Hope Is Not A Platform

I didn't an e-mail from his staff, but since Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) also announced his Presidential candidacy today, I thought I'd give him some of the spotlight too. Here's Sam on Iraq:

After my recent trip to Iraq, I am even more convinced that the situation there is precarious, but hopeful. I see hope in the Iraqi people. I believe this hope will be the foundation of a new Iraqi society. Much remains to be done, and I think we need a plan to turn this country over to its citizens. I will continue to work with the leaders in our country, as well as leaders in Iraq, to find a solution that protects the future of Iraq, and the pride and dignity of its citizens.

Profound. If the G.O.P. nomination eludes Sam's grasp, there's always the Miss America Pageant.

Socks and The Nazi

After (unforgettably described) sex with Adolf's future father, Alois Schicklgruber, Hitler's future mother, Klara Poelzl, experiences a guilt that is "as heavy as a waterlogged tree."

In a travesty of nature and procreation, the young Adolf Hitler likes to masturbate on leaves.

Somewhere along the line, Dieter remarks on "that curious human nature, which forces its way into existence between the hazards of urine and excrement, yet will later dream each night of a noble life." Inter faeces et urinam, another of this novel’s themes, is a further twist on "nakedness" and on mortal helplessness.

.... Adolf, whose onanistic sessions are like "being shot out of his own cannon."

In the midst of the review, sprezzatura returns to a favorite theme:

Ours is an age of mockery and sarcasm, when even irony is belittled for being secretly sincere about its lack of conviction.

Mockery, sockery! If you write about Hitler beating off as lit-ra-chure, you've got to expect to some snark.

The Power Broker

Top Democratic Presidential hopefuls are personally having their staffers vie for the Roger Ailes endorsement in the all-important Roger Ailes Primary. They know this blog can deliver more than 1,200 of the smartest and most civic-minded blog readers on a daily basis. (1,201 to be precise.)

Here's a personal invitation I recieved just this morning from my close personal friend, Peter Daou:

I wanted to personally invite you to visit hillaryclinton.com and view Sen. Clinton's announcement that she will form an exploratory committee to run for President. And I'd like to invite you to join the senator for a live conversation with America – an unprecedented series of video webcasts beginning Monday, January 22nd at 7pm EST for three nights. We are also asking people to submit posts in preparation for the upcoming launch of the official campaign blog – one entry will be selected as our first guest post.

As you may know, I've been communicating with bloggers and online activists on behalf of Sen. Clinton since last summer and I'd like to extend an invitation to you to contact me directly with any feedback, questions, comments, criticisms, compliments, or anything else you'd like to tell the campaign as we move forward.

I can be reached here: [gmail address removed to prevent spamming]

I'd also like to say that I'm excited to be working with several colleagues who you may be familiar with: Judd Legum (who will be the campaign's research director), Crystal Patterson, and Jesse Berney.

I look forward to hearing from you…

Best,


Peter

P.S. Please feel free to pass this along to fellow bloggers.

The ball's in your court, Senator Dodd.

Racist Profiling

Wide-load bigot Jonah Goldberg is so filled with hate that he can't be bothered with the facts:

Re: The Flying Imams: [Jonah Goldberg]

My apologies. Earlier this morning — pre-coffee - I posted about how the Flying Imams would get a refund. I was wrong entirely and utterly, misreading the article and the email in which it was forwarded. It was a different group of Muslims, on a different airline. Rather than foment more confusion, I took the post down. Again, I regret the stupidity on my part.

Hate is the default setting on Goldberg's dessicated brain. The Los Angeles Times must be very proud.

If anyone's got a copy of the deleted post, let me know. It must have been quite vile for the pantload to run from it so fast.

Here's the story the pantload couldn't bother to read. Different continent, different destination, different circumstances, different date, different everything. But to Goldberg, they all look alike.

Value Subtracted

The flip-flopping Tool, Scott Johnson, was for the slander before he was against it.

Scott "Not Asssocket" Johnson is counselling caution concerning Neal Sher's smear of former President Jimmy Carter. (See below.) "No story should be accepted based on Sher's word alone," declares the newly-prudent prat.

Which is funny, considering Johnson was pimping "Sher's invaluable recollection" based on Sher's word alone just two weeks ago. The price of a Sher has fallen almost faster than Powerline's credibility.

D'Souza, the author of the bestselling Illiberal Education, has no particular expertise on terrorism, which may explain why he writes twice that there are U.S. troops in Mecca (someone should probably alert Bob Gates) or why he thinks that President Reagan's 1986 airstrikes on Libya "convinced Qadafi to retire from the terrorism trade," despite the bombing of Pan Am 103 by Libyan agents two years later. But D'Souza's inexperience doesn't explain why he so badly misreads bin Ladenist ideology, despite the peppering of jihadist quotes that he uses to lend the book a sense of authority.

