard in the process of hurling it at the President seems to soar straight over his empty head.

3) House Majority Leader John Boehner didn't miss it, though, and expertly stirred the pot further:

Sometimes based on the votes that get cast, you wonder whether they're more interested in the rights of the terrorists than in protecting the American people.

Whoa, Nellie, if you thought the Dems were pissed at Bush's speech, Boehner's retort to Reid sent them all into orbit:

REID: Haven't we moved beyond that? Haven't we moved beyond the Republicans are more religious than Democrats? Haven't we moved beyond the fact that Republicans are trying to save us from the terrorists and Democrats aren't? I
think we've moved beyond that.

[Georgia Representative John] LEWIS: Mr. Speaker, the statement by Majority Leader Boehner was shameful and disgraceful. To suggest my fellow Democrats care more about protecting the terrorists than American people is not right, it is not fair, it is not just, it is not the American way. Democrats will not stand by and let a single attack go unanswered. You may play the politics of fear, but this dog will not hunt. This dog just will not hunt.

My, my, my; like asking the emperor who wore no clothes what he did with his pants. You're not just not supposed to say that the emperor is stark naked, you're not even supposed to notice it. You're supposed to gaze on his glorious imperial nudity and behold long flowing robes, pink satin pants, and a King Vitamin crown.

All Boehner did was connect the dots. El Rushbo elaborated:

"Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! We killed the Patriot Act!" They're applauding. Not quite a year ago. What did the Patriot Act do? The Patriot Act is what tore down the wall that the Clinton administration built that prevented various agencies like the CIA and the FBI from sharing intelligence and information that they had learned. The Patriot Act tore that down. These people wanted to kill it, they thought they had, and a huge round of applause. They have mischaracterized the FISA situation, the NSA foreign surveillance program. They continue to refer to it as a domestic spy program, as though Bush boorishly wants to spy on you for his own titillation.

Let's not leave out the SWIFT terrorist finance tracking program. And then there's the Dems' insistance on lavishing Geneva Convention protection and full US constitutional rights on the terrorists. How is it the slightest bit unreasonable to conclude from all that that the Democrats are more interested in terrorists' rights than in protecting the lives of the American people? If you take them at their prooffered word, there's no other conclusion a reasonable listener CAN draw. All Boehner did was come out and say so.

Words mean things, and have consquences. The Democrats are so completely unaccustomed to having to be accountable for their execrably seditious rhetoric that when an opponent does call them on the carpet, they're left with the sort of spluttering incoherence quoted above.

Well, I guess it's not entirely incoherent; Reid tried to suppress Boehner's dissent (as the Dems define it) by the rhetorical equivalent of pulling a phone cord out of the wall ("We've moved past that.") Lewis did the same thing when he in essence called the HML's criticism "unAmerican," which, as the Dems define it, was a despicable questioning of John Boehner's patriotism. But then they've been calling the President, Vice President, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby "traitors" for the past three years over the Plamegate fraud, so that isn't novel either.

It does go to show how easily the Dems' buttons can be pushed to expose their feckless extremism to their severe political detriment. White House press secretary Tony Snow gave a highly entertaining summation to CNN's Miles O'Brien:

O'BRIEN: "Not long after that speech the majority leader, John Boehner, said what he said about the Democrats being more interested in protecting terrorists than the American people. Not a lot of unity in that statement, is there?"

SNOW: Rather than focusing on John Boehner's statement, you've got one statement from a Republican, think of Carl Levin going on your network.

O'BRIEN: No, no, no. Can I ask you about Republicans first, though? Let's just talk about Republicans.

SNOW: Let's get our timing right. Because the moment the President gave his speech, boom, people are hitting the send button already hurling accusations. Now, what John Boehner was doing is he was musing and he was asking tough questions, for instance, in listening to people who want to go ahead and kill Americans - the terrorist surveillance program. The President has asked both parties to join together to do this, a perfect way of expressing unity. And, instead, what I get is Democrats saying how offended they were either by the President's speech or by Representative Boehner's comments.

O'BRIEN: Is the President a little concerned that his majority leader was basically ignoring his call for unity? That's not a unifying statement by any means."

SNOW: Well, again, Miles, you're asking a question in a vacuum. Within moments of the president finishing his address to the nation, the head of the Democratic senatorial committee, the head of the Democratic House committee, and Senator Kennedy were out blasting this.

O'BRIEN: I just want you to talk about Republicans for a moment.

SNOW: I see. Okay.

O'BRIEN: Forget the Democrats for just a moment.

SNOW: You know what it sounds like, Miles? I hate it tell you this, but sometimes in politics people make tough arguments. It happens. The President's been called a liar and a loser by the guy who's the top Democrat in the United States Senate. Does he worry about it? No. [emphases added]

Goodness, but O'Brien's a sniveling little gerbil, isn't he? And so honest; like the President and HML Boehner, Tony Snow wasn't sticking to the lib-imposed script; he persisted in criticizing and challenging the Democrats. That wasn't what Miles wanted to hear, and he actually admitted it on the air.

Instances like this leave me astonished that the Democrats can be challenging for control of Congress at all. Indeed, I can't fathom how they can even be considered a serious national political entity. And all it took was one sentence - twenty-six words - from a prominent GOP leader to trigger another damaging PR tantrum. Why aren't they doing this all the time? The Dems would have gone the way of the Whigs a long time ago.

***Don't believe me? Crazy Nancy Pelosi is making her party's top "national security" priority fighting global warming, a revival of the Clintonoid tradition of shoveling all manner of domestic policy crap into the Pentagon stalls in order to claim that they're "spending more on defense." They think that a border fence on the Mexican frontier would be the functional equivalent of the Berlin Wall - the latter of which was designed not to keep foreigners out, but the captive citizenry in. They've got more 2006 campaign themes than Rosie O'Donnell has Li'l Debbie's wrappers. They're morally and intellectualy bankrupt:

The greatest disappointment since 9/11/01 has been the total moral vacuity of the Left—a complete and utter nullity—both here and in Europe. Today, five years later, psychological denial still rules the day, and the few Democrats who raise their heads above the screaming mob are chased out, like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.

One-third of American voters are still being suckered by the left-wing media, who live in some sort of Toon-Town where you can Have your Cake and Eat it Too, where Lunches are Free and Health Care is Too, and where there are no ideological killer movements in this world, and to achieve World Peace you just have to point your finger at the “Warmongers” and scream really loud. The Left is now populated by “mewling, puking infants,” as William Shakespeare put it, utterly lacking an understanding of the world as it is.

It is a sad sight to behold. We need unity, not denial. As it is, the Left has become a Fifth Column, fighting the civilized world and busily explaining away danger. The New York Times can get away with sabotaging our fight for survival against the worst fascist movement since you-know-who. The Left is even descending to Nazi slogans and scapegoating Jews. A generation ago, who would have believed it?

Beats me. But you better not say it. The emperor just hates cold breezes.

***Will Bob Torricelli be getting a new cellmate and pinochle partner in the near future?

***If Bob Casey, Sr. were still alive, would he be giving serious consideration to changing his name?

***Jimmy Carter is a bastard. But then, you knew that.

UPDATE: He's a liar, too.