Is there any amount of incompetence of dishonesty which will deny a book contract to a right-winger? The publisher of this crap isn't WorldNutDaily or some Scaife whorehouse, it's Doubleday.

Radio Kills

Jennifer Strange, a mother of three from suburban Rancho Cordova, died last Friday of apparent water intoxication just hours after a failed bid to win a Nintendo Wii video-game system for her kids in a promotion dubbed "Hold Your Pee for a Wii."

...

A tape of the program, known as the "Morning Rave" on KDND-FM (107.9) "The End," reveals that the potential fatal effects of drinking too much water were raised during the course of the contest, with one on-air host mentioning the 2005 death of a college student during a hazing ritual in Chico. A listener also called in to advise against the stunt.

Strange -- one of 20 contestants -- initially joked lightheartedly with the show hosts as she and the rest chugged bottled water. But as the hours wore on, it came down to Strange and one other woman for the grand prize, and she admitted to having a splitting headache and feeling wobbly. Strange quipped on air that "it looks like I'm pregnant again."

...

A preliminary review by the coroner found she likely died of water intoxication, also called hyperhydration. People who drink too much water too fast can dilute their bodily fluids, creating potentially deadly shifts in their electrolyte levels.

...

Officials at Entercom Communications Corp., the station's Philadelphia-based owner, fired 10 people from KDND on Tuesday, including station manager Steve Weed, promotions chief Robin Pechota, producer Liz Diaz and the five on-air personalities involved in the show -- Adam Cox, Steve Maney, Patricia Sweet, Matt Carter and Pete Inzerillo. None returned calls for comment.

Alberto Gonzales has already offered them jobs at Bush Justice.

Here's some of the wacky radio banter soon to be known as Exhibit "A":

Female caller named Eva: "I want to say that, um, that those people that are drinking all that water can get sick and possibly die from water intoxication." DJ: "We're aware of that." DJ: "They signed releases, so we're not responsible. It's OK."

Sher and Smear Alike

Various wingnuts are drooling over the allegation in this article claiming that then-former President Carter allegedly requested leniency for a Nazi war criminal living in the United States.

Here's what we know about the accuser:

Now, the 56-year-old [Neal] Sher is unemployed. And, on Aug. 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stripped him of his D.C. law license. The move comes roughly one year after Sher conceded he had made "unauthorized reimbursements" of travel expenses from the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, where he served as its chief of staff. He resigned from that position in June 2002.

...

In 1998, several European insurance companies reached an agreement with Holocaust survivor groups, state insurance commissioners and the Israeli government to pay the families of Holocaust victims, who had earlier been denied insurance benefits. The insurance companies pledged millions of dollars, and the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims was created to help evaluate claims and disburse the money. Sher was hired as its chief of staff.

The commission came under fire early on for taking too long to process claims and for its refusal to make its finances public. In May 2001, the Los Angeles Times, citing internal commission documents, claimed that the commission had spent $30 million on salaries and outreach efforts, while paying out just $3 million. Later that year, a House committee held hearings at which Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., threatened to subpoena commission records. Commission Chairman Eagleburger, however, maintained that Congress had no authority over the group.

...

Two and a half months after the divorce was filed, The Baltimore Sun published a lengthy investigative article on the commission's expenditures. The article, which relied upon internal commission documents, reported that Sher had claimed to spend $136,653 in travel expenses in 1999. The article stated that the airfare alone for trips to Rome and Berlin often was $5,000 or more per trip. The article also noted that Sher had quit the commission just a few weeks prior to the article's publication.

Some details about what happened between Sher and the commission are still unclear. Eagleburger, in his statement to Legal Times, said that Sher was placed on administrative leave after admitting to the improper travel expense reimbursements. The commission's outside counsel, Thomas Howard of the D.C. office of Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, conducted an internal investigation. Howard's findings were then reviewed by one-time FBI director and former federal Judge William Webster III of the D.C. office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Sher paid back the commission, including the money it cost for the group to conduct the inquiry, and quietly resigned. According to Eagleburger, Webster recommended that no further action be taken.

Let's look closer:

However, the respondent [Neal Sher] admitted in his affidavit of consent to disbarment, which was annexed to the petitioner's notice pursuant to 22 NYCRR 691.3, that on 20 occasions between August 1999 and March 2002, while serving as the chief of staff and chief counsel to the ICHEIC, he filed claims for reimbursement which contained deliberately inflated statements regarding expenses incurred for air travel. The respondent admitted retaining $106,426.53. This sum was the difference in the price of coach class airfares that he actually purchased, as opposed to business class fares that he submitted as claims for reimbursements and which he was authorized to purchase, but did not.

...

Based on the evidence adduced, the motion and cross motion are granted to the extent that the Special Referee's report is confirmed. Notwithstanding the mitigation advanced by the respondent and the remorse expressed, he is guilty of serious professional misconduct which involves dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation. This misconduct warrants a one-year suspension.

Stealing from a Holocaust survivors' compensation fund. Dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.

Being a wingnut means never having to say you're a gullible dipshit.

Republican Idol

It looks like there's a three-way race for the quintessential Alan Keyes podium at the G.O.P. presidential debates:

Nobody seems very sure why Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the anti-immigration crusader, has thrown his hat in the ring for the presidency. No one believes he can win. A key lesson of 2006 is that the immigration issue is not an automatic winner for Republicans, and Tancredo is also not expected to raise the kind of money needed for a serious race. Many also believed that he would stay out after Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) announced his candidacy, since that put an immigration hawk in the race. But in fact, Duncan's presence in the race had less effect on Tancredo than the decision of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) to seek the nomination.

Tancredo got in anyway. He won't have the immigration issue to himself, but as long as he stays in, he may have to himself the anti-Bush mantle in the GOP primary. It is not expected that any of the other candidates (except maybe Paul) will denounce Bush for the GOP's decline, as Tancredo did Tuesday in an appearance on Tucker Carlson's afternoon program.

Of course, the inclusion of these loons will allow the G.O.P. and its media allies to claim that the party's more-polished loons, Willard Romney and John of Arc, are middle-of-the-roaders. But these chumps don't even have the amusement potential of Steve Forbes or Gary Bauer. Come back, George Allen, your party needs you.

(Quote from Novakula, click here at your own risk.)

Some Gave None

At last, someone has discovered the substantial personal price that "Doctor" Condoleezza Rice has made in re: Iraq. Debb Saunders has the details:

Actually, Rice is paying a personal price. She has not lost a son, but Rice has had to live with whatever policy mistakes she helped make, and she has put her life at risk when visiting Iraq.

Kind of like those doctors who kill so many patients they have to live with added malpractice premiums. Of course, Condi gets to live with the mistakes she made, while those on the recieving end of Condi's mistakes don't have that burden at all. They should be thanking Condi, those decomposing ingrates.

The rest of Debb's column contains not only the usual clownish distortion of Boxer's remarks, but also manufactures an entire new army of strawmen which have nothing to do with Boxer's remarks. Saunders quotes Faux journalist David Assman, who criticizes those who call U.S. soliders "kids" (which Boxer didn't do), a solider's mother who says Boxer doesn't speak for her (which Boxer didn't claim to do) and the mother of a deceased solider who's pissed off she doesn't get as much teevee time as Cindy Sheehan.

Soup Nazis

In honor of Gerald Ford, his decency, and the tremendous sacrifices he made to heal this country at a time of division, I pledge to spend 2007 working towards a similar depolarization – by cooperating with peers from opposing camps, by putting my countrymen's needs before my party's, and by making sacrifices if necessary. We stand stronger when united, and I pledge to lead my country by good example, just as I have been led by Gerald Ford's good example. I pledge to spend 2007 working towards that strong unity, and I dedicate that work to Gerald Ford's memory.

I don't have any great dislike for Ford, but the legacy of Gerald Ford is not a legacy of putting his countrymen's needs before his party's or making sacrifices. The Nixon pardon was what the Republican Party needed, not what the country needed, no matter how many thousands of Beltway monkeys type that line for a thousand years. Ford may have sacrificed his own chance to be elected President (which were non-existent at best before he was named V.P.), but his pardon immunized the Republican Party from the disclosure that its corruption was party-wide and deep, and not localized to the White House.

As for Hot Soup, I don't need a bunch of p.r. firm whores to tell me how to think about America. Those clowns wouldn't know sacrifice if it was rammed up their expense-account-padded fat asses.

Right now on Hot Soup (no link for you!) such unity-minded, self-abnegating non-partisans as Newt Gingrich and Mary Matalin are addressing the pressing issue of what they would do if Bill Gates gave them $10 billion dollars. (Playing along, Newtie and the Beast don't mention their dream of a privately-funded nuclear annihilation of Teheran.) For the Soup Nazis, partisanship is a character deficit exclusive to those you don't break cocktail weenies with.

Slander

Today on Press The Meat, Pumpkinhead Russert repeated the slander that Joe Lieberman (Me-CT) is a Democrat.

Lieberman repeated the slander that anyone who opposes the escalation is a 9/11-terrorist-loving loser. Oh, and he's supporting the escalation for his children and his grandchilden, apparently because they're too busy to do it themselves.